Page 2 of The Brothers Hawthorne

Nash crossed the room and snagged the ornament, then held it out. A sphere made of clear plastic dangled from a red ribbon. The plastic had a visible seam.

There was something inside.

Grayson took the ornament and, with the precision of a neurosurgeon, broke it open. A single white puzzle piece fell out. Jameson pounced. He turned the piece over and saw his grandfather’s scrawl on the back.1/6.

“One out of six,” he said out loud, and then his eyes widened. “The other trees!”

There were six Christmas trees in Hawthorne House. The one in the foyer stretched up twenty feet overhead, its boughs wrapped in sparkling lights. The dining room tree was strung with pearls, the one in the Tea Room bedecked in crystal. Cascading velvet ribbons danced through the branches of an enormous fir on the second-story landing; a white tree decorated solely in gold sat on the third.

Nash, Grayson, Jameson, and Xander scoured them all, obtaining five more ornaments, four with puzzle pieces inside. Opening those four ornaments allowed them to assemble the puzzle: a square. Ablanksquare.

Jameson and Grayson reached for the final ornament at the same time. “I’m the one who found the first clue,” Jameson insisted fiercely. “Iknewthere was a game.”

After a long moment, Grayson let go. Jameson had the ornament open in a flash. Inside, he found a small metal key on a little flashlight keychain

“Try the light on the puzzle, Jamie.” Even Nash couldn’t resist the lure of this game.

Jameson turned the flashlight on and angled its beam toward the assembled puzzle. Words appeared.SOUTHWEST CORNER OF THE ESTATE.

“How long will it take us to walk there?” Xander asked dramatically.“Hours?”

The Hawthorne estate, like Hawthorne House, was sizable.

Nash knelt next to Xander. “Wrong question, little man.” He looked up at the other two. “Either of you wanna tell me the right one?”

Jameson’s gaze darted to the keychain, but Grayson beat him to speaking. “What exactly is that a keyto?”

The answer was a golf cart. Nash drove. As the southwest corner of the estate came into view, an awed hush swept over the brothers as they gaped at the sight before them.

This presentdefinitelywouldn’t have fit in the Great Room.

A quartet of ancient oak trees, all of them massive, now hosted the most elaborate tree house any of them—and possibly anyone in the world—had ever seen. The multi-level marvel looked like something out of a fairy tale, like it had been called from the oaks by magic, like itbelongedthere. Jameson counted nine walkways stretching between the trees. The house had two towers. Six spiraling slides. Ladders, ropes, steps that seemed to float midair.

This was the tree house to end all tree houses.

Their grandfather stood in front of it all, arms crossed, the barest hint of a smile on his face. “You know, boys,” the great Tobias Hawthorne called, as the golf cart came to a stop and the wind whistled through branches, “I thought you’d get here faster.”

CHAPTER 1

GRAYSON

Faster.Grayson Hawthorne was power and control. His form was flawless. He’d long ago perfected the art of visualizing his opponent,feelingeach strike, channeling his body’s momentum into every block, every attack.

But you could always be faster.

After his tenth time through the sequence, Grayson stopped, sweat dripping down his bare chest. Keeping his breathing even and controlled, he knelt in front of what remained of their childhood tree house, unrolled his pack, and surveyed his choices: three daggers, two with ornate hilts and one understated and smooth. It was this last blade that Grayson picked up.

Knife in hand, Grayson straightened, his arms by his side. Mind, clear. Body, free of tension.Begin.There were many styles of knife fighting, and the year he was thirteen, Grayson had studied them all. Of course, billionaire Tobias Hawthorne’s grandsons had never merelystudiedanything. Once they’d chosen a focus, they were expected to live it, breathe it, master it.

And this was what Grayson had learned that year: Stance was everything. You didn’t move the blade. You moved, and the blade moved. Faster.Faster. It had to feel natural. It had tobenatural. The moment your muscles tensed, the moment you stopped breathing, the moment you broke your stance instead of flowing from one to the next, you lost.

And Hawthornes didn’t lose.

“When I told you to get a hobby, this isn’t what I meant.”

Grayson ignored Xander’s presence for as long as it took to finish the sequence—and throw the dagger with exacting precision at a low-hanging branch six feet away. “Hawthornes don’t have hobbies,” he told his little brother, walking to retrieve the blade. “We have specialties. Expertise.”

“Anything worth doing is worth doing well,” Xander quoted, wiggling his eyebrows—one of which had only just started to grow back after an experiment gone wrong.“And anything done well can be done better.”