Lyra looked down at the watch that Xander Hawthorne had just placed on her wrist. Words scrolled across the screen: PLAYER NUMBER 4, LYRA KANE.
Lyra had been number four of eight before, but she was four of five now. Her gaze went first to Grayson, who was still standing near his injured sister, then to Odette.
The three of them weren’t a team anymore.
“A question,” Odette said. She pinched the band of her watch between a finger and her thumb. “Are these watches transferable?”
It took Lyra’s brain a second to catch up with what Odette had just asked.
“By the rules of the game,” Odette elaborated, “can I give my place in phase two to another player?”
What? No. Lyra stared at Odette. You’re dying. This game—you’re going to win it if it’s the last thing you do. Lyra’s gaze shifted to Grayson, who looked back at her, a silent exchange that told Lyra their minds were operating in tandem.
Odette couldn’t leave. Not before she’d told them what she knew.
“Why would you?” Jameson Hawthorne’s expression made it clear: He was intrigued. Objectively, intrigued was probably a good look for Jameson Hawthorne, but Lyra barely even spared him a glance.
There was only one Hawthorne on this dock who mattered to Lyra, one
Hawthorne who knew what was truly at stake here. One and only one.
“My health is not what I thought it was, coming into this game.” Odette sold that statement like the actress she was, a proud tilt to her chin, like the admission cost her.
That’s not why you’re leaving. Lyra knew it. She knew that Grayson knew it, too.
This was about the omega symbol, the calla lily, the power outage. This was about Lyra and Grayson. The right kind of disaster just waiting to happen.
From her position on the dock, Avery Grambs silently exchanged a look with Jameson, then Xander, then Nash, before she finally looked back to Odette.
“We’ll allow it,” Avery said, speaking for the group.
Odette rubbed a thumb across the band of her watch, then turned toward Gigi Grayson.
“I don’t want it.” The sudden fierceness in Gigi’s voice surprised Lyra. “I never wanted anyone to hand any part of this game to me.”
Odette gave a brief nod, then her gaze shifted, sliding over Knox Landry and landing on Brady Daniels. “Care to hold out your wrist, young man?” Odette said.
Brady held out his wrist. Lyra still didn’t quite believe that Odette was going to do it, but within seconds, Brady was wearing the watch.
Odette had just given away her spot in the Grandest Game.
Why? The question pounded through Lyra.
“This is the second time I’ve been given a place in this game that I did not earn.” Brady looked down, then up again. “Thank you, Ms. Morales.”
Silence greeted that proclamation, broken only by the sound of waves lapping against the dock.
“So that’s it.” Knox recovered his voice first, his words intense but eerily devoid of emotion. “I’m out of the game, Daniels, and you’re not. It must seem like justice to you. You couldn’t have planned it better.”
To Lyra’s ears, that sounded like an accusation. Did Knox think that Brady had planned this? How was that even possible?
“Maybe,” Brady said, staring out at the horizon, “I just had a little faith.” As the game makers and other players began to depart from the dock,
Lyra kept her eyes locked on Odette, telegraphing a message she hoped was
very, very clear: You aren’t leaving—not until you tell us what you know.
Odette made no attempt to follow the others up to the house. Grayson stayed put, too, and soon, the three of them were the only ones left on the dock.
“You’re out?” Lyra said hoarsely. Of all the questions screaming in her mind, she had no idea why she started there. “What about leaving a legacy for your children and grandchildren?”
Odette walked slowly to the edge of the dock and stared out at the ocean. “There are some legacies one does not wish to pass down.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Lyra said. A chill spread down her spine.
A light wind blew in off the ocean, lifting Odette’s hair off her back, punctuating the old woman’s silence.
“Since it appears you are reluctant to answer Lyra’s question, try mine.” Grayson’s air was that of a precision shooter, taking aim. “How long have you known that you were going to be leaving the Grandest Game?”
“From the moment the power was cut.” Odette tilted her head toward the sky. “Or maybe it was the moment you saw my drawing, Lyra.”
The lily. “How did you know?” Lyra whispered, the words clawing their way out of her. The dream always started with the flower.
“What do you know?” Grayson elaborated. Silence.
“Please.” Lyra wasn’t above pleading.
Odette turned slowly back to face them. “A Hawthorne did this,” she said. The old woman closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, she repeated herself. “A Hawthorne did this. That is what your father told you, Lyra, prior to his final, dramatic display. A Hawthorne,” she repeated, emphasizing the words. “And the two of you assumed it was Tobias? A Hawthorne, and it never occurred to either of you that the A in that sentence might be an initial?”
An initial? Lyra stared at Odette, trying to make sense of that. She sorted through what she knew of the Hawthorne family tree. The billionaire, Tobias. His children, Zara, Skye, and Tobias II. The grandsons, Nash, Grayson, Jameson, and Xander.
Alexander. That made no sense. Xander was her age.
“Alice.” Grayson went very still, his eyes finding their way to Lyra’s, his
body never moving. “My grandmother. Alice Hawthorne. She died before I was born.” Grayson’s head swiveled back toward Odette. “Explain.”
Odette wasn’t looking at either one of them now. “There are always three.” There was something eerie about the way the old woman said those words, like she wasn’t the first one to say them.
Like they’d been said many times before. “Three what?” Grayson pressed.
Lyra thought about the dream, about her father’s gifts: a calla lily and a candy necklace. With only three pieces of candy.
“I promised you a single answer, Mr. Hawthorne,” Odette said, every inch the lawyer. “The rest, if you will recall, was shrouded in ifs.”
“You promised to tell us how you knew Tobias Hawthorne.” Lyra wasn’t going to give up on getting answers. She couldn’t. “How you ended up on his List.”
Odette stared at Lyra for a moment longer, then turned to Grayson. “As you correctly surmised, Mr. Hawthorne, I used to work at McNamara, Ortega, and Jones. That is how we met, your grandfather and I. We parted ways roughly fifteen years ago, a mere nine months into my employment.”
Fifteen years. Lyra’s father had died on her fourth birthday. She was nineteen and change now. Roughly fifteen years.
“As you have likely also surmised,” Odette continued, “the nature of my relationship with Tobias was… complicated.”
Lyra thought about everything Odette had said about living and loving. About Tobias Hawthorne being the best and worst man she’d ever known. About the loves she would have gone to hell and back for—and had.
Draw your Hawthorne, the way I once drew mine.
“Do not pretend to have had a romantic relationship with my grandfather.” Grayson’s voice was like sharpened steel. “The old man was very open about the fact that there was no one after his beloved Alice. ‘Men like us love only once.’ That is what my grandfather told my brother Jameson and myself, years before he died and years after you and he allegedly parted ways. I remember every word. ‘All these years, your grandmother has been gone, and there hasn’t been anyone else. There can’t and won’t be.’” Grayson breathed, in and out. “He wasn’t lying.”
“One logical conclusion,” Odette said in a lawyer’s tone, “is that, in Tobias’s eyes, I wasn’t anyone.” Her lips came together and then parted
slightly. “He treated me like no one in the end.”
Draw your Hawthorne, the way I once drew mine.
Lyra knew in the pit of her stomach and every bone in her body that Odette was telling the truth—and not as a distraction this time.
“Likewise,” Odette continued evenly, “I would point out that your grandfather referred to his wife as gone.”
Lyra’s mind raced. Her mouth was dry. “Not dead. Gone.”
“Enough.” Grayson had clearly reached his limit. “My grandmother was buried. She has a gravestone. There was a funeral—a very well-attended funeral. My mother has mourned her mother’s death for as long as I can remember. And you would have me believe she is alive? That she, what? Faked her death? That my grandfather knew—and allowed it?”
“Rest assured, he did not know—at first.” Odette turned toward ocean once more. “When we met, Tobias was still grieving the love of his life. The toll of burying Alice was etched into his face and body for everyone to see. And then there was me. Us.”
Fifteen years earlier, Odette would have been sixty-six, Tobias Hawthorne a few years younger.
“And then… she came back.” Odette’s voice was nearly lost to a rising wind, but Lyra heard so much more than just the words that had been spoken.
She. Alice. A Hawthorne.
“Tobias’s dead wife came to him and asked him to do something for her. Like they’d never parted. Like he had not literally buried her. He did as Alice had bidden. Tobias utilized me to accomplish that favor—used me for his true love’s ends—and then he discarded me and tried his level best to have me disbarred.”
There it was. The answer—the only answer—they’d been promised: how Odette had known Tobias Hawthorne and why she’d been on his List.
“What was the favor he had you help with?” Lyra asked. No reply.
“Once that favor was accomplished, am I to believe that my long-dead grandmother disappeared once more?” Grayson’s tone was impossible to read. “That my grandfather never said a word to anyone? Like mother, like son?”
Lyra was not, in that moment, capable of figuring out what that was supposed to mean.
“Here.” Odette pressed something into Lyra’s hands. The opera glasses. “They must have a use in the game still to come,” Odette told Lyra. “My game no longer.”
She really is leaving.
“If you are suffering from the misapprehension that we are done here, Ms. Morales,” Grayson said, his tone ominous, “allow me to cure you of that notion.”
Odette looked at Grayson like he was a little boy. “I’ve given far more than I owed, Mr. Hawthorne, and said far more than I should. The only proper answer to some riddles is silence.”
Lyra’s mind was never silent. Voices echoed through her memory—her father’s, Odette’s. A Hawthorne did this.
In the grandest of games, there are no coincidences.
There are some legacies one does not wish to pass down.
“You said that there are always three.” Grayson was not wired to give up. “Three what, exactly?” No answer. “Why leave the game, Ms. Morales? Why give up your chance at twenty-six million dollars? What are you afraid of?”
Lyra thought about her father, thankful that she couldn’t call to mind a single image of his body. A Hawthorne did this. She thought about the candy necklace, the calla lily, an omega drawn in blood.
But somehow, one question rose to the surface over all of that—the only question that Lyra had any real hope Odette would actually answer. “The notes,” Lyra said. “With my father’s names.” Her fingers curled into her palms. “Did you write them?”
Odette let out a breath, suddenly, utterly, and unnaturally calm. “I did not.”
