The next morning, I awoke to an empty bed and someone rapping on my door.
“I’m coming in,” Alisa called. She tried to open the door, but Oren stopped her from the hallway.
“I could be naked in here,” I grumbled loudly, hastily throwing on designer sweatpants before telling Oren to let her in.
“And you could count on my discretion if you were,” Alisa replied briskly. “Attorney-client privilege.”
“Was that an actual joke?” I asked. In response, Alisa placed a leather satchel on my dresser. “If that’s more paperwork for me to look over,” I told her, “I don’t want it.”
I had enough on my plate right now without thinking about the trust paperwork—or the journal Grayson had given me, its pages still blank.
“That’s not paperwork.” Alisa didn’t clarify what the bag was. Instead, she fixed me with what I had termed the Alisa Look. “You should have called me. The moment someone showed up claiming to be Toby Hawthorne’s daughter, you should have called.”
I glanced at Oren, wondering if he’d changed his mind and told her about Eve. “Why?” I asked Alisa. “The will is through probate. Eve isn’t a legal threat.”
“This isn’t just about the will. That threatening note you received—”
Notes, plural. I glanced at Oren, and he gave a slight shake of his head—he wasn’t the one who had tipped her off to any of this.
Alisa rolled her eyes at the two of us. “This is the part where you tell me—erroneously—that you have everything under control.”
“I advised against calling you,” Oren told her point- blank. “This was a security issue, not a legal one.”
“Really, Oren?” For a split second, Alisa looked hurt, then she converted that to extreme professional annoyance. “Let’s address the elephant in the room, shall we?” she said. “Yes, I took a chance when Avery was in that coma, but if I hadn’t moved her back to Hawthorne House when I did, she wouldn’t have a security team. The terms of the will were ironclad. Do you understand that, Oren? If I hadn’t done what I did, Avery wouldn’t be entitled to live at Hawthorne House with all its fancy security. You wouldn’t be able to pay your men.” Alisa stared at him, hard. “She would be out there with nothing, so, yes, I took a calculated risk, and thank God I did.” She turned to me. “Since I am the only one in this room who can claim to make the good, smart decision under fire—when things start going up in flames, you damn well pick up the phone.”
I winced.
“As it was,” Alisa muttered, “I had to hear about this from Nash.”
That startled a response out of me. “Nash called you?”
“He can’t even stand to be in the same room with me,” Alisa said softly, “but he called. Because he knows I am good at my job.” She walked toward me, her heels clicking against the wood floor. “I can’t help you if you won’t let me, Avery, not with this and not with everything you’re about to have on your plate.”
The money. She was talking about my inheritance—and the trust.
“What happened, Alisa?” Oren crossed his arms over his chest.
“What makes you think something happened?” Alisa asked coolly.
“Instinct,” my head of security replied. “And the fact that someone has been trying to chip away at Avery’s security team.”
I could practically see Alisa filing that piece of information away. “I’ve become aware of a smear campaign,” she said, giving Oren tit for tat. “Gossip websites, mostly. Nothing you need to concern yourself with, Avery, but one of my connections in the press has informed me that the going rate for pictures of you with any of the Hawthornes has inexplicably tripled. Meanwhile, at least three companies that Tobias Hawthorne owned a significant stake in are experiencing… turbulence.”
Oren’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of turbulence?”
“CEO turnover, sudden scandal, FDA investigations…”
Avenge. Revenge. Vengeance. Avenger. I always win in the end.
“On the business end of things, what are we looking for?” Oren asked Alisa.
“Wealth. Power. Connections.” Alisa set her jaw. “I’m on it.”
She was on it. Oren was on it. But we weren’t any closer to an answer or to getting Toby back, and there was nothing I could do about it. An incomplete riddle. A story— and we’re at the mercy of the storyteller.
“I’ll let you know as soon as I find something,” Alisa said. “In the meantime, we need to keep Eve happy, away from the press, and under surveillance until the firm can assess the best course of action. I suspect a modest settlement, in exchange for an NDA, may be in order.” In full-on lawyer mode, Alisa didn’t even pause before moving on to the next item on her agenda. “If, at any point, a ransom needs to be arranged, the firm can handle that as well.”
Was that where this was headed? The end of this story, once the riddle was complete? Was Toby’s captor just waiting until he had me where he wanted me to make demands?
“I’ll have my team keep you in the loop,” Oren told Alisa briskly.
My lawyer nodded like she expected nothing less, but I got the sense that Oren letting her back in mattered to her. “I suppose the only business that remains is that.” Alisa nodded toward the leather satchel she’d placed on my dresser. “When I updated the partners on the current situation, I was given this bag and its contents to pass along to you, Avery.”
“What is it?” I asked, walking toward my dresser.
“I don’t know.” Alisa sounded perturbed. “Mr. Hawthorne’s instructions were that it was to remain secure and unopened, unless certain conditions were met, in which case it was to be delivered promptly to you.”
I stared at the bag. Tobias Hawthorne had left me his fortune, but the only message I’d ever received from him was a grand total of two words: I’m sorry. I reached out to touch the leather bag. “What conditions?”
Alisa cleared her throat. “We were to deliver this to you in the event that you ever met Evelyn Shane.”
I remembered vaguely that Eve was short for Evelyn— but then another realization took over. The old man knew about Eve. That revelation hit me like splinters to my lungs. I’d assumed that the dead billionaire hadn’t known about Toby’s actual daughter. At some point, I’d started believing, deep down, that I’d only been chosen to inherit because Tobias Hawthorne hadn’t realized there was someone out there who suited his purposes better than I did.
A stone that killed at least as many birds. A more elegant glass ballerina. A sharper knife.
But he knew about Eve all along.
