Decoding Sheffield Grayson’s journal took all night. The longer Grayson worked, the faster he went, transcribing the translation in his own notebook
—leather, just like his father’s. Grayson ignored the similarity. He ignored everything but the shifting code and the words it gave him.
In the beginning, Sheffield Grayson appeared to have used this journal as an off-the-books ledger, recording where the money he embezzled from his company went. There were no account numbers, but with the dates and the locations of the accounts, there was a trail to follow.
The kind the FBI would definitely be capable of following.
But as Grayson got further and further through his translation and the dates at the top of the entries showed months and years passing, the tone and content of Sheffield Grayson’s writing changed. The journal entries went from focusing almost entirely on documenting illegal transactions to something more… confessional.
That was the word that Grayson kept coming back to as he decoded and transcribed what his father had written—except that wasn’t quite right. The word confession implied something like guilt or the need to unburden oneself. Sheffield Grayson hadn’t been burdened.
He’d been angry.
Cora’s funeral was today. It should have been a time of mourning. I should have been Acacia’s rock. Without her mother there to interfere, to hold her threats over my head, it should have been the two of us, husband and wife, against the world. Not so. Trowbridge
made sure of that. He got Acacia alone at the wake. He told my wife things he had no business knowing, let alone saying.
She had so many questions.
Grayson didn’t let himself pause in decoding, didn’t linger on any one entry, no matter what it said. But even as he kept his focus on turning numbers to letters and letters to words, on finding the exact location on each page in which meaningful content was embedded, his brain still processed every word he wrote.
The overall picture was becoming clearer and clearer in his mind.
Cora left everything to Acacia and the girls. No surprise there. It’s all tied up in trusts. No surprise there, either. Acacia is her own trustee, thank God, but Cora named Trowbridge trustee for the girls. The bastard is already asking to see financial records. I’ll force a sale of the company before I let that pathetic excuse for a man question me.
The next few pages detailed the sale of the company and Sheffield Grayson’s efforts to ensure the buyer took the financial records they were given at face value. But after that, the tenor of his words shifted again.
Acacia keeps asking about “my son.” As if he’s any business of hers—or mine, for that matter. As if the Hawthorne family hasn’t already taken enough from me. Acacia is too soft-hearted to understand. She won’t listen to reason—not about the boy and not about her trust.
And then, two pages later, there was another entry, a brief one: Tobias Hawthorne is dead at last.
It took another few weeks, but then, right after Avery had been named heir, the entries started up again.
That conniving bastard left his money to a girl not that much
older than the twins. A stranger, they say, but there are whispers that she’s Hawthorne’s child.
Grayson could feel the seething anger building in these pages. The entries became more frequent. Some were about Colin, the fire, the evidence that Sheffield Grayson had put together that it was the result of arson—evidence that the police ignored. Other entries focused on Avery and Sheffield Grayson’s obsessive theories about who she was to the old man, to the Hawthorne family.
Theories about Grayson’s supposedly dead uncle, Toby Hawthorne.
Grayson was able to pinpoint the exact moment that Sheffield Grayson had decided to have Avery tracked, to spy on her. The man was convinced she’d lead him to Toby.
And since he’s already a dead man, well… they can hardly charge me with his murder, now can they?
Grayson didn’t let himself pause, even for a second, when he transcribed the word murder. He just let this almost Shakespearean drama play out: the unseated king stripped of power by the machinations of his dead mother-in-law; a rising heir entangled with the king’s archenemy. A family with blood on their hands. A debt that would be paid.
Grayson was getting closer and closer to the end of the journal. And then he wrote down a date that made him look up from the page, made him close his eyes.
The interview. Mine and Avery’s. Grayson could recall each question that he and Avery had been asked. He remembered the way Avery’s body had turned toward his, the way he’d let himself look at her, really look at her, in service of letting the world see that the Hawthorne family had accepted Tobias Hawthorne’s chosen heir.
But mostly, Grayson remembered the moment they’d lost control of the narrative—and the way he’d taken that control back.
Pulling her body to his. Bringing his lips to hers.
For one damn moment, he’d stopped fighting himself. He’d kissed her
like kissing her was what he had been born to do, like it was inevitable, like
they were. And not long after, everything had exploded.
The way it always did. The way it had with Emily. With Avery. With Eve.
Why not you? Grayson forced his eyes open. He let himself stare at the date he’d written down, then he took Sheffield Grayson’s index card, matched its notches up to the notches on the page he was decoding, set the cipher wheel to the appropriate number, based on the withdrawal slip with that date. And then, he decoded, read, and wrote.
Sheffield Grayson had watched the interview. He was the one who had set them up to be broadsided with the bombshell accusation that Grayson’s uncle Toby was still alive. Sheffield Grayson had believed that Avery was Toby’s daughter. He’d wanted confirmation, but that confirmation had never come, because Grayson had taken matters into his own hands.
That kiss.
Grayson’s father’s resulting rage was palpable, even now. Toby Hawthorne’s daughter, he’d written, doesn’t get to kiss my son.
Grayson leaned his head back until swallowing hurt. He called me his son. No quotation marks. No dismissal. Nothing but possession and fury— and with that fury, purpose.
“Gray?” Xander said quietly beside him.
Grayson shook his head. He wasn’t talking about this. There was nothing to talk about. He focused instead on finishing what he’d set out to do. There were exactly three more entries in the journal. Grayson made his way through them with military precision and merciless speed. After the night of the interview, Sheffield Grayson had returned to the detached record-keeping style of his earlier entries.
The first of the three entries documented a cryptocurrency payment to a “specialist.” The second included payment information for a Texas storage unit. The third simply had a list of supplies that Sheffield Grayson anticipated needing. Chloroform. Zip ties. Accelerant. A gun.
And that was it, the end of his records.
Grayson stopped writing. He dropped the pen, allowed the journal in which he’d written the translation to close.
“Reckon I know better than to ask if you’re okay,” Nash said quietly.
“I ate the rest of the Oreos,” Xander announced gravely. “Here, Gray.
Have some pie!”
Grayson seized on the distraction his younger brother had offered. “When did you stop for pie?”
“When didn’t I stop for pie?” Xander replied philosophically.
The vise in Grayson’s chest loosened. Not much. Not enough. But at least he could breathe—and think. Not about the fact that Sheffield Grayson had finally referred to him as his son. Not about the role that kiss had played in setting off everything that followed: the bomb, Avery’s kidnapping, Sheffield Grayson’s death.
No, Grayson thought, as he always did, about what to do next. Some people could make mistakes. He wasn’t one of them.
Eventually—most likely within hours—Gigi and Savannah were going to come looking for the puzzle box. Without the faux USB key, they might never get it open, but Grayson knew better than to underestimate his sisters. If they opened the box to find it empty, they would be rightly suspicious.
His course of action decided, Grayson stole Xander’s fork, took a bite of pie, then placed a call to the concierge. “I need a plain leather journal,” he said. “Expensive, brown leather, lined paper, no brand name or other identifying marks on the leather or pages.”
