A chauffeured car picked Lyra up at the designated meeting spot. A private jet flew her from one secured airstrip to another. There, she found a helicopter.
“Welcome aboard.” A voice spoke from the far side of the aircraft, and a moment later, a long, lean form strolled around it to join her.
Lyra recognized him immediately. Of course she did. Jameson Hawthorne was very recognizable. “Technically, I’m not on board yet,” Lyra said.
Was that petty? Maybe. But he was a Hawthorne, and seeing him brought back the dream—and the only three things Lyra could remember her dead father ever saying to her.
Happy birthday, Lyra. A Hawthorne did this.
And then, a riddle: What begins a bet? Not that.
“When I said aboard, I wasn’t talking about the chopper.” Jameson Hawthorne was apparently the kind of person who could roll a smirk right into a smile in the blink of an eye. “Welcome to the Grandest Game, Lyra Catalina Kane.”
There was something in the way he said those words, an unholy energy, an invitation.
“You’re Jameson Hawthorne,” Lyra said. She didn’t allow an ounce of awe in her tone. She didn’t want him to think she was affected by his
presence, by his looks, by the way he leaned up against a helicopter as casually as he would have a wall.
“Guilty,” Jameson replied. “Of most things, really.” And then he looked over her shoulder. “You’re late,” he called.
“If by late, you mean early.”
Lyra froze. She knew that voice, knew it the way her body knew choreography she’d practiced a thousand times, like decades from now, she’d still ache with the memory of it the second she heard the music. She knew that voice.
Grayson Hawthorne.
“Definitely late,” Jameson called. “I am never late.”
“It’s almost as if,” Jameson said innocently, “someone told you the wrong time.”
Lyra barely heard Jameson, because the only sound her brain could process was footsteps on the pavement behind her. She told herself that she was being ridiculous, that she couldn’t feel Grayson Hawthorne coming closer.
He was nothing to her.
A Hawthorne did this. That memory gave way to another, her father’s voice replaced by Grayson’s: Stop calling. That was the imperious, dismissive order he’d issued the third and final time she’d dialed his number looking for answers, looking for something.
To this day, Grayson Hawthorne was the only person she’d ever told about the memory, the dreams, her father’s suicide, the fact that she’d been there.
And Grayson Hawthorne hadn’t cared.
Of course he hadn’t. She was a stranger to him, a nobody, and he was a Hawthorne, an arrogant, cold, above-it-all, asshole Hawthorne who didn’t care how many lives his billionaire grandfather had ruined—or whose.
Grayson stopped a few feet shy of Lyra. “I assume, Jamie, that you’re aware that you’re being watched.”
“Oh, I assure you, he most definitely is.” That reply hadn’t come from Jameson.
Lyra finally managed to turn around. Beyond Grayson—who she did not
look at—she could see a figure strolling toward them, far enough away that
he shouldn’t have been able to hear or respond to the conversation.
And yet… Lyra studied the new arrival. He was tall, broad through the shoulders but lean everywhere else, and he moved with a grace that she recognized, like to like. His accent was British, his skin light brown, his cheekbones sharp.
And his smile was nothing short of dangerous.
His black, thick hair curled slightly on the ends, but there was nothing messy about it. About him. “Though, as a point of clarification,” the newcomer said, his eyes locking on to Lyra’s, “Jameson wasn’t the one I was watching.”
Me, Lyra thought. He was watching me. Scoping out the competition.
“Rohan,” Jameson greeted, his tone half-accusing and half-amused.
“Pleasure to see you, too, Hawthorne.” The guy’s accent sounded less aristocratic than it had a moment before, and Lyra was hit with the sudden sense that this Rohan could be whoever he wanted to be.
If only it were that easy for her.
“Take a step back,” Grayson ordered. Lyra wasn’t sure if he was talking to Jameson or Rohan. The only thing that was clear was that her presence didn’t even register.
“My uptight and somewhat less charismatic brother here is going to be the one making sure everybody plays by the rules this year,” Jameson warned Rohan. “Yourself included.”
“Personally,” Rohan said, his gaze going back to Lyra’s, his lips slowly curving into that smile again, “I find that playing by the rules is exactly half the fun.”
