The Inheritance Games (The Inheritance Games, #1)

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

“The remainder of my estate,” Mr. Ortega read, “including all properties, monetary assets, and worldly possessions not otherwise specified, I leave to Avery Kylie Grambs.”

A man I’d never met hadn’t just left me a multi-billion-dollar fortune. Things like that didn’t happen, period.

“And I assure the rest of you, Tobias Hawthorne’s last will and testament is utterly unbreakable.

But let me make one thing very clear: Per the terms of the will, any heir who challenges Avery’s inheritance will forfeit their share of the estate entirely.”

They’re going to kill me. Someone in this room is actually going to kill me.

“It was his last request that I continue in the employment of Ms. Avery Kylie Grambs.”

I have a secret.… I pictured my mom in my mind. How many times had I heard her say those exact words?

But there was something about the way Grayson had looked at me, from the first time we’d met.…

Dearest Avery, I’m sorry. —T. T. H.

“Sometimes,” Jameson Hawthorne said, sounding strangely contemplative, “things that appear very different on the surface are actually exactly the same at their core.”

“You’re protective,” Nash commented, “and you seem like you’d fight dirty, and if there’s one thing I respect, it’s those particular traits in combination.”

“There’s a chance that Hawthorne House is just a tiny bit hard to navigate. Imagine, if you will, that a labyrinth had a baby with Where’s Waldo?, only Waldo is your rooms.”

“Everything’s a game, Avery Grambs. The only thing we get to decide in this life is if we play to win.”

“You might think you’re playing the game, darlin’, but that’s not how Jamie sees it.” Nash’s voice was gentle enough, but for the words. “We aren’t normal. This place isn’t normal, and you’re not a player, kid. You’re the glass ballerina—or the knife.”

“Oh, don’t be a prude, Abigail,” Skye admonished from inside the bathroom. “We’re all friends here, aren’t we? I make it a policy to befriend everyone who steals my birthright.” I’d never seen passive aggression quite like this.

“And I”—Skye took a long drink—“didn’t choose my sons’ middle names.”

“If you didn’t choose them,” I said, “then who did?” Skye finished off the champagne. “My father.”

The morality of an action depends, ultimately and only, on its outcomes.”

I made a show of studying the map in front of me, the geography of the estate, from the northern forest called the Black Wood to a small creek that ran along the western edge of the estate.

A brook, on the west side of the property. Westbrook. Blackwood. Westbrook.

“If I were a boy,” Thea told him with a Southern belle smile, “people would just call me driven.” “Thea.” Constantine frowned at her. “Right.” Thea dabbed at her lips with her napkin. “No feminism at the dinner table.”

“What happened,” Oren replied, glancing back into the distance, “is that someone saw the two of you out here, decided you were easy targets, and pulled their trigger. Twice.”

On the underside of that lever, on the fourth gun I looked at, were three letters: O. N. E. The way it had been etched into the metal made the letters look like initials, but I read it as number, to go with the one we’d found on the bridge.

Not infinity, I thought. Eight. And now: One. Eight. One.

The keychain was plastic, in the shape of the number one.

Like the current billion-dollar question: If Drake had shot at me, and Libby hadn’t let him onto the estate—who had?

Grayson let out a ragged breath, and then I felt him gently turning my face back toward his. “Avery.” He almost never used my given name. He gently traced the line of my jaw. “I won’t let anyone hurt you ever again. You have my word.”

“Emily was hunched over, crawling out of the water. I thought she was pretending.”

“I just stood there,” Jameson said dully. “I didn’t do a damn thing to help her.” I watched Emily Laughlin die.

“She collapsed. She went still, and she stayed still. And then you came back, Gray, and I left.”

Jameson shuddered. “I hated you for taking her there, but I hate myself more because I let her die. I stood there, and I watched.”

reordered, A very risky gamble. “He kept saying that,” Xander murmured. “That no matter what he planned, it might not work. That it was…” “A very risky gamble,”

There was no paper inside my envelope, no letter. The only thing it contained was a single packet of sugar.

A man eating in the booth behind me glances back. He asks me how old I am. “Six,” I say.

“I have some grandsons at home who are just about your age,” he says. “Tell me, Avery, can you spell your name? Your full name, like your mom said a minute ago?” I can, and I do. “I met him,” I said quietly. “Just once, years ago—just for a moment, in passing.”

Find Tobias Hawthorne II.