The Inheritance Games (The Inheritance Games, #1)

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

“It’s not what you think,” Libby promised. She was an apology cupcake baker. A guilty cupcake baker. A please-don’t-be-mad-at-me cupcake baker.

Some people would want to be me. Some people would hate me to the depths of their souls. For the first time, I noticed the gun holstered to Oren’s side.

For the rest of the morning, Alisa and I played what I had mentally termed The Uprooting Avery’s Life In An Instant game. I quit my job. Alisa took care of withdrawing me from school.

“Grayson is in training for the Insufferable Olympics, and we really think he can go all the way if he can just jam that stick a little farther up his—”

“I do hate you,” Xander replied, happily devouring his third scone. “If you notice, I have kept the blueberry confections for myself and given you”—he shuddered—“the lemon-flavored scones. Such is the depth of my loathing for you personally and on principle.”

“We aren’t normal. This place isn’t normal, and you’re not a player, kid. You’re the glass ballerina—or the knife.”

“If the gentleman so much as tries to lay a finger on her, I assure you, my brother would take pleasure in removing that finger.”

“No feminism at the dinner table.”

In the grand scheme of things, this entire life-changing, mind-blowing, headline-grabbing chain of events had nothing to do with me. I was just a little girl with a funny little name, born on the right day.

Tobias Hawthorne hadn’t known me—but he’d known about me. I might have been a very risky gamble. I might have been a part of the puzzle and not a player. But the billionaire had known that I could play.