The Inheritance Games (The Inheritance Games, #1)

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

In twenty years, he’s never given a perfect score. Do you see the problem?” I couldn’t quite bite back my instinctive reply. “A teacher who designs tests most of his students can’t pass?”

I opened it and saw a screenshot of a news headline. Avery Grambs: Who Is the Hawthorne Heiress? A short message accompanied the picture. Hey, Mystery Girl. You’re officially famous.

The room was circular. Shelves stretched up fifteen or twenty feet overhead, and every single one was lined completely with hardcover books. The shelves were made of a deep, rich wood. Spread across the room, four wrought-iron staircases spiraled toward the upper shelves, like the points on a compass. In the library’s center, there was a massive tree stump, easily ten feet across.

They were—the four of them—a unit. They were Hawthornes. I wasn’t. I felt that now, in a physical way. They shared a bond that was impervious to outsiders.

Jameson was taller, Grayson broader through the shoulders. The smirk on the former’s face was matched by steel on the latter’s.

“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.”

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

“You look like you could use a robotic dragon,” Xander told me. “Here.” He thrust it into my hands. “What am I supposed to do with this?” I asked. “That depends on how attached you are to your eyebrows.

Does “Don’t judge a book by its cover” mean anything to you? I asked Jameson. His reply was immediate. Very good, Heiress. Then, a moment later: It sure as hell does.

“Everything is something in Hawthorne House.” Everything, I thought. And everyone.

I lost track of time, lost track of everything except the rhythm of pulling books off shelves and covers off books, replacing the cover, replacing the book.

I thought about Skye referring to him as the heir apparent, even though she insisted that Jameson had been Tobias Hawthorne’s favorite. Grayson had spent his gap year dedicated to the foundation. His photographs hung in the lobby.

He might as well have ordered me to be fire or earth or air. A person couldn’t be worthy of billions. It wasn’t possible—not for anyone, and definitely not for me. “How?” I asked him. How am I supposed to be worthy of anything?

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

He probably thought he was talking over my head, but the moment he said objective analysis, I smiled. “You’re talking to a future actuarial science major, Hawthorne. Show me your graphs.”

Everyone had things they found inexplicably attractive. Apparently, for me it was suit-wearing, silver-eyed guys using the word empirically and taking for granted that I knew what it meant.

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. The Black Wood.

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

“Nash is with your sister.” Grayson spoke for the first time since we’d entered the car. “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.”

“And what would you do,” I said, “what lengths would you go to in order to protect your family?” I had him there, and he damn well knew it. He drew his hand back from mine, slowly enough that I felt the pads of his fingers skim my knuckles.

“I know why Tobias Hawthorne changed his will,” I said loudly. The response to that announcement was electric. There was a reason this was the story of the decade, one thing that everyone wanted to know. “I know why he chose me.” I made them look at me and only me. “I’m the only one who does. I know the truth.” I sold that lie for all I was worth. “And if you run a word about that pathetic excuse for a human being behind me—any of you—I will make it my mission in life to ensure that you never, ever find out.”

“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.” This time, I couldn’t bite back the snort. Point, Thea.

I thought about going two hundred miles an hour, about the climbing wall, about the moment I’d first seen him up on that balcony. Was being a sensation seeker so bad? Was wanting to feel something other than awful really so wrong?

Kissing him felt like fire.

“What if what the puzzle is trying to tell us is that my uncle isn’t dead?”

“That’s the thing, Heiress. If Emily taught me anything, it’s that everything is a game. Even this. Especially this.”

“There was a bullet. You were wounded. Emily would have said you were entitled to a little melodrama.”

“Was purple your favorite color as a kid or hers?” “Hers,” Rebecca said. She gave me a very small shrug. “She used to tell me that my favorite color was purple, too.”

“I want you to buy me Australia. You can afford it.” I snorted. “I don’t think it’s for sale.”

“Remember me?” I raised a hand, then paid for it. “Subject of your conversation and capable individual in her own right?”

The ceiling was slanted. The walls were lined with built-in shelves, each shelf exactly tall enough for a row of paperback books. The books on the shelves were well-worn, and they covered every inch of the walls, except for a large stained-glass window on the east side. Light shone through, painting colors on the wood floor.

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.”

Tobias Hawthorne had bet that my presence in the House would shake things up, that old secrets would be laid bare, that somehow, someway, one last puzzle would change everything. That, if Emily’s death had torn them apart, I could bring them back together.

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. He hadn’t entered into this blindly and hoped for the best. He’d plotted, and he’d planned, and I’d been a part of that calculation. Not just Avery Kylie Grambs, born on the day that Emily Laughlin had died—but the girl in these photos.

“I will always protect you,” he told me, his jaw tight, his eyes shadowed. “You deserve to feel safe in your own home. And I’ll help you with the foundation. I’ll teach you what you need to know to take to this life like you were born to it. But this… us…” He swallowed. “It can’t happen, Avery. I’ve seen the way Jameson looks at you.”

“Toby,” I managed. “I know him.” “You what?” Jameson walked toward me. Beside me, Nan went very still. “I used to play chess with him in the park,” I said. “Every morning.” Harry.