The Inheritance Games

When I was a kid, my mom constantly invented games. The Quiet Game. The Who Can Make Their Cookie Last Longer? Game. A perennial favorite, the Marshmallow Game involved eating marshmallows while wearing puffy Goodwill jackets indoors, to avoid turning on the heat. The Flashlight game was what we played when the electricity went out. We never walked anywhere—we raced. The floor was nearly always lava. The primarily purpose of pillows was building forts.

Right on cue, Libby’s on-again, off-again boyfriend—who had a fondness for punching walls and extolling his own virtues for not punching Libby—strolled in. He snagged a cupcake off the counter and let his gaze rake over me. “Hey, jailbait.”

Zara lost her hold on her tone. “You got in his head, didn’t you, Skye? Batted your eyelashes and convinced him to bypass us and leave everything to your—”

“Sons.” Skye’s voice was crisp. “The word you’re looking for is sons.”

“The word she’s looking for is bastards.” Nash Hawthorne had the thickest accent of anyone in the room. “Not like we haven’t heard it before.”

“Think about what this means. You’ll never have to worry about money again. You can buy whatever you want, do whatever you want. Those postcards you kept of your mom’s?” She leaned forward, touching her forehead against mine. “You can go anywhere. Imagine the possibilities.”

“I haven’t a clue how you pulled this off, but I will find out. I see you now. I know what you are and what you’re capable of, and there is nothing I wouldn’t do to protect my family. Whatever game you’re playing here, no matter how long this con—I will find out the truth, and God help you when I do.”

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

“My mom used to hit me. Only when she was really stressed, you know? She was a single mom, and things were hard. I could understand that. I tried to make everything easier.”

I was a girl with a plan—but that plan had always been driven by practicalities. I’d picked a college major that would get me a solid job. The practical thing to do now was stay the course. […]

“Travel,” I blurted out. “I’ve always wanted to travel.”

“You want the money.” Grayson Hawthorne looked down from on high. “How could you not, growing up the way you did?”

That was just dripping with condescension. “Like you don’t want the money?” I retorted. “Growing up the way you did?”

“I don’t need to tell you that most lottery winners find their existence made miserable as they drown in requests and demands from family and friends. You are blessedly short on both. Libby, however, is another matter.”

“Faust,” I said.

“The devil you know,” Jameson replied. “Or the devil you don’t.”

“If I were a guy, there’d be two racks of clothing in this room, max.”

“And if I were White,” Xander returned loftily, “people wouldn’t look at me like I’m half a Hawthorne.”

Homelessness. Poverty. Domestic violence. Access to preventative care. What could I do with a hundred million dollars a year?

“You’re young enough,” Zara said, her voice almost wistful, “to believe that money solves all ills.”

Spoken like a person so rich she can’t imagine the weight of problems money can solve.

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

“My grandfather believed that you have to see the world to change it […] He always said that I was the one with the eye.”

“Not everything is a game, Jameson.”

I saw something flicker in his eyes. He closed them, just for an instant, then opened them and leaned in, bringing his lips painfully close to mine. “That’s the thing, Heiress. If Emily taught me anything, it’s that everything is a game. Even this. Especially this.”

“She didn’t want to choose, and neither one of them wanted to let her go. She turned it into a competition. A little game.”

“Do you play?” I asked.

Nan harrumphed. “I did when I was young. Got a bit too much attention for it, and my husband broke my fingers, put an end to that.”

The logical thing to do was stop playing. Step back. But I wanted answers, and some part of me—the part that had grown up with a mom who’d turned everything into a challenge, the part who’d played my first game of chess when I was six years old—wanted to win.

“My grandfather should have left it to us all along.” Grayson turned his head, forcefully pulling his gaze from my skin. “Or to Zara. We were raised to make a difference, and you . . .”

I was overcome then by the mental image of Grayson helping Emily take down her hair, his fingers working the braid out, bit by bit.

My arm bumped Alisa’s wineglass. She tried to catch it but didn’t move fast enough. As the wine stained the white tablecloth red, I realized what should have been obvious right from the beginning, from the moment the will had been read.

I didn’t belong here in this world—not at a party like this, not sitting beside Grayson Hawthorne. And I never would.

“She turned it into a game.” Grayson shook his head. “And God help us, we played. I want to say that it was because we loved her—that it was because of her, but I don’t even know how much of that was true. There’s nothing more Hawthorne than winning.”

“She didn’t just want us. She wanted what we could give her.”

“Money?”

“Experiences,” Grayson replied. “Thrills. Race cars and motorcycles and handling exotic snakes. Parties and clubs and places we weren’t supposed to be.”

My face had been needed to get this far. Their hands were required to go farther.

“You helped me,” I said. He’d manipulated me. Moved me around, like a lure.