CHAPTER 51

Five million dollars?” I said those words repeatedly as we retreated from Zara’s wing to Tobias Hawthorne’s study to strategize. “Five. Million. Dollars. Does Zara honestly think that Alisa is just going to agree to cut that kind of check?”

The will was still in probate. Even once the estate was settled, I was a minor. There were trustees. I could practically hear my lawyer throwing out terms like fiduciary duty.

“She’s playing with us.” Jameson sounded more pensive than outraged.

Grayson tilted his head to the side. “Perhaps it would be wise to—”

“I can get the money,” Xander blurted out. His brothers stared at him.

“You want to pay Zara five million dollars to show us your grandfather’s wedding ring?” I said, stunned.

“Wait.” Grayson narrowed his eyes. “You have five million dollars?”

Each year on their birthdays, the Hawthorne grandsons had been given ten thousand dollars to invest. Xander had spent years dumping it into cryptocurrency, then sold at just the right time, and that money wasn’t part of Tobias Hawthorne’s estate. It was Xander’s—and apparently, his brothers hadn’t been aware of it until now.

“Look, ash-hole,” Max said, pointing a finger at Xander, “nobody is giving anybody five million dollars. We’ll just have to find another way to get the ring.”

“You’re still a minor,” Grayson told Xander, his voice low. “If Skye finds out you have that kind of money…”

“It’s in a trust,” Xander assured him. “Nash is the trustee. Skye isn’t getting near it.”

“And you think Nash is going to let you write Zara a check for five million dollars?” I asked incredulously. That seemed about as likely as Alisa letting me access the funds.

“I can be very persuasive,” Xander insisted.

“There’s another way.” Jameson had that look on his face—the one that told me he’d found a way of moving this chess game into three dimensions. “We’ll set up a trade.”

Grayson’s eyes narrowed. “And what, precisely, do you think our aunt would trade for her father’s wedding wing?”

Jameson smiled at me as he replied, like he and I were in this together. Like he expected me to anticipate his words. “Her mother’s.”

I didn’t know much about the late Alice O’Day Hawthorne, but I did know who had inherited her jewelry. We found Nan in the music room, sitting in a small wingback chair, facing ceiling-to-floor windows that looked out on the pool and the estate beyond.

“Don’t just stand there,” Nan ordered without ever turning around. “Help an old lady up.”

We made our way into the room. Grayson offered his great-grandmother an arm, but she looked past him to me. “You, girl.”

I helped her out of the chair. Nan leaned on her cane and examined the five of us. “Who’s she supposed to be?” the old woman grunted, nodding toward Max.

“That’s my friend Max,” Xander replied.

“Your friend Max?” I repeated.

“I promised to build her a droid,” Xander said cheerily. “We’re very close now. But that’s beside the point.”

“We need your help, Nan.” Grayson circled back to the reason we were here.

“You do, do you?” Nan snorted in her great-grandsons’ direction, then cut a glance toward me. She was scowling, but the flash of raw hope in her eyes was heartbreaking.

Without meaning to, I thought back to the Laughlins telling me how cruel I was for playing with an old woman. Nan loved Toby. She wanted us to find him.

Here’s hoping she wants that badly enough to give us the ring. I took a deep breath.

“We found a message that your son-in-law left for Skye, right after Toby disappeared.” Message was probably stretching it a little, but it was less complicated than the truth. “We think the old man left a similar message for Zara and that together they might somehow lead us to Toby.”

“But to get what we need from Zara,” Jameson interjected, “we need to offer her something in return.”

“And what might that something be?” Nan’s eyes narrowed.

Jameson looked at Grayson. Neither one of them actually wanted to say it.

“We need your daughter’s wedding ring,” I told her evenly. “So that we can trade it for your son-in-law’s.”

Nan harrumphed. “Zara always was a strange, quiet little thing.”

“I feel a story coming on.” Xander rubbed his hands together. “Nan tells the best stories.”

Nan swiped at him with her cane. “Don’t you try to butter me up, Alexander Hawthorne.”

“Is that what I’m doing?” Xander asked innocently.

Nan scowled, but she couldn’t resist a captive audience. “Zara was a shy, bookish child. Not like my Alice, who loved attention. I remember when Alice was pregnant with Zara, how giddy she was at the thought of having a little girl of her own to spoil.” Nan shook her head. “But Zara never took much to spoiling. It drove my Alice up the wall. I used to tell her that the girl was just sensitive, that all she needed was some toughening up. I told her Skye was the one to worry about. That child came out of the womb tap-dancing.”

I thought about the picture of Toby, Zara, and Skye. They’d looked so happy—before Toby had found out about the secrets and lies, before Skye had gotten pregnant with Nash, before Zara had gone from quiet and bookish to the cold, hypercontrolled force she was now.

“About that ring,” Jameson said, turning on the charm. “The old man left Zara the same bequest in multiple wills: his wedding ring, may she love as wholly and steadfastly as I loved her mother. That ring is a clue.”

“Not much of one. Steadfastly?” Nan grunted. “Wholly? Leaving his own daughter nothing but a damned wedding ring? Tobias never was as subtle as he liked to think.”

It took me a second to understand what she was implying. He left Zara his wedding ring and a message about being steadfast in love to make a point.

“Constantine is Zara’s second husband.” Grayson didn’t miss much. “Twenty years ago, when Toby disappeared, Zara was married to someone else.”

“She was having an affair.” Xander didn’t phrase that as a question.

Nan turned back toward the window and stared out at the estate. “I’ll give you Alice’s ring,” she said abruptly. She began walking slowly toward the doorway, and I saw Eli standing just outside. “When you give it to her, you tell Zara that she’ll get no judgment from me. She’s toughened up just fine, and we all do what we have to do to survive.”