CHAPTER 40

Thirty-six hours passed—no word from Toby’s captor, an ever-growing hoard of paparazzi outside the gates, and too much time spent in the solarium with files on Tobias Hawthorne’s enemies. His many, many enemies.

I finished the files in my stack. Each of the four Hawthorne brothers finished theirs. So did Libby. So did Eve. Nothing matched. Nothing fit. But I didn’t want to admit that we’d hit another wall. I didn’t want to feel cornered or outmatched or like everyone around me had taken repeated shots to the gut for nothing.

So I kept going back to the solarium, rereading files the others had already gone through, even though I knew the Hawthornes hadn’t missed a damn thing. That these files were burned into them now.

The moment Jameson had finished his stack, he’d disappeared into the walls. The only reason I knew he hadn’t taken off for parts unknown halfway around the world was that the bed was warm beside me when I woke in the morning. Grayson took to the pool, pushing himself past the point of human endurance again and again, and after Nash had finished, he’d dodged the press at the gates, snuck out to a bar, and came back at two in the morning with a split lip and a trembling puppy tucked into his shirt. Xander was barely eating. Eve seemed to think that she didn’t need sleep and that if she could just memorize every detail of every file, an answer would present itself.

I understood. The two of us didn’t talk about Toby, about the silence from his captor, but it fueled us on.

I’ll be in touch.

I reached for another file—one of the few I hadn’t made it through myself yet—and opened it. Empty. “Have you read this one?” I asked Eve, my heart whamming against my rib cage with sudden, startling force. “There’s nothing here.”

Eve looked up from the file she’d been scouring for the past twenty minutes. The desperate hope in her eyes flickered and died when she saw which file I was referring to. “Isaiah Alexander? There was a page in there before. Just one. Short file. Another disgruntled employee, fired from a Hawthorne lab. PhD, rising star—and now the guy has nothing.”

No wealth. No power. No connections. Not what we’re looking for.

“So where’s the page?” I asked, the question gnawing at me.

“Does it matter?” Eve said, her tone dismissive, annoyance marring her striking features. “Maybe it got mixed in with another file.”

“Maybe,” I said. I closed the file, and my gaze caught on the tab. Alexander, Isaiah. Eve had said the name, but I hadn’t processed it—not until now.

Grayson’s father was Sheffield Grayson. Nash’s father was named Jake Nash. And Xander’s name was short for Alexander.

I found my BHFF in his lab. It was a hidden room filled with the most random assortment of items imaginable. Some people did found art, turning everyday objects into artistic commentary. Xander was more of a found engineer. As far as Hawthorne-brother coping mechanisms went, it was probably the healthiest one in the House.

“I need to talk to you about something,” I said.

“Can it be about off-label uses for medieval weaponry?” Xander requested. “Because I have some ideas.”

That was concerning on many levels, and it was so Xander that I wanted to cry or hug him or do anything except hold up that file and make him talk to me about something he’d made it very clear during Chutes and Ladders that he didn’t want to talk about.

“Is this your father?” I said gently. “Isaiah Alexander?”

Xander turned to look at me. Then, as if coming to a very serious decision, he lifted his hand and pressed one finger to the end of my nose. “Boop.”

“You’re not going to distract me,” I told him, the exasperation I might have normally felt replaced by something more tender and painful. “Come on, Xan. I’m your BHHFF. Talk to me.”

“Double boop.” Xander pressed my nose again. “What’s the extra H for?”

“Honorary,” I told him. “You guys made me an honorary Hawthorne, and that makes me your Best Honorary Hawthorne Friend Forever. So talk.”

“Triple boo—” Xander started to say, but I ducked before he could touch my nose. I straightened, caught his hand gently in mine, and squeezed.

This was Xander, so there wasn’t a hint of accusation in my voice when I asked my next question. “Did you take the page that was in this file?”

Xander gave an emphatic shake of his head. “I didn’t even know Isaiah was on the List. I can probably tell you what his file says, though. I kind of spent the past several months making a file of my own.”

This time, I didn’t push down the urge to hug him. Hard. “Eve said he was a PhD who got fired from a Hawthorne lab,” I said, once I’d pulled back.

“That about covers it,” Xander replied, his cheery tone a copy of a copy of the real thing. “Except for timing. It’s possible that Isaiah was fired around the time I was conceived. Maybe because I was conceived? I mean, maybe not! But maybe?”

Poor Xander. I thought about what he’d said in Chutes and Ladders. “Is that why you haven’t contacted him?”

“I can’t just call him.” Xander gave me a plaintive look. “What if he hates me?”

“No one could possibly hate you, Xander,” I told him, my heart twisting.

“Avery, people have hated me my whole life.” There was something in his tone that made me think that very few people understood what it was like to be Xander Hawthorne.

“Not anyone who knows you,” I said fiercely.

Xander smiled, and something about it made me want to cry. “Do you think it’s okay,” he said, sounding younger than I’d ever heard him, “that I loved playing those Saturday morning games? Loved growing up here? Loved the great and terrible Tobias Hawthorne?”

I couldn’t answer that for him—for any of them. I couldn’t make these past few days hurt less. But there was one thing I could say. “You didn’t love the great and terrible Tobias Hawthorne. You loved the old man.”

“I was the only one who knew that he was dying.” Xander turned to pick up what looked like a tuning fork, but he didn’t make a single move to add it to whatever contraption he was building. “He kept it a secret from everyone else for weeks. He wanted me with him at the end, and do you know what he said to me—the very last thing?”

“What?” I asked quietly.

“By the time this is over, you’ll know what kind of man I was—and what kind of man you want to be.”