Hey lovely people,
I'm sorry it took so long but I've been quite ill for weeks, turns out I have corona. I also have an exam on Friday, but I'm just gonna wing it. My head hurts so I apologise if this isn't the best chapter. I promise the pace picks up soon as I have still some things to incorporate before we fully dive into the plot. If you have any things you want to mention, please let me know!
Thank you for all your comments and votes. Here's some life advice for you in return:
Drink your tea. Read your books. Hug your friends a little longer, and tell your family you love them.
C. R. D. - M. L. T.
Zara doesn't speak immediately once the two of us are alone. I decide that if she's not going to break the silence, I will. "You talked to the lawyers." That is the obvious explanation for why she's here.
I look around. These are her rooms. There's clothes everywhere, but it somehow doesn't look messy. She's turned her bedroom into a wardrobe.
"I did." Zara offers no apologies, and I'm glad she doesn't. I don't want apologies. I want answers. "And now I'm talking to you. I'm sure you can forgive me for not doing so sooner. As you can imagine, this has all come as a bit of a shock."
I scoff and cut through the niceties. "You held a press conference strongly suggesting that your father was senile and that I'm under investigation by the authorities for elder abuse."
Zara perches at the end of an antique desk—one of the few surfaces in the room not covered with her accessories or clothes. "Yes, well, you can thank your legal team for not making certain realities apparent sooner."
"If I get nothing, you get nothing." I'm not going to let her come in here and dance around the truth. "Is there anything else?"
"I'm not sure how much Alisa has told you, but in addition to my father's personal assets, you have also inherited control of the family's foundation." Zara takes measure of my cold expression before continuing. "It's one of the largest private charitable foundations in the country. We give away upward of a hundred million dollars a year."
A hundred million dollars. Fucking hell. A hundred million dollars a year in interest—and she is just talking about the foundation, not Tobias Hawthorne's personal fortune. I quickly run the math in my head. Even if taxes take half of the estate, and I only average a four-percent yield—I'll still be making nearly a billion dollars a year. Doing nothing. That's just wrong.
"Who does the foundation give its money to?" I ask.
Zara pushes off the desk and begins pacing the length of the room. "The Hawthorne Foundation invests in children and families, health initiatives, scientific advancement, community building, and the arts."
Under those headings, I can support nearly anything. I could change the world.
"I've spent my entire adult life running the foundation." Zara's lips pull tight across her teeth. "There are organizations that rely on our support. If you intend to exert yourself, there's a right way and a wrong way to do that." She stops right in front of me. "You need me, Camille. As much as I'd like to wash my hands of all of this, I've worked too long and too hard to see that work undone."
I listen to what she was saying—and what she isn't. "Does the foundation pay you?" I ask, and I smile at every second the answer takes.
"I draw a salary commensurate with the skills I bring."
"Seems like you need me more than I need you," I tell her. But as satisfying as it would be to tell her that her services will no longer be needed, I'm not that impulsive. "I want to be involved," I say next. "And not just for show. I want to make decisions."
"If you're serious about taking a role at the foundation..." Zara's voice sounds like pure agony is rolling off her lips. "I can teach you what you need to know. Monday. After school. At the foundation." She issues each part of that order as its own separate sentence.
The door opens and Oren takes up position beside me. The women will come after you in the courtroom, he told me. But now Zara knows that she can't come after me legally.
And my head of security doesn't want me in this room with her alone.
C. R. D. - M. L. T.
I ask Alisa about the will. I half expect her to look at me like I have truly gone insane, but the second I say the word red, her expression shifts. She informs me that a viewing of the Red Will can be arranged, and the next day—Sunday—Oren drives me to Ortega, McNamara, and Jones to see the Red Will.
"Camille." Alisa meets Oren and me in the firm's lobby. The place is modern: minimalist and full of chrome. The building looks big enough to host a hundred lawyers, but as Alisa walks us past a receptionist and security guard to an elevator bank, I don't see another soul.
"You said I was the firm's only client," I comment as the elevator begins to climb. "Exactly how big is the firm?"
"There are a few different divisions," Alisa replies crisply. "Mr. Hawthorne's assets were quite diversified. That requires a diverse array of lawyers."
"And the will I asked about, it's here?" In my pocket, I touch the square of red film we discovered taped to the inside cover of Faust.
"The Red Will is here," Alisa confirms. She turns to Oren. "How much company did we have today?" she asks. By company, she means paparazzi. And by we, she means me.
"It's tapered off a little," Oren reports. "But odds are good that they'll be piled outside the door by the time we leave."
On the third floor, we pass through another security checkpoint, and then, finally, Alisa leads me to a corner office. The room is furnished but otherwise empty, with one exception. Sitting in the middle of a heavy mahogany desk is the will. By the time I see it, Oren has taken up position outside the door.
Alisa makes no move to follow me when I approach the desk. As I get closer, the type jumps out at me.
Red.
"My father was instructed to keep this copy here and show it to you—or the boys—if one of you came looking," Alisa says.
I look back at her, the pieces slowly clicking into place. "Instructed," I repeat. "By Tobias Hawthorne?"
"Naturally." Alisa doesn't even asked what it is. She leaves and I wait until I hear the door close behind her before I go to sit at the desk. I retrieve the film from my pocket. "Where there's a will...," I murmur, laying the square flat on the will's first page. "There's a way."
I move the red acetate over the paper, and the words beneath it disappear. Red text. Red film. It works exactly as Jameson and Grayson described. If the entire will is written in red, all this is going to do is make everything disappear. But if, layered underneath the red text, there is another color, then anything written in that color will remain visible.
I skim the red film over the words, and they disappear. I glance down at the next sentence.
To my grandsons, Nash Westbrook Hawthorne, Grayson Davenport Hawthorne, Jameson Winchester Hawthorne, and Alexander Blackwood Hawthorne...
As I run the film over the page, the words disappear—but not all of them. Four remain.
Westbrook.
Davenport.
Winchester.
Blackwood.
For the first time, I think about the fact that all four of Skye's sons bear her last name, their grandfather's last name. Hawthorne. Each of the boys' middle names is also a surname. Their fathers' last names? I wonder. As my brain wrapped itself around that, I make my way through the rest of the document. Part of me expects to see something when I hit my own name, but it disappears, just like the rest of the text—everything except for the Hawthorne grandsons' middle names.
"Westbrook. Winchester. Davenport. Blackwood." I say them out loud, committing them to memory.
Then I text Grayson.
I found something. Meet me later?
"Whoa there, kid. Where's the fire?"
I'm back at Hawthorne House and headed to meet Grayson when another Hawthorne brother stops me in my tracks. Nash.
"I'm looking for Grayson," I explain. That sounds silly, even to me, considering he probably would take any opportunity to blackmail me. "I found a clue in a special copy of the will."
"A special copy of the will." Nash raises his eyebrows. "Would I be correct in assuming this has something to do with the nonsense in my letter from the old man?"
"Your letter," I repeat, my brain whirring. It shouldn't come as a surprise. Tobias Hawthorne left Grayson and Jameson with nearly identical clues. Nash, too—and probably Xander.
"Don't worry," Nash grins. "I'm sitting this one out. I told you, I don't want the money."
"The money is not at stake here," Alisa says firmly. "The will—"
"—is ironclad," Nash finishes for her. "I believe I've heard that a time or two."
Alisa's eyes narrow. "I should go." She turns, whip-fast, to me. "If you need anything—"
"Call," I finish, wondering just how high my eyebrows have risen at their short exchange.
"You gonna be alright?" Nash asks me.
"Sure. If your brother doesn't kill me, I should be fine." I smile weakly.
"He won't kill you," Nash assures me, then pauses. "Well, maybe a little."
"How comforting," I answer and he grins as he messes with his own hair. He looks like he is in desperate need of a haircut and today, he's pairing his suit with cowboy boots that have seen better days.
"Well, I needa go." His eyes scan my face. "Let me know if you need anything, Trouble. Wouldn't want my brothers to scare you away."
"The name's Camille."
His grin only widens. "It's good you're here. They needed a little change in their lives." I don't have to ask to know he means Jameson and Grayson. "Don't let Grayson get to you too much," he says. "He's an asshole, but he's just trying to protect his family."
So am I.