Page 105 of The Hawthorne Legacy
This was really it. He was really going to walk away from me. He was going to disappear again. “I know about the adoption,” I said, desperate to keep him here—to make him stay. “I know your biological mother was the Laughlins’ daughter and that she was coerced into the adoption. I know that you blame your parents for keeping secrets, for ruining the three of you. But your sisters—they need you.”
Skye was sitting in a jail cell, but she wasn’t guilty—this time, at least. Zara was more human than she wanted to admit. And Rebecca? Her mother was still mourning Toby.
“I read the postcards you wrote to my mom,” I continued. “I talked to Jackson Currie. I know everything—and I’m telling you: You don’t have to stay away anymore.”
“You sound just like her.” Toby’s expression softened. “I never could win an argument with Hannah.” He closed his eyes. “Some people are smart. Some people are good.” He opened his eyes and put a hand on each of my shoulders. “And some people are both.”
I knew, with a strange kind of prescience, that this moment would never leave me. “You’re not staying, are you?” I asked. “No matter what I say.”
“I can’t.” Toby pulled me in. I’d never been much of a hugger, but for a moment, I let myself be held.
When Toby finally let me go, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the small metal disk, the one he’d told my mother was valuable. “What is this?”
It was the last question I had for him. The last chance I had of making him stay.
Toby moved like lightning. One second, I held the disk in my hand, and the next, he had it. “Something I’ll be taking with me,” he said.
“What aren’t you telling me?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Horrible girl,” he whispered, his voice tender.
I thought of my mother, of every word she’d written to him about me, of the way he’d come for me tonight.
You have a daughter, I’d told him.
I have two.
“Am I ever going to see you again?” I asked, my throat closing in on the words.
He leaned forward, pressed a kiss to my forehead, and stepped back. “It would be a very risky gamble.”
I opened my mouth to reply, but the door to the warehouse flew inward. Men poured inside. Oren’s men.
My head of security stepped between me and Toby Hawthorne and then leveled a deadly look at Tobias Hawthorne’s only son. “I think it’s time we had a little talk.”
CHAPTER 86
I wasn’t able to overhear whatever words were exchanged between Oren and Toby. I was shuttled into the SUV, and when Oren took his place in the driver’s seat a few minutes later, I noted that he’d left several of his men inside.
I thought about Sheffield Grayson, dead on the floor. About Toby’s plan for that body. “Is disposing of corpses part of your job description?” I asked Oren.
He met my eyes in the rearview mirror. “You want a real answer to that?”
I looked out the window. The world blurred as the SUV picked up speed. “Skye and Ricky didn’t plant that bomb,” I said. I tried to focus on the facts, not the flood of emotions I was barely holding back. “They were framed.”
“This time,” Oren said. “Skye has already tried to have you killed once. Both of them are threats. I suggest we let them cool their heels in prison at least until your emancipation goes through.”
Once I was legally an adult, once I could write my own will, Ricky and Skye would stand to gain nothing by my death.
“Rebecca.” I lunged forward in my seat suddenly, remembering. “Thea helped Mellie abduct me because someone had Rebecca.”
“It’s been handled,” Oren told me. “They’re fine. So are you. The rest of the family is none the wiser.” From his tone, you would have thought this was just business as usual. The kidnapping. The body. The cover-up.
“Was it like this for the old man?” I asked. “Or am I just lucky?”
I thought about Toby, sparing Eve from my fate, like inheriting this fortune was less blessing than curse.
“Mr. Hawthorne had a list.” Oren took his time with his reply. “It was a different kind of list from yours. He had enemies. Some of them had resources, but by and large, we knew what to expect. Mr. Hawthorne had a way of seeing things coming.”
