As soon as we got out of the car I saw the helicopter on the front lawn. The last clue would be seen from above.

I tried to rush towards the helicopter but I slipped on my heel and started tumbling towards the ground. Right before I hit the floor I was pulled up by Grayson. He encircled his hand around my waist pulling me right up against him.

I felt his glare and his hot breath on my neck.

I sidestepped around in quickly escaped his tight grasp before placing a hand on his shoulder.

"What are you doing?" He said almost too quickly as if he was almost frightened by the movement.

I leaned further into his shoulder, "I need to take these off," I explained pointing to the simple black heals on my feet, "I swear I can't even walk two steps."

For a second I stared right at him. His eyes were sparkling in the moonlight and for a second that was all I could think of.

Him and me

Grayson

It was ridiculous how one person could take so much space in my mind.

I shook off the feeling and focused on unclipping the death trap that I was wearing on my feet. I did love how heels looked when I wore dresses and how they added one or two inches but they hurt like hell if I wore them for more than 3 hours.

I was able to get the heels off at record time. I moved back towards the car and grabbed my seeker from the back seat. I slipped them on and turned back to Grayson.

His face had a look of admiration with a small hidden smile.

"Time to go," I stated finally walking back towards the helicopter. I could see Avery arriving as well.

Almost immediately after Avery climbed in I was up next to her taking one of the empty seats.

When she spotted me Avery looked rather startled.

Before she could ask her question Jameson spoke, "You came."

I saw the smile peaking through his face, "I'm here if it all falls apart."

He gave me a slow nod of disbelief. No idea what problems the rest of the night might entail.

Not even a second later Grayson climbed up and looked at Avery, "May I?"

She paused before nodding. He slides down in the empty spot next to me.

Jameson looked very unhappy.

—-----------------------------------

Avery and Jameson bounded out of the helicopter before it even hit the ground. The two of them seemed almost drunk from the high of solving the puzzle we were giving them. Once they reached the ground the linked hands smiled wide

It was scary to think it would all come crashing down in a mere amount of minutes.

The clue that we found from above the blackwood was the number 0

8 1 1 0

It's a date.

October 18th.

A day I can only think of as cursed.

I glanced back at Grayson. His eyes were locked on me trying to figure out where my head was at.

I shiver.

The glare feels unsettling.

"Eight, one, one, zero," Avery exclaimed. "That's the order we discovered the numbers in—and the order of the clues in the will. A combination, maybe?"

"There are at least a dozen safes in the House," Jameson mused. "But there are other possibilities. An address... coordinates... and there's no guarantee that the clue isn't scrambled. To solve it, we may have to reorder the numbers."

Before any more ideas were launched by the pair I interjected, "It's a date."

My insistence of what the puzzle answer was seemed to wash over their heads as they continued their path to solving the puzzle.

"November eighth, August eleventh, January eighteenth-" Avery rambled before stopping abruptly.

Her birthday.

"Ten-eighteen—October eighteenth." her smile widened. "That's my birthday."

Jameson dropped her hands immediately, "No."

I stepped back inching closer to Grayson. I knew I couldn't look back. I could barely look forward.

I pure look of denial and hurt on Jameson's face was so clear. It wasn't hidden by a joke or his reckless to was displayed for everyone to see.

​​"Yes," Avery looks so hopeful. I regret not telling her anything. "I was born on October eighteenth. And my mother—"

"This isn't about your mother." Jameson balled his fingers into fists and stepped back away from her.

"Jameson? This could be it. Maybe his path crossed my mom's while she was in labour? Maybe she did something for him while she was pregnant with me?" Avery's mind continued racing through endless possibilities.

"Stop."

She looked so confused by his words "What are you—"

"The numbers are not a date. This can't be the answer. Annabelle, it's not the answer," his voice cracked the slides when saying my name.

"Jameson."

I didn't have any words. I couldn't. Everything was written on my face just the same as his. Everything I said about how he would be hurt by the puzzle, hurt by another game. I was right. I still wanted to be wrong.

Grayson stepped forward closer to Avery and me, "Emily died, on October eighteenth, a year ago."

I watched as her face fell.

"That sick son of a bitch," Jameson cursed. "All of this—the clues, the will, her—all of it for this? He just found a random person born on that day to send a message? This message?"

"Jamie—" Grayson tried.

"Don't talk to me." Jameson swung his gaze from Grayson to me. "Screw this. I'm done."

"Jameson," I yelled as I grabbed him back, "Stop."

"Did you know?" He spat. The rage and pain on his face looked so clear.

"What?"

"You told me a million times how this would only hurt me," he continued slowly," Did you know?"

"No," I looked right at him, "I knew it was something bad but I didn't think it would be this bad."

Jameson scoffed, "You weren't even there."

Before he could storm off again I pulled him back once more, "Jameson calm down."

"Just leave me the hell alone," The second he spoke those words I let go and watched as he stormed off.

"Where are you going?" Avery yelled.

"Congratulations, Heiress," Jameson called back, his voice dripping with everything but felicitations. "I guess you had the good fortune of being born on the right day. Mystery solved."

Averys POV

There had to be more to the puzzle than this. There had to be. I couldn't just be a random person born on the right calendar date. That can't be it. What about my mother? What about her secret—a secret she'd mentioned on my fifteenth birthday, a full year before Emily had died? And what about the letter Tobias Hawthorne had left me?

I'm sorry.

What had Tobias Hawthorne had to apologise for? He didn't just randomly select a person with the right birthday. There has to be more to it than that. But I could still hear Nash telling me: You're the glass ballerina—or the knife.

"Annabelle," I watched as Grayson walked slowly towards her.

She stiffened when he got close.

"Annabelle?" He repeated.

"I told him," she then leaned her head back to look at the sky.

Grayson placed a hand on one of her arms. She pulled away almost immediately.

"I have to go," she disappeared into the night quicker than Jameson's hand. Grayson watched her leave his face looking even more destroyed than a second ago.

"I'm sorry," Grayson spoke again moving back beside me. "It's not Jameson's fault that he's like this. It's not their fault..." The invincible Grayson Hawthorne seemed to be having trouble talking. "... that this is how the game ends."

I was still wearing my clothes from the gala. My hair was still in Emily's braid.

"I should have known." Grayson's voice was swollen with emotion. "I did know. The day that the will was read, I knew that all of this was because of me."

I thought of the way Grayson had shown up at my hotel room that night. He'd been angry, determined to figure out what I had done.

"What are you talking about?" I searched his face and eyes for answers."How is this because of you? And don't tell me you killed Emily."

No one—not even Thea—had called Emily's death a murder.

"I did," Grayson insisted, his voice low and vibrating with intensity. "If it weren't for me, she wouldn't have been there. She wouldn't have jumped."

Jumped. My throat went dry. "Been where?" I asked quietly. "And what does any of this have to do with your grandfather's will?"

Grayson shuddered. "Maybe I was meant to tell you," he said after a long while. "Maybe that was always the point. Maybe you were always meant to be equal parts puzzle... and penance." He bowed his head.

I'm not your penance, Grayson Hawthorne. I didn't get the chance to say that out loud before he was talking again—and once he started, it would have taken an act of God to stop him.

"We'd always known her. Mr. and Mrs. Laughlin have been at Hawthorne House for decades. Their daughter and granddaughters used to live in California. The girls came to visit twice a year—once with their parents at Christmastime, and again in the summer, for three weeks, alone. We didn't see much of them at Christmas, but in the summers, we all played together. It was a bit like summer camp, really. You have camp friends, who you see once a year, who have no place in your ordinary life. That was Emily—and Rebecca. They were so different from the four of us. We knew that especially before Annabelle moved to Texas. I used to think it was only because there were two of them. But it was really because of Emily. She was a force of nature, and their parents were always so worried she'd overexert herself. She was allowed to play cards with us, and other quiet, indoor games—but she wasn't allowed to roam outside the way we did, or to run."

"She'd get us to bring her things. It became a bit of a tradition. Emily would set us on a hunt, and whoever found what she'd requested—the more unusual and hard to find, the better—won."

"What did you win?" I asked.

Grayson shrugged. "We're brothers. We didn't have to win anything in particular—just win."

That tracked. "And then Emily got a heart transplant," I said. Jameson had told me that much. He'd said that afterwards, she wanted to live. "Her parents were still protective, but Emily had lived in glass cages long enough. She, Annabelle and Jameson were thirteen. I was fourteen. She'd breeze in for the summers, the consummate daredevil. Causing more chaos in everyone's lives. Rebecca was always after us to be careful, but Emily insisted that her doctors had said that her activity level was only limited by her physical stamina. If she could do it, there was no reason she shouldn't. The family moved here permanently when Emily was sixteen. She and Rebecca didn't live on the estate, the way they had during visits, but my grandfather paid for them to attend private school."

I saw where this was going. "She wasn't just a summer camp friend anymore."

"She wasn't," Grayson said "Emily had the entire school eating out of the palm of her hand. Maybe that was our fault. We never stopped to listen."

Even just being Hawthorne-adjacent changed the way that people looked at you. Thea's statement came back to me.

"Or maybe," Grayson continued, "it was just because she was Emily. Too smart, and too good at getting what she wanted from others. She had no fear."

"She wanted you," I said. "And Jameson and she didn't want to choose."

"She turned it into a game." Grayson shook his head. "And God help us, we played. We both just wanted to win. There's nothing more Hawthorne than winning."

Had Emily known that? Used it to her advantage? Had it ever hurt her?

"The thing was..." Grayson choked. "She didn't just want us. I knew that from the start. 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. It was a rush—for her. Annabelle used to say it was to gain back the control she lost during her years in hospital." He paused.

"One night, I got a call from Emily, late. She said that she was done with Jameson, that all she wanted was me." Grayson swallowed. "She wanted to celebrate. There's this place called Devil's Gate. It's a cliff overlooking the Gulf —one of the most famous cliff-diving locations in the world." Grayson angled his head down. "I knew it was a bad idea. I was angry and it felt good to win."

I tried to form words—any words. "How bad?"

He was breathing heavily now. "When we got there, I headed for one of the lower cliffs. Emily headed for the top. Past the danger signs. Past the warnings. It was the middle of the night. We shouldn't have been there at all. I didn't know why she wanted to go immediately—not until later when I realised she'd lied about choosing me. If she hadn't died I don't know if I would have cared much."

Jameson had broken up with her. She'd called Grayson, and she hadn't been in the mood to wait.

"Cliff diving killed her?" I asked.

"No," Grayson said. "She was fine. We were fine. I went to grab our towels, but when I came back... Emily wasn't even in the water anymore. She was just lying on the shoreline. Dead." He closed his eyes. "Her heart."

"You didn't kill her," I said.

"The adrenaline did. Or the altitude, the change in pressure. I don't know. Jameson wouldn't take her. I shouldn't have let myself either."

She made decisions. She had agency. It wasn't your job to tell her no. I knew instinctively that no good could come of saying any of that, even if it was true.

"You know what my grandfather told me, after Emily's funeral? Family first. He said that what happened to Emily wouldn't have happened if I'd put my family first. If I'd refused to play the game, if I just let my brother have the win."

Grayson's vocal cords tensed against his throat as if he wanted to say something else but couldn't. Finally, it came. "That's what this is about. One-zero-one-eight. October eighteenth. The day Emily died. Your birthday. It's my grandfather's way of confirming what I already knew, deep down.

"All of this—all of it—is because of me."

A/n

Merry Christmas everyone I hope you all have the best holidays.

I also hope you liked this chapter. 

Thank you for reading.