“… one.”
“Happy New Year!” Xander yelled. The next thing I knew, confetti was flying everywhere. I had no idea where Xander had gotten confetti, but he continued to produce it, seemingly out of nowhere.
“Happy new life,” Jameson corrected. He kissed me like it was New Year’s Eve, and I savored it.
I’d survived a year in Hawthorne House. I had fulfilled the conditions of Tobias Hawthorne’s will. I was a billionaire. One of the richest, most powerful people on the planet.
And I had A Plan.
“Shall I?” Alisa asked me. Nash’s eyes narrowed. He knew her—and that meant he knew quite well when she was up to something.
“Do it,” I told Alisa.
She turned the flat-screen television on and to a twenty-four-hour financial channel. It took a minute or two, but then the BREAKING NEWS beacon flashed across the screen.
“Precisely what kind of breaking news?” Grayson asked me.
I let the reporter answer for me. “We’ve just received word that Hawthorne heiress Avery Grambs has officially inherited the billions left to her by the late Tobias Hawthorne. After estate taxes and taking into account appreciation over the past year, the current value of the inheritance is estimated to be upward of thirty billion dollars. Ms. Grambs has announced—”
The reporter cut off, the words dying in his throat.
For the second time in my life, I felt every pair of eyes in a room turn to me. There was an eerie symmetry between this moment and the moment right before Mr. Ortega had read the final terms of Tobias Hawthorne’s will.
“Ms. Grambs has announced,” the reporter tried again, his voice strangled, “that as of midnight, she has signed paperwork transferring ninety-four percent of her inheritance into a charitable trust to be distributed in its entirety in the next five years.”
It was done. It was legal. I couldn’t have undone it even if I’d wanted to.
Thea was the first one to break the silence. “What the hell?”
Nash turned to his ex-fiancée. “You helped her give away all that money?”
Alisa raised her chin. “The partners at the firm didn’t even know.”
Nash let out a low chuckle. “You are so getting fired.”
Alisa smiled—not the tight, professional smile she normally used, but a real one. “Job security isn’t everything.” She shrugged. “And as it so happens, I’ve accepted a new position at a charitable trust.”
I couldn’t quite bring myself to look at Jameson. Or Grayson. Or even Xander or Nash. I hadn’t asked for their permission. I wasn’t going to be asking for forgiveness, either. Instead, I thrust my chin out, the way Alisa had. “You’ll all be receiving your invitations to join the board of the Hannah the Same Backward as Forward Foundation soon.”
Silence.
This time, it was Grayson who broke it. “You want us to help you give it away?”
I met his eyes. “I want you to help me find the best ideas and the best people to determine how to give it all away.”
Libby frowned. “What about the Hawthorne Foundation?” In addition to Tobias Hawthorne’s fortune, I’d also inherited control of his charitable enterprise.
“Zara’s agreed to stay on for a few years while I’m otherwise occupied,” I answered. The Hawthorne Foundation had its own charter, which laid out the minimum and maximum percentage of its assets that could be given away each year. I couldn’t empty it out—but I could make sure that my foundation had different rules.
That my inheritance wouldn’t stay earmarked for charity for long.
Grinning, I handed Libby a sheet of paper.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“It’s account information for about a dozen different websites I signed you up for,” I told her. “Mutual aid, mostly, and microloans to women entrepreneurs in the developing world. The new foundation will be handling official charitable giving, but we both know what it’s like to need help and have nowhere to go. I’ve set aside ten million a year for you—for that.”
Before she could reply, I tossed something to Nash. He caught it, then examined what I’d tossed him. Keys.
“What’s this?” he drawled, his accent thick with amusement at this entire turn of events.
“Those,” I told him, “are the keys to my sister’s new cupcake truck.”
Libby stared at me, her eyes round, her lips making an O. “I can’t accept this, Ave.”
“I know.” I smirked. “That’s why I gave the keys to Nash.”
Before I could say anything else, Jameson stepped in front of me. “You’re giving it away,” he said, his expression as much of a mystery to me as it had been the day we met. “Almost everything the old man left to you, everything he chose you for—”
“I’m keeping Hawthorne House,” I told him. “And more than enough money to maintain it. I might even keep a vacation home or two—after I’ve seen them all.”
After we had seen them all.
“If Tobias Hawthorne were here,” Thea declared, “he would lose it.”
All that money. All that power. Dispersed, where no one person would ever control it again.
“I guess that’s what happens,” Jameson said, his eyes never leaving mine as his lips curled upward, “when you take a very risky gamble.”
ONE YEAR LATER…
I’m here today with Avery Grambs. Heiress. Philanthropist. World changer—and at only nineteen years old. Avery, tell us, what is it like to be in your position at such a young age?”
I’d prepared for this question and for every question the interviewer might ask. She was the only one I’d granted an interview to in the past year, a media maven whose name was synonymous with savvy and success—and, more importantly, a humanitarian herself.
“Fun?” I answered, and she chuckled. “I don’t mean to sound cavalier,” I said, projecting the sincerity I felt. “I am fully aware that I am pretty much the luckiest person on the planet.”
Landon had told me that the art to an interview like this one—intimate, much anticipated, with an interviewer who was almost as much of a draw as I was—was to make it sound like a conversation, to make the audience feel like we were just two women talking. Honest. Open.
“And the thing is,” I continued, the awe in my voice echoing through the room in Hawthorne House where the interview was taking place, “it never really becomes normal. You don’t just get used to it.”
Here in this room, which the staff had taken to calling the Nook, it was easy to feel awed. The Nook was small by Hawthorne House standards, but every aspect of it, from the repurposed wood floors to the ridiculously comfortable reading chairs, bore my mark.
“You can go anywhere,” the interviewer said, quietly matching the awe in my voice. “Do anything.”
“And I have,” I said. Built-in shelves lined the Nook’s walls. Every place I went, I found a keepsake—a reminder of the adventures I’d had there. Art, a book in the local language, a stone from the ground, something that had spoken to me.
“You’ve gone everywhere, done everything…” The interviewer smiled knowingly. “With Jameson Hawthorne.”
Jameson Winchester Hawthorne.