O Superman by Laurie Anderson

Well you don't know me, but I know you.

After a slightly dramatic reunion with the others, we gather around Xander's laptop, all here to check this USB. "Play the first one." Jameson instructs. Xander does as he's told and plays it. Indecipherable words blur into one and create a white noise.

"And the second?" Nash hints, upon hitting play we realize they're both the same awful incoherent noise.

"Try playing them at the same time." I suggest, a lightbulb moment. 

Xander makes eye contact with me skeptically as if doubting the idea because it came from me.

He opens an editing operation and overlaps the audios, hitting play.

"Hello Avery." The old mans voice speaks. It's chilling to hear a man I know so much about but have never even heard speak. Something in the air shifts, the atmosphere tense.

"We're strangers, you and I. I imagine thats something you've thought about a lot." Tobias says.

"All great lives should have at least one grand mystery, Avery. I won't apologise for being yours. If you've spent late nights and early mornings asking yourself 'why me?' Well my dear, you are not the only one what is the human condition if not 'why me?'" He speaks.

There's something so utterly tense and untouchably quiet about this moment.

 "As a young man, I believed myself destined for greatness. I fought for it, I thought my way to the top, I cheated, I lied, I made the world bend to my will... I got lucky. I can admit that now. I'm dying, and not slowly, either. Why me? Why is this body giving out? Why am I the one sitting in a palace of my own making when there are others out there with minds like mine? I got lucky. Right place, right time, right ideas, right mind. If only that were it." He tells us.

"If you are playing this message, then things have become as dire as I projected. Eve is there, and certain events have led you to finding the tomb that once housed this family's greatest secret. How much, I wonder, have you put together for yourself, Avery?"

It feels eerie as if he's here in this room. Like he can see us.

"But then," he continues, I can practically hear the smile in his voice, "you're not alone, are you? Hello, boys."

There is a physical reaction from all the boys, you don't notice unless you're paying attention like I am. Xander's face softens, Jameson shifts uncomfortably, Grayson tenses up and Nash runs a stressed hand through his hair.

"If you boys are indeed there with Avery, then at least one thing has worked out as I intended. You know quite well that she is not your enemy. And you also know Paris is not either. She's here too, isn't she?" 

At the mention of my own name I swallow and fold my arms over my chest.

"Perhaps, if I have chosen as well as I think I have, the girls have reached a place inside of you that I never could. Dare I even say made you whole?"

"Turn it off," Nash orders. But nobody listens, and he doesn't persist because he himself needs to listen to this.

"If you've made it this far, you'll know already that my son had an affair with Avery's Mother and the product of this was Paris Hawthorne." 

Hearing him say that makes me physically shiver.

"Much like your sister, you may lie awake at night wondering, 'why not me?' Which is just as eager and burning a question. It would make sense, wouldn't it? Leaving my inheritance to my long lost Granddaughter? To that I say, too easy."

I could have been a fucking billionaire instead of my sister, and the only reason i'm not is because it's too easy?

"I hope you enjoyed the game I left you, boys. Whether your mother and aunt have found and played theirs, I cannot say. The odds I've calculated suggest it could go either way, which is why, Xander, I left you with the charge I did. I trust that you have looked for Toby. And Avery, I believe in my heart of hearts that Toby has found you."

He's had this whole thing planned out so clearly, he knew from the start exactly what would happen after he died, moving us like pawns.

"If you are listening to this, then there is a high likelihood that Vincent Blake has revealed himself as a clear and present threat. I'd hoped to outlive the bastard. For years, he and I have had an armistice of sorts. He considered himself magnanimous at first, to let me go. Later, once he began to resent my growing fortune, my power, my status—well, those things kept him in check. I kept him in check."

A pause.

"But now I am gone, and if Blake knows what I suspect you now know, God help you all. If Eve is there, if Blake knows or even suspects what I have kept from him all these years, then he is coming. For the fortune. For my legacy. For you, Avery Kylie Grambs. I'm sure you have already discovered this already. But what you don't know is he's coming for you too Paris. You're his Granddaughter after all. But you're also mine. And for all of that, I do apologize. To both of you."

My heart pounds. What does he mean he's 'coming for you'. Am I in danger?

"But better you than them. Yes, girls. I really am that much of a bastard. I really did paint a target on your forehead. Even without the truth surfacing, I saw the probabilities for what they were. Once I was no longer there to hold him at bay, Blake was always going to make his move. Hunting season, he might call it—playing the game, destroying all opponents, taking what was mine. And that, my dear, is why it is now yours."

We were always chess pieces in his game. And I had expected nothing less. 

"I met your mother, you know. Once when I believed her to be merely a waitress and once after I had deduced that she was Hannah Rooney, my only son's great love. I thought to use her to get to Toby. I tried my hand at working her—cajoling, threatening, bribing, manipulating. And do you know what your mother told me, Avery? She told me that she knew who Vincent Blake was, knew what had happened to his son, knew where Toby had hidden the Blake family seal, and that if I came near her—or you—again, she would bring the whole house of cards tumbling down."

I struggle to imagine my Mom standing up to Tobias Hawthorne. Then I think about how she must have felt when he bribed her, she probably felt guilty that she never took it. If she had maybe we would have grown up differently.

"Did you know about the seal?" Tobias ask, almost as if he'll hear if we answer. "Did you know this family's darkest secret? I think not, but I am a man who has made an empire by always, always questioning my own assumptions. I excel at nothing if not contingencies. So here we are, Avery Kylie Grambs. The little girl with the funny little name. A skeleton key for so many little locks."

"I had six weeks from my diagnosis until now. Another two, I wager, until my deathbed. Enough time to put the final pieces in place. Enough time to draw up one last game with so very many layers. Why you, Avery? To draw the boys in one last time? To bequeath to them a mystery befitting Hawthornes, the puzzle of a lifetime? To bring them back together through you? Yes."

He did this to bring his boys back together, I ruined that by being a slut.

"To pull Toby out of the shadows? To do in death what I was unable to do in life and force him back onto the board? Yes."

He did this to bring back his son, I ruined that by not keeping him safe.

"And, to my great shame, to pull Blake's attention and focus—and the attention and focus of all of my enemies, of whom there are doubtlessly many—to you."

"Call it misdirection," the billionaire says. "I needed someone to draw fire, and who better than Hannah Rooney's daughter, on the off chance that she had told you my secret? You'd hardly have motive to reveal it once the money was yours."

"But take as your consolation this, my very risky gamble: I have watched you. I have come to know you. As you draw fire away from those that I hold most dear, know that I believe there is at least a sliver of a chance that you will survive the hits you take. You may be tested by the flames, but you need not burn. If you are listening to this, Blake is coming. He will box you in. He will hold you down. He will have no mercy. But he will also underestimate you. You're young. You're female. You're nobody—use that. My greatest adversary—and yours now—is an honor-bound man. Best him, and he'll honor the win."

"Paris.." He addresses me directly now, "I do wish you had the chance to know me. But I know you. I know all about you. I've been watching you, studying you, learning things about you I bet my boys don't even know now. You're a lot like me, my dear, maybe it runs in the family. I had to stop myself so many times from introducing myself or helping you out. I stopped you from being hit by a car one time, dear. It was that same day I came across Avery in that diner. You were young, playing with a ball outside the diner. Then the ball rolled across the road. You ran straight after it, across the busy highway. I saw it happen in slow motion, sitting on a park bench minding my business. I ran over and stepped out in front of you, alerting the car that you were there. The car passed and so did you, you ran off after your ball, completely oblivious to your dodge of death. I recognized that hair and those eyes anywhere, the way your face pulled together. I saw Toby in you. So I followed you inside and took a seat at the diner, your Mother shouted at you for running away. You lead me straight to the diner where all of this began." Tobias tells me.

I shiver. An actual shiver chills up my back and hitches my breath. Maybe he did know me after all. The worst part is I couldn't even remember the moment, not only because I was so young but because it was insignificant to me. I didn't know he had even saved me, never mind the significance it would have had to my whole future. 

"My boys." Hawthorne sounded like he was smiling again, a crooked smile like Jameson's, a hard one like Grayson's. "If you are indeed listening to this, judge me as harshly as you like. I've made my deals with so very many devils. Find me wanting. Hate me if you must. Let your anger light a fire that the world will never extinguish."

I look up to all the boys. Grayson is sending daggers to one particular wooden floorboard, completely out of it, I want nothing more than to hold his hand. Nash looks unfazed to the naked eye, but if you know these boys the way i've learned to you can see the fury behind his eyes, the resentment and pure loathing for his Grandfather. Xander just looks upset, like a puppy who had its favourite toy ripped from its mouth. Jameson is stressed, i can tell because his foot is tapping up and down on the floor.

"Nash. Grayson. Jameson. Xander." He says all their names one at a time. "You were the clay, and I was the sculptor, and it has been the joy and honor of my life to make you better men than I will ever be. Men who may curse my name but will never forget it."

I link my hand into Grayson's, it doesn't mean anything romantically, but I do it because I know it's what he needs right now. It became a second nature to comfort him if he needed it no matter what. 

His hand in mine squeezes so hard he might break all my bones, but I don't care, I let him squeeze until I know I could bruise. He doesn't even notice he's doing it. He's just clinging to me, as if he's not even sure any of this is real and i'm the only thing making this real. 

I see Avery reach for Jameson's hand subconsciously too and instead of dismissing her, he indulges in it. It's what they need.

"On your marks, boys," Tobias Hawthorne says on the recording. "Get set. Go."

(a/n. Okay I know chapter 100 is usually sort of special but all the climax starts soon I swear. In terms of actually making it to a chapter 100? I'm genuinely out of my mind ecstatic that you guys have clung on to this rollercoaster of a plot for 100 whole chapters, and at about 15 minutes each, that means you've read for about 1500 minutes, which is insane. Insane! So thanks for making it this far. I'm saving all the sappy stuff for whenever this book ends, so that's all i'll say for now. Thanks for reading this chapter and all the others.)