“Are you okay?” Vivvie asked me, the question taking me back to the way she’d asked, over and over, my first day at Hardwicke.
“I just received a royal decree from my grandfather that he’s picking me up after school,” I said. The word grandfather felt foreign on my lips, like maybe I wasn’t saying it right. Gramps was my grandfather, but William Keyes? He was one of the wealthiest men in the country. He was a kingmaker, a powerful enemy, a powerful friend.
His name was on Ivy’s list.
“What exactly did you promise the old chap?” Asher fell in beside us in the hallway on our way to the exit.
“Besides a press conference announcing my existence to the world?” I asked, giving no visible clue to where my thoughts had really taken me. “Weekly dinners, giving him a say in my education, letting him set up a trust fund for me, and—” I mumbled the rest of it.
“Did you say changing your last name?” Asher asked.
“You said once that your sister and Keyes didn’t get along.” Now it was Henry’s turn to join the conversation. “I do hope that was an exaggeration.” The two of us weren’t friends, exactly, but we’d been through something—he’d sat by me when I’d been waiting for news on Ivy; I was the only person he’d ever told about his father.
Sometimes, when I caught him staring at me, I thought maybe he knew my secrets, too.
“Not an exaggeration,” I told Henry. “When Ivy finds out I went to William Keyes for help, when she finds out what I promised him . . .”
That would have been an ugly conversation no matter what. But given that Ivy was still staying up nights, locked in her office, given that she thought there was another conspirator out there and my grandfather’s name was on her suspect list—she was going to kill me.
We hit the front corridor. Asher pushed the door open. “Ladies,” he said with a gallant half bow, “after you.”
I stepped out into the sunshine and stopped dead in my tracks. There was a limo waiting at the curb, and standing just outside the limo was William Keyes. The man the First Lady said excelled at holding a grudge. The one I’d been told was ruthless and dangerous. The one who valued family, who wanted a legacy.
The one who looked at me, across the pavement, with a hungry look in his eyes that told me that legacy might be me.
“Will you remember us when you’re fancy?” Asher asked me. I shoved him to one side. All around us, students were slowing to look at Keyes. It wasn’t the limo that attracted their attention. It was the man.
Asher’s sister honed in on the four of us like a missile zeroing in on its target. “That’s William Keyes,” Emilia told Asher. “What is William Keyes doing here?”
Henry, Asher, and Vivvie all darted their eyes toward me.
Asher was the one who broke the silence. “Have you met my friend?” he asked Emilia. “Tess Keyes.”
Emilia stopped dead in her tracks. Asher had spoken just loudly enough that several people overheard him. My good old buddy John Thomas Wilcox looked like he’d swallowed a worm.
Note to self, I thought, kill Asher. But a second later, I had bigger things to worry about, because apparently Bodie hadn’t come by himself to pick me up today.
Ivy had come with him.
“Incoming,” Bodie coughed, and that was all the warning I had before Ivy swooped down, intercepting me before I made it to the limo and the man who was standing there.
“Tess,” Ivy said calmly.
“Yes?”
“What is Adam’s father doing here?”
I looked to Bodie, who gave me a look that said, oh so clearly, that I was on my own.
“What is Adam’s father doing here?” Ivy repeated.
There was no way to sugarcoat it. “Apparently, he’s giving me a ride home from school.”
We’d acquired enough of an audience that Ivy lowered her voice. “And why would William Keyes do that?”
“Because he knows,” I said. “About Tommy. About me.”
Ivy had to have suspected that was what I was going to say, but that didn’t keep her nostrils from flaring slightly the moment I said it.
“We needed a pardon.” I said the words below my breath, so low that no one but Ivy could hear them. “I did what I had to do to make sure you came home alive.”
I didn’t regret it. No matter who—or what—my paternal grandfather might be, I couldn’t regret it.
“Ivy.” William Keyes stepped forward and greeted Ivy with a cat-eating-canary smile. “You look well.”
“What are you doing here?” she asked him.
He smiled. “I’m picking my granddaughter up from school.”
Ivy forgot about keeping her voice low. “I want you to stay away from her. You have no legal standing—”
“I’ll stay away from her when she asks me to stay away from her,” William Keyes replied.
Ivy looked at me. “Theresa,” she said, her voice low. “Tess Kendrick. Tell him.”
His name was on that list. But there were other names, too.
“I gave him my word,” I said. This was the bargain I’d struck: the kingmaker’s presence in my life in exchange for saving Ivy’s.
It was a deal I would make all over again.
“In this business,” Keyes told Ivy, still looking altogether too satisfied with himself, “your word is the most valuable asset you have.”
He gestured toward the limo, and I stepped toward it.
“What’s your endgame here?” Ivy asked the man she’d once worked for. “What do you want with my daughter?”
“The same thing I’ve always wanted, dear,” William replied. “An heir.”
Unlike the rest of us, he made no move whatsoever to lower his voice. All around us, my fellow students were buzzing.
“By the way,” the man who made kings told Ivy, “her name isn’t Tess Kendrick. She’s changing it—to Tess Kendrick Keyes.” He smiled smugly. “There’ll be a lovely profile of her—and her courageous father, God rest his soul—in tomorrow’s Post.”
For once, Ivy was speechless.
Nearby, someone snapped a picture of the three of us on a cell phone. Keyes opened the door to the limo. With one last look at Ivy, I climbed in. My paternal grandfather climbed in beside me.