Just another Hawthorne🦢💸🧩 (she/her pronouns) (reader x The Inheritance Games)

Chapter 6

Avery's POV

"Welcome home, Avery." Alisa stepped into the foyer and spun to face me. I stopped breathing, just for an instant, as I crossed the threshold. It was like stepping into Buckingham Palace and being told it was yours.

"Down the corridor," Alisa said, "we have the theatre, the music room, conservatory, solarium..." I didn't even know what half of those rooms were. "You've seen the Great Room, of course," Alisa continued. "The formal dinning is farther down, then the kitchen, the chef's kitchen..."

"There's a chef?" I blurted out.

"There are sushi, Italian, Taiwanese, vegetarian, and pastry chefs on retainer." The voice that said those words was male. I turned to see the older couple from the worlds being ing by the entry to the Great Room. The Laughlin's, I remembered. "But my wife handles tho cooking day to day," Mr.Laughlin continued gruffly.
"Mr Hawthorne was a very private man." Mrs Laughlin eyed me. "He made do with my cooking most days because he didn't like having any more outsiders poking around the House than necessary."

There was no doubt in my mind that she was saying House with a a capital H and even less that she considered me an outsider.

"There are dozens of staff in retainer," Alisa explained. "They all receive a full time wage but work on call."

"If something needs doing, there is someone to do it," Mr. Laughlin said plainly, "and I see that it's done in the most discreet fashion possible. More often than not, you won't even know they're here."

"But I will," Oren stated. "Movement on and off the estate is strictly tracked, and no one makes it past the gates without a deep background check. Construction crews, the housekeeping and gardening staff, every masseuse, chef stylist, or sommelier they are all cleared through my team." 

Sommelier. Stylist. Chef. Masseuse. My brain worked backward though that list. It was dizzying.

"The gym facilities are down this hall," Alisa said, returning to her tour tile. "There are full sized basketball and racquetball courts, a rock climbing wall, bowling alley"

"A bowling alley?" I repeated.

"Only four lanes," Alisa assured me, as if it was perfectly reasonable to have a small bowling alley in one's house.

I was still trying to formulate an appropriate response when the front door open by me. The day before, Nash Hawthorne, give me the impression of someone who was out of here yet there he was.

"Motorcycle cowboy." Libby whispered in my ear.

Beside me, Alisa stiffener. "If everything's in order here. I should check in with the firm." She reached into her suit pocket and handed me a new phone. "I programmed in my number, Mr. Laughlin's, and Oren's. If you need anything, call."

She left without saying a single word to Nash, and he watched her go.

"You be careful with that one," Mrs. Laughlin advised the eldest Hawthorne brother, once the door had closed. "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."

That cemented something for me. Alisa and Nash. My lawyer had advised me against losing my heart to a Hawthorne, and when she'd asked me if I'd ever had my life ruined by one of them, and I'd said no, her response had been lucky you.