All Chapters of THE LAST GRAYMAN : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

The first sound every morning was the creak of the floorboard outside her door. Fiona Grayman had learned to measure the day by that sound. Soft meant Quin was in a mood to pretend. Heavy and deliberate meant Maxwell had already decided she had done something wrong before she even opened her eyes.Today the floorboard groaned under weight.She sat up before the door handle turned. The thin mattress protested. Her room was barely larger than a closet, the single window covered by a faded sheet that never quite blocked the Texas sun. A water stain spread across the ceiling like a map of somewhere she would never go. She kept her few belongings in a cardboard box under the bed: two changes of clothes, a broken pencil, and the small black notebook she had stolen from the school library two years ago.The door opened. Maxwell filled the frame.“Downstairs. Now.”No greeting. No reason. Just the order.Fiona swung her legs over the side of the bed. The floor was cold. She pulled on yesterda

The rattle of the loose tailgate grew louder.Fiona’s pulse hammered in her throat. Three seconds. That was all the space left between the approaching truck and the open passenger door of the quiet black car. Maxwell would see. He always saw. And once he saw, the evening would become something she would still feel in her bones three days later.She moved.Her hand found the door handle. She slid into the passenger seat in one quick motion and pulled the door shut hard enough that the sound cracked across the hot air. The boy, she still did not know his name, put the car in gear without a word. The engine was nearly silent as it pulled away from the shoulder. Gravel spun under the tires. In the side mirror she watched Maxwell’s faded blue truck crest the small rise behind them. For one long second she thought he had seen her face. Then the black car took the curve and the truck disappeared from view.Only then did she realize she was holding her breath.The interior of the car smelled

The sound of Maxwell’s truck was closer this time.Fiona’s body reacted before her mind finished the thought. She stepped back from the open passenger window as if the air between her and the black car had turned sharp. Kennedy’s eyes flicked toward the rise in the road, then returned to her face with a new intensity.“Get in,” he said. Not a suggestion.She shook her head once. “He already knows about yesterday.”“Then standing here talking to me will make it worse.” His voice stayed low, but the edge under it was new. “Decide.”The truck’s engine growled over the hill. Dust rose in a pale cloud behind it. Fiona’s bruised arm throbbed in time with her pulse. Every lesson this house had taught her said to walk away, to become small, to give Maxwell nothing he could use. Yet the note under her mattress burned in her memory, and the boy watching her from the driver’s seat looked like he already understood more than he should.She opened the door and slid in.Kennedy did not wait for her

Fiona stayed at the window long after the black car disappeared.The words from the bridge kept turning over in her mind with the same relentless rhythm as the bruises on her body. Not a robbery. The Maverick family gave the order. The last Grayman.She had lived for seven years inside the official story, a random act of violence that left her orphaned and placed with Maxwell and Quin. Now that story lay in pieces on the floor of her memory, and she did not know which fragments to trust.She forced herself away from the glass and sat on the edge of the bed. The notebook came out again. Her handwriting was tighter than usual, the letters pressed hard into the page.Hooded figure at creek bridge claimed the night of my tenth birthday was ordered by the Maverick family. Claimed I am the last Grayman. Claimed Kennedy belongs to the family that wanted me dead. Warned that being seen with him makes me either a tool or a threat. Kennedy was waiting outside the house when I returned. Watched m

The rumble of Maxwell’s truck grew louder, rolling toward the creek like a threat that already knew their names.Fiona’s body locked. Every lesson the house had beaten into her said the same thing: if Maxwell found her here, with Kennedy, the consequences would not stop at the belt. Kennedy’s eyes flicked toward the sound, then back to her face. In the moonlight his expression had lost its usual careful control. Something sharper and more urgent lived there now.“Move,” he said, voice low and fast. “Off the bridge. Into the trees on the far side.”She did not argue. They crossed the remaining planks in quick, quiet steps. The wooden surface complained under their weight, but the sound of the truck covered it. Fiona slipped between the low mesquite and scrub on the far bank, Kennedy close behind her. The shadows were thick enough to hide them if they stayed still. She pressed her back against a rough trunk and forced her breathing slow. The notebook still sat flat against her spine. Th