Glorious Rivals(98)

Grayson knew that Lyra was thinking about the twisted game her father had laid out for her the night he’d killed herself. Three pieces of candy on a candy necklace. A calla lily. A Hawthorne. And omega.

“This is the last time that I am asking for details.” His jaw still aching from Jameson’s punch, Grayson climbed slowly to his feet.

Alisa preempted any reply that Jameson might have given. “Less than an hour ago,” she told Grayson, “Avery shut down the cameras on the yacht, all of them, for a period of less than three minutes. She saw to it that Oren and his team were otherwise occupied. Based on the footage we do have, she was alone when she did it and gone by the time the cameras came back up. There was no sign of a struggle, no sign of anyone else with her at the time. And she left a note.”

Alisa plucked it off her desk and handed it to Grayson—purple ink, scrawled over the back of one of her mother’s old postcards.

I’m not missing. Don’t look for me.

The press cannot find out that I am gone.

“How long ago did you find this?” Grayson asked Jameson, knowing instinctively that Jameson was the one who had.

Jameson didn’t answer.

“Thirty-three minutes,” Alisa told Grayson. “Approximately fifteen minutes after the security outages. In that time, Oren and I have been completely read in. Multiple teams have been dispatched. Xander is trying to get ahold of Nash and Libby. Every shred of security footage we have is being gone over with a fine-tooth comb. Right before we talked to Gigi, I put in a call in with a very discreet contact at the Coast Guard.”

Discreet. The muscles in Grayson’s throat tightened as he looked back to Avery’s note. The press cannot find out that I am gone. Grayson would have recognized Avery’s handwriting anywhere. “What do we make of the lemniscate?” he asked.

“We don’t make anything of it.” Jameson’s voice was like a beast uncaged. “Avery is none of your concern.” He said Avery’s name like it had been torn from his soul, and Grayson felt Jameson’s statement like a sword through his heart.

Avery was family, and family had always been Grayson’s concern.

“I want Odette’s location,” Grayson told Alisa. Hurting or not, his brain sorted through next moves at warp speed. “She knows something. And where’s Toby?”

“He’s been out looking for Eve for the last couple of hours,” Alisa replied.

“What does he know?” Grayson asked Jameson. “About Alice.”

“Nothing he’s felt like sharing,” Jameson replied, voice taut, jaw hard, eyes hollow. “And he’s not answering our calls. But like I said, brother, this is none of your concern.” Jameson looked from Grayson to Lyra and back again. “You have other concerns now.”

It couldn’t have been more obvious: He blames Lyra for this. He blames me.

“Blame me all you want,” Grayson told his brother. “But est unus ex nobis. Nos defendat eius.” Grayson said the full phrase this time. “Avery is one of us, Jamie. We protect her. We will find her.” Grayson felt the force of that vow in every inch of his body.

“I will find her,” Jameson replied. “Oren and Alisa and their teams will. Nash will. Toby will. But you?” Jameson turned back and looked Grayson dead in the eye. “As far as I’m concerned, you and Lyra can go to hell.”

Chapter 85

ROHAN

Rohan could feel the labyrinth in his mind shifting, remade by a single new piece of information. Avery Grambs, missing. Without the heiress, there might well be no prize money—not immediately, at least. Not soon enough for Rohan to ascertain beyond any shadow of a doubt whether or not Savannah Grayson intended to keep her promise.

Why would she? Rohan did not appreciate being at anyone else’s mercy. He had to find another way.

There was always another way.

The paths laid out before Rohan were many and varied, his opponent crystal clear. This isn’t over, Duchess.

“What the hell is going on?” Savannah said, the first words she’d spoken to Rohan since she’d turned to him back in the final chamber and uttered the phrase the house always wins. “Why did they bring us back here?”

I’m the house, Rohan told himself. There is no other choice. I have to be the house.

“One might conclude,” he told Savannah, “that there is a situation.” Rohan made his way toward the front of the yacht, just to see if she would follow.

She did not.

My terms, Savannah Grayson had told him. No one else’s.

“And when there is a situation of a certain sort…，” Rohan continued, pivoting to face her again, walking backward now. “The first thing you do is lock down every player on the board.”

The helicopter that had brought them here had already taken off again, headed back to the island, no doubt, for Brady Daniels. Even as we speak, there’s a team flushing him out. That was good.

For Rohan’s purposes, Daniels was key.

Were you forbidden from interfering with the game, Duchess? Rohan had the photographs, but those wouldn’t be sufficient to prove Zella’s hand in any of this. Did the Proprietor tell you that if the Grandest Game was called off, you’d be disqualified as a potential heir? Is that why you instructed Brady that the game must go on?