Glorious Rivals (The Grandest Game, #2) (56)

“Did you read what I wrote?” Jameson demanded.

You played my game once, Jameson Hawthorne. And to get in, you put up a secret, wrote it down, agreed to forfeit it if you lost. “The Proprietor never would have allowed that,” Rohan assured his mark. “Your secret is safe—from me.”

“I wasn’t in my right mind,” Jameson said. “Back then.”

“Who among us hasn’t gotten a little reckless?” Rohan replied. He studied Jameson for a moment. “It looms large in your mind, doesn’t it?” he asked. “My game. The Mercy.” Rohan reached for the labyrinth, for details stored, if not ever explicitly noted. “I cannot help but notice certain parallels. A lemniscate, like the one laid into the floor of the atrium of the Devil’s Mercy. Ledgers bound in leather.” Rohan slipped on his tuxedo jacket without bothering with the shirt. “This exact shade of purple is the color of the ink in which you wrote that horrible secret of yours that I do not know.”

Even if he had known Jameson’s secret, Rohan couldn’t have used it. That was one of the terms of the challenge that had been laid at his feet. He could not use any information obtained while in the Mercy’s employ. But that Jameson Hawthorne had a secret—well, that was more of a gray area.

After all, everyone had secrets.

“The music box,” Rohan continued, “and keys, of course, both lifted straight from my game to yours.”

“You hardly invented keys,” Jameson retorted, but Rohan had an unerring sense for when he’d gotten to another person. He was fairly certain that until he’d pointed it out, Jameson very likely had not noticed how much of this game could be traced back to the Mercy, to Rohan.

“You have a secret,” Rohan reiterated, letting his upper-crust accent shift to something with a bit more force, “and something has you shaken.” Rohan used his discarded shirt to wipe sweat from his face and neck, his eyes never leaving Jameson’s. “If you decide you require actual assistance with either of those things once the game is done—there is some possibility that I can be bought.”

And there it was: A net. A backup plan. An offer from one gentleman to another.

“You need money,” Jameson flatly. He did not seem inclined to take Rohan up on his offer. Yet.

“I do,” Rohan confirmed, “and you are running a race against a ticking clock, because by the time this game is over, by the time I win—I won’t.”





Chapter 48





ROHAN


Armed with the solution to the music box puzzle and bathed in the familiar feeling of having begun to tug certain strings just so, Rohan decided it was time to check in on Savannah—not that she would thank him for it.

But then, she didn’t need to know.

Rohan exited the interior of the yacht, made his way to the starboard side of the ship, and began scaling the outside, stopping only when he reached the very top. Standing on the highest point of the ship, he scanned his surroundings, not caring that it was night. Any light was enough for someone who had spent as much time in darkness as Rohan had.

And Savannah glowed.

Rohan spotted her at the front of the ship, sitting on the helipad, her legs dangling over the edge. She wasn’t alone. Well done, love. Rohan began the climb down. He might have signed off on Savannah’s plan to offer up her fungible loyalty to Brady Daniels to wring whatever use out of him they could, but Rohan had never promised to trust her.

Trusting other people was always a mistake.

In less than a minute, Rohan had made his way down the side of the yacht and past the lowest deck. As a child, there had been days when practicing his grip had made the muscles in Rohan’s fingers and palms cramp so badly that his hands had turned to claws. But nowadays, he could climb anything—vertical or otherwise.

Using raised embellishments on the side of the yacht for holds, Rohan moved swiftly. Close enough to the ocean that he could feel the spray of every individual wave, he took himself to the place in his mind that was beyond pain, beyond thinking or feeling.

He stopped moving only when he was close enough to hear.

“—double-cross your current partner?” Brady Daniels had a deep voice, pleasant enough.

Savannah’s, in contrast, was high and clear, cutting through the air like a diamond-studded blade. “Partner is an overstatement. Rohan knows quite well that our interests only align to a point.”

Rohan smiled. There you are, winter girl.

“And that point is…,” Brady prompted.

“A matter of some internal debate. At this juncture, I could be persuaded of many things, and I have to say, Mr. Daniels, that you strike me as the debate team type.”

“It’s the glasses,” Brady replied.

Rohan wondered if Brady was peering at Savannah through those glasses, but from this angle, he couldn’t see a thing, could only hear them.

“On day one of this competition,” Brady commented mildly, “you told your sister that she couldn’t trust anyone in this game. You warned Gigi that I wasn’t her friend.”

“Was I wrong?”

“You were not.” Brady Daniels left it at that.

Rohan wondered what the scholar’s read on Savannah Grayson was. Obviously, he’d be suspicious of her, but did he have any idea what she was truly capable of?