Glorious Rivals (The Grandest Game, #2) (96)

Biggest, smallest, white, red. Do you know the question yet?

Rohan knew. He’d solved it. And it didn’t matter. Bloody Hawthornes and their bloody games. There was no time. No time to make a go at lifting your dice, love. No time for persuasion. No time for bargains.

The Devil’s Mercy hung in the balance, and there was no time for Rohan to do anything except the one thing that Nash Hawthorne had clearly not expected him to be capable of.

“Damn it all to hell and back.” Rohan crossed to Savannah and pressed his dice into her hands.

Trust was weakness.

Affection was weakness.

Rohan was not wired to rely on anyone else, ever—not like this. But what choice did he have? He’d aligned himself with Savannah Grayson, and he’d pushed her away. He’d pushed and pushed and pushed, and the betrayal had never come.

Make your move, love.

Savannah did not hesitate. She never hesitated, was incapable of it. One after another, she dropped the glass dice into the cylinder: White dice first, the five before the three. Then the red six and the red two last.

Biggest, smallest, white, red. Do you know the question yet?

The second the last die was in the cylinder, music filled the air. Church bells. The ceiling parted. A flatscreen television descended, an obvious camera attached to its side. The screen flickered to life—but the light on the camera never came on.

On the screen, there were four chairs. One for each of the game makers, but those chairs were…

Empty.

Rohan’s watch buzzed. He didn’t look down, his eyes trained on Savannah. Behind him, Lyra Kane read the message they had all just received aloud: “We have a winner.”

Savannah. She’d won the Grandest Game. But there was no one on the screen—no Hawthornes, no heiress, not even their lawyer. There was no livestream, no one to accuse.

“Where are they?” Savannah Grayson was fury and poise and best-laid plans come to ruin. “I won.” Savannah did not raise her voice, but she might as well have been screaming for all the power and heartbreak in those words. “Where are they?”

Rohan had warned her. She’d never stood a chance without the element of surprise. Should have taken Brady’s deal, love. But before Rohan could say that out loud, Grayson Hawthorne took a heavy step forward, staring bullets at the screen and those empty chairs.

“Something is wrong.”





Chapter 82





GIGI


Four miles, due north. Gigi wasn’t sure she was going to make it.

Here lies Gigi Grayson, her tombstone would read, done in by cardio in the end.

When the bar finally came into view in the distance, Gigi tried—and failed—to breathe a sigh of relief. This night was ending. This brief, absolutely bonkers chapter in her life was coming to a close.

“This is as far as we go,” Eve told Slate. “We need to be long gone before anyone Hawthorne-adjacent comes for her.”

That stung more than it probably should have.

“Stay out of trouble, sunshine.”

A ball of emotion rose in Gigi’s throat, but she chose to smile. Because she could. Because even after everything, she still had to believe that happiness was a choice.

“Trouble is my second middle name,” she told Slate. “Juliet Aurelia Trouble Grayson.” Her smile wavered, but Gigi persevered, nodding toward the bar, which looked, even from a distance, every bit as seedy as advertised. “Think they sell mimosas?”

“No,” Slate said. “I don’t.”

“True or false.” Gigi met his eyes through the dark. “You’ll miss me.”

“Slate.” Eve’s patience was clearly evaporating.

Gigi decided not to wait for an answer that probably wasn’t going to come. She set her sights on the building in the distance and made it all of three steps before Mattias Slater spoke behind her.

“Let’s play a game,” he said. “It’s called You Don’t Need to Prove a Damn Thing. To anyone. It’s called You’re Already Strong.”

Gigi stopped walking, but she didn’t look back. She didn’t let herself look back. Still, she had to ask: “Were you ever out there?”

How many times in the past year-and-a-half had she hedged her bets, calling out into the night? I know you’re out there. He’d been a figment of her imagination on so many nights—and maybe that was all.

Maybe if she turned around, she’d discover that he was already gone.

And then came a reply. “More than once.”

Gigi nodded, and then she swallowed. It wasn’t all in my head. She took the deepest breath of her life. “Good-bye, Mattias.”

She started walking toward the bar again. The first two steps were the hardest. After five, Gigi forced herself to pick up the pace, as much as she could—for Savannah. Even if Zella had been right and the Grandest Game was ending, even if it was already over and Gigi was too late, she had to get to her sister. And now, thanks to Eve and her big mouth, Gigi needed to get to Grayson and Lyra, too. At the very least, she needed to tell someone about Calla—the Watcher, the Lily, the Woman in Red.

Because whatever came after the time for watching? Even Gigi wasn’t optimistic enough to think that it was good.