The Final Gambit (The Inheritance Games, #3)(67)
“The prodigal son,” Xander murmured. “Will Blake.”
A wasteful youth. Vincent Blake’s distinctive voice rang in my mind. Wandering the world—ungrateful. A benevolent father, ready to welcome him home. But if memory serves correctly, there were three characters in that story…
Everything pointed to the third person in this story being Tobias Hawthorne—and if that was the case, maybe Xander had it wrong. “What if Will isn’t the prodigal?” I said. “On the phone, Blake emphasized that there were three characters in the parable of the prodigal son. The father—”
“Vincent Blake,” Thea filled in.
I nodded. “The son who betrayed his family, took the money, and ran—what if that’s not Vincent Blake’s actual son? What if it’s a man he’d brought into the family fold? Young Tobias Hawthorne. Nan said that Blake’s son was younger at the time, fifteen when your grandfather would have been…” I did the math. “Twenty-four.”
“At fifteen, Vincent Blake’s son might not have been old enough to have one of those seals,” Xander said, thinking out loud, “but he was plenty old to witness the betrayal.”
My entire body felt alive and alert, horrified and entranced. “Witness the betrayal,” I echoed, “and wonder why his father let some nobody from nowhere get away with screwing him out of millions?”
That put Will Blake in the position of the son who had stayed—the good son, upset that the prodigal’s betrayal was rewarded instead of punished.
There are three characters in the parable of the prodigal son, are there not?
Avenge. Revenge. Vengeance. Avenger.
I always win in the end.
“The question is,” Xander said, “why did Toby leave a poem by a poet named William Blake hidden in his wing, way back when?”
“And what are the chances,” I added, one thought leaping to the forefront of my mind, “that Will did have one of the Blake family seals with him when he disappeared?”
If the seal in Tobias Hawthorne’s possession had belonged to Vincent Blake’s son…
It felt like we were barreling toward the edge of a cliff.
“How long ago did Will Blake go missing?” Rebecca wasn’t looking at any of us. Light from the window hit her hair. Her tone was throaty and intense.
I got out my phone and did a search. And then another. Eventually, I was sure: The last time that Vincent Blake had been publicly photographed with his son, Will had been in his early twenties. “Forty years ago?” I estimated. “Plus or minus. Rebecca—”
“Will is one nickname for William,” Rebecca said, sucking every last molecule of oxygen out of the car. “But another one is Liam.”
CHAPTER 62
Mallory Laughlin hadn’t revealed much about the man who’d gotten her pregnant. She’d said that he was older, very charming. She’d said that his name was Liam. And when Eve had asked what had happened to Liam, all she would say was that he had left.
If Liam was Will Blake…
If he’d sought out a sixteen-year-old girl living on the Hawthorne estate…
If he got that girl pregnant…
And if Will really hadn’t been seen for more than forty years… plus or minus…
Questions piled up in my head. Did Toby know or suspect that Will Blake was his biological father? Did Vincent Blake know that Toby was his grandson? Is that why he took him? And if the seal that Toby had stolen from his father really did belong to Vincent Blake’s son—how had it come to be in Tobias Hawthorne’s possession in the first place?
What happened to Will Blake?
If we’d been barreling toward the edge of the cliff before, I was in the free fall now.
The moment we arrived back at Hawthorne House and I burst out of the SUV, Jameson was there. He stopped, inches from me, intensity radiating off his body. Everything we’d learned was about to come pouring out of my mouth when he spoke.
“What the hell is wrong with you, Heiress?”
I stared at him, disbelief giving way to anger that bubbled up in me and exploded out. “What’s wrong with me? You’re the one who locked me in the world’s most bejeweled escape room!”
“To keep you safe,” Jameson emphasized. “Vincent Blake is powerful, and he’s connected, and he’s going to keep coming for you, Avery, because you’re the one holding the keys to this kingdom. And I don’t know if he wants what you have, or if he wants to burn it down, but either way, how am I supposed to keep you safe if you won’t let me?”
I knew that Jameson loved me—and that pissed me off because our love wasn’t supposed to be like this. “You’re not supposed to keep me anything!” I burst out. He tried to look away, but I wouldn’t let him. “Ask me what we found.”
He didn’t.
“Just ask me, Jameson.”
I could see him wanting to, warring with himself. “Promise me first.”
“Promise you what?” I asked.
“That you’ll be more careful. That I won’t come home to find you gone again.”
I wasn’t sure how to say this to make him believe it, so I put both my hands flat on his chest and stared into green eyes that I knew better than anyone else’s. “I’m not going to stay locked up here, and it is not your place to lock me up. I don’t need your protection.”