“Your son,” I said, “impregnated an underage girl, then got physical with her when she had the audacity to be devastated at the realization that he’d just been using her to get close enough to make a move against Tobias Hawthorne.”
“Hmmmm.” Blake made a humming sound that felt far more threatening than it should have. “Will was fifteen when Tobias and I parted ways. The boy was irate that we’d been double-crossed. I had to disabuse him of the notion that we had been anything. What happened was between young Tobias and me.”
“Tobias bested you.” That was my first thrust in this little verbal sword match of ours.
Blake didn’t even feel it. “And look how well that turned out for him.”
I wasn’t sure if that was a reference to the fact that the only person who had ever bested Vincent Blake had turned out to be one of the most formidable minds in a generation—or a self-satisfied prediction that all of Tobias Hawthorne’s achievements would be nothing in the end.
The billionaire was dead, his fortune ripe for the taking.
“Your son hated him.” I tried again, with a different type of attack. “And he was desperate to prove himself to you.”
Blake didn’t deny it. Instead, he brought the bowie knife away from the wood and tested its sharpness against the pad of his thumb. “Tobias should have let me handle Will. He knew the kind of hell there would be to pay for bringing harm to my son. Choices, young lady, have consequences.”
“And how would you have handled what your son did to Mallory Laughlin?”
“That’s neither here nor there.”
“And boys will be boys,” I shot back. “Right?”
Blake studied me for a moment, then laid the knife on his leg. “I understand you have some friends at the gate.”
“The entire world knows I’m here,” I said. “They know what happened to your son.”
“Do they?” Eve said, a challenge in her tone. The story I was telling— she must have heard enough from Mallory to question it.
“That’s enough, Eve.” Blake’s voice was clipped, and Eve swallowed as her great-grandfather looked between the two of us. “I shouldn’t have sent a little girl to do a man’s job.”
Little girl. On the phone earlier, he’d referred to me that way, too. Tobias Hawthorne had been right. I was young. I was female. And this man would underestimate me.
“If I’d brought you your son’s remains,” I said, “you would have blackmailed me for breaking the law.”
“Blackmailed you into what, I wonder?” Blake meant that I should wonder.
I knew that it was to my advantage for him to think he had the upper hand, so I had to tread carefully now. “If Grayson and Toby don’t leave here with me, I’ll give another interview on the way out.”
It was dangerous to threaten a man like Vincent Blake. I knew that. I also knew that I needed him to believe that this was my play. My only play.
“An interview?” That got me another little hum. “Will you tell them about Sheffield Grayson?”
I’d anticipated that he would counter my move, but I hadn’t foreseen how, and suddenly, I couldn’t hold my pulse steady anymore. I couldn’t keep my face completely blank.
“Eve may have failed at her primary task,” Blake said, “but she’s a Blake—and we play to win. I’m still considering whether she’s earned this.” He brandished a golden disk identical to the one I’d placed on the wall. “But the information she brought me when she returned was… quite impressive.”
Information. About what happened to Grayson’s father. I thought about the file, the pictures on Eve’s phone.