Guest was one way of phrasing it—but as far as incentives went, it was enticing. Too enticing. If he’s willing to keep his hands off my loved ones, he must have other buttons to push. Other forms of leverage.
Another plan to take everything from me.
“Win both games,” Blake promised, “and I’ll also swear secrecy on the matter of Sheffield Grayson.”
Toby flinched. Clearly, he hadn’t known about that bit of leverage his biological grandfather had been holding in reserve.
“Are these terms acceptable to you?” Blake asked Toby and only Toby, like Eve and I were foregone conclusions.
Toby gritted his teeth. “Yes.”
“Yes,” Eve said, alive in a way that made all other versions of her seem faded and incomplete.
And as for me…
Blake will honor his word. If I won both matches, the truth about Grayson’s father would stay buried. The people I loved would be safe.
Blake would still be coming for me. He’d find a way of destroying me and all I held dear, but he’d be limited in how he could do that.
“I agree to your terms,” I said, even though he’d never given me the option to do anything else.
Blake turned to the glittering, five-hundred-thousand-dollar chess set I’d gifted him. “Well then. Shall we begin?”
CHAPTER 80
Toby and Eve went first. I’d played against Toby often enough to know that he could have ended it within the first twelve moves if he’d wanted to.
He let her win.
Blake must have concluded the same thing because once the board had been reset for my match against Toby, the older man picked up his bowie knife. “Throw this game, too,” he told Toby contemplatively, “and I’ll ask Eve to give me her arm and use this to open a vein.”
If Eve was disturbed by the implication that her great-grandfather would slice her open, she didn’t show it. Instead, she held tight to the seal she’d been given and kept her eyes on the board.
I took my position and met Toby’s eyes. It had been more than a year since we’d played, but the second I moved my first pawn, it was like no time had passed at all. Harry and I were right back in the park.
“Your move, princess.” Toby wasn’t pulling his punches, but he did his best to put me at ease, to remind me that even if he played his hardest, I’d beaten him before.
“Not a princess.” I echoed my line in our script back at him and slid my bishop across the board. “Your move, old man.”
Toby narrowed his eyes slightly. “Don’t get cocky.”
“Fine words from a Hawthorne,” I retorted.
“I mean it, Avery. Don’t get cocky.”
He sees something I don’t.
“Eve,” Vincent Blake said pleasantly. “Your arm?”
Her chin steady, Eve held it out to him. Blake rested the edge of his blade against her skin. “Play,” he told Toby. “And no more hints to the girl.”
There was a beat—a single second—and then Toby did as he’d been instructed. I scanned the board, then saw why he’d cautioned me against getting cocky. It took three moves, but then: “Check,” Toby gritted out.
I took in the board, all of it at once. I had three possible next moves, and I played all of them out. Two led to Toby getting checkmate within the next five moves. That meant I was stuck with the third. I knew how Toby would counter it, and from there I had four or five options. I let my brain race, let the possibilities slowly untangle themselves.