Did my real opponent?
“Well done, Eve.” Blake offered her a small, self-satisfied smile, and Eve glowed, the smile on her face luminescent. Blake turned to me—and Grayson. “The two of you may leave.”
His men closed in on us, and I didn’t have to fake my panic. “Wait!” I said, sounding desperate—and feeling that desperation, because even though this had been a calculated risk, I had no way of knowing that I hadn’t miscalculated. “Give me another chance!”
“Have some dignity, child.” Blake stood and turned his back on me as his hunting dog returned to his side and dropped a dead duck at his feet. “No one likes a sore loser.”
“You could still have a favor,” I shouted as Blake’s security began to remove me from the premises. “One last game. Me against you.”
“I don’t need a favor from you, girl.”
That’s okay, I tried to tell myself. There’s another option. An option I’d come prepared for. An option I’d planned for. The gift of the chess set, the fact that I had Alisa waiting for me outside—I’d always known what my gambit was going to be.
What it was going to have to be.
“Not a favor, then,” I said, trying to hold on to the panic and the desperation so he wouldn’t see the deep sense of calm rising up inside me. “What about the rest of it?”
Grayson cut a sharp look in my direction. “Avery.”
Vincent Blake held up his hand, and his men all took a silent step back. “The rest of what, exactly?”
“The Hawthorne fortune.” I let the words come out in a rush. “My lawyer has been after me to sign these papers for weeks. Tobias Hawthorne didn’t tie my inheritance up in a trust. The fine people at McNamara, Ortega, and Jones are nervous about a teenager taking the reins, so Alisa drew up paperwork that would put everything in a trust until I turn thirty.”
“Avery.” Toby’s voice was low and full of warning. Part of me wanted to believe he was just helping me sell the in-over-my-head act, but he was probably offering a genuine word of caution.
I was risking too much.
“If you play me,” I told Blake, nodding toward the chessboard, “and you win, I’ll sign the papers and make you the trustee.”
Coming here, I’d been counting on Blake’s ego to make him think that he could beat me, but there had always been the chance that he would realize I’d suggested chess specifically because I stood a good chance at winning. But now?
He’d seen me play.
He’d seen me lose.
He thought I was making this offer on impulse because I had lost.
And still, he looked at me with sharp eyes and the most suspicious of smiles. “Now, why would you do a thing like that?”
“I don’t want anyone finding out about Sheffield Grayson,” I bit out. “And I’ve read the paperwork! With a trust, the money would still belong to me. I just wouldn’t control it. You would have to promise me that you would okay any purchases I wanted to make, that you’d let me spend as much money as I wanted, whenever I wanted. But everything I can’t spend? You’d be the one making the decisions about how it’s invested.”
Do you know what the real difference is between millions and billions? Skye Hawthorne had asked, what felt like a small eternity ago. Because at a certain point, it’s not about the money.
It was about the power.
Vincent Blake didn’t want or need Tobias Hawthorne’s fortune to spend it.
“All of this, for double or nothing?” Blake asked pointedly. Like Tobias Hawthorne, the man across from me thought seven steps ahead. He knew I had another card up my sleeve.
But hopefully just one.
“No,” I admitted. “If you win, you get control of everything free and clear until I’m thirty or you’re six feet under. But if I win, you make sure that any nasty rumors about Sheffield Grayson stay buried, and you give me your word that this ends here.”
This was the plan. This had always been the plan. My greatest adversary—and yours now—is an honor-bound man, Tobias Hawthorne had told me. Best him, and he’ll honor the win.
“If I win,” I continued, “the armistice you had with Tobias Hawthorne—you extend that to me. End of hunting season.” I gave him a hard look, which I deeply suspected he found amusing. “You let me go, the way you let a young Tobias Hawthorne go, way back when.”
I willed him to see me as impulsive, to see this as me scrambling because I’d lost. I’m young. I’m female. I’m nobody. And you just saw Eve beat me at chess.
“How am I to know you’ll keep up your end of the deal?” my adversary queried.
It took everything in me not to allow even a shadow of victory to pulse through me. “If you accept the wager,” I said, all wide eyes and bravado, “we’ll make two calls: one to your lawyer and one to mine.”
CHAPTER 82
What the hell are you doing?” Alisa hissed.
The two of us were—purportedly—alone, but even with no one visibly listening, I didn’t want to explain anything that could tip my hand to Blake. “What I have to,” I said, hoping Alisa would read so much more in my tone.
I have a plan.
I can do this.
You have to trust me.
Alisa stared at me like I’d grown horns. “You absolutely do not have to do this.”
I wasn’t going to win this argument, so I didn’t even try. I just waited for her to realize that I wasn’t backing down.
When she did, Alisa swore under her breath and looked away. “Do you know why Nash and I broke off our engagement?” she asked in a tone that was far too calm for both the words she’d spoken and our current situation. “He was so determined that his grandfather wasn’t going to pull his strings—or mine. He expected me to walk away from all things Hawthorne, too.”
“And you couldn’t.” I wasn’t sure where she was going with this.
“Nash was raised to be extraordinary,” Alisa said. “But he wasn’t the only one the old man had a hand in raising, so yes, I stayed.” Alisa clipped the words, refusing to allow them more importance than she had to. “I did what Nash should have done. It cost me everything, but before Mr. Hawthorne passed, he stipulated to my father and the other partners that I would be the one who took the lead with you.” She looked down. “I can just hear what the old man would say about the mess I’ve made of my job. First, I let myself get kidnapped, and now this.”
The mess that she thought I was making right now.
“Or maybe,” I told her in a tone that somehow captured her attention, “you’ve done exactly what he raised you to do—exactly what he chose you to do.”
I willed her to read meaning into my emphasis. He didn’t just choose you. He chose me, too, Alisa—and maybe I’m doing exactly what he chose me for.
Slowly, the expression in her deep brown eyes shifted. She knew that I was telling her to believe that I’d been chosen for a reason. That this was the reason.
This was our play.
“Do you have any idea how risky this is?” Alisa asked me.
“It always has been,” I replied, “from the moment Tobias Hawthorne changed his will.”