For a brief time, Jameson had almost felt seen. “I’m not giving you anything,” he said fiercely. “Would the deal you’ve struck even give you Vantage back?” Jameson let the question hang in the air, but he knew the answer, had known it the first time he’d uttered the words What about Vantage?
Katharine—and his other uncle—weren’t playing for Vantage. They were playing for the damning secret of a powerful man, which meant that Katharine must have offered Ian something else, something he wanted more than the estate his mother had left him. The place where he grew up. A property that had been in his mother’s family for generations.
He doesn’t care. Not about family. Not about this place. Jameson breathed in. Not about me.
“Time is wasting,” Katharine declared, her tone brisk. “And I’ll still need to locate the boxes that those keys unlock.”
Ian’s eyes narrowed at Jameson. “I know that you aren’t wired to lose, Jameson,” he said, his voice silky. “But you need to do what I say, because neither am I.”
That was a warning. A threat.
“Do I look like a person who’s easy to threaten?” Jameson smiled, even though it hurt his bruised and battered face.
“Not particularly.” Rohan appeared as if by magic, stepping out from behind a statue. “Some people,” the Factotum continued, “just don’t know when to stay down.”
Jameson wasn’t sure if that was a reference to Ian or himself. Either way, it didn’t matter. Jameson was done talking. What happens to Ian now—what Rohan does to him for interfering—is none of my concern.
“Let’s go,” he told Avery, a lump rising in his throat. He’d gone a lifetime without a father. He didn’t need one now.
All Jameson Winchester Hawthorne needed was to win.
CHAPTER 76
JAMESON
Two of the three keys had been found on the grounds. Jameson’s gut said that the boxes those keys opened would be back inside the manor. He listened to his gut and paid no attention to the storm of emotions churning inside him—and even less to the sound of Ian shouting after them.
“Jameson.” That was all Avery said, once they were out of earshot of the others.
“I’m fine,” he told her. That was a lie. They both knew it was a lie.
“You’re better than fine,” Avery told him fiercely. “You’re Jameson Winchester Hawthorne. And we’re going to win this game.”
Jameson came to a stop and turned to face her, so he could quiet the storm inside in the only way he knew how. He pushed Avery’s wild, wind-blown hair back from her face. She tilted her head back, and he brought his lips down on hers—not hard this time but soft and slow. His mouth hurt. His face and body hurt. Everything hurt. But kissing Avery?
That hurt in the best possible way.
“Watch yourself,” he murmured, his lips just barely pulling back from hers. This was what it meant to focus. To play.
“The last clue,” she murmured back. “One last chance to win this game.”
Screw Ian. Jameson didn’t need Ian. It was—now and always—Jameson and Avery against the world.
Back inside the manor, they started looking for mirrors. In a house of this size—of this type—there were dozens, many of them too large and heavy for even two people to lift. So instead of lifting them, Jameson and Avery probed the frames, running their fingers along the sides, looking for hinges, a button, a hidden compartment.
Eventually, they hit paydirt.
In a long hall on the fourth floor, they found an enormous mirror with a bronze frame. When Jameson pulled on the side of the frame, there was no resistance. It swung open like a door.
Watch yourself. Jameson stepped into a long, nearly empty room, Avery on his heels. The room was dark, lit only by candles on a single chandelier in the center. Although the ceiling was at least twenty feet tall, the chandelier hung low, almost to the floor. Looking at it called to Jameson’s mind a pendulum.
As the mirror swung closed behind Avery, Jameson realized just how little light the candles provided. The dark green walls looked almost black. Portraits hung every ten feet, all the way down the length of the room.
Jameson didn’t see a treasure box, let alone three. There’s nothing in this room except for the chandelier and the portraits. He strode to examine the closest one. Ian smirked back at him from the frame.
Jameson set his mouth in a firm line. It made sense. Ian Johnstone-Jameson was the most recent owner of this place. Jameson looked to the next portrait and saw a woman. The resemblance between her and Ian was uncanny.