“You will tell me what I need to know to protect you,” Branford ordered.
Luckily, thanks to Grayson, Jameson had plenty of practice at ignoring orders. “As long as the Proprietor keeps to his word, my secret will remain a secret, and I should be fine.” He paused. “Unless the duchess is a problem.”
“She won’t be.” Branford sounded far too certain of that. “But you’re still going to need to tell me—”
“Absolutely nothing?” Jameson suggested, offering the viscount a charming smile.
“I do not trust that smile,” his uncle said.
Jameson shrugged. “That’s only because you definitely shouldn’t.” He paused. “And about your secret…”
A change came over Branford. “It needs to stay a secret.” There was a single moment’s silence. “He does.”
Jameson was hit with the sense that Branford had rarely, if ever, referred to his own son. A million questions burned in his mind. “I’m supposed to believe that if you’d known about me, you would have been a part of my life, but I’m only your nephew. If you have a son—”
“He has a father.” The tightness in Branford’s tone when he said those words was palpable. “A good one. And a title.”
“A good one?” Jameson suggested.
Branford’s voice grew quiet as he looked out at the view, out at the ocean and the storm on the horizon. “If his true paternity became known, lives would be ruined, his and his mother’s among them. I cannot allow that to happen.” He turned from the window and brought the full force of his gaze back to Jameson. “Do you understand?”
“I do. Some secrets are best forgotten.” Jameson thought about the words he’d written on his scroll, about the way that night in Prague had gnawed at him for weeks, the way he’d fought and fought with himself, resisting the urge to tell—not because he didn’t trust Avery, but because he didn’t trust himself.
Jameson Hawthorne had been raised to solve puzzles and take unfathomable risks, to push boundaries and cross lines if that was what it took to win. But for once, the voice that Jameson heard in the back of his head wasn’t the old man’s.
It was Branford’s. I call it honor.
“I believe Vantage is in good hands,” Branford said beside him. “My mother… she would approve.”
“I’m not looking for anyone’s approval,” Jameson said, and somehow, for the first time ever, that felt true.
CHAPTER 89
JAMESON
Back downstairs, Jameson found Rohan and Zella on opposite sides of the foyer, waiting for them.
“Family business all sorted?” Zella asked. She slid her gaze from Branford to Jameson. “I didn’t read your secret, by the way.”
Jameson’s gut said that wasn’t a bluff. Probably. “You still owe me,” he told her. “Your Grace.”
“I always pay my debts,” she replied. “Boy.”
“That boy beat both of you.” Rohan pushed off the wall and strolled forward. “The Proprietor will be disappointed. He tries to hide it, but you were clearly his favorite this year, Duchess.”
Zella smiled at Rohan. “I won what I set out to win, and I doubt the Proprietor will be that disappointed. Honestly, I think he made me a player this year just to prepare me for next year.”
Rohan’s expression didn’t darken or shift, but Jameson felt a change come over him. “Next year?” the Factotum said lightly. “Counting on another invitation to the Game?”
Zella walked toward Rohan, never taking her eyes from his. “Next year,” she said. “I’ll be planning and running it. The Proprietor has already promised as much.” She didn’t stop walking until her body was even with his, and then she turned her head to the side. “Surely you didn’t think you were his only possible heir, Rohan. If there’s one thing the man loves, it’s competition.”
“You won.” Those were the first words out of Avery’s mouth the second she saw him—a statement, not a question. “Tell me everything.”
Jameson’s lips curved into a lopsided smile. “Where do you want me to start, Heiress? The seventy keys, the bell tower, the moment I altruistically chose to save a life and lose, or the instant I knew how to win?”
Avery lifted her head, angling her lips up toward his. “I said everything.”
He kissed her the way he would have if she’d been there the moment he’d won—all the adrenaline, the wild beating of his heart, the need to keep that feeling going, the need to make her feel it, too.