What else don’t I know?
“I lost.” Ian turned his palms toward Jameson in an insincere mea culpa. “People who lose too much get desperate. The Factotum does not trust desperate men.” Ian’s lips curled into a smile, dark and wry. “And I may have upturned a chair or two.”
So you have a temper. Jameson didn’t dwell on that. This wasn’t a time for dwelling on anything. “There were two men there tonight. I don’t know what they did, exactly, but the Factotum—Rohan—he rattled off a series of dates, presumably ones on which they’d committed some kind of transgression. He offered them the chance to play him.”
Ian tilted his head to the side, his body very still. “What were the terms?”
“If one or both of them won, they could fight it out in ring.”
“Ah.” Ian lifted a brow. “Loser in the ring takes the punishment for both. It would certainly make for motivated fighters—and a great deal of money wagered on the result. But that’s not what happened, is it?”
“Rohan won the hand. He said they knew what would happen if he did.” Jameson had a strong sense that everyone in that room had known. Everyone but him. “Were they banned the way you were?”
“Exile is considered a lighter punishment.” Ian’s characteristic air of detached amusement was back. “No, those poor sods, whoever they are, will pay a much steeper price.” Ian rocked back on his heels. “It’s not a coincidence the Factotum made an example of someone right before the Game.”
Jameson’s eyes narrowed. “What do you know that I don’t?”
“Your heiress, she didn’t actually join the Mercy, so I assume she didn’t have to pay the levy.”
Jameson thought back to Rohan’s initial offer. The levy to join the Devil’s Mercy is much steeper. “The cost of joining—how much is it?” When Ian didn’t reply, Jameson amended his question. “What is it?”
Ian turned back to the window, and Jameson had the vague sense that he was checking to make sure they weren’t being watched—or listened to. “There is a ledger in the Devil’s Mercy, as old as the club itself. To gain membership, to pay the levy, you must provide fodder for the ledger. Blackmail material that could be leveraged against you.”
Jameson felt his pulse speed up. “Secrets.”
“Terrible ones,” Ian agreed. “The Proprietor must have a way of keeping all those powerful men in line, after all.” Ian spoke like he wasn’t one of them. “A secret and proof. That’s what the ledger contains. Those who cross the Proprietor quickly find themselves at his mercy.”
The Devil’s Mercy. Suddenly, the club’s name held new meaning. “Does the Proprietor have any mercy?” Jameson asked.
“It depends on the offense. Occasionally, he’ll ruin a man simply to remind the rest of us that he can, but more frequently, the punishment fits the crime. Men who risk the Proprietor’s wrath find themselves at risk. Their levy becomes a prize to be won by their peers.”
Jameson’s mind raced as he put the pieces together. “The Game. It’s not just for assets the house has won over the course of the year.”
Ian’s eyes locked on to his. “The winner may choose: a coveted prize or a forfeited levy, a disgraced member’s page from the ledger.”
A terrible secret, Jameson thought. Blackmail material. The kind that could ruin a person.
“The more powerful the member,” Ian continued, “the more valuable his levy is to the rest. Tell me, who ran afoul of the Devil tonight?”
The Devil. Jameson wasn’t sure if that was supposed to refer to Rohan or the Proprietor or the Mercy itself. “I don’t know.”
Ian stared at him hard, then looked away. “Maybe I’m asking too much of you.”
Jameson felt like a needle had been stabbed straight through his chest. Ordinary, a voice inside him taunted. Lesser. He gritted his teeth. “Ainsley.” Jameson pulled the name out of his memory. “Rohan addressed one of the men as Ainsley.”
Ian cursed under his breath. “There’s not a member of the Mercy that won’t be grappling for an invitation to the Game now.” The man stepped forward, an eerily familiar intensity in his vivid green eyes. “What have you done to earn one?”
Jameson didn’t flinch, didn’t hesitate, didn’t blink. “I won at the tables.”
“That won’t be enough.”
How many times had Jameson heard some iteration of those words? How many times had he said them to himself? When you have certain weaknesses, you have to want it more. “I issued a challenge.”
“Tell me.”
Jameson did.
“You winked at him? During the descent?” Ian threw his head back and laughed. It was so unexpected that Jameson almost didn’t notice—I have his laugh.
Jameson was too much of a Hawthorne to dwell on that. “I was taught to see openings—and take them. For better or worse, the Proprietor will be keeping an eye on me now.”
“If you’re going to succeed,” Ian replied, all trace of laughter gone from his tone, “you’re going to have to do a hell of a lot more than win at the tables.”
Know no fear. Hold nothing back. Jameson felt something unfurling inside himself. “Then I won’t confine my winning to the tables.” He could do this. He was this. “Tomorrow, I’ll start the night in the ring.”
CHAPTER 36
GRAYSON
Eve. Grayson felt nothing when he heard the name. He let himself feel nothing. “What do you want?” he asked Eve’s spy.
“What I want,” the dark-eyed boy replied, coming to a standstill, “is not your concern.” The obvious implication was that what Eve wanted was.
Grayson was not prone toward forgiveness—not for himself, not for her. Betrayal tasted like failure still, bitter as a poisoned root, coppery like blood. Eve had used him to get what she wanted: the full power of her great-grandfather’s fortune, his empire.
His employees, Grayson thought, assessing the spy who’d been tailing him through new eyes. Vincent Blake was dangerous. Anyone who worked for him was likely to be the same.
Raking his gaze over his adversary, Grayson saw flashes of ink on the spy’s forearms. Tattoos, obscured by his shirt. A single back tendril was visible snaking out of his collar and climbing the side of his neck.
“Do you do everything Eve tells you to?” Grayson asked. He could have made that sound like an insult or a challenge. He didn’t. The less you gave away with your tone, the more meaning you could extract from your opponent’s response.
“You don’t want to know what I’ve done.” The guy didn’t so much as blink.
“You’ll have to tell her I spotted you.” Grayson tried again, his tone just as neutral.
“You the kind of guy who likes to tell people what they have to do?” A question of that sort should have been accompanied by some sort of motion: a cock of the head, a narrowing of the eyes, a hardening of the muscles in the jaw. But the guy in front of Grayson was statue-still: unmoving, unmovable.
I don’t have a word to say to you about the kind of man I am. “You can tell Eve that my stance hasn’t changed. She made her choice. She’s nothing to me.”
Nothing except an error in judgment and a reminder of what happened when Grayson let his guard down. What happened when he made mistakes.
“If you think I’m going to tell Eve that, you’re living in a dream world, rich boy.” The spy shifted liquidly from stillness into motion, slowly circling Grayson once more, a predator playing with his prey—then he turned.
The spy spoke as he walked away but didn’t look back. “For what it’s worth, hotshot, you weren’t the one she sent me to Phoenix to watch.”
CHAPTER 37
GRAYSON
Eve had someone staking out the Grayson family. No matter how many times Grayson went over the facts, that was the conclusion he reached. And no matter how many times he came to that conclusion, as he drove back to the hotel, he couldn’t banish the memory that wanted to come.
“I didn’t mean to disturb you.”