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.”
This was his very risky gamble—and mine.
CHAPTER 83
Blake let me play white, which meant that the first move was mine. I went with the Queen’s Gambit. It wasn’t until a dozen moves later that Vincent Blake realized my instincts went beyond classic maneuvers. Four moves after that, he took my bishop, allowing me to execute a sequence that ended with me taking his queen.
Slowly, move by move and counterattack by counterattack, Vincent Blake realized that we were much more evenly matched than he’d anticipated.
“I see now,” he told me, “what you’re doing.”
He saw what I had done. The young woman he was playing against now wasn’t the one who’d lost to Eve. I’d hustled him, and he knew it—far too late.
In four moves, I thought, my heartbeat brutal and incessant in my chest, I’ll have him.
After two, he realized I had him trapped. He stood, tipping his king, conceding the match. White gold clattered as the piece hit the jewel-encrusted board, the black-diamond king glittering in the sun.
Vincent Blake was a dangerous man, a wealthy man, a formidable opponent—and he had underestimated me.
“You can keep the chess set,” I told him.
For a moment, I felt Blake fighting with himself. The lawyers had been there to ensure my end of the bargain—not his. I promise I won’t slowly and strategically destroy you wasn’t a legally enforceable term. I’d bet everything on the only real assurance Tobias Hawthorne had given me.
That if I bested Blake, he’d honor the win.
“What just happened here?” Eve demanded.
Vincent Blake offered me one last hard look, and then he rocked back on his heels. “She won.”
CHAPTER 84
Vincent Blake would honor our wager, but he never wanted to see me on his property again. “Escort Avery, Grayson, and Ms. Ortega back to the gate,” he ordered his men. “See that the press is dispersed before they get there.”
A hand locked around my forearm, suggesting exactly what kind of “escort” I could expect. But the next thing I knew, the man who’d grabbed me was on the ground, and Toby was standing over him. “I’ll escort them,” he said.
Blake’s men looked to their boss.
Vincent Blake gave Toby a foreboding smile. “As you wish, Tobias Blake.”
The name was a razor-sharp reminder: I might have won my wager, but Toby had lost his. With a hand on my back, he led me away, back around the house.