Eve didn’t lead me into the house. She led me around back. A man stood there. He had suntanned skin and silver hair shorn to the scalp. I knew he had to be in his eighties, but he looked closer to sixty-five—and like he could run a marathon.
He was holding a shotgun.
As I watched, he took aim at the sky. The sound of the shot was earsplitting and echoed through the countryside as a bird plummeted to the ground. Vincent Blake said something—I couldn’t hear what—and the largest bloodhound I’d ever seen took off after the kill.
Blake lowered his weapon. Slowly, he turned to face me. “Around here,” he called, in that smooth, borderline-aristocratic voice I recognized all too well from the phone, “we cook what we shoot.”
He held out the gun, and someone rushed to take it from him. Then Blake strode toward us. He settled down on a cement wall near a massive firepit, and Eve led me right up to it—and him.
“Where are Grayson and Toby?” That was the only greeting this man was going to get out of me.
“Enjoying my hospitality.” Blake eyed the large box I carried in my hands. Wordlessly, I opened it. I’d stopped in the vault to retrieve the royal chess set. Once I’d been granted admission to Blake’s lands, I’d had Oren surreptitiously hand it to me.
Now I set it in front of Blake, an offering of sorts.
He picked up one of the pieces, examining the multitude of shining black diamonds, the artistry of the design, then snorted and tossed the piece back down. “Tobias always was the showy type.” Blake held out his right hand, and someone placed a bowie knife in it.
My heart leapt into my throat, but all the king of this kingdom did was withdraw a small piece of wood from his pocket.
“A set you carve yourself,” he told me, “plays just the same.”
That’s not a carving knife. I didn’t let him intimidate me into saying that out loud. Instead, I leaned forward to place the seal I’d flashed to gain entrance beside him on the wall. “I believe this is yours,” I told him. Then I nodded to the chess set I’d brought. “And we’ll call that a gift.”
“I didn’t ask you to bring me a gift, Avery Kylie Grambs.”
I met his iron-hard gaze. “You didn’t ask for anything. You told me to bring you your son, and you’ll get him.” By now, Blake doubtlessly would have heard the reports that Landon had leaked. There was a good chance that he’d watched my press conference. “Once the investigation is complete,” I continued, “the authorities will release his remains to you. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for your loss.”
“I don’t lose, Avery Kylie Grambs.” Blake’s knife flashed in the sun as he scraped it along the wood. “My son, on the other hand, appears to have lost quite a bit.”
“Your son,” I said, “impregnated an underage girl, then got physical with her when she had the audacity to be devastated at the realization that he’d just been using her to get close enough to make a move against Tobias Hawthorne.”
“Hmmmm.” Blake made a humming sound that felt far more threatening than it should have. “Will was fifteen when Tobias and I parted ways. The boy was irate that we’d been double-crossed. I had to disabuse him of the notion that we had been anything. What happened was between young Tobias and me.”
“Tobias bested you.” That was my first thrust in this little verbal sword match of ours.
Blake didn’t even feel it. “And look how well that turned out for him.”
I wasn’t sure if that was a reference to the fact that the only person who had ever bested Vincent Blake had turned out to be one of the most formidable minds in a generation—or a self-satisfied prediction that all of Tobias Hawthorne’s achievements would be nothing in the end.
The billionaire was dead, his fortune ripe for the taking.
“Your son hated him.” I tried again, with a different type of attack. “And he was desperate to prove himself to you.”
Blake didn’t deny it. Instead, he brought the bowie knife away from the wood and tested its sharpness against the pad of his thumb. “Tobias should have let me handle Will. He knew the kind of hell there would be to pay for bringing harm to my son. Choices, young lady, have consequences.”
“And how would you have handled what your son did to Mallory Laughlin?”
“That’s neither here nor there.”
“And boys will be boys,” I shot back. “Right?”
Blake studied me for a moment, then laid the knife on his leg. “I understand you have some friends at the gate.”
“The entire world knows I’m here,” I said. “They know what happened to your son.”
“Do they?” Eve said, a challenge in her tone. The story I was telling—she must have heard enough from Mallory to question it.
“That’s enough, Eve.” Blake’s voice was clipped, and Eve swallowed as her great-grandfather looked between the two of us. “I shouldn’t have sent a little girl to do a man’s job.”
Little girl. On the phone earlier, he’d referred to me that way, too. Tobias Hawthorne had been right. I was young. I was female. And this man would underestimate me.
“If I’d brought you your son’s remains,” I said, “you would have blackmailed me for breaking the law.”
“Blackmailed you into what, I wonder?” Blake meant that I should wonder.
I knew that it was to my advantage for him to think he had the upper hand, so I had to tread carefully now. “If Grayson and Toby don’t leave here with me, I’ll give another interview on the way out.”
It was dangerous to threaten a man like Vincent Blake. I knew that. I also knew that I needed him to believe that this was my play. My only play.
“An interview?” That got me another little hum. “Will you tell them about Sheffield Grayson?”
I’d anticipated that he would counter my move, but I hadn’t foreseen how, and suddenly, I couldn’t hold my pulse steady anymore. I couldn’t keep my face completely blank.
“Eve may have failed at her primary task,” Blake said, “but she’s a Blake—and we play to win. I’m still considering whether she’s earned this.” He brandished a golden disk identical to the one I’d placed on the wall. “But the information she brought me when she returned was… quite impressive.”
Information. About what happened to Grayson’s father. I thought about the file, the pictures on Eve’s phone.
“I read between the lines,” Eve said, her lips curving up. “Grayson’s father is missing, and based on what I was able to put together, he went missing shortly after someone orchestrated an attempt on your life. Sheffield Grayson had motive to be that someone. I didn’t have proof, of course, but then…” Eve gave a little shrug. “I called Mellie.”
Eve’s sister was the one who had shot Sheffield Grayson. She’d killed him to save Toby and me. “The sister who never did a damn thing for you?” I asked, my throat bone-dry.
“Half sister.” The correction told me that Eve hadn’t lied about her feelings for her siblings. “It was a very touching reunion, especially when I told her that I forgive her.” Eve’s lips twisted. “That I was there for her. Mellie is wracked with guilt, you know. About what she did. About what you covered up.”
I’d been ushered out of the storage facility when Sheffield Grayson’s blood was still fresh on the ground. “I didn’t cover up anything.”
Blake brought his blade back to the wood and began carving again—slow, smooth motions. “John Oren did.”
I’d come here with a plan, but I hadn’t planned for this. I’d thought that by calling the police about Will Blake’s remains, I would sap his father of much-needed leverage. I hadn’t foreseen that Vincent Blake had leverage in reserve.
“It seems,” the man commented mildly, “that I have the advantage on you once again.”
He’d never doubted it.
“What do you want?” I asked. I let him see my very real distress, but inside, the logical part of my brain took over. The part that liked puzzles. The part that saw the world in layers.
The part that had come here with a plan.
“Anything I want from you,” Blake said simply, “I’ll take.”
“I’ll play you for it,” I told him, improvising and letting my brain adjust, adding a new layer, one more thing that had to go right. “Chess. If I win, you forget about Sheffield Grayson and see to it that Eve and Mellie do the same.”
Blake seemed amused, but I could see something much darker than amusement glinting in his eyes. “And if you lose?”
I had a trump card, but I couldn’t play it—not yet. Not if I wanted even a sliver of a chance that I’d walk away today with the kind of win I needed.
“A favor,” I said, my heart brutalizing my rib cage. “Very soon, I’ll have control of the Hawthorne fortune. Billions. A favor from someone in my position has to be worth something.”
Vincent Blake didn’t seem overly tempted by my offer. Of course he didn’t, because he already had a plan to come for Tobias Hawthorne’s fortune on his own.
After a moment, however, amusement won out. “A game seems fitting, but I’m not going to play you, little girl. I will, however, let her play you.” He jerked his head toward Eve, then tilted his head to the side, considering. “And Toby.”
“Toby?” I croaked. I hated the way I sounded—the way I felt. I couldn’t let my emotions take control. I had to think. I had to modify my plan—again.
“My grandson has asked about you,” Blake told me. “You could say I have a knack for recognizing pressure points.”
Vincent Blake had kidnapped Toby to get at me, to win Eve entrance to Hawthorne House. I realized, in that moment, that Blake had also doubtlessly leveraged me against Toby.
“Eve,” he said, his voice carrying the weight of an order that no living person would dare disobey, “why don’t you fetch your father?”