Page 85 of Glorious Rivals (The Grandest Game #2)

LYRA

S omething is wrong. Grayson’s words hung in the air. Lyra should have been thinking about the fact that she’d lost, about Mile’s End, but all she could actually think about, as she stared at the game makers’ empty chairs on that screen, was calla lilies floating on water.

So many of them.

“Why would something be wrong?” Savannah said, her voice high and clear and sharp and jagged all at once.

“Even when I come in first, I lose.” Grayson’s sister looked to the person who’d been her partner in this game, the one who’d given up his dice so she could win.

“The house always wins, right, Rohan?” Savannah said.

The house. Lyra couldn’t shake the question bubbling up inside of her like an ominous sense of premonition.

What if the game makers aren’t the house?

Beside Lyra, Grayson was typing something on his watch, but before he could finish, all four of their watches buzzed with what Lyra could only assume were four identical messages.

REPORT TO HELIPAD FOR EXTRACTION.

“Something is very wrong,” Grayson reiterated directly into Lyra’s right ear as a military-style chopper touched down on the helipad. His assessment was immediately confirmed when one of the helicopter doors opened, and two passengers climbed out.

Men. Neither of them Hawthornes. It was obvious, just by looking at them, what these men were. Security.

“There were supposed to be five of you,” one of them yelled over the sound of the chopper’s blades.

“Brady Daniels,” Grayson called back. He strode toward the men. “He must still be out on the island somewhere. Now, which one of you gentlemen is going to tell me what precisely happened?”

Something did , Lyra thought. Something happened. The Grandest Game was not a game that had been designed to go out with a whimper. This wasn’t just about Savannah and Eve and their agenda, whatever it was.

Calla lilies on the water. The house always wins.

“You four,” one of the men barked, ignoring Grayson’s question and taking his life into his own hands, “in the chopper!”

“Allow me to rephrase,” Grayson said. “Which one of you would prefer I not devote considerable time and resources going forward to making you regret not answering my question?”

The man on the right broke first. “We were told to secure all of the players and get you back to the yacht. Oren’s orders. The heiress is AWOL.”

A change came over Grayson’s body, and Lyra felt a shiver crawl down her own spine.

“What do you mean,” Grayson said, grabbing the man by the front of his shirt, “ the heiress is AWOL ?”