Page 108 of The Final Gambit

He’d manipulated it. Manipulated us.

If I wanted to beat Blake, I had to do the same. So I didn’t take the opening Eve had given me. I didn’t beat her in five moves.

I let her beat me in ten.

I saw the exact moment when Eve realized that Vincent Blake’s empire was in her grasp—and the moment, right afterward, when Toby’s eyes flashed. Did he suspect I’d thrown the game?

Did myrealopponent?

“Well done, Eve.” Blake offered her a small, self-satisfied smile, and Eve glowed, the smile on her face luminescent. Blake turned to me—and Grayson. “The two of you may leave.”

His men closed in on us, and I didn’t have to fake my panic. “Wait!” I said, sounding desperate—and feeling that desperation, because even though this had been a calculated risk, I had no way of knowing that I hadn’t miscalculated. “Give me another chance!”

“Have some dignity, child.” Blake stood and turned his back on me as his hunting dog returned to his side and dropped a dead duck at his feet. “No one likes a sore loser.”

“You could still have a favor,” I shouted as Blake’s security began to remove me from the premises. “One last game. Me against you.”

“I don’t need a favor from you, girl.”

That’s okay, I tried to tell myself.There’s another option.An option I’d come prepared for. An option I’d planned for. The gift of the chess set, the fact that I had Alisa waiting for me outside—I’d always known what my gambit was going to be.

What it was going tohaveto be.

“Not a favor, then,” I said, trying to hold on to the panic and the desperation so he wouldn’t see the deep sense of calm rising up inside me. “What about the rest of it?”

Grayson cut a sharp look in my direction. “Avery.”

Vincent Blake held up his hand, and his men all took a silent step back. “The rest of what, exactly?”

“The Hawthorne fortune.” I let the words come out in a rush. “My lawyer has been after me to sign these papers for weeks. Tobias Hawthorne didn’t tie my inheritance up in a trust. The fine people at McNamara, Ortega, and Jones are nervous about a teenager taking the reins, so Alisa drew up paperwork that would put everything in a trust until I turn thirty.”

“Avery.” Toby’s voice was low and full of warning. Part of me wanted to believe he was just helping me sell the in-over-my-head act, but he was probably offering a genuine word of caution.

I was risking too much.

“If you play me,” I told Blake, nodding toward the chessboard, “and you win, I’ll sign the papers and makeyouthe trustee.”

Coming here, I’d been counting on Blake’s ego to make him think that he could beat me, but there had always been the chance that he would realize I’d suggested chess specifically because I stood a good chance at winning. But now?

He’d seen me play.

He’d seen me lose.

He thought I was making this offer on impulsebecauseI 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 tospendit.

“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.