Page 111 of The Final Gambit

I shrugged. “You’re the one who chose my name.”Avery Kylie Grambs. A very risky gamble.Toby had helped bring me into the world. He’d named me. He’d come to me when my mother died. He’d saved me when I needed saving.

And now I was losing him all over again.

“What happens now?” I asked him, my eyes beginning to sting, my throat tight.

“I become Tobias Blake.” Toby had known the truth about his lineage for two decades. If he’d wanted this life, he would have been living it already.

I thought of the words he’d written in the chamber under the hedge maze.I was never a Hawthorne. I will never be a Blake.

“You don’t have to do this,” I told him. “You could run. You managed to evade Tobias Hawthorne for years. You could do the same thing with Blake now.”

“And give that man justification to renege on his deal with you?” Alisa cut in. “Invalidate one wager in a set and he could easily argue that you’ve invalidated them all.”

“I’m not running this time,” Toby said intently. I followed his gaze to Eve, who was standing on the porch again, her amber hair blowing in the wind, looking for all the world like some kind of unearthly, conquering queen.

“You’re staying forher.” I hadn’t meant that to sound like an accusation of betrayal.

“I’m staying for both of you,” Toby replied, and for a moment, I could see the two of us, hear the last conversation we’d had.

You have a daughter.

I have two.

“She helped Blake kidnap you,” I said roughly. “She used me—used all of us.”

“And when I was her age,” Toby replied, opening the passenger door of the truck and gesturing for me to get in, “I killed your mother’s sister.”

I wanted to object, to say that he hadn’t lit the fire, even if he’d doused the house in gasoline, but he didn’t give me the chance.

“Hannah thought I was redeemable.” Even after all these years, Toby couldn’t reference my mom without emotion overtaking him. “Do you really think she’d want me to walk away from Eve?”

I felt a sob caught somewhere. “You could have told me,” I said, my voice scraping against my throat. “About Blake. About the body. About why you were so damn set on staying in the shadows.”

Toby lifted a hand to the side of my face, brushing my hair back from my temple. “There are a lot of things I would do differently if I could live this life all over again.”

I thought about what I’d said to Jameson about destiny and fate andchoice. I knew why Tobias Hawthorne had chosen me. I knew that this had never been aboutme. But unlike Toby, I had no regrets. I would have done it—all of it—all over again.

Tobias Hawthorne’s game hadn’t made me extraordinary. It had shown me that I already was.

“Will I ever see you again?” I asked Toby, my voice breaking.

“Blake isn’t going to keep me under lock and key.” Toby waited for Alisa and Grayson to climb in after me, then closed the passenger door and rounded to the other side of the truck. When he spoke again, it was from the driver’s seat. “And Texas really isn’t that big—especially at the top.”

Money. Power. Status.My path and Vincent Blake’s would probably cross again—and so would mine and Toby’s. Mine and Eve’s.

“Here.” Toby placed a small wooden cube in my hand as he started up the truck. “I made you something, horrible girl.”

The endearment nearly undid me. “What is it?”

“Blake didn’t give me much to entertain myself with—just wood and a knife.”

“And you didn’t use the knife?” Grayson asked beside me. His tone made it very clear the kind ofuseshe would have approved of.

“Would you have,” Toby countered, “if you thought your captor could get to Avery?”

Toby had protected me. He’d made something for me.

You have a daughter.