Page 2 of The Final Gambit

I could feel my eyes narrowing. “No party, Alisa.”

“Is there anyone you’d like to see on the guest list?” When Alisa saidanyone, she wasn’t talking about people I knew. She was talking about celebrities, billionaires, socialites, royals.…

“No guest list,” I said, “because I’m not having a party.”

“You really should consider the optics—” Alisa began, and I tuned out. I knew what she was going to say. She’d been saying it for nearly eleven months.Everyone loves a Cinderella story.

Well,thisCinderella had a bet to win. I studied the wrought-iron staircases. Three spiraled counterclockwise. But the fourth… I walked toward it, then scaled the steps. On the second-story landing, I ran my fingers along the underside of the shelf opposite the stairs.A release.I triggered it, and the entire curved shelf arced backward.

Number twelve.I smiled wickedly.Take that, Jameson Winchester Hawthorne.

“No party,” I called down to Alisa again. And then I disappeared into the wall.

CHAPTER 2

That night, I slid into bed, Egyptian cotton sheets cool and smooth against my skin. As I waited for Jameson’s call, my hand drifted toward the nightstand, to a small bronze pin in the shape of a key.

“Pick a hand.” Jameson holds out two fists. I tap his right hand, and he uncurls his fingers, presenting me with an empty palm. I try the left—the same. Then he curls my fingers into a fist. I open them, and there, in my palm, sits the pin.

“You solved the keys faster than any of us,” Xander reminds me. “It’s past time for this!”

“Sorry, kid,” Nash drawls. “It’s been six months. You’re one of us now.”

Grayson says nothing, but when I fumble to put the pin on and it drops from my fingers, he catches it before it hits the ground.

That memory wanted to loop into another—Grayson, me, the wine cellar—but I wouldn’t let it. In the past few months, I’d developed my own methods of distraction. Grabbing my phone, I navigated to a crowd-funding site and did a search formedical billsandrent.The Hawthorne fortune wasn’t mine for another six weeks, but the partners at McNamara, Ortega, and Jones had already seen to it that I had a credit card with virtually no limit.

Keep gift anonymous.I clicked that box again and again. When my phone finally rang, I leaned back and answered. “Hello.”

“I need an anagram of the wordnaked.” There was a hum of energy to Jameson’s voice.

“No, you don’t.” I rolled over onto my side. “How’s Tuscany?”

“The birthplace of the Italian Renaissance? Full of winding roads, hills and valleys, where a morning mist rolls out in the distance, and the forests are littered with leaves so golden red that the entire world feels like it’s on fire in the very best way? That Tuscany?”

“Yes,” I murmured. “That Tuscany.”

“I’ve seen better.”

“Jameson!”

“What do you want to hear about first, Heiress: Siena, Florence, or the vineyards?”

I wantedall of it, but there was a reason Jameson was using the standard Hawthorne gap year to travel. “Tell me about the villa.”Did you find anything?

“Your Tuscan villa was built in the seventeenth century. It’s supposedly a farmhouse but looks more like a castle, and it’s surrounded by more than a hundred acres of olive orchard. There’s a pool, a wood-fired pizza oven, and a massive stone fireplace original to the house.”

I could picture it. Vividly—and not just because I had a binder of photos. “And when you checked the fireplace?” I didn’t have to ask if hehadchecked the fireplace.

“I found something.”

I sat up, my hair falling down my back. “A clue?”

“Probably,” Jameson replied. “But to what puzzle?”

My entire body felt electric. “If you don’t tell me, I willendyou, Hawthorne.”

“And I,” Jameson replied, “would very much enjoy being ended.” My traitorous lips threatened a smile. Tasting victory, Jameson gave me my answer. “I found a triangular mirror.”