Page 97 of The Final Gambit

Back when Emily was young and medically vulnerable, Rebecca’s home had probably been entirely sterile.

“Please go back to the cottage.” Mr. Laughlin’s tone and mannerisms were a perfect match for his granddaughter’s: quiet, understated steel. Until that moment, I’d never seen the resemblance between the two of them. “Thea, take her back.”

“I loved working with you,” Rebecca told her grandfather, the sun catching her ruby-red hair. “But there was one part of the maze that you always insisted on doing yourself.”

My stomach twisted.Rebecca knows where to dig.

“Emily looked like your mother,” Mr. Laughlin said roughly. “But you have her mind, Rebecca. She was brilliant. Is still.” He choked on the next words.“My little girl.”

“It wasn’t Mr. Hawthorne who killed Vincent Blake’s son,” Rebecca said softly. “Was it?” There was no answer. “Eve’s gone. Mom lost it when she couldn’t find her. She said—”

“Whatever your mother said,” Mr. Laughlin cut in harshly, “you forget it, Rebecca.” He looked from her to the horizon. “That’s how this works. We’ve all done our share of forgetting.”

For more than forty years, this secret had festered. It had affected all of them—two families, three generations, one poisonous tree.

“Your daughter was only sixteen.” I started with what I knew. “Will Blake was a grown man. He came here with something to prove.”

“He used your daughter.” Xander took over for me. “To spy on our grandfather.”

“Will used and manipulated your sixteen-year-old daughter. He got her pregnant,” Jameson continued, cutting straight to the heart of the matter.

“I’ve given my life to the Hawthorne family. I don’t owe any of you this.” Mr. Laughlin’s voice wasn’t just harsh now. It was vibrating with fury.

I felt for him. I did. But this wasn’t theoretical. It wasn’t a game. This might well be life or death.

“Show us the part of the maze he wouldn’t let you work on,” I told Rebecca.

She took a step, and Mr. Laughlin grabbed her arm. Hard.

“Let her go,” Thea said, raising her voice.

Rebecca caught Thea’s gaze, just for a moment, then turned back to her grandfather. “Mom’s distraught. She started rambling. She told me that Liam was angry when he found out about the baby. He was going to leave her, so she stole something from the House, from Mr. Hawthorne’s office. She told Liam that she had something he could use against Tobias Hawthorne, just so he would meet with her again. But when he came, when she went to give him what she’d taken, it wasn’t in her bag.”

I pictured them someplace isolated. The Black Wood, maybe.

“Tobias.” At first that was all Mr. Laughlin managed—the dead billionaire’s name. “He was spying on them. He followed Mal that day. He didn’t know why she’d stolen from him, but he was damn set on finding out.”

“What he found,” Jameson concluded, “was Vincent Blake’s adult son taking advantage of a teenage girl under his protection.”

I thought about the reason that Tobias Hawthorne had turned on Blake in the first place.Boys will be boys.

“That little bastard Liam got angry when Mal couldn’t give him what she’d promised. He went cold, told her that she was nothing. When he went to leave, she tried to stop him, and that monster raised a hand to my little girl.”

I got the very real sense that if Will Blake rose from the dead right now, Mr. Laughlin would put him six feet under all over again.

“The second Liam got rough, Mr. Hawthorne stepped out from wherever he’d been hiding to issue some very pointed threats. Mal was sixteen. There were laws.” Mr. Laughlin let out a breath, and it was a ragged, ugly sound. “The man should have slunk away like the rat he was, but Mal—she didn’t want Liam to go. She threatened him, too, said that she would go to his father and tell him about the baby.”

“Will needed to keep his father’s favor to keep his seal,” I said, thinking about Vincent Blake’sshort stringfor his family. “More than that, if he’d come here to prove something to Blake, to impress him—the idea of doing the opposite?”

I swallowed.

“Liam snapped and lunged for her again. Mal—she fought back.” Mr. Laughlin’s eyes closed. “I came in just as Mr. Hawthorne was pulling that man off my daughter. He got that bastard under control, had his arms pinned behind his back, and then—” Mr. Laughlin forced his eyes open and looked toward Rebecca. “Then my little girl picked up a brick. She went at him too quick for me to stop her. And not just once.… She hit him over and over again.”

“It was self-defense,” Jameson said.

Mr. Laughlin looked down, then forced his gaze to mine, like he needed me, of everyone here, to understand. “No. It wasn’t.”

I wondered how many times Mallory had hit her Liam before they stopped her. I wonderedifthey had stopped her.