The Final Gambit (The Inheritance Games Book 3)

Jameson led me to the third floor, to a hobby room filled with model trains. There were dozens of them and twice as many tracks set up on glass tables. Jameson pressed a button on the side of one of the trains. At his touch, the wall behind us split in two, revealing a hidden room the size and shape of an old-fashioned phone booth. Its walls were made entirely out of gemstone slabs—a shining, metallic black for half the room and iridescent white for the other.

“Obsidian,” Jameson told me. “And agate crystal.”

“What are we doing here, Jameson?” I asked. “What do you need to tell me?”

It felt like we were on the verge of something. A secret? A confession? Jameson nodded toward the gemstone room. I stepped inside. The ceiling overhead glimmered in a rainbow of colors—more gems.

I realized too late that Jameson hadn’t followed me into the room.

The wall behind me closed. It took me a second to process what had just happened. Jameson trapped me in here. “What are you doing?” I banged on the wall. “Jameson!” My phone rang. “Let me out of here,” I demanded the second I hit Answer.

“I will,” Jameson promised on the other end of the line. “When we get back.”

We. Suddenly, I understood why Grayson had waived his right to fight, post–On Spake. “You promised him you’d go after Eve together.”

Jameson didn’t tell me I was wrong.

“What if she’s dangerous?” I asked. “Even if all she wants is to get Toby back, can you honestly say that she wouldn’t trade you or Grayson to get him? We barely know her, and your grandfather’s message said—”

“Heiress, have you ever known me to shy away from danger?”

My fingers curled into a fist. Jameson Winchester Hawthorne lived for danger. “If you don’t let me out of here, Hawthorne, I will—”

“Do you want to know how I got my scar?” Jameson’s voice was softer than I’d ever heard it. I knew immediately what scar he was talking about.

“I want you to open the door,” I said.

“I went back.” He let those words linger. “To the place where Emily died—I went back.”

Emily’s heart had given out after cliff jumping. “Jameson…”

“I jumped from dangerously high up, the way she did. Nothing happened the first time. Or the second. But the third…”

I could picture the scar in my mind, running the full length of Jameson’s torso. How many times had I dragged my fingers along its edges, feeling the smooth skin of his stomach on either side?

“There was a fallen tree, submerged in the water. I could only see one branch. I had no idea what was underneath. I thought I’d cleared the whole thing, but I was wrong.”

I pictured Jameson barreling down from the top of a cliff, hitting the water. I pictured a jagged branch catching his flesh, barely slowing him down.

“I didn’t feel pain, not at first. I saw blood in the water—and then I felt it. Like my skin was on fire. I made my way to the shore, my body screaming. Somehow, I managed to pull myself to my feet. The old man was standing there. He didn’t bat an eye at the blood, didn’t ask me if I was okay, didn’t yell. All he said, looking my bleeding body up and down, was Got that out of your system, did you?”

I leaned against the wall of my gemstone cage. “Why are you telling me this now?”

I could hear the sound of his footstep on the end of the line. “Because Gray is going to keep jumping until it hurts. He’s always been the solid one, Heiress. The one who never trembles, never backs down, never doubts. And now, he’s lost his mooring, and I have to be the strong one.”

“Take me with you,” I told Jameson.

“Just this once,” he said, an aching tone in his voice, “let me be the one who protects you, Avery.”

He’d used my actual name. “I don’t need you to protect me. You can’t just leave me here, Jameson!”

“Can’t. Shouldn’t. Have to. This is my family’s mess, Heiress.” For once, there was nothing wicked in Jameson’s tone, no innuendo. “It’s up to us to clean it up.”

“And what about Eve?” I asked. “You know what your grandfather said. Don’t trust anyone. Grayson isn’t thinking straight, but you—”

“I’m thinking more clearly than I ever have. I don’t trust Eve.” His voice was low and aching. “The only person I trust with all that I am and all that could be, Heiress, is you.”

And just like that, Jameson Winchester Hawthorne hung up the phone.