Page 8 of The Grandest Game
“Hurt her, and you’ll regret it.” Rohan didn’t put any heat in those words. He didn’t have to.
Most people had enough sense to recognize the moment he’d flipped the switch.
“That’s it, folks! A press release from Hawthorne heiress Avery Grambs has confirmed that, less than forty-eight hours in, all seven slots in this year’s Grandest Game have been claimed.”
Sitting on the edge of a bed that was not his, wearing nothing but a lush Turkish cotton robe, Rohan twirled a knife slowly through his fingers. There were advantages to being a ghost. In the past year, he’d slipped in and out of luxury hotels like this one with ease. He’d spent that year obtaining funds, contacts, intelligence—not enough, in and of itself, to win him the Mercy, but enough that nothing about his current plan had been left to chance.
“Last year’s game was a free-for-all,” the reporter continued on-screen, “as people from around the world raced through a seriesof elaborate clues that took them from Mozambique to Alaska to Dubai. This year’s affair looks to be more intimate, with the identities of the seven lucky players currently a closely guarded secret.”
Not that closely guarded. Not against someone with Rohan’s skill set.
“The location of the game is also being kept tightly under wraps.”
“For some values of the wordtightly,” Rohan quipped. He turned off the television. Upon claiming his ticket, he’d been given a pickup location and a time. Now that it was drawing close, he made his way to the luxury suite’s massive shower.
He lost the robe but kept the knife.
As the glass walls of the shower steamed up around him, Rohan brought the tip of his blade to the glass. He’d always had a light hand, always known exactly how hard—or soft—to push. Lightly, he skimmed the knife through the steam, drawing six symbols in the moisture on the surface of the glass.
A bishop, a rook, a knight, two pawns, and a queen.
Already, Rohan had begun to classify his competition.Odette Morales. Brady Daniels. Knox Landry.He dragged the tip of his blade through the bishop, the rook, and the knight. That just left the three players nearest to Rohan’s own age of not quite twenty. Gigi Grayson he’d observed from the rooftop. The other two he knew only on paper.
A game such as this one would require the cultivation of certain assets. Those three were… possibilities.
Gigi Grayson. Savannah Grayson. Lyra Kane.Only time would tell which of the three would prove of the most use to Rohan—and if any of them had the versatility of the queen.
Chapter 6
LYRA
Achauffeured car picked Lyra up at the designated meeting spot. A private jet flew her from one secured airstrip to another. There, she found a helicopter.
“Welcome aboard.” A voice spoke from the far side of the aircraft, and a moment later, a long, lean form strolled around it to join her.
Lyra recognized him immediately. Of course she did. Jameson Hawthorne was very recognizable. “Technically, I’m not on board yet,” Lyra said.
Was that petty? Maybe. But he was a Hawthorne, and seeing him brought back the dream—and the only three things Lyra could remember her dead father ever saying to her.
Happy birthday, Lyra.
A Hawthorne did this.
And then, a riddle:What begins a bet? Not that.
“When I saidaboard, I wasn’t talking about the chopper.” Jameson Hawthorne was apparently the kind of person who couldroll a smirk right into a smile in the blink of an eye. “Welcome to the Grandest Game, Lyra Catalina Kane.”
There was something in the way he said those words, an unholy energy, an invitation.
“You’re Jameson Hawthorne,” Lyra said. She didn’t allow an ounce of awe in her tone. She didn’t want him to think she was affected by his presence, by his looks, by the way he leaned up against a helicopter as casually as he would have a wall.
“Guilty,” Jameson replied. “Of most things, really.” And then he looked over her shoulder. “You’re late,” he called.
“If bylate, you meanearly.”
Lyra froze. She knew that voice, knew it the way her body knew choreography she’d practiced a thousand times, like decades from now, she’d still ache with the memory of it the second she heard the music. Sheknewthat voice.
Grayson Hawthorne.
