The Final Gambit (The Inheritance Games #3)(83)

“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’s short string for 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 wondered if they had stopped her.

“I got a hold of her,” Mr. Laughlin said, his voice heavy. “She just kept saying that she thought he loved her. She thought—” There were no tears in his eyes, but a sob racked his chest. “Mr. Hawthorne told me to go. He told me to take Mal and get her out of there.”

“Was Liam dead?” I asked, my mouth almost painfully dry.

There wasn’t a hint of remorse in the groundskeeper’s face. “Not yet.”

Will Blake had been breathing when Mr. Laughlin left him alone with Tobias Hawthorne.

“Your daughter had just attacked Vincent Blake’s son.” Jameson was wired to find hidden truths, to turn everything into a puzzle, then solve it.

“Back then, our family wasn’t wealthy enough or powerful enough to protect her. Not yet.”

“Do you even know what happened after you left?” Rebecca asked after a long and painful silence.

“My understanding is that he needed medical attention.” Mr. Laughlin looked at each of us in turn. “Shame he didn’t get it.”

I pictured Tobias Hawthorne standing there and watching a man die.

Letting him die.

“And afterward?” Xander said, uncharacteristically muted.

“I never asked,” Mr. Laughlin said stiffly. “And Mr. Hawthorne never told me.”

My mind raced—through the years, navigating through everything we knew. “But when Toby moved the body…” I started to say.

Mr. Laughlin locked his gaze back on the horizon. “I knew he’d buried something. Once Toby ran off and Mr. Hawthorne started asking questions, I figured out pretty quick what that something was.”

And you never said a word, I thought.

“Show them the spot if you have to, Rebecca.” Mr. Laughlin gently pushed his granddaughter’s hair away from her face. “But if Vincent Blake asks what happened, you protect your mother. You tell him that it was me.”





CHAPTER 74

We found the remains.

I brought out my phone, ready to place the call to Blake, but before I could pull the trigger, it rang. I glanced at caller ID and stopped breathing.

“Alisa?” I forced my lungs to start working again. “Are you—”

“Going to kill Grayson Hawthorne?” Alisa said evenly. “Yes. Yes, I am.”

Just hearing her voice—and the absolute normality of her tone—sent a shock wave of relief through me. It was like I’d been carrying extra weight and pressure in every cell in my body, and suddenly, all that tension was gone.

And then I processed what Alisa had said.

“Grayson?” I repeated, my heart seizing in my chest.

“He’s the reason Blake let me go. A trade.”

I should have known when he hadn’t come with us to find the body.

Grayson Hawthorne and his grand gestures. Frustration, fear, and something almost painfully tender threatened to bring tears to my eyes.

“Your brother’s playing sacrificial lamb,” I told Jameson, trying to let that first emotion mute the rest. Xander heard my terse statement, too, and Nash appeared behind them.

“Alisa?” he said.

“She’s fine,” I reported. And this time, we’ll take care of her. “Oren, can you have someone bring her in?”

Oren gave a curt nod, but the expression in his eyes betrayed how glad he was that she was okay. “Give me the phone, and I’ll coordinate a pickup.”

I passed the phone to him.