The Gilded Blade (The Grandest Game #3)

CHAPTER 1 JAMESON

JAMESON

Jameson Hawthorne was terrible at hurting. When he hurt, he took risks—more and more and bigger and more risks, dancing hand-in-hand with danger and letting it all ride.

But that wasn’t what this was.

This was a private jet headed for Prague, and Jameson was a man on a mission.

For more than a year and a half, he’d let this mystery lie.

He’d exercised damn near superhuman restraint and resisted every impulse to look for answers about his “dead” grandmother.

Jameson had pretended there was no mystery—to keep Avery safe, to keep his brothers safe.

And now Avery was gone, and Grayson was the reason why.

I told him not to even say the name Alice Hawthorne, Jameson thought dully, but there was nothing dull about the pain his brother’s refusal to stop had wrought.

The enormity of it robbed the air from Jameson’s lungs with every third breath.

He wanted to tear the entire world apart—but he’d start with Prague, and though it went against every instinct he had, he’d fight the pulse-pounding urge to be reckless.

He’d exercise caution and discretion and a lamentable amount of self-preservation, because that was what Avery would want.

She’s fine, Jameson thought viciously, desperately. She has to be. He stared at the note Avery had left, and it stared right back at him.

I’m not missing. Don’t look for me.

The press cannot find out that I am gone.

Jameson had read the words a hundred times already, had scoured the message for hidden meaning, for invisible ink, for a code of any kind.

Other than the lemniscate at the bottom, there was nothing.

As for that little infinity symbol, either the note had been written under duress, and the lemniscate was the only secret message she’d been able to sneak in, or Avery had meant every word she’d written, in which case, that symbol might have meant something closer to I love you, always, forever.

To Jameson, that felt treacherously close to the good-bye.

Like hell, Heiress. The fact that the note said to keep the press in the dark seemed to suggest, if taken at face value, that Avery was at least hoping to return.

She’d never expect them to be able to hide her absence indefinitely.

But for Jameson, hope wasn’t enough. Not given the circumstances.

Not when he knew that Alice was dangerous.

And I know you, Heiress. Jameson knew that if Avery had chosen to disappear, to leave them like this, if she’d willingly gone with Alice or anyone else, she’d almost certainly have done so for a noble reason.

And Jameson also knew that if their positions had been reversed, if he or any of his brothers had disappeared under dangerous circumstances, there was no way in hell Avery would have just sat back and hoped everything turned out fine.

Note or no note, Avery would have looked for them, but she would have been smart about it. Cautious. Discreet. In an attempt to hold it together the way she would have, Jameson pressed his fingers to the lemniscate Avery had drawn and allowed a memory to wash over him.

Like the sun and the moon, I loved her…

A muscle in Jameson’s jaw trembled as he thought of a note he had once written, a clue in an elaborate game of his own design. During that game, Jameson had given Avery an infinity ring—and a promise that someday, he’d give her a ring of a different sort.

Prague was where Jameson had made that promise.

Prague was where he’d come face-to-face with his dead grandmother very much alive.

Prague was where threats had been issued, where Jameson’s blood had been shed.

If the lemniscate on the bottom of Avery’s note was a coded message, that message was: Go to Prague. And if Avery hadn’t meant it that way…

Jameson was damn well going anyway. I’ll be smart about it, Heiress. I’ll be careful if it kills me. But I’m going.

Restless and feeling the confines of the jet like a cage, Jameson closed his eyes and tried to calm himself by thinking all the way back to the beginning, or very close to it, to stepping out of a fireplace and into Avery’s room at Hawthorne House.

He thought about the way she’d looked in those ratty-thin pajamas of hers, tangled hair falling into her face.

Right from the start, Avery Grambs had cut straight through all of Jameson’s defenses, demolishing every last layer of artifice.

Right from the start, he’d known she was something special.

Jameson swallowed but refused to open his eyes. He needed to sleep, no matter how impossible that seemed. It would be hours before he landed in Prague, and when he did, he needed to be sharp. He needed to be able to think with perfect clarity, to see nine moves ahead.

So he held the image of Avery in his mind and breathed in and out and willed his wild, churning mind to still, sinking deeper into memories of her, of them.

Heads or tails, Heiress. Heads you want me to come after you, tails you don’t, but either way, I’m coming. I won’t let anyone hurt you. I can’t.

Either way, I will fight for you.

Either way, all I have and all I am is yours.