CHAPTER 3 GIGI
GIGI
Gigi couldn’t stop running—up staircase after staircase. And everywhere she looked, there were more stairs. When she finally managed to stop, there was utter silence.
And then she heard footsteps. Coming down. Gigi whirled, but no matter where she looked, all she saw was stairs. And then—a flash of red. She turned, more slowly this time, and came face-to-face with a hooded figure.
Red cloak.
Red gloves.
Red boots.
The woman’s face, however, was bare. “Avery?” Gigi blinked.
“Remember,” Avery Grambs whispered. “Asks may be answered, invitations declined.”
Gigi’s eyes flew open, and she rapidly registered three facts: She’d been dreaming; she was curled into a little ball like some kind of human-hedgehog hybrid; and she was alone.
Unfortunately, alone was the one thing that Gigi Grayson did not excel at being.
That, and sensible. Maybe also dignified. But regardless—
Where was Savannah?
Gigi stared at the empty space on the bed where her twin should have been and tried to shake off the dream.
So much had happened in the past few days.
Gigi had entered and been eliminated from the Grandest Game.
She’d been kidnapped. Twice. Kidnapping number two had culminated in Gigi getting a visit from the long-missing Calla Thorp—now, the Woman in Red, also rather ominously known as the Lily and the Watcher, who had super ominously declared that the time for watching was over.
And immediately thereafter, Avery had disappeared. Those things had to be connected, but Gigi couldn’t do anything about any of it. Unless…
The door opened, cutting off any plotting and/or planning Gigi might otherwise have been inclined to do.
“Savannah!” Gigi sprang from hedgehog position, then tilted her head to the side. “You have Savannah Face.”
“Seemingly by definition,” Savannah replied, but Gigi wasn’t fooled. She knew her twin. She knew that face. It was her sister’s trying-not-to-feel-anything-and-feeling-everything face.
“You had a rendezvous,” Gigi concluded, her eyes lighting up.
“I hope it was scandalous. Very scandalous… and yet also very British.” Gigi wasn’t sure if her twin had fully forgiven her for keeping the truth of their father’s death a secret, but if there was one thing Gigi Grayson excelled at, it was having hope. “What’s he like? Rohan?”
“Heartless,” Savannah replied with a graceful shrug and all the poise in the world. “Vexing. And persistent.”
Persistent. Gigi thought back to Rohan’s offer. He’d wanted an accomplice, and though Gigi knew for a fact that she made an excellent accomplice, she’d said no—or rather, she’d allowed Savannah to say it on her behalf.
“Heartless,” Gigi echoed with an earnest nod. “Vexing. And his shoulders—they’re very broad. I shall call him Code Name—”
“Please don’t give him a code name.”
“Code Name Vex-Buddy. See also, Shoulders McBroady-Broad.” Gigi had missed this, missed being half of a pair. “If he hurts you,” she told Savannah cheerfully, “I’ll kill him.” Gigi nodded to the sheet of paper in her sister’s hand. “What’s that?”
“An NDA. We’re supposed to sign.” Without giving Gigi a chance to reply to that, Savannah crossed the room and sat on the bed. “Bad dream?” Savannah asked.
Growing up, Gigi had always taken refuge in her twin’s bed after nightmares. “I prefer to think of this particular dream as metaphorically confused,” Gigi replied.
“You were kidnapped. Twice.” That was Savannah’s way of asking if Gigi was traumatized.
“They were perfectly amiable kidnappings,” Gigi insisted, and her mind went suddenly—stubbornly—to Mattias Slater, to words he’d called after her the night before.
Let’s play a game. It’s called You Don’t Need to Prove a Damn Thing. To anyone. It’s called You’re Already Strong.
No one had ever thought of Gigi as strong before, least of all Savannah. Gigi looked down at the NDA. “I take it we’re not signing?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Gigi had the distinct feeling that there were a lot of things her sister wasn’t saying. “Does this have something to do with Code Name Vex-Buddy being persistent?”
“It has to do with getting off this yacht.”
“After which…” Gigi prompted, and then she made a scooty motion with her hands. “Do go on.”
Savannah bowed to the power of the scooty hands. “Rohan is, for reasons of his own, attempting to drudge up a lead on Avery’s disappearance. To that end, he’s looking for a way to pin that Zella woman down, and for that, he seems to think he needs you.”
“Am I the bait?” Gigi asked earnestly. “I excel at being bait.”
“You aren’t the bait,” Savannah told her. “Brady is.”
Objectively, Gigi barely knew Brady Daniels. Subjectively, hearing his name made her think about chaos theory and how naive she’d been during the Grandest Game, how she’d let Brady manipulate her into thinking there might be something between them.
“Alisa Ortega hired Knox to find Brady.” Gigi Grayson could do all business with the best of them. “Knox hates people, but he likes me.”
“Everyone likes you,” Savannah said.
For as long as Gigi could remember, she and her twin had each had their roles. Savannah was the strong one. The perfect one. The winner. And Gigi was the one people liked.
That isn’t all I am, a tiny voice inside her whispered. Gigi ignored the voice and the pang that accompanied it and searched her twin’s eyes. “Rohan wants to find Avery. What do you want, Savannah? Is it Rohan? No judgment if so, because boy is built like a—”
“Brady’s sponsor knows where the body is buried.” Savannah let those words hang in the air for a moment. “Supposedly.”
“The body.” Gigi felt like the oxygen had been vacuumed out of her lungs. “Dad?”
Savannah’s Savannah Face returned with a vengeance. “I know you love Grayson, Gigi. I know you’re… attached to his brothers and Avery, too. And I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t,” Gigi said. Sometimes, faith was a simple thing.
“You don’t know that.” Savannah fixed her gaze straight ahead.
“I’m an optimist. You’re my Savannah. I do know it.”
“I make no promises, Juliet.”
“I make all the promises,” Gigi replied, meaning that and willing Savannah to feel just how much. It’s you and me, Savannah. It always has been, and I can have enough faith for us both.
Could this go badly? Definitely. Was Gigi letting her twin chase a lead like this alone?
Definitely not, especially since joining her sister might let Gigi find a way of helping Avery, too.
So when Savannah removed a pen from her pocket, stood, placed the NDA flat against the wall, and signed, Gigi didn’t even hesitate.
She added her name right below her sister’s.
“So,” Gigi summarized, capping the pen with a flourish. “Step one: Knox. Step two: Brady. Step three: Zella.”
Savannah narrowed her eyes. “You have Gigi Face.”
“I,” Gigi corrected grandly, “have a plan.”