Blake let me play white, which meant that the first move was mine. I went with the Queen’s Gambit. It wasn’t until a dozen moves later that Vincent Blake realized my instincts went beyond classic maneuvers. Four moves after that, he took my bishop, allowing me to execute a sequence that ended with me taking his queen.
Slowly, move by move and counterattack by counterattack, Vincent Blake realized that we were much more evenly matched than he’d anticipated.
“I see now,” he told me, “what you’re doing.”
He saw what I had done. The young woman he was playing against now wasn’t the one who’d lost to Eve. I’d hustled him, and he knew it—far too late.
In four moves, I thought, my heartbeat brutal and incessant in my chest, I’ll have him.
After two, he realized I had him trapped. He stood, tipping his king, conceding the match. White gold clattered as the piece hit the jewel-encrusted board, the black- diamond king glittering in the sun.
Vincent Blake was a dangerous man, a wealthy man, a formidable opponent—and he had underestimated me.
“You can keep the chess set,” I told him.
For a moment, I felt Blake fighting with himself. The lawyers had been there to ensure my end of the bargain— not his. I promise I won’t slowly and strategically destroy you wasn’t a legally enforceable term. I’d bet everything on the only real assurance Tobias Hawthorne had given me.
That if I bested Blake, he’d honor the win.
“What just happened here?” Eve demanded.
Vincent Blake offered me one last hard look, and then he rocked back on his heels. “She won.”
