Avery dreams that Avery is back in the park playing chess with Harry, who becomes the beaten Toby. When Avery asks who hurt Toby, the pieces blur into shadows, and Tobias Hawthorne appears instead. Tobias repeats lessons about strategy and tells Avery he kills twelve birds with one stone while strangling Avery, waking Avery in terror.

Avery finds Jameson absent from bed and goes searching in Tobias Hawthorne’s study. The trophies, books, and patents remind Avery how deliberately Tobias shaped the Hawthorne grandsons in Tobias’s image. Avery interprets the nightmare as a warning that the current enemy may also be thinking many moves ahead, using threats as pieces in a larger story.

From the study balcony, Avery sees Grayson swimming alone in the lit pool and remembers his haunted guilt over a past rescue. A motion sensor light reveals Eve wearing one of Avery’s nightgowns, and Grayson gets out of the pool and puts an arm around Eve. Jameson arrives and notices Avery watching them, prompting tension over Avery’s concern for Grayson and Jameson’s fear of what that concern means.

Jameson kisses Avery intensely, then voices the insecurity underneath the moment. Avery insists Avery is with Jameson, but Jameson connects the situation to Emily, saying that for Emily, it was always going to be Grayson. Avery rejects the comparison, but Jameson reveals Jameson knows Avery visited Grayson in the wine cellar and that Grayson left for Harvard early afterward.

Avery denies betraying Jameson and insists Grayson would not either, but Jameson clarifies that Jameson does not distrust Avery or Grayson; Jameson distrusts himself. Jameson admits that growing up against Grayson’s perfection taught Jameson to win by crossing lines and becoming strategically reckless. Jameson wants to be better with Avery, but warns that if their relationship begins to feel like another competition with Grayson, Jameson does not trust himself not to play.