Avery visits Nan alone and places the metallic disk on the dining room table while asking about Vincent Blake. Nan initially deflects, but confirms that Tobias Hawthorne was already courting Alice when he worked for Blake in the early 1970s.

Avery explains that Tobias and Blake collaborated on one patent before Tobias filed a better one alone, cheating Blake out of a fortune. Nan reveals that Blake was rich, controlling, and fond of pitting protégés against one another. Blake had brought Tobias into his inner circle, where power had to be earned and won.

Avery begins to realize that Tobias may have learned his love of games from Blake rather than inventing that style of manipulation himself. Nan then explains why Tobias turned against Blake: Blake's nephews, jealous of Tobias's favored position, targeted Alice. They harassed and manhandled her, and one of them pinned her down and forced a kiss on her, while Blake did nothing.

Because Blake excused the nephews' behavior, Tobias abandoned his dream of working for Blake and set out to become a better version of him. Nan says Tobias's double patent move was underhanded and a betrayal, but Blake accepted it because Tobias had beaten him within the rules of the game.

Avery asks whether Blake is dangerous, and Nan warns that men like Blake and Tobias always are. Nan suggests Blake may have taken Toby now because Tobias is no longer alive to hold him back. She closes by warning Avery that, as Tobias's successor, she is now the one Blake will try to break if she lets him.