The Inheritance Games, #3
The Final Gambit
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Contents
CHAPTER 40
Overview
With Toby’s captor still silent, Avery and the Hawthornes exhaust Tobias Hawthorne’s enemy files without finding a clear suspect. A missing page in Isaiah Alexander’s file leads Avery to confront Xander about the possibility that Isaiah is his father.
Xander’s vulnerability reveals how Tobias’s legacy is wounding the brothers in different ways. The chapter shifts the investigation from anonymous enemies toward a deeply personal connection while also showing that Tobias anticipated Xander’s reckoning with who Tobias really was.
Summary
Thirty-six hours pass with no contact from Toby’s captor. Paparazzi crowd the Hawthorne House gates while Avery, the Hawthorne brothers, Libby, and Eve keep searching the files on Tobias Hawthorne’s enemies. Every lead fails, but Avery keeps rereading because admitting defeat would mean accepting that Toby may be lost.
The pressure affects everyone differently. Jameson disappears into the hidden passages, Grayson exhausts himself in the pool, Nash sneaks out and returns injured with a puppy, Xander barely eats, and Eve refuses to sleep as she memorizes the files. Avery and Eve do not speak directly about Toby, but the captor’s silence drives them both.
Avery opens a file labeled Isaiah Alexander and finds it empty. Eve says the file had contained one page about a former Hawthorne lab employee, a promising PhD who was fired and ended up with nothing. Eve dismisses the missing page as likely misplaced, but Avery realizes that Xander’s full name connects to Alexander, just as his brothers’ names connect to their fathers.
Avery finds Xander in his hidden lab and gently asks whether Isaiah Alexander is his father. Xander tries to deflect with humor, but Avery presses him as his best honorary Hawthorne friend. Xander denies taking the missing page and admits he did not know Isaiah was on the enemy list, though he has spent months building his own file on him.
Xander says Isaiah may have been fired around the time Xander was conceived, possibly because of Xander’s conception, and admits he has not contacted Isaiah because he fears being hated. Avery reassures Xander, but Xander reveals how deeply he has felt hated throughout his life. Xander then asks whether it is wrong that he loved growing up at Hawthorne House and loved Tobias Hawthorne despite the terrible things they have learned.
Avery tells Xander he loved the old man, not the ruthless legend. Xander reveals that he alone knew Tobias was dying for weeks before the end, and that Tobias wanted him present. Tobias’s last words to Xander were that by the end, Xander would know what kind of man Tobias was and what kind of man Xander wanted to be.
Who Appears
- Avery Kylie GrambsKeeps searching Tobias’s enemy files and gently presses Xander about Isaiah Alexander.
- Xander HawthorneReveals Isaiah may be his father and shares Tobias Hawthorne’s final words.
- EveObsessively studies the files and identifies the missing Isaiah Alexander page.
- Tobias HawthorneHis enemies drive the investigation; his dying words haunt Xander’s identity crisis.
- Isaiah AlexanderAbsent former Hawthorne lab employee whose missing file page may connect him to Xander.
- Jameson HawthorneCopes with the failed search by disappearing into Hawthorne House’s walls.
- Grayson HawthornePushes himself past endurance in the pool while the investigation stalls.
- Nash HawthorneLeaves the estate, returns injured, and brings back a trembling puppy.
- Libby GrambsHelps review Tobias Hawthorne’s enemy files without finding a match.