Max sat on the sofa with Abby’s feet in his lap, the fire crackling in the living room’s stone fireplace. It was quiet, the terrace doors closed against the chill, the TV off, Abby long since asleep.

He’d drawn a bath for her when they got home from the morgue and then ducked into his office to bring Nico up to speed. He didn’t know what he’d expected from the other man, but after a long pause Nico’s voice had come hard and cold across the line.

Draper will pay.

Max had never been more sure it was true. There was no doubt in Nico’s voice, no bravado or machismo.

It was a statement of fact.

A promise.

He’d kept an eye on Abby in the tub while calling the funeral home she’d chosen to arrange for the pickup of her father’s body. Max was worried about her, worried about the hollowness in her cheeks and the shadows under her eyes, the stillness that had replaced her energy and movement.

There had been no directives from Abby’s father regarding his wishes in the event of his death. She'd chosen cremation and a simple service generously hosted by the owners of the ranch where he’d worked.

After her bath, Max had set her up on the couch with the fire and a blanket. He made pasta with sun-dried tomatoes and her favorite cream sauce, then made a show of eating his own food while she picked at hers.

Taking care of her was a relief, both because it gave him a way to feel useful and because it had allowed him to push aside the cold wasteland that had opened up inside him when they’d been talking to the pathologist at the morgue.

Now Abby was asleep, stretched out on her back, and Max couldn’t run from his thoughts anymore.

And if he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, why were there no lacerations on his face, his arms? At the speed he was traveling, he likely would have been thrown from the car, or at the very least, thrown around inside the car.

Max had thought immediately of his father when Doctor Kowalski had explained the inconsistency. His father had also died in a car accident on a dark desert road. He hadn’t had any alcohol in his system — that had been a special touch just for Abby — but there were similarities.

Max’s father had been stone cold sober when he’d run off the road on a straight stretch that a twelve-year-old could have driven. But like Abby’s dad, he’d been found without a seatbelt.

The windshield had broken, which had caused enough injury to Donald Cartwright’s face that his lack of a seatbelt was plausible to the police.

But it had never been plausible to Max, because his father had always worn a seatbelt. Max used to tease him about it. His father put it on if he moved the car from one parking space to another and left it on when he cut the engine to wait for Max before he was old enough to drive.

That his father would be driving through the desert at one in the morning without a seatbelt had been the biggest of all of Max’s questions about the night his father died.

In the end, the autopsy report had indicated a heart attack — enough reason for his father to drive off the road when there was no evidence anyone had been around — and the lacerations on his father’s face had supported the finding that he hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt.

His father had been in good physical health, but after Jason’s takeover of Cartwright Holdings, he’d been depressed. He had been sixty-four years old at the time of his death, old enough that recent stress could have contributed to a heart attack in an otherwise healthy man.

But the seatbelt had never sat right with Max.

And now he knew why.

Now new questions pushed at his consciousness. Had his father really had a heart attack? Or had he been given something to make it look like a heart attack in the same way Abby’s father had been force-fed alcohol? Had his father been conscious when he went off the road? Had he been aware that someone was orchestrating his death?

Had he been in pain? Had he been afraid?

Max pushed the questions down, grateful for the weight of Abby’s feet on his lap. Grateful for the necessity of taking care of her, seeing her though the next few days and all that would entail. Grateful for the desire that remained to build a future with her.

Because without her, there was a good chance he would be on his way to the Tangier, heavily armed and determined to shoot his way into Jason’s suite, even at the expense of his own life.

He forced himself to call on the patience he’d cultivated under Nico’s tutelage. Acting on his desire to eviscerate Jason in the moment would be a mistake. This was when patience counted — when you wanted to toss off its binds, throw caution to the wind, and rage and rage and rage.

The ringing of his phone pulled him back to the present. He slid Abby’s feet off his lap and stood, pulling the phone from his pocket and looking at the display.

Unknown.

He hurried onto the terrace before the ring could wake Abby, stepping outside and shutting the door to the house.

“You’re dead,” he said into the phone. “You are a fucking dead man walking."

“No greeting?” Jason’s voice greeted him from the other end of the phone. “Still lacking in the social graces, I see.”

Max turned his back on the city in the distance and leaned against the railing.

“I should have known,” he said. “All these years… I should have known it was you.”

“Still looking back instead of forward,” Jason said. “You and Abby have that in common.”

Rage flooded Max’s body, so pure and so hot it wiped out his vision. “Say her name again and I’m going to take my time when I kill you.”

“You’ve always had a flair for the dramatic.” Jason’s voice was earnest, like they were still teenagers, sitting in Max’s room and debating the merits of their favorite band. “That’s your problem — everything is emotional, reactive. All of your advantages, all the money and good parenting and stability, can’t make up for an inherent lack of discipline.”

“I’m not interested in your opinion, on this subject or any subject. I just want to know why you did it,” Max said. “To Abby. To me. We were friends. You were like a brother to me.”

“We haven’t been friends for a long time, probably for a lot longer than you’re willing to admit. In fact, I’d venture a guess I was always a charity project for you, a way for you to feel benevolent, superior.”

Max thought about all the secrets he’d shared with Jason, all the hours they’d spent locked in intense discussion before Jason started spending more of his time at the Cartwright house with Max’s dad.

“I’m sure it makes you feel better to think that,” Max said. “But it’s not true. You were my best friend.”

“That’s a lie and you know it. Abby was your best friend. You were hers. It’s always been the two of you. I was just a prop, a crutch to give the two of you an excuse not to fuck in high school.”

Max paged through the memories in his head, replaying moments he’d spent with Jason, all the times they’d spent with Abby. They’d been best friends, all three of them. There had been no hierarchy other than the one that had obviously lived in Jason’s mind.

He shook his head. Jason was trying to unsettle him, trying to knock him off-balance on a day when he was already off-balance.

“Bullshit. Playing the victim was your prop. Being the martyr was your crutch. I wish I’d known you felt so sorry for yourself all that time — it would have saved me the trouble of feeling sorry for you.”

“Feeling sorry for Abby and me made you who you are. You’d be nothing without us, just another rich kid with more money than ambition, more privilege than discipline.”

Laughter erupted over the phone. Max was surprised to realize it had come from him.

“Something funny?” Jason asked.

“What’s funny is that you’re finally being honest,” Max said. “And it only took trafficking women, burning down your best friend’s house, and killing two innocent people.”

“Abby’s father wasn’t innocent.” Jason’s voice was cold.

“What about you?” Max asked. “Are you innocent?”

“I may not be innocent, but I am powerful, and I’d take that any day of the week.”

“Even if it’s your downfall?” Max asked.

“Even then.”

“Good to know. Because it will be.”

“And I suppose you’ll be the one to do the job?” Jason asked.

“You got it.”

There was a long pause before Jason spoke again. “Well, come and get me, brother.”

The phone went dead and Max turned to face the city, imagining Jason standing at the window in the Tangier’s Presidential suite, surrounded by guards, under assault from all sides, moving pieces on his chessboard.

Max opened the door to the house and returned to the living room. Abby was still asleep on the couch, the fire burning low in the hearth. He stood watching her, Jason’s words echoing through his head.

Come and get me, brother.

Jason might have an army of pawns. He might even have bishops and knights.

But he didn’t have a queen — and Max would do anything for his queen.