The Final Gambit characters

Appears from the start

Weeks away from her eighteenth birthday and from full, unconditional control of a fortune she is still not certain she should have. A year of Hawthorne games has made her a match for the brothers, and she has begun thinking seriously about what the money is actually for rather than how to keep it.

Appears from the start

The third Hawthorne brother and Avery's partner in every sense, drawn to risk and to being tested, and inclined to treat a threat as an invitation to play.

Appears from the start

The second Hawthorne brother, disciplined to the point of coldness, carrying in private what happened to his biological father and what the family did to keep it quiet. He has made himself the person everyone else can rely on and asks for nothing back.

Also known as Xander

Appears from the start

The youngest Hawthorne brother, inventive and irrepressible, who builds contraptions for the fun of it and reads the family's moods better than any of them realize.

Appears from the start

The oldest Hawthorne brother, protective by instinct and steady in a crisis, now openly attached to Libby and still refusing to have anything to do with the money.

Appears from the start

Avery's older half-sister and guardian, settled into life at Hawthorne House and finally being treated well by the person she is with.

Also known as Max

Appears from the start

Avery's best friend, living at Hawthorne House and the one person who tells her the unvarnished version of anything.

Also known as John Oren

Appears from the start

Avery's head of security, whose job has grown with her profile and who has learned that the serious threats to this family come from people with money and patience.

Appears from the start

Avery's lawyer, preparing her for the moment the trust arrangements end and every decision becomes hers, and drilling her for the public scrutiny that will come with it.

Appears from the start

Tobias Hawthorne's son, alive after twenty years of being presumed dead and unwilling to slot back into the family that raised him. He keeps his distance from Hawthorne House and from the fortune alike.

Appears from the start

A self-made Texas billionaire, dead before the trilogy began, who raised his grandsons on puzzles and left his fortune to a stranger. Everything that happens to the family still runs through arrangements he made in advance, including at least one game he never got to see played.

First appears in chapter 4

A young woman who is very nearly the image of Emily Laughlin, which unsettles Grayson and Jameson from the moment she appears. She presents herself as Toby Hawthorne's daughter and says that Toby is in danger and needs the family's help.

First appears in chapter 20

The patriarch of a large and feared family whose history runs alongside the Hawthornes' from the very beginning. Courteous, patient, and entirely ruthless, he holds that the foundation of the Hawthorne fortune was taken from him, and he intends to collect on the debt with interest.