The Final Gambit recap

Weeks from her eighteenth birthday and full control of the Hawthorne fortune, Avery is confronted by Eve, a young woman who is the image of the dead Emily Laughlin and who says she is Toby Hawthorne's daughter and that Toby has been taken. The man holding him is Vincent Blake, the head of a rival family who believes the money Tobias Hawthorne built his empire on was stolen from him, and who also knows what really happened to Grayson's father, a secret the Hawthornes cannot afford to have made public. Avery and the brothers work the last of their grandfather's puzzles while Blake tightens his grip and Eve's presence pulls the family apart from the inside. Eve proves to be working with Blake. Rather than wait him out, Avery meets him on his own ground and beats him at his own kind of game, winning Toby's freedom and ending the threat. She turns eighteen and takes the fortune outright, and a year later she is systematically giving it away and has announced a contest in which ordinary people can compete for a fortune of their own.

Avery Kylie Grambs, a Connecticut teenager with nothing but her half-sister Libby and a talent for numbers, inherited nearly the whole fortune of Tobias Hawthorne, a Texas billionaire she had never met, on the condition that she live in his mansion for a year. His daughters and his four grandsons, Nash, Grayson, Jameson, and Xander, were cut out. In the first book Avery survived two attempts on her life arranged by the brothers' mother, Skye, and solved enough of the old man's puzzles to learn that his son Toby, believed dead for twenty years after a fire on the family's private island, was alive, and that she had unknowingly been playing chess with him for months. In the second she and the brothers traced Toby's history: taken in as an infant rather than born a Hawthorne, he discovered it as a young man, vanished after the fire, and spent twenty years on the streets, where he came to know Avery's mother, which is how Tobias Hawthorne came to choose Avery at all. Toby was found held captive by Grayson's biological father, Sheffield Grayson, who had been behind the renewed attacks on Avery; he died in the confrontation and the family concealed it. Avery and Jameson are together, Nash and Libby are together, and a young woman who looks exactly like the dead Emily Laughlin has just arrived at Hawthorne House calling herself Eve.

Eve's resemblance to Emily Laughlin unsettles the whole house, Grayson and Jameson above all. She presents herself as Toby's daughter and says that Toby is in danger and needs the Hawthornes. Avery, meanwhile, is weeks from her eighteenth birthday, when the trust arrangements end and the fortune becomes hers outright, and Alisa is drilling her for the scrutiny that will follow. Hawthorne House is crowded: Libby and Nash, Max, Xander, the brothers, and an expanded security operation under Oren. Avery has been quietly working out what a person is supposed to do with more money than she can imagine spending, and getting no useful answers from anyone whose job depends on her keeping it.

Toby has been taken by Vincent Blake, the head of a large and dangerous family whose history runs alongside the Hawthornes' from the beginning. Blake's grievance is old and specific: he considers the stake Tobias Hawthorne built his empire on to have been taken from him, and he means to get it back, along with the man he regards as belonging to his family rather than to the Hawthornes. Blake also holds something the Hawthornes cannot afford to have made public, the truth about how Sheffield Grayson died, which weighs on Grayson more than on anyone. Eve's presence keeps reopening old wounds, and Avery cannot tell whether the girl is an ally, a rival, or a plant.

The family goes at the problem the way they were raised to: as a puzzle. Tobias Hawthorne left one last game behind him, and the brothers and Avery work it while Blake applies pressure from outside, using the disappearance of Sheffield Grayson as leverage and letting the Hawthornes understand exactly how much he knows. Eve is drawn into the household and into the brothers' divisions, and Grayson and Jameson both find her impossible to be around and impossible to avoid. Avery's public profile becomes a weapon in its own right, and Alisa fights to keep the estate and its reputation intact while her client keeps choosing to engage rather than retreat.

Blake's terms are made explicit: he wants what he believes the Hawthornes owe him, and he is prepared to take the family apart to get it. Security at Hawthorne House is tested, the household is forced to weigh who inside it can be trusted, and Toby's captivity turns into a bargaining position. The clues Tobias Hawthorne left take on a new meaning, since the old man knew who Blake was and what he would eventually do, and appears to have prepared for it. Avery refuses to hand over anything simply because it is demanded, which raises the stakes for everyone still living in the house.

Blake presses his advantage. Grayson's guilt over how his father died becomes a lever, the family's public position is squeezed from several directions at once, and every plan that amounts to waiting for Avery's birthday looks worse than the last. Eve is still in the house, and the brothers are divided over her in ways that have more to do with Emily than with Eve herself. The last of Tobias Hawthorne's game is worked out, and what it leaves Avery with is less a prize than a lesson in how the old man believed a Hawthorne should fight someone who cannot be beaten head-on.

Eve's real allegiance comes to light: she has been working with Vincent Blake, and much of what the household has spent the book reacting to was arranged between them. The betrayal lands hardest on Grayson and Jameson, who each let her close for reasons that had more to do with Emily than with Eve. Rather than wait behind Oren's security perimeter until her birthday, Avery decides to face Blake herself, on his ground and his terms, and she and the brothers prepare for it as a game with rules, stakes, and a way to win that does not depend on outspending or outfighting an old man with a private empire. What she means to play for is Toby's freedom, an end to Blake's claim on the Hawthorne fortune, and the removal of the hold he has over the family through Sheffield Grayson's death.

Avery meets Vincent Blake and beats him at his own kind of game, winning Toby's freedom and ending both his claim on the fortune and his hold over the family. Eve's part in his campaign is exposed. Avery turns eighteen, the last of Tobias Hawthorne's conditions lapses, and the money becomes hers with nobody's permission attached. Toby is alive and free and keeps his distance on his own terms, and the brothers are left to decide what to do with lives never meant for anything but the family empire. Avery's answer for herself is to give the fortune away deliberately rather than sit on it. A closing section set a year later shows her doing that work with the Hawthornes, together with Jameson, and announcing a competition in which ordinary people can play, by Hawthorne rules, for a fortune of their own.

Eve's loyalties turn out to lie with Vincent Blake, and the pressure that has been closing on Hawthorne House was engineered rather than accidental. Avery stops trying to outlast Blake and goes to meet him on his own ground, playing the kind of game she has spent a year learning from his oldest rival, and she comes away with Toby's freedom and with the threat to the Hawthornes lifted, including the hold Blake had over the family through what happened to Sheffield Grayson. Avery turns eighteen; the last of her benefactor's conditions falls away and the fortune becomes hers outright, with no trustees and no permission required. Toby is alive and free and stays on his own terms. The brothers are left with the question of what to do with lives that were never going to be spent running the family empire, and Grayson in particular begins to look outward. Avery has decided that the point of having the money is giving it away. The closing section, set a year later, finds her doing exactly that alongside the Hawthornes and announcing a competition in which ordinary people can play, on Hawthorne terms, for a fortune of their own, with Jameson beside her.