Chapter 572 | She’s Playing to Stay

Chapter 572: 572 | She’s Playing to Stay

I read that line twice, and then I read it a third time just to watch it sit there on the page.

Past Jace, the guy from week one with the spreadsheet and the death clock, would have skipped straight to the collar clause like a kid tearing open a birthday present. That guy would have missed the whole point. Blair Davenport had sat down at midnight to put her surrender in writing, and the first thing she made her lawyer write was the exit door. She had built herself a fire escape before she built anything else.

Good, I thought, and I meant it with my whole chest. If she had left it out, I would have written it in myself with a gel pen.

The graft gave a slow warm pulse behind my ribs, as though it had read the clause over my shoulder and approved.

Clause Seven was the collar, and I grinned so hard my face hurt.

Any collar referenced in the original wager shall be platinum, selected by Party A, removable by Party A at her sole discretion, and shall not be worn inside any academic building.

She had gone shopping. Blair Davenport had looked at catalogs. Somewhere in her Summit House penthouse there was a browser tab she would rather die than let anyone see, and I would have traded a cup of Belle’s butterscotch to look at it for ten seconds.

Clause Nine was a single sentence in bold that the lawyer had clearly been ordered to make bold.

Party B shall not deploy, summon, or permit the existence of any clone within ten meters of Party A.

"My clone didn’t even do anything to you," I said to the screen. "He tackled the Captain’s clone. He’s a gentleman."

The Ruby kid stirred in his sleep, mumbled something incoherent about covalent bonds that would have gotten him a C-minus on the midterm, and dropped back under. I envied him.

Clause Eleven barred Party B from referring, orally or in writing, to any event occurring in any cave, crevasse, hole, or subterranean feature whatsoever. Below it, in a smaller font that I could practically hear Blair dictating through clenched teeth, sat an amendment clause. This prohibition shall extend to ferries, and to sprinkler systems.

I was laughing into my sleeve, trying not to wake the guy three tables over, when my phone lit up and started vibrating hard enough that it crawled across the table toward the edge like a possessed object.

Belle was calling me, which Belle never did. Belle believed phone calls were a tool for people who couldn’t type at ninety words a minute and therefore had nothing to offer society.

I answered it before the third ring finished.

"You opened it already," Belle said. The accusation came through perfectly clear. "I can hear you grinning through the speaker, which is a disgusting skill I never asked to develop and now can’t turn off."

"Clause nine personally attacks my clone, Fox."

"Clause nine is fine," she said, and I heard paper shuffle on her end. I could picture her—in my stolen tracksuit on her bed, laptop balanced on a pillow, three highlighters uncapped and scattered around her like ammunition. "Clause nine is the healthiest thing she’s ever written. Skip to page six. Read fourteen and fifteen out loud to me."

"Why do you need me to read your own copy to you?"

"Because I need to hear somebody else say it before I believe it," she said, and her voice went thin on the last few words before she caught it. "Read it, Monroe."

I scrolled down to page six.

"Clause Fourteen," I read. "Should the Midnight Foxes fail to place within the top five at Winter Evaluation, the return of Ms. Misato Ayame to Party A’s service is hereby waived in full. Ms. Ayame shall remain with the Midnight Foxes."

Belle didn’t say anything at all, and the silence on the line pressed in on me harder than the words had.

I kept reading because my mouth had decided to keep going without me.

"Clause Fifteen. Regardless of outcome, no member of the Ayame household shall suffer any change in employment, housing, or compensation arising from this wager or from the conduct of Ms. Misato Ayame. Party A shall personally indemnify the household against any such change, including changes initiated by Davenport Industries or its officers."

The library lamp ticked as it cooled, and I heard the heater kick on somewhere in the ceiling.

"Its officers," Belle said. "That means her father, Monroe. She just signed a contract against her own father."

"Can she even do that?"

"Legally she can promise to pay for anything he breaks, and she has a trust fund with more zeros than my hometown has people." Her keys clacked, and I could tell from the speed that she was pulling numbers up while she talked. "She can’t stop him, but she can make it cost her personally every single time he tries. Page nine has a notary seal on it. She woke up a notary at midnight, and I’d bet my whole stipend she paid him triple."

My eyes kept drifting back to fourteen, and something sat heavy under my sternum that I didn’t want to name at one in the morning.

The bet in Misato’s kitchen had always cut both ways, and I had known that when I opened my big mouth. If we lost, Misato went back to the Davenports and I spent three years as a Davenport house pet, and Blair would finally have proof that lottery kids belonged in the trash. That was the whole reason she said yes. That was the knife she’d been holding against my ribs for weeks, every morning at six, through every drill.

She had just handed the knife back to me, handle first, with a notary stamp on it.

"She took the bullets out of her own gun," Belle said. "She lawyered away the only leverage she had left over you, and then she lawyered away the leverage her family has had over Misato for nine years. Do you understand what that means in Davenport math?"

"It means she isn’t playing to win anymore."

"It means she’s playing to stay," Belle said, and then she sniffed, very loudly, right into the phone.