52 pages • 1-hour read
Thieves' Gambit
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Chapters 12-22Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence, physical abuse, emotional abuse, illness or death, and cursing.
Chapter 12 Summary
Adra ambushes Ross, pressing a weaponized ring to her neck and demanding the Empress’s Ring. Ross spots Yeriel scouting a nearby corridor just as Noelia arrives. Ross shoves Adra and bolts, but Adra tackles her. They struggle, and Ross removes Adra’s rings to try and distract her.
Noelia throws a metal projectile that shatters a display case. A guard arrives and fires his gun, hitting Yeriel. Adra uses the distraction to pickpocket the Empress’s Ring from Ross and flees with Noelia, who hesitates over the wounded Yeriel before leaving. Ross chooses to help Yeriel instead of pursuing them, knowing the decision will likely disqualify her and put Rhiannon’s life at risk.
Chapter 13 Summary
Ross ambushes a guard and chokes him unconscious to clear an escape path for herself and Yeriel. They leave a blood trail and hide under the skirt of a mannequin as guards pass. Realizing their original entry point is blocked, Ross deduces a hidden exit must connect to the elevator system.
She picks the lock to a storeroom and finds a switch that activates a secret elevator. Ross loads Yeriel inside and sends her down, trusting her to return it. As guards close in, the elevator comes back. Ross descends, finds Yeriel has crawled out, and helps her through a door to a secret staircase.
Chapter 14 Summary
Ross helps a weakening Yeriel across the museum courtyard. Devroe pulls up, and he offers a ride in exchange for a future favor. Kyung-soon rides with him. Ross reluctantly agrees, and they speed away as guards emerge. Ross applies pressure to Yeriel’s wound and insists Devroe drive to a hospital, though doing so could cause them all to be late and therefore disqualified.
Devroe agrees after Kyung-soon urges him. At the hospital, Ross hands Yeriel to the nurses. Yeriel gives Ross her own target item—a miniature portrait—so Ross can remain in the Gambit. Ross, Devroe, and Kyung-soon leave as staff wheel Yeriel inside.
Chapter 15 Summary
Ross, Devroe, and Kyung-soon reach the hotel meeting point. Ross confronts Noelia in the lobby, wiping Yeriel’s blood on Noelia’s scarf. Noelia demands Ross’s disqualification for carrying a weapon, but the Count rules in Ross’s favor. The competitors submit their items, and the Count confirms that everyone passes Phase One.
Later, Devroe follows Ross into an elevator and suggests a date as the favor she owes him. Ross refuses and pickpockets his phone only to return it immediately. In her room, she calls her mother’s kidnappers and speaks briefly with her mother, who urges her to win the Gambit and trust no one.
Chapter 16 Summary
The next morning, Taiyō corners Ross to ask how she escaped the museum, declaring his goal to become the perfect thief and build an Asian syndicate. In the breakfast room, Ross exchanges tense glances with Devroe and a sharp comment with Noelia. Lucus flicks open a concealed switchblade to intimidate Ross.
Ross sits with Devroe, Kyung-soon, and Mylo as Mylo demonstrates a metal-cutting tool. The Count announces Phase Two is a team challenge: They must steal a golden sarcophagus. She divides them by tables, placing Ross with Devroe, Kyung-soon, and Mylo, and Noelia with Adra, Taiyō, and Lucus.
Chapter 17 Summary
Ross’s team meets to strategize. Kyung-soon suggests a temporary truce with the other team for the train ride to Paris, guessing the organizers planned something. Ross accompanies Devroe to deliver the offer.
They find Noelia and Taiyō in the hallway. Devroe proposes the truce. Noelia agrees, but only if Ross asks her directly. Ross answers with a curt dismissal, which Noelia accepts, confirming the truce applies only to the train ride.
Chapter 18 Summary
On the train to Paris, Ross’s team plays cards, and Mylo admits he cheats. Kyung-soon mentions her mentor told her about the competition. Mylo says an organizer recruited him after he stole government intelligence, raising questions about the organizers’ reach.
Ross reflects on why her family hid the Gambit from her. When the others ask about Devroe’s connection to the competition, he grows quiet and abruptly leaves the table.
Chapter 19 Summary
Still on the train, Ross deletes an email from a gymnastics camp. Devroe returns and resumes his flirtatious banter. Ross presses him for his real motive, and he confides that he competes for his late father, who received a Gambit invitation but died before Devroe was born.
Ross shares that her father was an anonymous sperm donor who also died before her birth. They connect over the similarities. All competitors then receive a text from the organizers with a side task: Steal politician Gabriel Raines’s phone within 28 minutes or their team faces a penalty.
Chapter 20 Summary
The truce ends, and both teams race to find Gabriel Raines. Ross deduces he is in the caboose and heads there with Devroe. They find Taiyō already in position. Ross convinces Taiyō to cooperate: Taiyō distracts Gabriel while Ross creates a diversion, allowing Taiyō to swap the phone with a decoy.
As they exit, Devroe bumps Taiyō and lifts the real phone while Ross snatches Taiyō’s glasses. Back in their car, Noelia arrives with a guard and accuses Devroe of stealing her phone to provoke a search.
Chapter 21 Summary
As the guard prepares to search Devroe, Ross alerts her team by text. Devroe drops the phone, and Mylo snatches it. The guard finds nothing on Devroe. An announcement declares a search of all passengers, as a VIP passenger (Raines) reported a stolen phone. The group engages in a frantic keep-away game.
Kyung-soon kicks the phone to Ross, but Lucus intercepts it and slides it to Taiyō. After a brief struggle, Ross claws it back and kicks it to Devroe just as the train pulls into the station and the timer expires. Devroe signals their victory, but Ross senses they missed something.
Chapter 22 Summary
The team flies to Cairo. Kyung-soon strips down Gabriel’s phone and confirms it has no tracking bugs. At their hotel, Ross notices protestors with a replica of the golden sarcophagus, sparking an idea for a fail-safe. She catches Mylo sizing up a risky pickpocket and stops him. He admits he chases adrenaline to distract himself while waiting for a phone call.
Ross shares her replica idea with Mylo. Devroe and Kyung-soon return from check-in with room keys and four flash drives from the organizers.
Chapters 12-22 Analysis
The museum heist becomes a turning point for Ross. It forces her to choose between the Quest family rule to trust no one and her own growing sense of right and wrong. This moment directly illustrates the theme of The Paradox of Trust in a World of Deception. The Quest family code, built on self-preservation, falls short when Ross must choose between securing her place in the Gambit and saving a competitor’s life. Ross hesitates when she must pick “the ring or Yeriel [...] Mom’s life or hers?” (95). By helping the wounded Yeriel, Ross acts contrary to the self-serving mindset her mother taught her. This choice becomes a crucial moment in shaping Ross’s identity and stepping away from the expectations of a typical Quest thief. Yeriel’s later reciprocity—giving Ross her own artifact so Ross can remain in the competition—supports Ross’s choice and encourages her to reconsider her assumptions about alliances. It shows that alliances can be a reasonable alternative to her family’s focus on isolationism.
The story uses games and competitions to organize its conflicts and show the dynamics of rivalry and alliance. The surprise penalty game on the train to Paris is a clear example, serving as a small-scale version of the larger Thieves’ Gambit. This timed challenge dissolves the fragile truce between the teams, transforming the confined space of the train car into a tense, strategy-driven, contest. The frantic game of keep-away with the politician’s phone illustrates the shifting allegiances and constant betrayals that define the competition, as the phone passes from teammate to rival and back again. The “game” demonstrates how quickly trust can shift in the Gambit. By weaving these small, high-stakes games into the main contest, the story keeps up a fast pace and forces characters to react under pressure. This structure shows that in this world, every interaction is a strategic move. The game’s conclusion, where Ross’s team wins yet she feels “like we lost” (170), complicates the seemingly simple ideas of winning and losing, suggesting that a perceived victory can hide a deeper setback.
Ross’s journey through these phases is a negotiation of trust on practical and interpersonal levels. Her decision to help Yeriel is an instinctual act of trust, but her subsequent interactions with Devroe treat trust as something exchanged through favors. By offering rescue in exchange for a favor, Devroe sets up a network of debts and obligations, turning trust into a strategy rather than a personal bond. This transactional approach challenges the distrust dictated by the Quest family mantra. The tension sharpens in Ross’s phone call with her mother, who reinforces the family’s core beliefs at the very moment Ross is learning its limitations. The warning also foreshadows later events and subtly shifts the family mantra. By shifting from, “A Quest can only trust another Quest” (53), to, “Trust no one” (117), Rhiannon suggests that even she cannot be fully trusted. This conversation deepens Ross’s internal conflict, pitting her mother’s rigid doctrine against her own lived experience.
This section of the narrative explores The Illusory Promise of Freedom by repeatedly surprising characters and weakening their sense of control. Ross’s strategic thinking during the penalty game leads to tactical success, yet her lingering suspicion that something is wrong highlights the instability of control within the competition. The organizers’ manipulations ensure that even a successful outcome feels insecure, reinforcing the idea that the competitors are pawns in a larger game. Likewise, Ross’s backup plan with the protestors’ replica sarcophagus shows her cautious thinking, while also emphasizing the pervasive atmosphere of betrayal in the Gambit. This moment creates suspense by hinting that a double-cross is likely. The motif of doors, exits, and locks reinforces this theme, as Ross’s talent for slipping past physical barriers mirrors her search for a way out of the path chosen for her. However, each lock she opens or passage she finds moves her only into a new form of confinement, questioning whether genuine freedom is possible for Ross.
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