Page 34

W ITHIN A MINUTE OF PLAY RESTARTING, F INN SCORES THE FIRST point of the chukker. “Far from the lead, kiddo,” Dash hollers at him. Despite the admonition, however, my father’s words ring with the harmless vengeance of sports smack talk.

Though his son has done exactly what he commanded, Finn’s father doesn’t cheer or smile or even seem to notice Finn’s score.

I don’t, either. My focus is elsewhere. The polo goal isn’t my goal.

Guiding my white mare, her coat gleaming like the snow underfoot, I stay on Mia.

I’ve found the muscle memory of equestrianism returning haltingly.

While I haven’t ridden horses in years or played polo in a decade, I did have a pony growing up.

The private riding lessons I had on the expansive grounds of Dash’s Rhode Island estate keep me astride my seat.

Of course, much credit is to my horse herself. Leonie’s stables hold only the finest. She requires little of me, responding intuitively to my own movements.

I chase the ball over the driven snow, attempting to tap in straight lines as the rules require when I have possession. More often, I lose the ball or cede control to my team’s other players for one unique purpose.

Whenever Mia gets possession of the ball, I’m there. Riding her off by sweeping into her path with matching speed and gentle contact or hooking her shots by sweeping my mallet in front of hers, timed to screw her up even if it does earn me a foul or two.

Every time I do, my crew shouts reassurances. It warms my heart, honestly. It is not, however, why I’m facing down my cousin with my fiercest gameplay.

Dash wants his cuff links back. I need to understand why. Ernest gave me nothing, so I’m going to score some information from Mia herself.

With each interference I make, she grows more and more frustrated. She rides harder, her cheeks pink. Every time she loses the ball, Hammond glowers. Mia knows Hammond is glowering. She knows what waits for her is the derision and condemnation Finn—whose gameplay has improved—received earlier.

Mia drives down the pitch. I come up alongside to hook her shot—the ball rolls over the snow, and I send it shooting off sideways—

Only for my father, who is, extremely irritatingly, playing on my team, to receive my unintentional pass.

He fires the ball into the goal. While everyone cheers, he smiles grandly at me.

“Thanks for the assist, Olivia!” he calls out warmly.

Only polo could coax paternal politeness out of my dear old dad.

Mia isn’t so lucky. I stay on her, maintaining my defense while we reset. Riding next to her, we pass Hammond on the sidelines.

“ Focus, Mia! ” her father howls. “Are you even paying attention?”

I see the ice-shard words penetrate Mia, watch her frustration change into panic in heartbreaking ways I wish I didn’t remember. She chews her lip, exhaling sharply, eyes glistening in the cold.

Which means I’m close. I just need to keep the pressure on.

When the next point starts, Mia pursues the ball even more ferociously. Her pony’s nostrils flare, snow flying up under the horse’s nervous stomping—as if she can feel Mia’s frenetic energy. I charge forward, single-minded in pursuit.

Mia knows I’m there. She rides harder, and it’s no use. I hook her mallet hard, and when she thrashes in frustration, I stay on her, crushing in closer while our horses slow.

With the sound of hooves subsiding, I go in for the kill.

“ Come on, Mia. Don’t cry ,” I say, my voice low. “If you cry, you’ve lost.”

Mia’s eyes fly wide, startled. Her mallet goes loose in her slackened grip.

The words work exactly as I hoped. I haven’t just flung Mia’s own childhood taunts in her face. I’m pretty sure I’ve just repeated the echo of a hundred painful pressures inflicted by her own family, which are, I happen to know, the strongest leverage.

In Mia’s distraction, I maneuver fast, retaking the ball. Pivoting, I charge, galloping uninterrupted down the pitch and shooting the ball straight into the goal.

When cheering erupts, even from Dash, I ignore the celebration. I focus on Hammond, who is focused on Mia. My uncle is mouthing his frustration in words I cannot hear over the whistles for my goal. He points toward the tents, jabbing one damning finger.

Mia’s own father is kicking her off the team.

Perfect.

Mia obeys, routing her pony to the edge of the pitch. She dismounts and continues past the seating section while Raphael Krause’s girlfriend, Helena, eagerly rotates in onto Mia’s horse.

I catch Dash’s eye, nodding my head to the side to indicate I’m leaving the game.

Galloping over to the dark barricades of the pitch, I dismount, letting Sofia have my pony.

I hasten my steps through the spectator section, continuing past the main tent out toward the smaller one set up for changing into uniform.

Mia, her stomped footsteps visible in the snowy path, has gone inside. I hurry into the tent, where I find her taking off her helmet.

“Now you’re giving up,” I chide. “You really have lost, haven’t you?”

Mia whirls. What I saw on the pitch is worse now. Her defeat. Her misery. Tears well in her eyes. “I haven’t lost a thing,” she retorts.

I know what I have to do. I call on every memory I have of Mia Owens. The girl who locked me in the darkness with glee.

“You tried to use me to get Leonie’s ring, and you failed. Tom doesn’t want you the way he wants me. Now you can’t even avoid disappointing your own father.” I shake my head. “I’d say I relate, except, well”—I shrug—“I don’t.”

Rage explodes into Mia’s features like shattered porcelain.

“I’m a Knife,” she seethes. “You’re nothing compared to me.”

Now we’re getting somewhere.

I have no idea what Mia means, but I know it’s important. And I know Mia needs to brag right now to keep from breaking.

In fact, I’m betting on it.

“A Knife?” I repeat, scoffing dismissively. If I’m going to learn more from this exchange, Mia is going to need to feel like she hasn’t saved face yet. “I have no idea what you mean,” I inform her disinterestedly, even though, okay, my comment is in fact extremely interestedly.

Mia matches me, grasping on to pretend pity for my ignorance. “Of course you don’t,” she returns.

She holds up her wrist—where my grandfather’s cuff links gleam.

“You really were cast out of the Owens family, weren’t you?

” Mia continues. She wants to hurt me, so I let her.

The bigger her victory, the more I can pry from her.

“I’m not surprised your father didn’t tell you before he was kicked out of the Knives Club.

Your hacker friend—or is it sister , I suppose?

—won’t be able to find anything out about it, either.

We’re far too exclusive for the likes of your pathetic crew. ”

I fist my uniform’s sleeves, fighting my instincts to retort. Because even in her disdain, Mia’s revealed she knows Abigail is a hacker. Either Tom is telling her enough to satisfy her, or she has done some investigation of her own.

“My father…,” I say, focusing on the information, not the insults.

The pieces come together. The cuff links. Crossed-dagger cuff links.

Knives.

Mia stole the cuff links, and now she’s a member and my father isn’t.

Interesting. Now I’m starting to understand why Dash wants those cuff links back. “I see,” I go on. “You stole my father’s cuff links. You took his spot in this… Knives Club, and now you’re flaunting it in front of him.”

Mia indicated the Knives Club doesn’t have an online footprint, but that it’s something I might have known about if I wasn’t “cast out of” this family. Some kind of old-money club, then.

She grins, pleased with herself, no longer desperate. Convinced she’s in control, she either hasn’t realized or doesn’t care how much she’s revealed to me. Not while it helps her flaunt her familial superiority.

“You know, you can just say, ‘the Knives,’” she chastens me patronizingly.

Returning her the fakest of smiles, I turn to leave. My head is humming. The Knives. Mia’s given me more than I ever expected when I realized I could use polo to rattle her.

Taunting my cousin, I’ve ended up uncovering a secret organization.

With connections to some Owens family members, but not others.

Mia. Dash. And… More pieces connect. Ernest Hensson.

Refusing my inquiries into his cuff links.

Is that why Ernest tried to steal my grandmother’s ring?

Was he doing it for them? Was Mia, who wears her own set of cuff links, helping him?

Ernest failed. Was the man sitting next to him on the chairlift, who left Ernest shattered in the snow… a Knife?

What will happen to Mia if she fails, too?

Mia interrupts my departure. “I have to say,” she continues loftily. “Your father is brave. Brave and stupid, but still, Dash isn’t a coward. To show up here without the cuff links.”

I round slowly. I’m not sure what to make of the veiled threat, but once more I feel the importance of keeping Mia talking.

“Don’t underestimate him,” I find myself saying.

Ugh. Did I just defend my father? What is wrong with me? I need to spend more time in the heated brunch tent because I fear my brain is suffering from hypothermia.

“No. No one should underestimate him,” Mia replies thoughtfully.

Her eyes no longer glitter with tears. They focus sharply on me, and in the moment before Mia speaks, I recognize the look in them. Revenge.

“Not after what he did to Grandpa,” she says.

I don’t know where she’s going with this, but I don’t like the possibility that Mia is lining up her own shot on the goal. Retaliation for how I humiliated her on the pitch. I hold her gaze. “You’re really going to have to be more specific,” I reply.

“Don’t pretend you’re innocent, Olivia. You can’t pull it off. You were there when Grandpa died,” she says. Her voice is quiet. “You and Dashiell. Tell me, how did he do it? I mean, getting away with murder. I have to concede, it’s impressive.”

Murder. The word slams into me like a bullet.

They think Dash is the killer.

Mia has her vengeance. I feel like I’m choking. Like snow is falling onto me, burying me in the cold.

She smiles prettily while my head spins. “Although he didn’t cover his tracks very well,” she remarks. “Refusing the autopsy was sloppy. My dad was furious, of course.”

It’s all I can do to stay very still. If I move, I’ll start shaking. I need to pace. To remind myself I’m in control. Information is only a piece on my chessboard. So my dad is a suspect? I can use that.

I’m desperate to use it, to keep it in the part of myself that is logical, calculating, unafraid.

Far away from the seventeen-year-old girl who could be destroyed if something like this was true.

I’ve often felt my humanity slipping, but if this was true—if my father killed my grandfather—I don’t know who I would become.

No. Right now, I’m a heist leader. Nothing else.

Forcing myself to remain methodical, I evaluate whether the conclusions connect.

Leonie is trying to lure a killer to the vault.

Dash is a suspect. He’s shown up here after Hammond told him Leonie was dying, and Leonie just welcomed him with literal open arms. He’s not the prodigal son. He’s her mark.

Everything fits.

Dash said he’s here for his cuff links, but since when do I believe his lies? What if the cuff links are only the convenient cover for his real purpose here? Doesn’t it make more sense that he’s returned to Volenvell to use the vault combination?

I know the logical answer to each question.

I hold my uniformed elbows to my chest, hugging myself like a little kid. “Why don’t you ask him how he did it yourself?” I say to my cousin. “Or ask the rest of your new friends in the Knives ?” I emphasize the right terminology with a sneer.

Mia’s gaze narrows. “Maybe I will.”

Feeling the need to get free, I decide I’m done with snow polo for the day. With uneven footsteps, I leave Mia in the snow, heading directly for the road, where Leonie’s fleet waits. I’m retreating. Fleeing.

I thought I knew the full extent of my father’s sins. He’s lied and stolen professionally his whole life. He’s cheated—multiple times. He cast me out. He let my mom go into debt. He abandoned his other daughter.

He murdered his father?

I should accept it. What reason do I have to doubt my dad’s darkness?

Yet… I don’t know. I can’t believe it.

As terrible as my father is, I don’t think he’s a killer. I want to believe he’s not. You are my legacy, Olivia.

Not this legacy. Never this.

I won’t descend from heiress of thieves to daughter of death . Mia has to be wrong.

She has to be.