Page 4

U NDERSTANDABLY, EVERY EYE IN THE COMPARTMENT EXCEPT T OM’S whips to me.

While Grace sits down next to Tom, Deonte straightens up. I can tell I’ve perturbed him, which is not easy.

“Where’s Abigail?” he demands.

While Jackson says nothing, his stare holds me. He doesn’t need words to echo Deonte’s question.

“I assume in Rhode Island,” I reply evenly. “Although I suppose she could be anywhere.”

“She’s… not coming?” Kevin has the honesty to look disappointed.

“I haven’t spoken to her since the wedding,” I say, impatient.

I guess I expected the crew would recognize Abigail’s absence from our goddamn group chat would imply her absence from our international heist. How would I even reach my sister, an expert hacker who never gave me her real contact information?

“She betrayed us on the last job,” I remind everyone.

“I mean, I did, too, and I’m here,” Kevin points out.

I look at him. “Do you really want to remind us of that?”

Kevin shrinks in his seat.

“What a warm welcome.” Grace finally speaks up. Her voice is polite but chilly. I wish I couldn’t characterize the entire vibe in our compartment the same way.

Jackson, of course, recovers first. He extends his hand. “Sorry, Grace. I’m Jackson,” he says with the warmth Grace invoked ironically. “Jackson Roese.”

While they shake hands, Grace looking somewhat more enthusiastic, my phone lights up. I read my mom’s text on my lock screen.

You sure you don’t want to come back to Bern? There’s a spa with a view of the river.

Then the snowflake emoji. Then the sunset emoji. Then the Christmas tree emoji. I smile, until her next message follows.

I promise it’s better than where you’re heading.

Outside our pristine window, we’re nearing our destination, the landscape growing familiar.

I’ve visited Switzerland before, when I lived my old life.

Everything glistened with invitation, as if the world were made just for five-year-old me.

The diamonds outside didn’t need stealing—they were mine from the start.

What wasn’t, then?

Before my grandmother cut us off. Before my father abandoned me. Before I knew what it meant to be an Owens.

Grace smiles, her teeth white and perfect. “I assure you,” she says, “you won’t miss Abigail.”

With every word, it’s easier to recognize Tom’s likeness to the girl I’ve met only over one short FaceTime after my customary encrypted emails and whose qualifications Knight vouched for. Siblings cut from the same silk.

I chew the inside of my cheek, weighing my reply to my mom.

Volenvell Castle has nice views too.

Mom’s reply is immediate.

I’m referring to the number of Owens family members you’ll be trapped with.

I knew what my mom meant. I don’t disagree.

While I would never show the weakness to my crew, the number of my extended family members waiting at my grandmother’s inherited castle home, hopefully unaware spectators to my plans, does make me uneasy.

Pulling off my wedding heist around innocent influencers and out-of-it congresspeople was easy enough.

The Owens family, however? If there’s one group ever watchful for deception or disloyalty, it’s my dad’s relatives.

In my guarded heart, I know their savvy is not the only reason I’m dreading the week spent in their company. They remind me, like Volenvell Castle perched imposingly on the mountaintop, of my old life.

First-class flights, young Olivia fending off stomachaches with Sprite sipped from champagne glasses.

Dreaded evenings with my cousins outside the grown-ups’ purview, when I hoped they would ignore me instead of doing worse.

My mom’s smile like porcelain stretched over steel during dinner, followed by parental fighting I could hear from my four-poster down the hall.

Just because I have the wedding’s practice in fighting off emotions while executing plans doesn’t mean it’s not hard.

“Obviously, Grace is my sister,” Tom summarizes.

“Double the Phams, double the fun,” Kevin enthuses. He eyes the newcomer with earnest curiosity. “You’re not in our year, right? I think I remember you from Berkshire.”

I know Kevin Webber from the vaunted halls of the same prep school where I met Tom. I’d met Deonte and, of course, Jackson when I wound up in public school after my parents’ divorce. Oh, how I love accumulating the socioeconomically split pieces of my past and present in one crew. It’s very fun.

“I’m a sophomore at Stanford, but I’m hoping to drop out next semester,” Grace explains. “Cannot be wasting my time exhausted in school while my younger brother makes a fortune before me.” She winks.

Tom’s smile says I’m one million in the lead, sis .

Immodest, like usual. I know nothing of sibling rivalry—or, not in the usual respects.

I guess your unknown half sister siding with your father and threatening to ruin your heist and steal your inheritance might count.

But I recognized its power when I discussed Grace’s involvement with her.

Her love for Tom will mean her loyalty, while her competitiveness with him will mean her focus. Perfect.

Deonte extends his hand. “It’s good to have you,” Deonte promises, recognizing our former hacker’s disappearance is not Grace’s fault.

While he and Kevin introduce themselves to our newest crew member, I offer my mom the reassurance I’ve repeated to myself over and over. Consolation or self-preservation, I don’t know which.

I can handle the Owens family.

My mom’s typing bubble pops up. Then disappears.

I hope in vain she’s contemplating the perfect emojis. May I recommend the snowman? Instead, her concise reply comes moments later.

I know you can.

I hear the unwritten continuation. Because you’re one of them.

The thought torments me. How much of my father’s daughter am I? The truth is more complicated than I like to admit.

You are my legacy. Heiress to an empire of thieves.

The worst part is, while I want to hate it, when I look into my eyes in the mirror—green, like my mom’s—I’m comforted when I find the knife edge of my father’s glare in them, or his uncompromising assurance in the sneer of my lips.

Owens features reassure me. They feel like weapons, the only ones I have to fight my family’s legacy.

I know my mother recognizes it. She’s kind and generous.

She is not, however, naive. Did she deserve an extended stay in a Swiss chalet after the past years in which Dashiell Owens—the least kind, least generous person I know—cheated on her, leaving her with nothing due to my parents’ prenup and forcing her to work multiple jobs, one of which led to her accident and overwhelming medical debt? Of course.

Has she probably noticed the timing of said trip to align with my own far-from-innocent motives in Switzerland involving an unusual invitation I had just received?

Probably. Yes.

Her next message hits my screen.

If you change your mind, I’m not far away.

My heart feels tight when I write my reply.

I know. Thanks Mom. I hope you enjoy your trip.

I figured my mom would be more willing to let me visit Volenvell Castle if the Switzerland plan was framed as a family trip.

It worked, and despite my determined dispassion, I’ve permitted myself to enjoy the past few days with the family I love.

We celebrated a small Christmas in Zurich with Jackson and without objection from the Roese family, who unsurprisingly love my mom.

We had chocolate and pastries and strolled in our coats along four-hundred-year-old streets, admiring the Christmas lights.

And then, in the morning, Jackson and I got on this train to venture into the waiting arms of people my mother refuses to speak to ever again.

“I miss McCoy,” Kevin says. He sounds morose, having evidently hoped for one happy heist reunion.

Me too , I don’t say, though I feel the same.

Peter McCoy has been sort of like… my mentor or whatever.

I don’t love the vocabulary. Makes me feel like a medieval craftsperson.

Nevertheless, it’s the closest word I have for my freshman-year English teacher.

I’d say father figure, except, well, father figures don’t exactly carry positive connotations for me.

Fired from his Berkshire Preparatory job due to my actual father’s complaints, Mr. McCoy reluctantly, but competently, helped me on my first heist. It makes me sad he isn’t joining us on my second, which is one more confession I’ve never spoken out loud.

I get it. With his revenge executed and the money he needed to restart his teaching career elsewhere, McCoy has found himself understandably less interested in crime these days.

He remains supportive, if lightly disapproving.

When I reminded him Dickens’s most famous young heroes were thieves, invoking my childhood favorite, Oliver Twist , it did get him to drop our why don’t you focus on college instead of crime? discussion.

“I did ask if he wanted in,” I tell the crew.

“I saw he’s still living in England,” Deonte says. While McCoy is not on our group chat due to it’s too weird reasons, he let us follow his private Instagram, theliteratepete .

I nod. “He said he’s not leaving until he’s seen every Shakespeare play at the Globe.”

“Going to be difficult,” Deonte muses. “Probably don’t do Cymbeline or Measure for Measure very often.”

I’m swallowing my laugh when my phone hums in my hand. My mom’s message pulls me from the introductions again.

I hope you get what you want from yours.

I read her message over.

Then I pocket my phone, hearing her insinuation ringing in her words, crisp as the weather.

What you want.

While I’ve never come clean to her regarding exactly how my father’s money found its way into her finances, instead hinting he gifted it to his daughter out of guilt, I suspect she suspects what really happened.

She’s said nothing about it, which doesn’t surprise me. My mother was married to Dash for years. She’s used to not asking questions she doesn’t want the answers to.

The train hisses into the station, forcing my mind onto the logistics instead. “Everyone, please,” I interrupt sharply. “I insist you enjoy the view. When this train stops, the job officially begins.”

My command works, pulling the group’s focus to me. Everyone sits up a little straighter, electricity sparking in the small carriage.

“On our way to our next destination,” I continue, “we will pass other passengers, pedestrians, train attendants, hoteliers, who knows what. Consequently, until we have reached our secure location, we will speak only of how nice this view is. Nothing can identify us,” I emphasize, “or make us memorable.”

As we file off the train and onto the platform of Rothbad, Switzerland, the network of metal and plexiglass charms me like no snowy Swiss mountainsides could, for they, unglamorous and structural, represent the next piece of the plan fitting into place.

I feel good. Really good. Heart racing, unlike this train. With my crew reassembled, rivalries and resentments, jealousies and jokes will give way to the icy mechanics of the heist.

Finally. The moment I’ve waited months for.

“Welcome,” I say, “to Chess Club.”