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H IS ULTIMATUM LEAVES ME NO CHOICE. “Y OUR ROOM, ” I DEMAND. “Now.” If my father means what he’s saying, I share his concern for unwanted eavesdroppers interrupting our negotiations. Plus, if Otto apprehends us jamming up the hallway, we’ll probably incur a lecture on fire hazards.

“Follow me,” Dash replies.

I do, continuing out of the hallway into the atrium, where Norway returners are mingling with other guests—including Abigail, whose gaze finds me and our father immediately.

Deonte is with her. I don’t even want to wonder how their romance has progressed in my absence.

His hand in hers, Abigail crosses to us.

“What’s going on?” she demands, intuiting there’s nothing innocent in my chat with Dad.

“Nothing,” I say.

“Abigail,” Dash interjects warmly. “Please, join us.”

I purse my lips in irritation. Abigail looks like she didn’t need the invitation. With no reply, she falls into step with me, tugging Deonte with her as we follow Dash.

At the massive double staircases, Dash does not ascend the ones leading to the guest wing.

Instead, he heads up Leonie’s stairs. The family wing.

The medieval luxury of the hallway greets our party grandly, white sun reflected on the dark hardwood. Dash leads us to the end of the passage, where he opens the door for us.

Passing him, I enter my father’s teenage bedroom.

The decor distracts me from our impending discussion.

It’s… disarmingly normal. The double bed with dark blue sheets, the dumbbells near his desk.

The posters on the walls, the prototype of my father’s den in Rhode Island.

Hair metal bands and favorite movies. Whitesnake, KISS, Poison. Rambo: First Blood.

I remember the newspaper articles on Leonie and Andrew’s divorce. Dash remained with Andrew in the United States, but of course he would have had to stay somewhere when he visited his mom.

Unable to help myself, I look to Dash.

He shrugs without embarrassment for the youthful decorations.

“Even though I lived with my father after my parents’ divorce, I had a room here.

I still do,” he explains. He gazes over the furniture, and unusual quiet enters his voice and expression.

“Even after all these years, she never changed a thing.”

I hate remembering my father is a person. Hate it.

The room forces me to recognize this fundamental reality.

Inescapable, like the labyrinth of family itself.

Dash was once the son Andrew Owens had loved.

Once the young man my mom had adored. Once the brother Hammond and Elwood had looked up to.

Once the boy whose parents had cut his life in half, leaving him to close up the wounds the best he could.

Had he ever felt the way I do when I visit my unchanged bedroom in his house?

I wonder why Leonie left the room the same. I mean, I wonder why my father left my room the same. If I could explain why parents make the contradictory choices they do, I’d be well adjusted and not pulling a heist right now.

I don’t have to ponder the questions for long. Deonte, Jackson, and Abigail follow me in. My sister closes the door with ominousness she probably intends.

Dash regards them. He grins with cold mirth—the father I know. “You want to assemble the rest of your crew ?” he asks me, patronization unhidden and intended. He chuckles. “Did you really involve Kevin Webber again?”

I ignore him. Maintaining my calm, I remove my backpack. I reach into the pouch in which I stored my Norway score, where, yes, I find cold metal.

“You don’t have the ring,” I say. “I do. I stole it in Norway.”

Deonte startles in relief. “Nice job,” he says.

“Yes, well done, Olivia,” Dash drawls. “Unfortunately, you should have listened to me when I said you could learn a couple things from your father. Namely, how to use your money. Or should I say, my money?”

Abigail glares. Deonte shifts uncomfortably.

I resent my father’s confidence. I clutch the ring tightly in my hand, uncertain.

“It’s a fake,” Dash says, nodding at my grip. “You did steal the real one in Norway, though. Impressive work. But somewhere along the way home… your score was heisted out from under you.”

He says the final words coyly. Smug. Of course he is. I’m not the only Owens who finds revenge wedding-cake sweet. With his unhurried declarations of victory, I feel panic quicken my pulse, shallowing my breathing.

It’s impossible. I have the ring. I’ve had the ring the entire time. I never let it out of my possession or my sight once. Except—

Impossible.

Since the airport, I haven’t dared take out the necklace. I examine it now, and my heart sinks. There’s no engraving inside.

Dash smiles.

“You’re playing a game we’ve all mastered. Think bigger. Beyond your group of high school friends. No offense,” he remarks to Deonte.

“Actually, no, I’m going to take offense,” Deonte retorts.

I don’t like the withering look Dash deals him. Neither, I note, does Abigail. My sister’s nostrils flare.

“Instead of putting your money into bakeries ,” Dash recommends, “you could put your money into your next con. Invest smarter.”

The pieces snap together in my head. “Leonie’s plane,” I say, groaning. Of course.

But how? I was never far from the necklace. I watched it every second I wasn’t in the full-body scanner.

My father grins, either pleased I’ve put it together, or just pleased he can gloat fully. Probably the latter.

“Pay the right people and planes can easily fail inspection, forcing your family to fly commercial,” he says, Professor Dash in a lecture on thievery.

“When a person or a bag travels through the X-ray machine, the security agents see exactly where everything is. Pay every single one of them on duty before your flight, and the agents examining the Owens family will search for a very specific piece of jewelry. When they find it—not on the seventy-year-old woman they expected, but in the bag of a seventeen-year-old girl—they’ll swap the ring with a fake.

All I had to do was make sure I went through security last, and those same agents could easily place the stolen ring in my bag. ”

I fume, hating becoming his student. Still, it’s a lesson I won’t ignore.

But not quite in the way he means it. Just because family is and always will be a threat doesn’t mean I can trust strangers, either.

No one is safe. No one is beyond the reach of my family’s money.

Their empire isn’t a mansion or a castle. It’s the world.

“It didn’t cost me that much, honestly,” Dash goes on. “Half a mil, altogether. You have to make sure it’s a sum that erodes morals. Of course, I know you’ve already mastered that lesson, daughter.” His eyes flit to Jackson, to Deonte.

“I memorized the combination,” I reply through gritted teeth. “I don’t need the ring to get inside the vault.”

“No. I suppose you don’t. Neither will anyone else I give the ring to, either. Of course, I could promise not to,” he says, his eyes pinning me, “ if we work together.”