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N O ONE REPLIES TO D ASH. T HE MOMENT HIS WORDS HAVE LEFT HIS sneer, we rush into the hallway, leaving him in his frozen-in-time room.

“He’s bluffing,” Abigail announces while we hurry down the passage.

“We need to find out for sure,” I reply. It’s easy to assume my father is lying to us, manipulating us. The problem is, it’s equally easy to assume he would plan to double-cross Mia, then double-cross us.

Triple-crossing? Or is it like multiplication? Quadruple-crossing?

Questions I wish I wasn’t asking myself.

Jackson’s soccer-field stride keeps effortless pace with mine. “Tom,” he says darkly. “He’ll know.”

I nod. There’s more than one heiress in this family.

Descending the stairs forces us to slow our pace.

I don’t want Volenvell’s other occupants to notice our suspicious haste.

We walk urgently instead of running down the imposing staircase, returning the way we followed Dash, then reroute to the guest wing stairs.

“I’ll head to the West Tower and keep watch,” Abigail informs me.

“Good,” I reply. “We need all hands on this.”

Abigail splits off from us. While she vanishes into Volenvell, the remaining three of us mount the stairs into the guest wing.

We don’t need to knock when we near Tom’s door. He’s on his way out. “Hey,” he greets the group. His voice holds no echo of our conversation on the Sonnfjord rooftop. No edge, no judgment, no guardedness. “What’s up?”

“Where’s Mia?” I demand.

Tom shrugs. While I’m never completely certain with him, the fact that I’m 95 percent convinced of his honesty is compelling. “She blew me off,” he says.

“Shit,” I mutter.

“I’ll call Kevin,” Deonte offers immediately. He pulls out his phone and retreats down the hallway.

I push myself. Think. Think, Olivia. If the wedding heist taught me one thing—other than to suspect everyone might secretly be your sister, I guess—it’s that pulling a heist is only half planning.

The other half is… right now. Every real heist leader needs to know how to retake control when fate destroys her diagrams and fumbles her phases.

“Is Grace nearby?” I ask. I need to examine the whole chessboard.

Tom opens the door wider, revealing his sister in their room.

I lead everyone inside, Deonte with his phone to his ear. The Phams move to the back, intuiting—with not exactly Sherlockian insight—something is wrong.

“Tom, I need you to go stall Mia. Immediately. She has the combination. She can’t get into the vault before us,” I say, my voice steady with focus.

Tom’s expression sharpens. He doesn’t waste time with questions and explanations. Our heist is at risk, and this is why he’s part of our crew. He nods and leaves, pulling out his phone to text Mia.

I immediately start wearing out the rug with my pacing.

I have the combination. I memorized the numbers I found on Leonie’s ring. I could open the vault right now. But I can’t get the fortune out, not in the middle of the day with the family unpacking from Norway in their rooms overlooking the courtyard. We need to stop Mia.

It would be easiest to report her to Otto and Leonie, but what will that mean for my heist?

Surely they would tighten security. Furthermore, I can’t get Ernest Hensson’s crumpled body out of my head.

If the Knives punished Ernest for failing to get the ring, what will they do to Mia if she’s expelled from Volenvell?

They want into that vault. I don’t have the heartlessness to condemn my cousin to Ernest’s fate.

I look to Grace. I have no plans yet. I’m starting to envision possibilities, however, which are plans’—

Well, I won’t say cousin . What good have cousins ever done me?

“Can you break the vault?” I ask Grace. “So no one can get inside, even with the combination?”

Her eyes widen. “You want me to… trigger the relockers? That’s one of the things I learned to avoid doing. It’s one of the protections vaults like these have against vault crackers,” she replies.

“To learn how to avoid doing something means—” I begin.

She cuts me off. “I can do it.”

“Get here now, dude—” Deonte whispers into his phone.

He’s interrupted when Kevin himself, still on the other end of the line, opens the door and walks into the room. Deonte hangs up.

I pause in front of the Phams’ window. While I know I’m only imagining it, I feel as if the winter sunlight is chasing the shadows from the dark corners of my mind, illuminating new possibilities and opportunities.

“If Mia is trying to get into the vault,” I say slowly, deciding on my conclusion as I speak, “we have to stop her. We have to make the combination worthless.”

“But then how will we get in?” Jackson asks, his voice vibrating with intensity.

“We’ll figure that out later. Before New Year’s Eve,” I reply.

“It’s possible to drill past relockers,” Grace ruminates. “It’s just way harder. It’ll take way longer. I might need more equipment. But it’s possible.”

I nod. It’s risky. Very risky. But it’s what we need to do. It’s the move separating checkmate from check. If I damage Leonie’s vault, I—we—might fail. If we let Mia in, we definitely will.

“It’s the only way,” I insist. “In order to save our heist, we have to stop my cousin’s heist.”

In the room’s hush, I feel my crew evaluating the inevitable, looking for flaws in the gambit.

When no one objects, I proceed. “Right now, we need to make sure Otto doesn’t find out we’re in the dungeon. Which means,” I say, “we need a distraction.”

My eyes swivel to Kevin.

“I know exactly what to do,” he enthuses, as if he’s proposing epic weekend plans. “I… may have stolen Otto’s secret projector,” he confesses. “I was waiting for my moment.”

He looks indicatively to Deonte, who grins slowly. “ Puss in Boots on the rampart?” Deonte asks.

“You read my mind,” Kevin replies.

I evaluate the plan honestly, from perspectives other than how funny it would be if a vein popped out on Otto’s forehead due to the presence of Shrek in his precious castle. If he’s drawn to the rampart… he won’t be in the parlor or dining room with a view of the West Tower door.

It’s… kind of perfect.

“Do it,” I order.

Kevin fist pumps grandly. Not even the steely Grace hides her smile now. “See?” Kevin crows. “I knew I’d be useful.”

“We’re out of time,” Jackson declares, holding up his phone. “Tom says Mia is heading to the tower,” he says. “She’s about to execute her heist.”

I look around the room. I may have no plans and not enough time. What I have is… them. Just a day ago, we were fracturing. Now we’re working in seamless synchrony. It’s wonderfully ironic—the liberation of Leonie’s ring in Norway did reunite us. Just not the way I expected.

With them, I know we have a chance.

“Let’s do this,” I say.