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F ROM WHAT I REMEMBER OF R OTHBAD, THE SMALL MUNICIPALITY closest to Volenvell Castle, we will not be the first group of expensively dressed teenagers to check into the Hotel Evelisse. Nor will we be the last.

Rothbad is the perfect little Swiss postcard city, a cross section of elite restaurants, cozy coffee shops, quaint charm, and European wealth.

Fifteen minutes on the curved, snowy streets lead us to the curved, snowy driveway of the Hotel Evelisse, where I have never stayed.

It’s impressive in the low, inconspicuous way of the city, several stories of white-pink stone with high French windows.

Snow has sprinkled over the trees outside and the stone foundation set into the hillside.

I notice eyebrows rise in admiration when we enter the lobby, check in, and continue up into the cream-colored hallways.

With our luggage waiting at the front desk, where the staff relocated it from the SUV I hired, the group files into the hotel room slowly—except Kevin, who pounces on the room service menu the moment we get in the door.

The room is tastefully luxurious. We gather in the small living room, where a circular coffee table overlooks the tall, narrow window.

Past the railing, the ivory face of the Swiss Alps rises over Rothbad.

I move to the cushioned dust-pink chair—if I’m King, it’s exactly the throne I would want—where I wait for everyone to sit. They do, even Kevin.

Jackson leans forward, unquestionably focused. I recognize the expression from his soccer practices I’d half watched while doing homework in the warmer months.

The determination in his eyes, the rigor, is hot. I won’t pretend otherwise. But I don’t have time for fantasies. Not with everyone watching me, chess pieces ready to play our opening moves. Waiting among them, Jackson is my crew, not my crush.

With their focus on me, I can’t deny that I, like Tom, love a spotlight. It’s not just money that I crave, although I very much do. It’s this. Feeling competent. Feeling in control.

So much of the last three years had left me powerless. I hadn’t been responsible for what my dad did to my mom. When I’d told her that I’d seen him cheating, I’d watched my entire life fall apart. I’d lost everything—even myself.

In leading a crew, I finally have authority over my own life. If everything falls apart again, it’ll be my fault. I take comfort in that.

“Thank you, everyone, for joining me in Switzerland. I hope each of you has a… rewarding trip,” I say, smiling. “This is your only chance for questions before we are surrounded by enemies as we steal my grandmother’s fortune at her birthday party on New Year’s Eve.”

Everyone is hushed, holding their breath.

I pull from my purse—Louis Vuitton, of course—the invitation I’ve kept since it arrived in my mail three months ago. Heavy black lining around a cream-white card. Thick, textured paper. Embossed gold-foil script.

Leonie Owens warmly invites you to her seventieth birthday celebration on New Year’s Eve. Family are welcome to reunite for a full week at Volenvell Castle.

I pass the card around the group, watching the gold glisten in each of their hands.

“Volenvell,” Kevin reads aloud with very posh French diction. “So, what’s the deal here? Did your grandma rent out a whole castle for her shindig?”

Kevin’s assumption is understandable. Medieval castles across Europe have been converted to hotels and rentals used for weddings, drunken bachelor parties, and private travel for the wealthy.

Understandable, and wrong.

“Volenvell is ours,” I answer. “Hers, I should say. It’s been in my grandmother’s family since the medieval era.”

Tom passes the card to Grace. “So, of all the money in this room, in this whole hotel, yours is the oldest,” he comments, as if he’s remarking on the weather. When his eyes meet mine, though, I see something evaluating in his examination of me.

Interest in me? Or in my pedigree?

“On my grandmother’s side,” I correct him, uncomfortable. “My late grandfather, Andrew Owens, was self-made. Dash is… well, my father has squandered his inheritance and recently misplaced the rest.”

I’m relieved to see Deonte and Tom smirk. They may come from different worlds, but they both helped me steal everything my father has.

“Your mom isn’t old money.”

I blink, pulling my gaze to Jackson. His remark is factually true but irrelevant to the current discussion.

“No,” I say slowly. “She’s not. But she’s not an Owens. Not anymore.”

Jackson looks just as perplexed as I feel. “She’s your real family, though,” he insists.

“She’s also not relevant to this week,” Tom counters.

I pointedly don’t look at him, not liking how similarly he and I often think.

Jackson turns to him. “I just don’t think Olivia should be defined by only one side of her family. Especially when they have nothing to do with her.”

My name is Owens , I want to say, but don’t. It’s not worth discussing my place in my family here or, frankly, ever. If we did, I’d have to unpack the final words my dad spoke to me at his wedding.

Like father, like daughter. Heiress to an empire of thieves.

“Nothing to do with?” Grace says, holding up my grandmother’s card. “And yet you have this invitation. Did you steal it?”

I’m instantly grateful for Grace’s perceptive focus. She leans forward, examining the invitation as if I’m going to require her to reproduce the card from memory later. Which, I mean, who knows?

“I didn’t steal it,” I confirm. Fair guess , I want to say. Stealing the invite would be very me.

Unfortunately, the reality is worse.

“It was sent to me. But Jackson is right,” I continue.

Does Tom’s expression ice over like the pavement outside?

Possibly. “I haven’t spoken to my grandmother since she cut off contact with my father ten years ago.

I don’t know why they’re estranged, although I have to assume it’s because my father is an asshole.

Leonie didn’t come out for his wedding this year. ”

When only Grace’s eyebrows rise, I remember she has yet to experience the wonderfully warped Owens family. How fun for her.

“She doesn’t call,” I continue. “She doesn’t write. Whatever pushed them apart, it’s nothing insignificant. I haven’t been invited to Volenvell since I was a kid.”

“So why now?” Deonte asks.

Why now? Standing at my mail slot where I first opened the invitation in my old Coventry home, I weighed the same question.

Now that I no longer live with her estranged son, does she consider me family again?

Or—what if she’s not welcoming me home to Volenvell at all?

What if she’s inviting me to the end of my own young empire?

You know what they say—keep your enemies close, but your family closer.

In the end, I give Deonte what I would want from every member of my crew—honesty.

“I don’t know,” I say.

“Maybe turning seventy has softened her,” Jackson offers. “Maybe she wants to get to know her granddaughter.”

I laugh dryly. Never in months of my own speculation, not once, could I muster up the optimism for this conclusion. “I doubt it,” I say.

“Or she has her own agenda,” Tom suggests pointedly. I pretend I don’t hear the one-upmanship in his voice. Perhaps it is worth directing heist funds to a PlayStation where they can exorcise their competition on the small screen.

I have no choice but to agree with Tom. “Certainly. Which is why we all have to be extremely careful this week. Not only of Leonie. You can safely assume every Owens at this family reunion has an agenda. Every aunt and uncle. Every cousin. No one is to be trusted,” I conclude.

“No one, except the people in this room.”

The reality of what I’ve said settles in over my crew. The hush is cold like the white mountains outside the Hotel Evelisse.

I know what they’re feeling. Trust doesn’t come easily to me. I wish I could say my father cheating on my mom—repeatedly, I recently learned, courtesy of the vanished girl I once called Queen—didn’t fuck me up, but… it did.

Even in my crew, I don’t know how to free myself from suspicion.

I remind myself everyone chose to be here.

Everyone needs one another. It’s the opposite of family, in a way.

You’re connected to family forever, no matter whether you want to be.

What real loyalty could be found in people whom history and blood will hold you close to no matter how they hurt you?

I learned the lesson keenest from Abigail. My half sister, knifing her legacy of suspicion into my heart. She never was my crew, not really. She was my greatest misfortune. Family.

A crash from the corner jolts me from my thoughts. Kevin, who was playing with the in-room iPhone speakers and clock, has knocked the unit to the ground.

“Whoops,” Bishop says. “My bad.”

Deonte struggles not to smile. Feeling the somber suspicion in the room fade, I do something I’m finding is becoming instinct—I use the moment.

“Now,” I say. “On to the fun part. Our target.”