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I know her fear intimately. Haven’t I spent the week, the months, the years wondering whether I was becoming my father, or my grandmother?

Mia is like me, whether or not I welcome the comparison.

She—like Hammond, like Dash—has her own fraught place in our family of thieves.

Why wouldn’t Mia fear her own future the same way I do?

Why wouldn’t she also fight her hardest to escape it?

Of course, understanding Mia doesn’t mean handing her the vault. She wouldn’t want it if I did, which I respect.

“I underestimated you, cousin,” I concede.

“Yeah, you did,” Mia replies. “Because you’re about to lose.”

Grace whips her gaze to the vault crackers, understanding entering her eyes. Her expression freezes in horror.

She speaks directly to the intruders. “You have to stop,” she implores them. Panic has leaped into my crew member’s voice. “It won’t work. This vault is too strong. I’ve triggered the relockers.”

The men don’t stop.

While Tom grabs our drill and starts hauling it to the case, Abigail darts to the men’s equipment bag. “They don’t care. They have explosives,” my sister announces. “They’re going to blow their way in.”

“No. They can’t.” Grace’s voice chills me. Not just intent. Pleading. “You have to tell them to stop,” she orders my cousin. “It won’t work. It won’t. All they’ll do is bring the building down on you. These vaults have survived nuclear blasts.”

I remember my research in the heist’s initial planning phase. Grace is right. High-caliber vaults withstand most explosives. Whereas the medieval Volenvell…

Swedish military fortification never foresaw pounds of C-4 set off within a thirty-square-foot room under five stories of stone.

“You’re not just going to lose,” Grace says. “You could die.”

Mia pales.

She didn’t know , I realize. She brought these men in without asking for their every contingency plan. She didn’t check their equipment when she snuck them in. She rounds on them, speaking rapid-fire French, which they ignore.

Fast, deliberate movement in my peripheral vision startles me. Jackson stands, releasing Finn. With everything crumbling, he abandons the caution I silently pleaded from him. Unhesitating, he lunges for the drilling man.

The other man intercepts him, wrestling furiously. The drill tip slips off the wall while the motor howls on. I see the man throw a punch, his fist hammering into Jackson’s face. Blood sprays onto Mia’s white sweater. Jackson goes down hard, pummeled under the man’s blows.

Finn responds fast, recognizing Mia has lost control.

He enters the fray—but not to help his sister.

Fighting each other was one thing. Letting Jackson take hits from men twice his age is another.

He pulls the man off Jackson while Mia’s voice pitches up, matching the screaming of the drill. The dungeon is descending into chaos.

“Abigail, call Deonte,” I order. My heart is pounding. “Tell him to stop—” Whatever happens, I won’t say Puss in Boots during this safecracking fistfight with our lives on the line. “The distraction,” I finish. “We need security. Now.”

“We’ll all get caught,” Tom objects.

He’s right. I know he’s right. I push my fingernails into my palms, fending off panic. If we’re lucky we’ll be sent home. If we’re unlucky, we’ll be calling Mitchum Webber from jail.

Either way, we will have lost the vault. The heist will be over.

I won’t risk my crew, though. I won’t follow the fucking Owens family rules on this, the ones saying money is everything, manipulation is fair game, and people are for exploiting. My heist is worth more to me than everything except my friends.

“We’re leaving,” I say. “If there’s another way, we’ll find it,” I promise. “If there isn’t… we’ll leave with our lives.”

Mia continues to scream in obviously unhappy French.

The men ignore her. The driller kills the machine, then paces to his equipment to collect the explosives.

I understand their plan perfectly. They know the detonation holds their only chance of reaching their objective before they’re caught.

They won’t listen to the kids telling them not to pursue what is within their reach.

Could we overpower them together? Maybe, but Mia didn’t know they had explosives. What other weapons might they have smuggled in? What Jackson did, lunging for the driller, was dangerous. No, I won’t risk him or Grace or Tom or Abigail or Sofia, or even Mia or Finn.

“We’re leaving,” I repeat. “Now.”

I head for the dungeon stairs. Tom grabs Grace’s elbow.

She cries out in frustration, but comes with, leaving her equipment on the cold cobblestone floor.

Sofia flees for the stairs. Jackson, his face bloodied, hesitates next to the vault.

Then he doubles back, hoisting Grace’s drill, trying to return the machinery into the rolling suitcase.

“Jackson!” I shout, frantic. “Leave it!”

“We won’t get it back,” he protests. “Grace can’t undo what she’s done without it. It’ll be over.”

What’s gotten into him? The insistence. The defiance in his voice. He can’t care about my heist this much. It’s not him. Is he just doing this because he knows it’s important to me? The question scares me. “Jackson,” I utter, panic-choked. “Please.”

His eyes meet mine. When he realizes I’m waiting for him—endangering myself in the dungeon with every delayed second—he drops the drill. He moves swiftly to the stairwell, leaving only Abigail and my cousins in the dungeon with the fearsomely intrepid vault crackers.

“Mia, we have to go,” Finn urges. And—there it is, in cousin Finn’s eyes, finally. Fear. Love.

Mia hesitates.

“Mia,” her brother insists.

The men pack lethal putty into the hole. My sister is the one to grab Mia’s wrist. She pulls Mia forward unceremoniously while Mia resists. “It’s not worth it,” Abigail pleads. “This family isn’t worth shit.”

But Mia doesn’t move.