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“You inherited your father’s cuff links, didn’t you? You joined the club after he died,” I say.

We’ve reached the questions I spent the snowy drive down the mountain working over. The real reason we’re here—no disrespect to the welcoming decor and impeccable music.

The truth is, I can’t trust Otto Karlson or my father. Believed, past tense. Whoever is my most incontrovertible suspect is the person I need to conclude killed my grandfather. Even if it’s the man in front of me.

“You had a very strong motive to want him dead,” I continue. “Was it the task the Knives gave you to join? Were you assigned to kill your own father for membership?”

Dash startles. “How did you—?” It never fails to stun adults when I’ve figured something out on my own.

Then cold erases Dash’s expression.

“No. I didn’t,” he says. “I did a task for the Knives, but it wasn’t that and it’s nothing you ever need to know. Once I repossess my cuff links, I’ll be back in the club.”

I stare him down. He holds my gaze while questions explode in my head. What did he do for the Knives? How did he use his membership? Why would he want to join an organization he believes killed his father? I’ve reckoned with the positive change my father is capable of. What else is he capable of?

“Did Leonie know you were a Knife? Is it why she cast you out of the family? She probably knows how much you’ve stolen from your own father even after his death—”

“Leonie didn’t cast me out,” Dash says, his voice rising. Strands of his hair fall forward over his brow with the force of his declaration.

I startle. What he’s saying doesn’t make sense. Years of visits and phone calls ended overnight, right around when Andrew died. Of course it’s why—

Abigail speaks up, her shrewd gaze on our father.

“ You left the family,” she says slowly. “She made you apologize when you arrived. It wasn’t because you did something that made her toss you out. It’s because you chose to leave.”

It’s funny. Right now, unraveling deception and decades-old intrigues, we feel more like family to me than ever before. This conversation, the way we’re piecing together everything, is… easy .

Dash straightens his hair, regaining his composure. “If I have a motive for murder, it’s not against my father,” he says, his voice softer now.

“Tell me, or the deal is off,” I demand.

He glares, but he can’t walk away from this table. If he has something to clear his name, he needs to tell me, or I’ll hand him to Leonie myself.

“When my father got sick, he called me to his bedside. Had something he needed to get off his chest.” Dash’s eyes go distant as he returns to the past. “He… wanted me to know the truth.” He sucks in a defeated breath. “I… wasn’t an Owens. Not really. Andrew wasn’t my father.”

My hand slips, knocking my silverware to the ground.

“That’s… impossible,” I say hopelessly. The one member of my Owens family who was truly good… isn’t my family? I feel suddenly dizzy.

“Leonie got pregnant out of wedlock. It was… scandalous at the time and in her social circles.” Bitterness steeps in Dash’s voice.

“She would have been ruined. Andrew, her friend, offered to marry her. They hid the truth from me all those years. But before he died, Andrew wanted me to know. In case I ever wanted to find my real father. He… he told me he chose me in the divorce because he always wanted me to know I was his son, no matter my blood.”

He pulls his eyes back to me. I’m surprised to find sympathy in his gaze. He knows what this reveal is doing to me because it did it to him once, too.

“When I confronted Leonie, she refused to tell me who my father was. So I left. I couldn’t look at her any longer.” He shakes his head, full of long-undying fury. “She lied to me my whole life just to protect herself.”

I feel Abigail keenly at my side. How much has Dash hidden from us? In hating his mother, he certainly didn’t avoid inheriting her vices.

“That’s why you pulled me aside to ask how the family was treating me. You told me to come to you if they ever gave me trouble,” Abigail says. “Because you and I are the same. Not raised by our real fathers.”

“Yes.” His expression grows kind as he looks at Abigail.

“They need to know that even though I’m not like them, I’m still their family.

So, you see, I never would have hurt Andrew.

Never. He was the one person who chose me.

Who did right by me. It didn’t matter I wasn’t his.

I will always be more loyal to him than to anyone else with my last name. ”

He’s telling the truth. Dash can’t fake emotion like this.

My world is upside down. My grandfather isn’t my grandfather, and my father is innocent. Of this, at least.

“But Leonie believes you killed Andrew for his fortune because you found out he wasn’t really your father,” Abigail concludes.

“Why now?” I wonder aloud. “Why try to catch you now ? Ten years later.”

“Don’t ask me to explain the actions of that vicious woman,” Dash says, his voice scathing. “I don’t care what she does, but I won’t let her convince everyone I killed Andrew just because she hates me for confronting her with decades of her lies. I won’t let her have her revenge.”

While Dash stares into his drink, I follow where our deductions lead.

Someone else did kill Andrew. Not my father, not with what he’s just revealed.

Which means it was the Knives, trying to reclaim what Leonie stole from them or punishing Andrew for betraying them.

While Dash’s revelation is painful, it doesn’t change how keenly I feel the loss of the man I knew and cherished as my grandfather.

Never have I felt my heist’s imperative more sharply. Knife -sharp.

If I don’t help the organization that ordered Andrew Owens’s execution, others I love will die.

From the fraught darkness, new possibilities emerge. Theories, plans, strategies, rising like castles in my mind.

“I need to get into that vault, and we can’t let anyone get there first,” I say, returning to this meeting’s purpose. “No more stunts with the combination. I appreciate the point of your demonstration by giving Mia the wrong combination, but we can’t waste time on—”

Dash interrupts me. “I didn’t give Mia the wrong combination.”

Abigail straightens in her seat. “She put in what you gave her. It didn’t open the vault.”

“I sent her the combination exactly,” he insists. “If the vault didn’t open, then…”

In his unfinished sentence, I feel everything shift once more. If the ring engraving doesn’t open the vault, what does it mean? It’s a string of random numbers, having nothing to do with Leonie’s wedding or Andrew.

Panic enters Dash’s eyes. He’s just realized what I have. The ring is useless. He has nothing to offer us. I could cut him loose right now.

But the ring has to mean something. The quiet, calculating part of me is certain—the part of me that found the key to my last heist in my father’s unassuming trust documentation.

The ring—which Leonie wore around her neck, which she romantically remembered when I unlocked her jewelry box—is part of this.

And besides… maybe I don’t want to damn Dashiell Owens to the family’s ruthless suspicions of him. I don’t want him to go down for a crime he didn’t commit.

I’d much rather he go down for a crime he did commit.

“The deal still stands. Give me the ring and don’t betray us. When we’ve pulled our heist and gotten out safely, the cuff links are yours,” I say.

His eyes widen in surprise before he regains his negotiation demeanor. “I want to see that you have the cuff links first, and”—he pauses—“I will remain with someone from your crew until I have them in my possession.”

While I’m reminded of Kevin ransoming the wedding heist for the chance to hang out with us, I’m relieved. I find Dash’s conditions… reasonable. I was worried he’d negotiate in weekly dinners or something, like high-stakes Gilmore Girls .

Yes, Dash is irritating. Unlike Kevin, however, he’s discreet. If he wants to hang out with Tom during the Volenvell heist, fine. They can compare menswear opinions. It’s worth the security of knowing he won’t betray us.

And the cuff links…

I meet Abigail’s glance. I nod, and my sister produces the shining knives. She sets them on the table in front of her.

Dash huffs a laugh. “Well done.”

I snatch them up. I wouldn’t put it past Dash to grab our prized item off the table in front of him.

Instead, our father’s posture relaxes. “Seems all that’s left is for you to find out how you’re going to get into the vault now that the combination doesn’t work. I assume you don’t have a drill?”

I watch the ice melt in his glass. The vault is being repaired as we speak, and we don’t have a way to get in.

Explosives clearly didn’t work, not that we could get any on such short notice.

What if we got something stronger? No. Grace said these vaults can survive nuclear explosions. What we need is—

I look up.

The board has changed, presenting new barriers. New opportunities, too, however. Riskier, yes. The kind of risk worth millions.

“I don’t need a drill,” I reply.

Dash’s eyebrows rise. Abigail smirks, watching my expression.

Dash looks between the two of us. Then he grins, his slick smile matching my sister’s. He holds his hand out to shake.

“Well, then,” our father says. “Looks like you just got a new crew member.”