Page 67

I CLOSE US INTO THE DARK.

There are no lights within. No one was ever intended to do what we’re doing, locking ourselves inside. We’re thrown into black when the merciless door slides shut, the pounding outside muffled by the thick metal sealing us in.

I pull out my phone.

Hitting the flashlight, I illuminate the small metal room.

Shelves surround us. Some hold filing chests.

Others, slim metal jewelry boxes, enough to hold diamonds innumerable.

Paintings in glass frames rest in dividers, porcelain vases on one high shelf.

Against the far wall, in dense metal crates— the gold .

I don’t know how much wealth surrounds us. Hundreds of millions, possibly. Not incalculable. Just—unfathomable.

Leonie doesn’t seem to enjoy my scrutiny. “Otto would have heard the commotion,” she huffs. “He’ll have them thrown out soon.”

I nod, preoccupied, moving carefully inside the vault cavity. When my gaze moves from one shelf of treasures to the next, I catch Dash’s eye. I recognize my own calculating greed in him like I would in a mirror.

“Hopefully we don’t run out of air first,” Leonie continues. She sounds unreasonably impatient, as if we used the wrong kind of milk in her coffee or something.

We’re helpless in here. The vault door doesn’t open from the inside. However, she’s wrong about the air. “We won’t,” I say. “Bank vaults are built with an air source in case tellers are locked inside. It happens more than you’d think.”

Leonie laughs harshly. “Of course you would know that, given your plans. Well, you’re inside now. Is it everything you imagined?”

“More,” I reply honestly.

In the darkness, I can’t gauge Leonie’s expression in my peripheral vision. With the indignation in her voice, I don’t need to. “More?” she repeats. “All that research and you didn’t know exactly what you were trying to steal,” she chastens.

“Oh, I knew,” I reply. “But I didn’t imagine how good this moment would feel.”

I practically feel Leonie go still.

“What do you mean?” she finally dares. Realizing I don’t sound like a hostage—I sound like a conqueror.

I shine my light on her. Her posture is rigid. With discomfort, not confidence. I know the feeling of imminent failure. Of deep, inescapable panic. Of everything falling apart.

It feels cold.

“Listen,” I say quietly. “No more pounding.”

Outside the vault is silence. I square my shoulders to my grandmother, feeling victorious.

Her gaze snaps to me. “What did you do?”

I grin and look to Dash. “Was the vault cracker apprehended?” I ask.

“Tom pointed him out to security the second Leonie left the party,” he replies dryly.

“You…” Leonie’s eyes narrow. She struggles to recover. “They were never Knives, were they?” When I shake my head no, she frowns. “Who was pounding on the doors? Who…” She turns to my father. “Who punched you?”

“That would be my crew,” I reply. “Lovely people. Very skillful. Although I am curious who won the coin toss to throw the punch,” I say to Dash.

“Grace, unfortunately,” my father grumbles. “She’s quite strong. She might’ve broken my nose.”

“You’ll live,” I reply.

“I will,” my father agrees.

His words hang in the darkness, the rest of the sentence unspoken. Because you saved me. In the flashlight’s illumination, his gaze lingers, his gratitude unmistakable.

I could have followed Leonie’s grand plan. I could easily have turned on the father who once turned on me. I didn’t. I haven’t forgiven him everything he’s done—obviously—but… I don’t hate him, either.

I never really did. Hurt changed into vengefulness streaked with hunger for his recognition, then once more into coldhearted independence.

Never hate, though.

Besides, if I wanted to destroy Dash Owens, I wouldn’t do it in service of someone else’s machine. It would be my plan.

The conviction sharpened in me when I considered Leonie’s full scheme.

I’m done following in the footsteps of my family.

Instead, I remind myself of the Olivia Owens I want to be.

Selfish and selfless. The diamond and the darkness.

Rather than damning my father, independence demanded a new plan, forcing me to outwit and outdo the Owens legacy.

I found vengeance in mercy, cunning in loyalty.

I don’t need to be their heiress. I am my own destiny.

“I would say I can’t believe it…,” Leonie mutters. “It was a risky play. But I’ve learned myself how sometimes the risky plans are the only ones with a chance of success.”

Her show of frustration doesn’t quite reach the depths of her voice. Underneath her ire, she’s impressed.

It was risky, I knew. I got the idea from what Grace said—how some vaults have even survived nuclear explosions. I reversed Grace’s thinking. Instead of breaking through the vault’s protections, what if the vault was used to protect us ?

I suppose nuclear blasts weren’t my only inspiration while my plan formed. So much of my thinking was done in Volenvell’s hallways past midnight. The labyrinth. Leonie’s luxurious edifice. Her confinement.

Her refuge, I eventually understood, from the Knives. The line between prison and sanctuary, shimmering with the fragility of thin ice.

I only needed to engineer a scenario where Leonie genuinely thought we were in real danger.

A suspicious outsider with a penchant for violence and ties to people powerful enough to get him out of jail was everything I needed—or, enough for my crew to do the rest. The New Year’s Eve fireworks we heard overhead were the perfect complement.

“You almost called our bluff,” I commented. “If you had waited longer, two teenagers would have stormed in here. Tom and Grace are intimidatingly well dressed, but they’re no Knives.”

Leonie hmph s. I narrow my gaze, half curious and half crowing.

“What made you change your mind?” I ask.

In the silence, I regard her with the pinpoint shine of my flashlight. She’s visibly uncomfortable. She doesn’t like to be bested. But this answer in particular is stealing something from her, I realize—one final secret.

“You called him… Dad ,” she confesses, pronouncing the casual moniker as if it’s foreign. “After everything he did to you…,” she marvels.

Her eyes stray to Dash as she says it. The darkness seems to surround her words, scorning a fragment of what looks like hope in her face. She hates him for what he confronted her with, but beneath that, love remains. I know better than anyone how the feelings can intertwine in a heart.

Honestly, I don’t know if reconciliation is possible between them. But I never thought I would work with Dash, either.

Dash doesn’t respond.

“What do you plan to do with the Knives list?” Leonie inquires with almost weary formality.

Back to business. When you have nothing else left, the cold comfort of your own machinations feels like home.

“The moment we get out of here, will you send the club after me? Your perfect revenge for the years I neglected you?”

I tighten my grip on the envelope.

“First,” I say, “we have to get out of here.”

Honestly, she couldn’t have set me up better.

I grin. “Tell me the combination, and I’ll have my crew open the door,” I say.

Leonie purses her lips. It’s her turn to fit the final pieces into place. “I imagine you don’t plan to leave empty-handed,” she says slowly.

“I do not,” I confirm.

The gold surrounds us. The diamonds. The fortune. Imposing in expectation, like it doesn’t yet know it’s mine.

No, not mine. Ours.

“I could always refuse to tell you,” she protests petulantly. “I could be buried with my fortune after all. Lobster mousse and quail… one could do worse for one’s last meal.”

I shake my head. I knew we’d won the moment we set foot inside the metal chamber.

“You saved us,” I remind her. “You saved us when you didn’t have to. Even though the threat wasn’t real, your choice still was. You could have waited for the Knives to storm in. I would have been holding the list. You could have pinned it on both of us and talked your way out of it.”

“The thought did cross my mind,” Leonie replies, but her peevishness is performed. Dooming us did cross her mind—if only for the instant it took for Leonie Owens to retreat from the edge of darkness.

“And yet here we are,” Dash rejoins. “You’ve made plenty of horrible choices in your life, but what do you know? Even you still have a heart.”

I find myself smiling. I definitely haven’t forgiven my father. However, him teasing his villainous mom does earn him some points.

More surprisingly, Leonie lets him. “A small one, perhaps,” she concedes slyly.

Of all the mysteries I’ve sought answers to in Volenvell, this is the one I didn’t know I needed the most. Proof that despite everything my grandmother has said, everything she’s done, glimmers of redemption flicker within even the iciest of hearts. Goodness in even the most wicked Owens.

It’s not much, but it’s something. Because if even Leonie can put nobility and compassion over her fortune, and over decades of instincts sharpened for self-preservation, strategy, and supremacy, well… Maybe no one is beyond hope.

Soft rapping on the steel door intrudes on the moment. A reminder of the outside world. Of our victory.

“The combination, Grandmother?” I prompt Leonie.

She stares at the door for a moment, no doubt fantasizing about giving in to spite for one moment more before rolling her eyes and reaching for my phone. I watch as she types in the numbers. When she finishes, she holds it out to me.

My fingers on the phone, Leonie doesn’t let go. We stand there, each clasping half the prize.

“I wasn’t lying when I said this fortune was a curse,” she says, her gaze locked on mine. “Now it’s your curse.”

Despite her icy tone, her eyes sparkle like diamonds in the dark. She releases the phone, finally surrendering.

It only takes seconds after I send the text before I hear great mechanisms moving inside the door. A moment later, it swings wide.

In the sharp light of the dungeon stand Tom, Grace, Kevin, Deonte, and Abigail. My crew.

And trays of glorious cake.