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I exhale in frustration, recognizing I have not improved intra-crew relations. “What I mean is ,” I say sternly, “he was invited to this party—he and Grace—by Mia, who took a liking to him at the wedding and DMed him after his and my public breakup.”

I was delighted when I realized I could weaponize Mia’s most irritating proclivity.

She thought my relationship with Tom was real, not merely part of the wedding heist, and while yes, Tom is obviously handsome, Mia has never missed a chance to take something of mine, even an ex-boyfriend. Especially an ex-boyfriend.

Tom props up one shining shoe on his knee. “I promise you,” he reassures Jackson smugly, “Mia uses me as much as I use her. If you think her inviting Olivia’s recent ex to the family event where Olivia is debuting her new boyfriend is innocent, well…” He shrugs. “You don’t know the Owens family.”

Jackson’s eyes flash with real resentment.

I won’t pretend I don’t understand. Yes, Thomas Pham comes from money like me.

With its pressures, its leisures, its rewards and risks.

Yet none of my crew knows the Owens family the way Jackson does, for one reason.

No one knows me the way Jackson does. He was the one who found me when my father’s cruelty left me in the halls of East Coventry High, who endured dinners with Dash and Lexi, who held me while I cried in fits of panic over my mom and our finances.

Yes, Jackson knows the Owens family.

But defending Jackson will only antagonize Tom. Jackson doesn’t need my defense, I tell myself. He has me. All of me.

“Unfortunately for Mia,” I say pointedly, “her plans for revenge have only helped mine. Knight and Queen will have guests’ permissions in the halls of Volenvell, and at the end of this week, Tom will be able to cast suspicion on Mia when we’ve taken the prize.

Which brings me to how we take the prize. ”

Do everyone’s eyes gleam? I know mine do.

“Gold and diamonds are more conspicuous than transferring funds electronically,” I say. “Given how well Rook’s masterpieces have worked in the past for smuggling…”

Deonte’s shoulders square proudly. Tom laughs in delight.

“Genius,” he offers me genuinely. “The symmetry of it. The poetry. Cakes smuggled goods in last time, and now they’ll smuggle goods out. You outdo yourself, Olivia.”

“I do try,” I reply.

“They’re not just cakes,” Deonte says with the air of correcting someone for mistaking a Porsche for a Prius. “They’re mille-feuilles.” He says the French perfectly.

“I cannot wait to taste them, man,” Kevin says earnestly.

“We know they’ll be spectacular,” I add, looking to Deonte, framed next to Jackson in the dazzling Alpine view.

“Rook has been in Switzerland since school got out, working on this. My grandmother plans her parties personally, which means no interchangeable staff in forgettable uniforms. Leonie will catch intruders. This is why Deonte won’t be an intruder,” I elaborate. “He’s a man on the inside.”

I nod to him, like, You want to explain, or should I?

“Olivia, under the guise of needing information for her boyfriend’s newfound nut allergy, learned from her aunt who all the caterers and bakers were.

She flew me out here the same night the semester ended.

I was demolishing calculus in the morning, in Zurich at midnight,” Deonte elaborates.

“I impressed the head patissier and scored an internship.”

“Dude,” says Kevin. “That will look so legit on the Wilford’s website.”

Deonte smiles. “Thanks, Kev. When we finish this job, I’ll be able to lease a better location, too. Maybe get some delivery trucks.”

Rook’s number-one love in life is Wilford’s, the bakery where he sells fine cakes and pastries. The grand opening in November is honestly one of my happiest memories. The entire Chess Club was there—even McCoy flew home.

With the money from the wedding heist, Deonte could move his grandfather with dementia, whose name had inspired the bakery’s and who himself had inspired Deonte’s love of his culinary craft, into a long-term care facility.

But running the business while supporting his grandfather isn’t cheap.

Deonte could use another influx of cash, and I happen to know a vindictive Swiss seventy-year-old who has some to spare.

Tom nods in recognition of Rook’s unique contribution. He steeples his fingers on the couch. “So Deonte gets out the riches, Grace gets into the vault, I frame and distract our opponents,” he summarizes. “Olivia gets the vault specifications and picks the lock. Jackson… is her boyfriend.”

Jackson glares.

“Where does that leave Kevin?” Tom inquires. “Do you even have an invite to this party?” he asks, facing Kevin.

For whatever reason, the question induces Kevin to grin as if I’ve credited him with the entire heist and renamed him King.

“Don’t worry about that,” Kevin replies loftily. “I’m excellent at crashing parties. If I weren’t, I wouldn’t get to go to hardly any.”

“Kevin is going to purchase and drive our getaway truck,” I reply to Tom. “He has a French driver’s license from his family’s summers in Provence.”

“That’s just to start,” Kevin promises.

“No,” I say to him, peeved to have this conversation for the one millionth time. “That’s what you’re doing. That’s your job.”

“ Part of my job,” Kevin insists. “I’m so useful.

Something will come up, and I’ll be your guy.

Like if you need a hostage—already crushed that one once.

Oh, or you need someone fluent in French, or you need a distraction.

Or you need someone with detailed knowledge of the Mission: Impossible franchise, or someone who knows how to get a cool side party started. Or—”

I know exactly how long he could go on, having had this debate numerous times over our planning FaceTimes in recent months. Occasionally, I wondered whether Kevin just enjoyed chatting under the premise of heist planning.

I interrupt him with reassurance instead of resentment. “ If we need any of those things, Kevin will be our guy,” I promise the group. Kevin preens.

The truth is, Kevin does have one other potential use.

If everything goes very wrong and we end up arrested, we’ll invoke Kevin’s menacingly competent lawyer father.

No matter how little I wanted to deal with Rhode Island law enforcement, I want to face international detainment and extradition even less. Way, way less.

Even less, I reluctantly recognize, than I want to deal with Mitchum Webber. If Dash Owens is a silver-plated steamroller, Webber the elder is a snake with jeweled fangs.

Nevertheless, he protected his son to his own detriment when we “kidnapped” Kevin. If we end up in the hands of Interpol, Mitchum is the only person willing and able to help us.

Probably.

“You all have your roles,” I state. With my mind on consequences, stress has started stealing coldly into my chest. In fact, planning high-stakes, highly illegal heists isn’t just fun and Mission: Impossible jokes.

“If any one of you fails, we all fail, and I promise if we are caught, you cannot depend on my grandmother for leniency,” I emphasize.

“I haven’t spoken to her in a decade. She does not love me. ”

“Your family is seriously dysfunctional,” Deonte notes.

“Yes, well,” I reply. “If we weren’t, I’d be traveling to Switzerland with my boyfriend to celebrate my grandmother’s birthday as a loving granddaughter and not as the leader of a crew out to steal everything she has, if she doesn’t destroy me in the process.”

“We handled your father fine,” Kevin points out. “We’ve got this.”

While I know Bishop means the reassurance kindly, it doesn’t reach me. I need them to know this is important. It’s real.

“Dashiell Owens is a warm-up compared to Leonie,” I say. “She comes from the kind of wealth that could fund nations. She’s had fifty years to build her own empire. She has served as a matriarch of a cutthroat and conniving family, whom she is unafraid to move against, and she has never—never—lost.”

No one speaks now. The mountains outside echo their silence. Waiting. Imposing. Unchanging, as Leonie Owens imagines her own empire of thieves.

“Until this week,” I say.

Hopeful eyes dare to meet mine now. I choose to hold Jackson’s gaze, mirroring his defiant conviction. If we fail, Jackson will lose not only his future, his reputation, and his relationship with his family.…

If we go down, he’ll lose the girl he loves.

“I believe in this crew. I trust every one of you. In six days, we will be going home with a fortune. Please prepare yourselves however you require, mentally, emotionally, or logistically,” I say. Finally, I stand from my makeshift throne. “Because our job starts now.”