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But it turned out, I have a lot of empty hours to fill at his shop. Under Ray’s tutelage, I discovered I have quite an eye for detail. A superb eye, really. My duties gradually expanded from middleman to shopgirl to jewelry forger.

Our fleecing enterprise had not always been so remote and high profile.

During my youngest years with the Royals, the game was, in fact, to simply be invisible.

I learned how to walk with a tread lighter than air.

How to lift a watch from an unassuming pocket or dangling from a wrist at the produce stalls.

How to melt into evening shadows, to stand in plain sight on the busiest of afternoons in the city market…

but have no one’s eyes land on me at all.

If they can’t see you, they’ll never catch you…

There’s an art to invisibility, so an artist—a virtuoso —I became. The memories burn technicolor bright.

“The Kat Burglar strikes again,” Paul cawed the memorable day I came home with my first diamond necklace.

I was nine.

“Unbelievable,” Tony breathed .

“How’re we gonna move that ?” Abe’s eyes were wide.

“Leave it to me.” With a smile, Paul snatched up the gems and was gone.

Yes, at first the game was to be invisible, and I was a natural. But then, much to my chagrin, the game started to change. Paul, of course, was the one who told me.

“Kitty-Kat, you’re starting to get older now. People are gonna start looking.”

“I’m good, Paul. Nobody ever sees me. You know that.”

“Kitty-Kat, trust me. Soon you’re gonna be impossible to miss.” He pulled a strand of my inky hair through his fingers and looked at me. “You’re already nearly impossible to miss.”

That was the first day Paul kissed me.

I was thirteen.

After that day, the game became something else entirely. The game is being seen . Seen exactly how and when I want. Seen until the pivotal moment when I decide to disappear. All three boys can do parlor tricks and sleight of hand, but I’m the only one who can sweet talk us into the big leagues.

Don’t worry, Mama, I think as I head to my workstation. They’ll still never catch me.

“I almost forgot to tell you.” Ray follows me. “I unloaded something for Paul the other night. Here’s the cut.”

“Golly, that’s a lot of bills.” I furrow my brow as I peek inside the envelope. “What did you move? We haven’t run a job in weeks.”

“Er, just some old odds and ends he had lying around.”

“Really?” I lean against my desk, knowing full well Ray is lying. “Must have been some expensive odds and ends.”

“I reckon he’s been trying to make some extra scratch lately. You only have a few months left at the Academy. Pretty soon, you’ll probably need to clear a space on one of your fingers.” He nods suggestively at my rings .

I raise my eyebrows and rub my thumb over the signet on my right hand. “Paul already gave me a ring.”

He makes a face, looking at me like I’m an idiot.

After a moment, I realize I am.

“Oh!” I glance down at my fingers, specifically the fourth one on my left hand. “Nah. That’s not really Paul’s style. He’s far from the marrying type.”

Ray shrugs and walks away. “You know better than me, I suppose. Pass along the cut, will ya?”

When he returns to the floor, I pull out my latest obsession piece for an afternoon of tinkering. It started as a wild daydream, born from a trip to the pictures with Paul to see Theda Bara in Cleopatra .

Spellbound. Captivated. That’s how I felt watching her sashay about the elaborate set, dripping in gemstones from head to toe, turning the eye of every person in the theater, man and woman alike.

The idea for a multilayered gold, obsidian, and emerald collar showpiece percolated for nearly a year before I began crafting it with my fingers.

Inspiration for a matching cobra statement ring struck soon after, an ode to the legend of Cleopatra’s grief-stricken suicide by snakebite after the death of her lover, Mark Antony.

The utter deliciousness of an unscheduled afternoon stretches before me, endless time to indulge my wildest artistic fantasies.

It’s exceedingly rare to not have a project for either Ray or Paul take center stage on my desk, but our only upcoming job is the one at Astor Manor.

And I can hardly make a forgery of the solid gold ballerina figurine we’re after.

Titled The Dancer , the statuette is an Astor family treasure dating to the Italian Renaissance.

As reclusive as it is renowned, we have only one grainy black-and-white film negative of the figurine atop a fireplace mantel somewhere in the manor.

Paul got his hands on the photograph from a bayou contractor who had recently done interior work at the estate, but the rest of our information is sparse at best.

There are six fireplaces throughout the mansion, not including the massive hearth in the kitchen.

Six possible locations the ballerina could be, the most challenging of which is the flue emptying into the master bedroom.

All of this assumes, of course, The Dancer hasn’t been moved since Paul’s man captured the photograph several weeks ago.

It’s a big job, the biggest we’ve ever undertaken, but we didn’t earn our reputation by playing it safe.

We’ve taken calculated risks before and always cashed them in for sizable payouts.

And this would be a huge payout, one that could keep us living in high cotton for a lifetime.

Not to mention the prestige from pulling off a heist against the Astor family.

Some things, some institutions , are considered sacred. Untouchable.

But our mission has always been to prove nothing is untouchable. Not for us.