Eight
WITHOUT HESITATING, CASS JABS QUICK KEYSTROKES INTO HER computer. I don’t recognize the interface she’s working with, which my experience with hackers in movies indicates is promising. When Microsoft Windows disappears is when shit’s going to get real.
In seconds, sound crackles from Cass’s computer. Voices. Uniform, male. Discussing the “main entrance,” the “east wing,” positioning on the “garden terrace.” Terms I know because they describe the house I called home for fifteen years.
Cass has hacked immediately into the Millennium Security’s communications channel. She hands McCoy a walkie-talkie tuned to the same frequency. Watching her, her dedicated focus, her competency, I can’t help respecting the quiet girl I’d never spoken to before today.
When I offered her the job—emailing her on the secure address she’d supplied me after I’d first reached out to her on DMs with an “exciting opportunity” connected to my father’s wedding, the vague line I used in establishing initial contact with prospective crew members—she didn’t even really seem interested in the money. I felt like she signed on just to prove she could do the job. While not my main motive for the day, it certainly is a compelling side effect of the revenge I’m out for.
In fact, if my father had respected me, had considered me worthwhile instead of the whiny, vapid girl he figures I am, I might not want revenge, either.
Deonte has finished assembling the cake, which he evenly relocates to the rolling cart. “Days of work,” he laments. “Probably the finest frosting I’ve ever done. Can’t even post a photo of it.” He glances into the van. “I need the rest of you not to fuck up, because I cannot waste this cake on the heist going wrong. Cannot do it,” he mutters to himself, starting to wheel the cake forward.
McCoy follows.
Then me and Tom.
We join the crowd of expensively dressed guests heading into the house’s main entrance. The estate stands before us, imposing. Honestly, the house where I grew up is ridiculous. It’s three stories of gray stone walls, sharply slanted roofs, and high windows, with sculpted rows of hedges and a front patio of smooth, latticed stone—everything speaks of monumental wealth dedicated to classical elegance.
Not that the design mattered to Dad. With his parents’ wealth in his pockets, I’m pretty sure he’d just requested his Realtor pull up the most expensive listings in Rhode Island.
When I walk up to this house for dinner, I’m resentment knotted up underneath worry. Now one feeling consumes me.
Revenge.It runs deep in my chest.
Years before The Plan or this wedding, I was walking up these steps, heading unknowingly into the worst day of my life. It was a beautiful spring afternoon—I remember it perfectly. Mom was in Hartford caring for Grandpa, which she did often in my first couple of years of high school, so I Ubered home. I’d gotten out of school early because of some prospective-parents’ event Berkshire was holding.
I guess my dad forgot, because I walked into the entryway to find him making out with Lexi.
Lexi, who was his publicist.
Not his wife, who was my mom.
I stopped in the entryway, stunned. I’ll never forget how my dad responded. With one nod, his eyes on mine, not Lexi’s, he dismissed her, leaving her to float past me on her violet perfume out the front door. Wiping his mouth as if he’d finished eating something, he sat me down on the white living room furniture.
Only then did my wounded confusion change into real fear. It was the way his gaze lingered on me, the look I recognized looming in his features. The look from the photograph on my lock screen of his company’s party. My father’s favorite glare. It meant the same thing every time—I’m going to hurt you, and I won’t regret it.
Whatever was coming, I knew—I knew—it would not be good.
“Obviously, you won’t tell your mother,” he informed me.
When I paused, uncertain, which I know he intended, he went on.
“Olivia, you’ll ruin everything. Your mother’s whole life, our marriage. Everything we have here. No one needs to know what just happened.” He leaned forward on the pearlescent couch. “Do you want to ruin everything? It’ll be”—I remember how he paused, emphasis in the guise of consideration—“all your fault.”
It was grotesque, putting the responsibility for his cheating onto his fifteen-year-old daughter. I knew it was wrong even then, yet I couldn’t fight how convincing his words were. Olivia, you’ll ruin everything.
Past the pressure of guilt, I understood everything else he was saying. You’ll lose your home, Olivia. You’ll lose the life you’ve always known. You’ll lose the only father you have.
He knew what he was doing. He fucking knew it; I know he did. I’ve grown to recognize how people like my father operate. Wielding his money, his influence, even the roof over my head, like weapons. Using everything he has to hold on to everything he wants. Putting fault for ruining lives on people like me. The young, the powerless.
Painful weeks passed until, finally, I revealed what I’d seen to my mom, hearing myself gulping, starting to cry, my words coming fast. I got out everything, though. People like my father deserve deception. People like my mother don’t.
Everything unraveled from there. My mom divorced my dad—who, I will remember every day of my life, never pressed for custody of me. Never.
His prenup with Mom to protect his inherited wealth—which is, in fact, all his wealth—left her with nothing except the minimum of child support, so to Coventry we went, into the house with my chaotic bedroom. I moved from Berkshire to East Coventry High for my sophomore year. My dad married Lexi—undoubtedly to save face because he never loved Lexi. What he loved was the flashy image of swapping his starter family for someone five years my mom’s junior instead of looking like the ignominious divorcé he was.
My mom soldiered on, finding new jobs, managing hours, pretending she didn’t notice the exhausting contortions of each week. I pretended I didn’t notice, either. Figured out which days customers were rude to her from hearing the restrained edge in her voice. Explained the plots of our favorite shows after she started nodding off whenever we would watch them together—or, when she eventually stopped trying to follow the story, contented myself with sitting next to her while she slept.
Until the accident. Fate adding injury to insult, as it were.
When I got the call informing me of what happened, my vicious mind didn’t even hesitate. It started in instantly. Reprimanding me for how she would have never gotten hurt if she didn’t have to do everything for the daughter who destroyed her marriage. Feeding me whispers of how I could never possibly be worth the debts I’d put her in.
She could have died.Even while I knew everything was my dad’s doing, his words stuck like invisible shrapnel in my heart—Your fault. Your fault. Your fault.
Nothing can quite remove them, even now, no repetition of how it’s not my fault, it’s not. I’ve spent countless nights with the irrational, unshakable conviction that I’m partly responsible for ruining my mom’s life, agonizing over how I could possibly repay her. It’s the only hope I have of quieting his accusations.
Eleven months after he married her, my dad hit Lexi with his second divorce. Months from then, Maureen showed up to dinner in my old home.
In the two years since I found him with Lexi, I’ve forgotten none of it. The look he gave me. The guilt. The pain. The manipulation.
Most important—my vow.
Packing up my room in the house I used to love during the week I moved out, suffocating with so much hurt I felt like I would die, I swore to myself one day I would steal something from him. Not just for revenge, either. I would prove I wasn’t powerless just because he was powerful. I would cut into him long-overdue lessons. I refuse to have everything put onto me. I refuse to have everything stolen from me.
I would make him understand what it feels like when I—when we—stole something back.
On the huge marble steps of Dashiell Owens’s home, Tom offers me the crook of his elbow as we’d planned. I put my arm in his.
For years, I’ve waited for the perfect opportunity to hurt my father like he’s hurt me.
Today, it’s finally here.