Forty-Seven
MAYBE I’M NOT GOOD AT HEISTS. IF I WERE, I WOULD TAKE THE perfect opportunity in front of me.
To return to the wedding, we pass through the house. Security doesn’t follow me. Why would they? I’m Dash’s daughter. Whoever stole from Dash stole from me, too. It would be incredibly easy to run up to my old room. To ditch my phone in one of the drawers of things I left behind in the move. Just another relic from my childhood about which no one would think twice.
When security finds phones on my crew? Different story.
They would take the fall. Sure, they would pin the operation on me, but without any physical evidence, no one would listen. As agreed, Cass has wired the money to the Swiss bank account I opened to distribute to each crew member once we have returned home and everyone has carried out their jobs completely. I would walk away with the entire payload—one more gilded liar in my family’s legacy.
It’s sort of perfect. It’s what a real heist leader would do.
I pass by the stairs, the window of opportunity closing with my every step.
I can’t take the out. I can’t betray my crew. I think they might be my friends now.
God, what a depressing thought. Two of them, I barely talked to before today, another is the most annoying guy I’ve ever met, and one of them is a teacher.
Even so, I want us all to leave this wedding with million-dollar party favors.
Jackson at my side, I exit the house onto the patio and head for the tent, where the festivities are still going in full force. Clearly, security hasn’t decided to disrupt the dance floor yet. There’s no rush. We’re roadblocked in anyway.
“What’s your plan?” Jackson asks while we cross the grass.
A tuxedoed Millennium Security officer covertly guards every corner of the tent. It’ll be impossible to get one crew member, let alone all of them, out of the tent without drawing attention. Despite the odds, I keep walking. “Making it up as I go,” I say.
Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Jackson smirk. “That doesn’t sound like the Olivia I know.” His voice is teasing.
I cut him a half-hearted glare. While I want to focus on the rather dire situation in front of me, I can’t deny there’s comfort and confidence in approaching this with playful flippancy. I find myself feeling grateful to him for the opportunity to joke. “Last chance to walk away,” I warn him. “Stick with me any longer and you’ll be an accomplice.”
“Do I get a cut if I stay?” he replies immediately.
I can’t help smiling, surprised by him. “That doesn’t sound like the Jackson I know.”
He takes my hand, his expression suddenly serious. “I’m staying. No matter what.”
Tonight has been full of mysteries. My father’s cover-ups. His debts. Abigail Pierce. Above all else—Jackson. I don’t know what I should think, but I know what I believe. I don’t pull my hand from his. He’s standing by me when he has every reason not to. It means… something. I know it does.
“That sounds more like you,” I say softly.
My words admit to more than I meant to reveal, a tenderness in me I never could cut out despite how many nights I wished I could.
Still, I don’t take it back.
Jackson smiles. His hand in mine, we enter the tent together.
I clock Lexi quickly. From the way she stands, arms crossed in the corner, her gaze fixed on Dash with relentless focus, I know she hasn’t had the chance to confront him yet. The reasons are the three security guards Dash is currently conferring with, heads tipped together in hushed conversation.
“Find my crew,” I direct Jackson, not taking my eyes off my targets. “Tell them we need a way to destroy the phones and get them out.”
“Wait, what?” Jackson falters. “Where are you going?”
“I need to tie up another loose end,” I inform him. The edge in my voice invites no inquiry. Jackson offers none, leaving me to cross the dance floor in the direction of my former stepmother.
Watching Lexi’s eyes, I wonder how the day makes her feel. Her intrusion into the office did not put her in proximity with the party, only the hallways of the house empty of guests or ceremonial focus. Now, out here, she’s experiencing the full finery of her ex-husband’s next wedding.
I know she notices the contrast. Her own wedding to Dash was nice, don’t get me wrong. Dash’s event staff know how to plan the loveliest thirty-person ceremony my father’s favorite Hamptons club had ever held. Nevertheless—it was nothing like the epic event we’re in the midst of.
I know from Instagram. I’d spent the day watching old movies with Mom, forgetting the world with Doris Day and Edy’s Neapolitan ice cream.
When Lexi notices me approaching, her frown deepens.
“Whatever you’re going to say,” she preempts me when I come close, “don’t bother.”
I smile, enjoying the imitation of the charmless expression she would often give me. “You have no idea what I’m going to say,” I point out.
“I’m collecting my money. Tonight,” Lexi insists. Her eyes flit to Dash—hungrily defensive, practically paranoid in her focus. “He has to know I was here,” she continues.
The glimmer of hurt in her voice forces me to falter. While I may have mirrored her shallow smiles on purpose, it’s disconcerting to hear in her voice the echo of the reminders I’ve privately issued myself often in the past hours. I want him to know it was me. Cut a hole into my father’s life.
The display is unsettling. Despite every way I rightfully resisted Lexi’s presence in my family, I found her intimidating in one frustrating respect—she refused to be intimidated herself. The way she flung coats on the furniture, left glasses on the table, held work meetings in the living room—she continued to coordinate publicity for various Owens portfolio companies even into the marriage—everything projected the assumption of entitlement to her new role in my father’s life.
It’s something Maureen hasn’t mastered. My new stepmom eagerly postures like she’s this house’s owner. Lexi acted like its empress.
She’s clicking her acrylic red nails now, worrying the skin of her fingers.
“How have you not been thrown out yet?” I wonder aloud. Honestly, the guards could probably question her right now on the grounds of her whole Lady Macbeth vibe alone.
She spares me a look. Half pitying, half dismissive. “I was his publicist,” she reminds me. “His wedding planner is the same woman I hired for his five-million-listeners party.”
I can’t help cringing, remembering. I was in middle school—for months, my dad talked about nothing except his New York nightclub event celebrating how his data people determined five million people consistently streamed every episode of his podcast. What do you get when you mix one vain CEO intent on cross-platform reinvention with the money for unlimited alcohol? Very gauche, easily Googleable pictures and one very long fight with my mom about the example his debauchery set for his daughter.
“She owes me one,” Lexi comments.
I huff a laugh. Of course Lexi has her own resources. Her own people on the inside.
“Look,” I say grudgingly. “I… understand why you want to confront him, but you can’t. Not right now.”
“Why not?” Lexi demands.
“See the security he’s with?” I pause indicatively. “They know the safe has been opened. When you confront him—when you reveal you’re here when you shouldn’t be—they’ll arrest you.”
Understandably, the revelation pulls her focus to me. Her gaze narrows. “How do they know the safe was opened?”
I roll my eyes, impatient, needing to return to my crew instead of negotiating the favor I’m doing for my ex-stepmother. “If you don’t want to trust me, fine! Enjoy getting arrested for nothing,” I say. “Look,” I explain, “Dash didn’t cheat on you. We fabricated the evidence. You’re our pawn. You’re in the middle of our plan. If you confront my father, he’ll say the same. Do you want to go down for nothing?”
“Dash… was faithful to me?” She sounds impossibly happy?
It annoys me. “Congrats,” I say dryly. “You were the wife he actually liked, I guess. It only cost you five million dollars. Listen to me,” I go on. “You should leave. Your very presence here is incriminating. If we had worked together from the start”—I shrug—“maybe we could have avoided this.”
Lexi has the gall to grin. “We could have,” she offers.
“No,” I say. “We couldn’t.”
I watch my words reach her with the insistent ebb of resignation. The fervor in her eyes clouds.
“Why are you helping me now, then?” she asks.
Fixated on my father, she weighs the reality in front of her. The man she wants to confront who has no idea she’s here. The security surrounding him.
I study her, reckoning with how little I recognize the Lexi before me, the one I expected to encounter during her and my father’s short marriage and never did. Insecure. Daunted. The Lexi who understands how fast one can lose love and luxury in the corridors of the Owens estate. The sight feeds my forming suspicion that Lexi has spent years in disguise, playing wife like I’m playing heiress. Only now I’m glimpsing the sad shadow of the person past the veil.
I guess it… makes me want to show her the same.
“Because,” I say, “I know what it feels like to be tossed aside and replaced.”
Lexi faces me now—and she actually looks ashamed. Another first. I intended my words’ combination of accusation and commiseration, and her expression says I’ve hit my mark.
She folds the paper I notice she’s holding. Our forged email. She slips the sheet into her clutch.
“Thanks,” she says. “For the warning… and the insight. I guess I’ll slip out.”
“The road is barricaded,” I say.
In her catlike grin, I glimpse the usual Lexi returning. Presumptuous. “I didn’t park on his property,” she replies patronizingly, like, oh, duh, of course not. “You want a getaway ride?” she offers.
“From you? I’m good,” I reply.
Instead of leaving, the way I felt my dismissal very much invited, Lexi pauses. “Olivia, I just want to say—”
No. No way.Understanding, fine. Reconciliation?
I cut her off. “Apologize to me,” I snap, “and I’ll call security over here right now.”
The disguise drops again, long enough for me to catch surprising hurt staining her features. Just as quickly, she replaces the facade. “You know,” she starts, and I masochistically welcome the return of the voice she would use when she was playing “mom” with me, “sometimes apologies are better than payback.”
“If you really believed that, you wouldn’t be here right now,” I point out.
Lexi huffs a laugh.
“He”—her eyes move to indicate my father—“doesn’t ever apologize. Ever.”
In the echo of her parting words, I have no reply, and Lexi offers me no opportunity for one. She spins on her heel and leaves the wedding, a streak of red in the white night.