Fifty-Three
A?BIGAIL REACHES FOR MY HAND AND, INSTEAD OF SHAKING, SNAPS a handcuff onto my wrist. Acting with quickness I don’t anticipate, she hooks the other handcuff around a leg of Dash’s massive wooden desk.
It’s what I get for a greeting, I guess. Instantly, I feel foolish for my formality.
“Sorry,” she says flatly. “I just need you to stay put.” While surprise renders me helpless, she swipes my clutch out of my hand. She tosses it to the other end of the room. Inside the fake-leather sleeve, my phone hits the hardwood.
I yank my wrist, trying to free myself, but the desk is heavy, the drawers full of god knows what. It’s hopeless, which my half sister undoubtedly knows.
Half sister.It rings in my head, like secrets the world didn’t mean to speak.
I recognize her now. Not literally, not from having met her before. I recognize myself in her. The contours of her face, the shape of her eyes. The precision. The unsmiling focus. I don’t know how I’m only noticing them now. She’s the girl pushed out of the frames of family portraits.
I settle onto the floor with what I hope passes for dignity. The riddle of her engages the rational, magnifying-glass part of my mind. “What should I call you? Abigail or Cass?” I ask.
She blinks. “Abigail,” my sister says. “Cass is a third-rate prankster from your high school who you’ve never laid eyes on.”
The whisper of indignation in her voice intrigues me. It’s obvious she resents hiding her identity. Needing to.
“Honestly, I did you a favor,” she insists, spite underlining her every word. “I’ve devoted years to my craft. Understanding every interface. Cracking every code. When your very existence is founded on hidden information,” she explains, “you get very good at figuring out how it’s hidden.”
I watch her, heart pounding. She’s absolutely enjoying giving her reveal speech.
“The real Cass just… guessed a couple of passwords and erased a few files for fun. I wouldn’t call it hacking. When you reached out to her,” Abigail continues, “you mentioned you’d never spoken, but you thought she might be interested in a job. I locked her out of her email and have been impersonating her to you ever since.” Now Abigail looks impossibly smug. “It was my perfect way in.”
I work through the information coming at me, head spinning. There is a Cassidy Cross who goes to East Coventry High. And… the proud, venomous girl in front of me isn’t her. The real Cass is probably home in Coventry, loitering outside Starbucks. Abigail managed to intercept my communications to the classmate who I assumed—inexpertly—could use the abilities she employed to erase some high school exams in service of The Plan.
And instead of the rebel I intended to hire, I got a real hacker.
My half sister.
I reach for questions, feeling as if I’m falling. “How did… how did you even know when I contacted Cass?”
“I’ve been watching you for some time, Olivia,” Abigail says.
The suffocating gravity of her response silences me. With the chrome cuff chewing into my wrist, I start realizing just how early my heist fell apart. I’d failed before I’d even really begun. Houses of cards. Without knowing it, I’d stacked mine on a slanted surface.
Except… I have the money.
“You could have easily taken the money for yourself,” I say. “You didn’t need to transfer it for real.”
She huffs a laugh. “Olivia, I’m not after a paltry five million dollars,” she replies. “The money in your account is just the proof I need to collect what I’m here for.”
I feel my eyes widen with realization. “You made a deal with Dash,” I say, filling in the details. The handcuffs. Left for her. Planned with someone inside this house. Someone who knew I was coming… because Abigail told him. “That’s why he was preparing to add you to the will,” I finish, darkness opening in my stomach. “You’re trading me for an inheritance.”
It all fits into place. The reason Abigail couldn’t let me give up the heist—it was because the heist was just the first phase of her plan. The game within the game. The heist within the heist.
With the new information, I reframe my entire concept of the day. The Plan. Phase One. Foolish. Every way I’ve named my own machinations in my head now feels like the made-up words kids use playing pretend. I was just playing heist.
And Abigail was playing me.
Her jaw clenches. “I never got to know our dad,” she says quietly, the hush of contained fury. “My mom signed an NDA and promised never to reveal who my father was to me, for a onetime payment. Enough to make a dent in his liquid assets.”
I stay silent, hating the obvious sense of what she’s saying. It’s exactly coherent with what I know of my dad’s fidelity issues. Perfectly consistent with his penchant for pouring money on problems.
When Abigail shrugs, I read the pained resentment in the very not-casual gesture.
“It didn’t matter,” she says. “My mom didn’t know how to make money work for her the way those born to it do. She used up the hush money fast. This”—her eyes dart over the room, the polished wood, the paraphernalia of wealth, the cigars, the chesterfield couches—“was never her world. Which is why Dash was so keen to keep her a secret.”
I realize now isn’t the first time I’ve seen the look in her eyes. The peculiar cast of despising your own jealousy. I remember how her scrutiny probed over my copy of Oliver Twist, my old clothes, my dollhouse.
Who cares if it’s you anymore? I would never give up anything like this.
With gut-churning guilt, I remember everything she’s said to me. The way she wants to fit in here. The way she knows she doesn’t but reassures herself it doesn’t matter.
Insecurities I now know she was dealing with a hundredfold. I feel a pang of pity for her, denied everything I’ve been denied and more.
“You weren’t easy to find, you know,” my half sister informs me. “It took intensive investigation through my mom’s computer for me to even learn Dash’s name. Once I did, it led me to you.” She shakes her head in wonderment. “I was shocked to discover how close we were,” she says, and I realize she’s marveling at Dash’s laziness or stupidity. “Just one school district over. When I started monitoring you, saw what you were planning, I realized it was… exactly what I needed. The one way I could get into my father’s life.”
Her eyes bore into mine.
Handcuffed in place, I hope my face reveals nothing of how I feel. How… intimidated.
“He didn’t believe me when I reached out to him. Oh, he knew I was his daughter,” she clarifies. “He just didn’t believe his real daughter would ever turn on him.” Her lips purse. “His words. Real daughter,” she repeats. “He told me to deliver him proof, and then, well…”
She pauses, darkly playful.
“Then there would be an opening in the family,” she says.
The words churn my stomach. It shouldn’t surprise me, my dad’s willingness to replace me. Remove me like I’m an unsavory negotiating point in a deal. Still, he could reject me a thousand times and it would never stop hurting.
I look away. I have no secrets from Abigail Pierce. Not The Plan, not my family. The last stronghold I can keep is the pain putting tears in my eyes.
Of course, I fail.
“Did I hurt your feelings?” she asks. “Imagine how I felt knowing you had everything I was denied. Dad raised you. You have his last name.”
Dad.Her use of the innocuous word is quietly resounding. “Believe me, you didn’t miss much,” I say. Like the day’s other lies, it’s half honest. Yes, having his last name is what made me want to use his first. He’s Dash to me, not Dad, for punishingly fair reasons. Or maybe it’s just one more vain attempt to protect my heart. Dash doesn’t love me hurts a hell of a lot less than Dad doesn’t love me.
Nevertheless…
On the floor of my father’s study, her words force me to reframe my life. I’ve spent the rueful day walking the lawns and hallways of the house where I grew up, evaluating everything ripped from my grasp when Dash forced me and my mom out. Everything I’ve lost.
No.Abigail reminds me of everything I once had.
Easter egg hunts among the fountains outside. Studying for exams I didn’t really need to pass in rooms the size of many apartments. Never wanting, except wanting respect from the father whose roof I lived under. Never wondering, except wondering whether I was happy enough in my dollhouse life.
A paltry five million dollars.Yeah, my objective feels small now—just not in the way Abigail meant.
It’s nothing compared to the heist I’ve already executed, if unknowingly. Years, months, days. Memories and hopes.
I’ve stolen a whole life from her.
Abigail’s mouth twists. “You have no idea what it’s like to know your dad not only didn’t want you but put himself in debt to hide you from the world. From himself.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, entirely honest now.
“No.” She exhales. “Don’t. Don’t act like you’re not glad you got to have your perfect childhood in this house with your two parents. If my existence had come out, everything would have changed.”
With deadening calm, I know she’s right. My imagination unwinds the years of my childhood. If my mom had found out about Abigail, she would have left Dash sooner. Much sooner. Dash has shown his willingness to trade one family for another. Maybe Abigail’s mom would have been his second wife. My room would have been my sister’s.
Partially in defiance, partially, curiosity, I push myself to hold her gaze. It’s unnerving, looking into the eyes of the person my father has pitted me against.
No.I won’t let Dash control me. Not like this.
“Abigail, we don’t have to compete,” I plead, hoping she doesn’t point out it’s not much of a competition when one of us is in handcuffs. “I’m sorry you didn’t have the dad you deserved, but you can have a sister.”
She is the one who looks away now. The whole room narrows down into her silence. The moment suspends, pillars of glass holding up the fate of everything I’ve planned. Except, when she speaks, the calm in her voice lets me know I’ve lost.
“You should have played the long game, Olivia,” she says. “Why pull a heist when you can be an heiress?”
She walks out of the room. When the door closes, I’m alone. Really, finally alone.