Page 63 of Conning the Billionaire
“Yeah, sure.” She didn’t budge.
Micah rested his hand on the small of her back as they neared the elevator. She didn’t move away, so he kept it there.
When they were inside their suite and the door closed, Kylie dropped to her knees and ripped the package apart.
She was feral, tearing at the rigid plastic with her teeth and fingernails, desperately clawing it open.
Micah said, “Hey, hey! Are you hungry or somethin’? It’s almost lunchtime. I can order up some room service.”
Kylie ripped open the last plastic layer that shrink-wrapped the bills into a hard block.
Packs of hundred-dollar bills spilled over the royal blue carpeting, the gray-green bricks interrupting the gold scrollwork design. “How do I count this? How do I know if there’s enough?”
She began tearing at the bank wrapper on one of the packs.
“Hang on, Kylie! They’re C-notes. You can see they’re all hundreds by riffling the ends, see?” Micah dragged his thumb over the end of one of the bundles, an unmoving flip animation of “100” and sage tracery. “There are a hundred Benjamins in each pack, so that’s ten grand each. We should have twelve normal-sized packs and an extra half. Let’s lay them out.”
Sweat beaded on her forehead, and tears smudged her eyes.
He dealt the packs out in a three-by-four grid, showing there were twelve, and tossed the half-bundle at the bottom. “And then there’s this empty suit.”
“They’re all—that’s a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars?”
“Yeah.” Micah picked up each stack in turn, flipping the ends to assure her they were all hundreds. “What’s going on with you?”
“And they’re not counterfeit.”
“Fresh from the bank.”
Kylie gathered the stacks of cash and stuffed them back in the end of the ripped-open bag. “Nothing.”
“There’s obviously—hey, wait!”
With a flick of a furtive glance, Kylie snagged the torn parcel, ducked out from under Micah’s hand on her arm where he was trying to comfort her, and bolted for the door.
Micah was far taller and had at least a foot of reach on her, so though Kylie had the door open and was starting to slip around the end, Micah reached over her head and slammed the door shut. “What the hell is going on?”
“Nothing—none of your—let me go!”
“Are you running out on me? Are you trying to go back on our deal?” he demanded.
“I just need to go. I need to get out.”
“We had a deal. I’m paying you half a million to get me in to see Salvatore Grande.”
“No, you’re coercing me. You’re using me like a prostitute. I have to go.”
“If you don’t want to sleep with me, we can renegotiate the money. I’ve never coerced a woman in my life and don’t plan to start now.”
“I just need to get out. I need to leave.”
“You can leave if you want, but you’re not taking the money unless you do what I’m paying you for, which is getting me in to see Salvatore Grande and getting him to do what we need.”
Kylie stopped jerking at the door and fell to her knees, clutching the money to her chest. “I don’t want to try to rip off a Mob boss. He’ll kill me. He’ll do horrible things to me and then kill me.”
“With half a million dollars up front and probably more later, you can move somewhere else and get lost. He’ll never find you.”
“That’s not the only problem,” she said.
