Page 18 of Conning the Billionaire
Maybe it was the way he grabbed a hunk of bread out of the breadbasket, ripped it apart, and sopped up red sauce, relishing it.
Maybe it was how he casually sprinkled a little red pepper on his rapini like most people sprinkled salt.
But all those moments added up, and Kylie was convinced that the guy across the table from her was Italian. Maybe not Sicilian. But definitely Italian.
A blond Italian.
Or maybe she just wanted him to be Italian. Not that she could bring him home to her parents, but someone who understood where she came from would be nice to talk to.
The fact that the blond Italian man still hadn’t told her his name was troubling. She wasn’t going to sleep with him. Kylie never slept with marks. It was not that it just wasn’t her style. Her little girl gang had long ago decided that they never did that.
And this guy was just a mark.
That’s all he was.
But if she did sleep with him, she should at least know his name. She was supposed to scream his name if he was doing it right at some point. She could yell God or Jesus because she didn’t want this guy to think too much of himself, either.
At the end of the meal, the blond Italian paid the bill with a flash of a QR code on his phone to charge the food to his room, and then he added what Kylie considered a nice tip.
Which was good.
Waitstaff and dealers lived on tips, and cheapskates were the bane of Kylie’s existence when she waited tables at the Tropicana.
When they left the restaurant, properly stuffed with Italian food just like Nonna used to insist, they strolled around the Borgata casino floor for a while as Kylie continued to attempt to pry information out of him.
Somehow, dammit, the blond Italian managed to sidestep everything she asked so smoothly that she didn’t even notice he wasn’t answering her for several minutes.
That was some trick. Kylie should learn how to do that instead of making up cover stories every day and having to create texts and stuff to back them up.
The Borgata casino in Atlantic City had been nonsmoking indoors for a while, but acrid whiffs of cigarette smoke leaked in through the doors from the exterior smoking lounges and fumed from smokers’ clothes. Because people who gamble tend to have a greater tolerance for long-term risk, more gamblers smoked. Despite the Borgata’s best efforts at keeping them outside and the excellent HVAC systems, the air was still whiffy.
Kylie was immune to the clangs and squeals of the slot machines, their flashing lights, and the people jockeying for position at a better one. Music drifted overhead near the beige ceilings, rock and country oldies performed by orchestras, which were recognizable and comforting without being distracting.
The blond Italian maneuvered Kylie through the crowds thronging the walkways, protecting her as they stepped between the gamblers, cocktail waitstaff, gaming tables, and banks upon banks of slots.
Tendrils of cigarette smoke drifted between the food smells of restaurants which emitted scents of their specialties, and a group of college kids walking by had indulged in too much body spray.
The man escorted her through the casino, his hand gently resting on the small of her back in a chivalrous but not presumptive way.
Yeah, there was something about him that was different.
When they walked along a carpeted corridor beside a wall, he crossed behind Kylie and gently steered her to walk next to the wall, taking the outside lane.
He probably did that outside on sidewalks, too, because it was the chivalrous thing to do.
Kylie would have felt bad about conning this guy if he wasn’t a cheater.
The blond Italian escorted her around the casino to a discreet archway—no flashing lights around this one—where a bouncer glanced at a silvery card the guy flashed and immediately removed a velvet rope barrier. “Right this way.”
She tried to peek at the card, but he’d turned the face away from her. She couldn’t see whether his name was on it.
After they’d entered, Kylie turned to her blond Italian guy. “Was that a titanium player’s card?”
He shrugged. “It gets us away from the crowds. What do you like to play?”
“Oh, the usual things. Blackjack, I guess.”
“I thought you might have seen too much blackjack.”
