Page 6 of Conning the Billionaire
Micah turned back to the table and sliced another piece of tuna tartare topped with crispy shallots.
Across the table from him, an old friend from school was doing the same to a shallot tartlet. He glanced up at Micah, watching him with striking silvery-blue eyes. “You’re right. She’s quite good. Are you certain that’s Kylie Miller?”
The man’s British accent was as crisp and perfect as an English lord, which was precisely what he was.
Micah said, “I’m sure. I’ve been trailing her for a week.”
He nodded. “And she hasn’t connected the dots yet?”
“Connected means something different in Atlantic City and New York than it does in London.” Micah’s native New York accent sneaked through as it sometimes did during certain topics of conversation, and he calmed himself down.
Slower.
More precise.
Be no one because then no one will betray you.
The other man lifted one dark eyebrow but continued slicing his own appetizer. “A week is a short time for adequate surveillance.”
“You taught me better tradecraft than that, Arthur.”
Arthur Finch-Hatton didn’t flinch at the word tradecraft or the use of his given name in public. “If you’re going to use vocabulary like that, perhaps we should have this conversation in the deer park at my estate.”
They’d had many conversations in the fields of Arthur’s manor house, the seat of his earldom, watching the English red deer prance and leap through the grass. “No, it’s fine.”
Arthur touched his lips with his napkin and laid his silverware at an angle on his appetizer plate. “But do you think she’ll suffice?”
“She’s conned three different guys this week and passed an envelope to Salvatore Grande at church last Sunday. I’ll see if she does it again tomorrow morning. She has to be connected to Don Grande’s operation somehow. I’m telling you, Kylie Miller is our girl.”
Arthur touched his napkin to his lips and signaled to the waiter that they were ready for their entrées. “Then you must cultivate this woman and see what comes of it.”
4
UNICORN
KYLIE MILLER
Four days later, Kylie stationed herself outside the Old Homestead Steak House in the Borgata casino, one of the most expensive restaurants in Atlantic City and even pricier than B Prime, and pretended to look around as if she were waiting for someone.
Her gown that night was dark blue, also a pawn store find, and she’d coiled her long hair into an updo dripping curls. Her makeup was darker, more dramatic. She’d applied garnet lipstick and smoked out her eyes like a tire fire.
The vast majority of men wouldn’t recognize her as the jilted innocent from B Prime, and her targets were the type of self-absorbed men who wouldn’t look too closely at someone they thought was vulnerable.
After fifteen minutes of supposed waiting, Kylie began to frown and look concerned. She scanned the crowd and pouted prettily after another glance at her phone.
More men watched her as she leaned against the wall, growing increasingly agitated.
She stretched her leg to the side through the high slit in her dress, showing skin from her self-manicured toes peeping through her strappy high-heeled sandal to the top of her thigh.
Several men at the closest poker table folded their cards and turned away to stare at her leg.
Why hadn’t he texted her back? ran through Kylie’s head. Was he going to stand her up again? Was he still seeing that other woman, what was her name, Miranda?
Her body tensed at those thoughts. The words became energy, became knives in her head, slicing at her at the mere wisp of a thought of being abandoned.
Even by a guy who didn’t exist.
She thumbed her phone, her red-painted nail swiping over the screen. I’m outside Old Homestead. I’ve been waiting for 20 min.
