One Night Wife (The Confidence Game 1)

“I’m a con man.” He closed his eyes a moment, bracing himself, and that worried her more than anything he’d said. “The whole of Sherwood is a con. Has been for generations. My great-granddad chose the name Sherwood when he aligned with three other crime families with the idea that wealth needed to be redistributed from the rich to people who needed it more.”

“But you have that shiny office and… No.” She shoulder-bumped him and pointed to the floor. “Nice try. Funny hah hah. On your knee, con man.”

He squeezed her hand. “We pay our rent. We pay taxes. But we also take money from people who can afford to lose it and are too arrogant to know they’re being conned, and we redistribute it to where it can do good.”

Cal wasn’t smiling. There wasn’t a hint of it in his eyes, not hiding in the tiny muscles there, not dancing around his flatlined lips or across his brow. He’d taught her how to read a liar. She went cold and pulled her hand from his grip. “You’re a thief?”

“We don’t steal. We’re not bank robbers. We convince people to give us money.”

“How? Was it only one time, because, I guess that—”

“Fin, it’s all the time. It’s my whole life. It’s everything we do and have done for generations.”

What was he saying? It didn’t make sense. “You’re a salesman. You talked people into giving you money for Everlasting. They didn’t have to do it. You didn’t hold them up at gunpoint or steal their credit cards.”

“That’s the art of the con.”

He was saying what she already knew about him—that he could get people to do what he wanted them to do without directly asking for it.

“None of what we do is real.”

She stood, hands to her head. “No. No. You’d get caught like Lenny’s dad.”

“We don’t get caught. We’re the best in the business. We have rules and procedures to keep ourselves honest, and we spend time and money taking down other cons who prey on disadvantaged people.”

That was pride she’d heard in Cal’s voice. She backed away, shaking her head. It was going to pop off her neck, hit the ceiling, and brain matter would splatter all over the room. “You’re telling me you’re a fraud, a scam artist, a criminal. You and Zeke and Halsey, Sherin and Tresna.”

“And Rory and Mom and Dad, though he’s pretty

much retired now.”

“Retired.” She laughed. Could a thief retire? “This isn’t normal.”

“It’s all too normal. Everyone lies, and everyone scams. So much of what we think of as truth is a distortion designed to push an idea.”

“You’re making it sound like you run a giant shell game, and it’s all harmless fun.”

“We are running a very large, very sophisticated shell game, and the only people harmed are those who can afford to pay or deserve to be taught a lesson.”

“This can’t be real.” For a moment she considered she was being pranked. Cal could pull it off. He was a better actor than she was.

“It’s a lot to take in,” he said. She didn’t want to take it in. “I’m going to show you something that will prove it.” He left the sitting room and returned with his laptop. He logged on and opened a couple of programs, typed in a bunch of long passwords, then turned the screen to face her.

“This is the family’s secret offshore bank account. We have shadow accounts for everything else. You’re looking at all the legitimate transactions for Everlasting, Brainstorm and the other work we’re doing.”

She sat beside him but turned her face away. “I don’t want to hear any more.”

“It’s only part of the story. Look, here’s the money coming in. But see where it’s going.”

She shouldn’t have looked. She should’ve run screaming from the house and called the cops. The numbers all blurred, too many zeroes. But the words didn’t. Money was going out to wildlife refuges and conservation groups, to green product manufacturers and medical research. There was funding for AIDS vaccinations and cataract operations and albatross rehoming. She still didn’t understand. It made what Cal was doing look like what she was doing with D4D, but on a massive scale.

A massive criminal scale.

“But you could ask for the money instead, like a normal charity or cause.”

“You stood on a barstool twice and asked for money and you hardly raised a cent.”

“But I didn’t have the right connections, and I wasn’t asking the right people.”