Fool Me Forever (The Confidence Game 2)

“I won’t contact you again. I’ll see your money is returned. I’ve called you a car to take you home.”

She dragged her gaze back to him because he sounded utterly torn, and it was still hard to believe he could hurt her so easily. The sight of him made her heart buck against the arteries holding it in place. His face was contorted by emotion, his shoulders slumped, head hanging low on his neck, eyes squeezed closed.

She loved him, but like her father, he traded in slippery truths and she’d never be able to trust him.

He lifted his head, blinked hard on glassy eyes, and winced, putting a hand up to shield his face when headlights flared over them. “You’re an incredible woman, Lenore Bradshaw. I’ve never felt happier than these weeks we’ve had together. I’m forever grateful to have loved you.”

She shook her head, tears distorting her vision.

He’d pushed her to react in front of everyone. He’d wanted her to blow it up. He’d said, “Good girl,” when she had. He’d tried to make it better. But she couldn’t afford to be even a little bit wrong about that. About him. She was the daughter of a fraud and a criminal, and she’d been naive to that her whole life.

Even knowing his secrets, the risk of Halsey Sherwood was too high a price to pay.

They’d begun with breaking things, and broken was how they ended.

“Miss Bradshaw?”

She turned to the sound of her name. There was a black town car at the curb, the driver holding the door open. She looked back for Halsey, to tell him she was sorry for how they’d come to this end, but he was gone, as if he’d never been in her life. As if she’d conjured him up and then lost her mind and forgotten he was a dangerously addictive substance she was allergic to.

The city was a haze of neon stars through watery eyes from the back of the car. When her phone rang she didn’t answer it. When it kept ringing, she pulled it from her purse intent on turning it off, but it was Mom and she was sobbing.

Easton had been arrested in a police raid and charged with drug trafficking, fraud, and money-laundering offenses.

He needed a lawyer, and Lenny would need to find a way to pay.

Now the full horror was here, and all she had left inside was grief.

Chapter Twenty-Five

It was cold inside the impressively large foyer of the Sixth Street building. All that Greek Revivalist stone. But Halsey’s shiver owed more to nerves than architecture. Behind him in the three rooms they’d commandeered as their stage for New York’s oldest, most exclusive, and all-fake Evergreen Club, assorted members of the Sherwood, Robins, Archer, and Johns families were dressed and ready to go, impersonating the wealthiest of the world’s most private people.

None of them were shivering. They were having a grand old time drinking coffee and playing cards, reading their social feeds and one-upping each other with the stories of their latest cons and not-for-profit works. The minute it was show time, it would be top-shelf booze, loud pontificating about their best investments, and a steely readiness to freeze the notorious newcomer out in a way that could only make him feel like he needed to conquer them.

Once the newcomer rocked up to this last act of Operation Green with Envy, that was.

“Quit looking like your dog died and come inside,” Zeke said.

“I’ll come inside when I know he’s on the move.”

Halsey had moved on Cookie Jar at his hotel the day after the gala, in a fit of temper he didn’t have to manufacture. It’s a wonder he had any body hair left and it hadn’t all burned away, so hot was his blood. At least that anger had prevented him worrying about whether confronting the prime minister in public had fucked with the con. He detested the man, and he hated himself for having been played and the damage that did to Lenny.

In their meeting, he pledged to track the forger down, providing a faked police report, and introducing Cookie Jar to a cousin playing the role of private investigator. He pledged a fake donation, denied the prime minister his bitcoin, but reluctantly offered to speed through an invitation to Sonny to join the Evergreen Club. Then, he’d surprised himself by insisting the man write to apologize to Lenny for maligning her publicly. Not that it would help, but it made him feel vindicated to see prime ministerial letterhead used for something worthwhile, even if Lenny used it to wrap trash.

“I hate fieldwork.”

He should’ve appreciated how badly he’d wounded Cookie Jar’s ego. Should’ve known not to leave Lenny’s side, and that the private backstage meeting the prime minister requested was a ruse to separate them, to leave her vulnerable. Cookie Jar had outsmarted him, read what he hadn’t been able to hide—his love for Lenny—and used it against him.

It was a rookie fieldwork mistake.

“He’ll show,” Zeke said.

“I know.” Because he’d tailor-made this setup to appeal to the man’s ego. Greed would motivate him. It was one of the only things he could be sure of after what happened with Lenny. That, and the fact Halsey was retiring from fieldwork for all time after this. There were too many variables. Too much that could go wrong, in too many ways to hurt someone he cared about.

Cookie Jar showing and then letting Halsey con him again were too different things. “He could refuse to pay the fee. Turn it into a misunderstanding to humiliate me over the painting all over again.”

If that happened, he’d never manage to snare the prime minister in his fake investment scheme before he quit New York for Ossovia, and the fake painting scandal alone wasn’t enough leverage for Baiba to challenge for the leadership.

He looked through the big double doors to where Sherin was standing in her sleek black suit, with her discreet Evergreen lapel pin, ready to give the action command to everyone inside. This was a whole other level of deceit in action, and when he’d failed so shockingly with Lenny, it was impossible to see how this could turn out the way he needed it to.