—Dammit.
The hotel bedroom formed a dark shell around Kylie except for a rectangle of faintly glowing lines on one side.
Kylie shot her leg across the crisp sheets toward the other side.
Nothing.
And even worse, no one.
She grabbed her phone where she’d left it on the nightstand. The screen read 4:48 a.m.
Goddamn, that son of a bitch, that scheming asshole had done it to her again.
As soon as she’d gone to sleep, Micah must have leaped up and grabbed his shaving crap from the sink and his suits out of the closet, stuffed them in his suitcase, and left the room as silently as a cat burglar.
The hotel security staff wasn’t going to catch Kylie this time. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Kylie vaulted out of bed, scrambling for the lamp on her side.
Light blazed through the room. She squinted in the glare and snagged the few things she’d left out, dragged a pair of shorts under her long jammies shirt and tucked the shirt’s hem into the waistband on one side, jammed her bare feet into her tennis shoes, and bolted for the door of the bedroom.
That jerk had left his suitcase again. It must be another dummy suitcase. So he had a definite modus operandi like a career criminal.
In business, her swarthy Italian ass. Micah Shine was a consummate con man, and she was not getting trapped again.
She flipped open the bedroom door and barreled through, striding for the exit to the hallway.
In the living room, Micah Shine was sitting on the couch with his back to her, a laptop open on the coffee table, and nodding as someone on the computer said something in a foreign language that did not resemble Kylie’s high school Spanish. A cup of coffee sat on the glass tabletop.
Kylie stopped walking.
Outside the windows, Atlantic City still glittered in the night around the base of the building, and the ocean beyond was inky darkness.
As she stood there, Micah’s head inclined in Kylie’s direction as if he were listening to something, but he didn’t turn around. He asked the person on the computer, his tone bold and decisive, “Will the ROI on that shipment be enough to justify the outlay of capital?”
What the hell? It wasn’t even quite five o’clock in the morning. He couldn’t be on a business call before dawn. Kylie dropped her suitcase.
Micah said, obviously still talking to the person on the computer, “But what would be the percentage return on our investment? Manufacturing in Britain is difficult enough after Brexit. We have to recalculate all our ROIs and include inflation costs of our materials to ensure we return a respectable profit.”
Britain? The UK was five hours ahead of the US East Coast in time zones, so it must be something like ten o’clock in the morning there.
Now that Kylie really looked at the back of Micah’s shoulders and his blond head, the collar of a white dress shirt was just visible above a navy blue suit jacket he wore, which was not the soft black tee shirt and the black pajama pants he’d worn to bed just three hours before.
Weird.
Kylie walked around the couch, nearly tripping over her untied shoelaces and giving him a wide berth to make sure she wasn’t visible to whomever he was video-chatting with.
As she crept toward the end of the sofa, the person’s voice on the other end of the teleconference became clearer. The person wasn’t speaking a foreign language. The woman just had a robust British-like accent.
It wasn’t precisely British, though. Kylie had heard many British people from different parts of London and other parts of England while being a cocktail waitress and growing up in Atlantic City. She wouldn’t place the woman’s accent as British, but it wasn’t Scottish, and it certainly wasn’t Irish or Australian or anything like that.
As Kylie came around the end of the couch, she saw what Micah was wearing and slapped both hands over her mouth so the people in a business meeting wouldn’t hear her cracking up.
Yes, Micah was wearing a white dress shirt, open at the neck, and the jacket from a navy blue suit, but from the waist down, he wore only a pair of light blue boxer briefs and navy blue socks.
His long legs were propped up on the coffee table beside the computer and crossed, muscular and thick from his hips to his ankles. Coarse dark blond hair was scattered over his thighs and calves, softening the deep crevices and ridges of muscle.
Micah had gone Zoom-casual.
His laptop computer sat upon a stack of books, so he must only be visible from the chest up.
And stiff and proper Micah Shine in a videoconference without pants was just freakin’ hysterical. Kylie fumbled for her phone in her pocket to take a picture.
As she clicked, he blocked his face with his arm like he was fending off a punch.
Kylie lowered her phone, trying to put Oh, come on, dude into her facial expression and the click of her tongue.
Micah narrowed his eyes at her as he lowered his arms, saying to the computer, “The reflection of the sun from the next casino over flashed a glare in my eyes.”
The woman’s voice on the computer said, “Really? I would’ve thought sunrise would be later in the morning this late in autumn.”
Unknown computer-woman was right. The sky was dark as midnight outside. The sun wouldn’t rise until after seven at this time of year. Kylie had hated walking to school in the dark, her sneakers crunching over a crust of dirty snow.
Micah’s briefcase was lying on the coffee table. Paper documents peeked out the top of the leather bag.
Kylie snatched them.
“Hey!” Micah grabbed at the paperwork and missed, and then he turned back to his computer. “No, nothing. Housekeeping came early, and they’re tidying up and nearly confiscated my coffee.” He glared at Kylie. “Please give that back.”
But he didn’t stand up and take it from her.
Because he couldn’t.
If Micah stood up, his tight boxer briefs and the thick bulge therein would be visible to the computer camera because he wasn’t wearing pants.
If he reached over and shut the laptop, the camera would swing down as it closed, so the view would also be of his crotch.
He couldn’t chase her.
Oh, no, if it wasn’t the consequences of his own sartorial decisions.
Kylie rustled the papers and angled them toward the overhead lights.
Micah cleared his throat and glared at Kylie while the woman on the computer talked at him.
Kylie read the documents.
The letterhead read Shine Industries.
Shine Industries? Such a pretentious name for a company. It seemed like his company was manufacturing something, but whether it was widgets or aglets or intercontinental ballistic missiles, Kylie couldn’t tell. But they did seem to be making things.
And Shine Industries was making a healthy profit. While some numbers for Materials and Labor had been printed in red on a spreadsheet, the Net Profit column was typed in black with plus signs.
So he was good at business.
Kylie grabbed another handful of paper from the briefcase.
Micah scrambled after her. “Those are confidential.”
She grinned at him and started reading them, peeking at him over the tops of the pages.
He scowled as he turned back to the screen, growling, “Housekeeping staff, again.”
The woman’s voice spoke from the computer, “Och, why don’t ye throw her out, then?”
Still glowering at her over the laptop, Micah said, “She’ll behave, or she’ll get a spanking.”
“Oh, Micah, are ye seducing the house staff again, ye rogue? You do have a penchant for tupping the serving wenches.”
Kylie suppressed a laugh so that it sounded like a belch.
Micah growled at the computer, “That was a one-time indiscretion.”
“Just make sure she’s not an industrial spy like the last one, won’t you? Terrible, that was, when Mecha International underbid us by one penny, and we lost the contract.”
Micah’s expression smoothed, and he looked down. “It won’t happen again.”
Oh, wow, Kylie was learning boatloads about Micah by eavesdropping. This was fascinating.
As were the documents she held.
One of the pages appeared to be a list of art pieces, their artists, and their owners.
Kylie’s eyes were drawn to one particular line on the spreadsheet that listed a title as Annunciation by Lorenzo di Credi.
Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and all the saints, the owner’s name was also listed on the line.
Salvatore Grande.
Kylie’s mind flashed back to the many times she’d sat in Salvatore Grande’s crappy little office in Philadelphia and stared at the several Catholic Italian religious paintings on the walls, a total Mafia cliché.
Was that the art that Micah wanted to steal, or swindle, or whatever?
Flashes of a waterlogged corpse, puffy and soaked, pieces missing from fish chewing on it, careened through Kylie’s mind. “Jesus Christ, Micah. I can’t believe you’d think we should hustle a Mafia boss. We’ll get whacked.”
The woman on the computer said, “Was that your serving wench? She sounds pretty.”
Micah’s face went absolutely blank, and he looked up at Kylie. His gray eyes seemed flat, devoid of the blue and teal sparkles visible only when she was closer to him.
His lack of expression was more terrifying than a rage, and Kylie hurried to stuff the documents back into his briefcase.
Micah said, “Not my serving wench, and the housekeeper seems to have gone into the other room to make the bed now.”
Kylie dragged her suitcase back to the bedroom, closing the door behind her, and she paced.
Was Micah Shine insane?
One did not steal or swindle or whatever the hell Micah thought he was doing from a Mob boss. Stealing from the Mafia was how people ended up with a gunshot hole shattering the backs of their heads and dumped in the Schuylkill River.
There was no way Kylie was going through with this. Nope. She was out. She could go to the mattress for a couple of days until she was sure that this hot, stupid asshole with a death wish had left Atlantic City, and then she would slide right back into her old life. Micah might show up at her apartment to try to talk her back into it, so she could stay with Rita or Priyanka for a few nights until she was sure he was gone.
Kylie grabbed her luggage and strode for the door again.
When she opened it, Micah was standing on the other side, his feet planted and his hands on his hips. “Where do you think you’re going?”
Wearing a full suit from his waist up but socks and underwear on his lower half, Micah looked ridiculous. Kylie was not going to be bossed around by a half-dressed man.
She told him, “I am not getting involved with swindling the Mafia. No way. Not on God’s green Earth.”
Micah tilted his head to the side. “What makes you think I’d do that?”
“I saw your list out there. Salvatore Grande’s name is on there. I recognized other names, too.”
“Which ones?” he asked.
Kylie kept talking. “Considering the research you did about me, you must know who Grande is.”
He nodded and walked over to his closet. “I know who Salvatore Grande is.”
She called after him, “Then you should know better than to steal from a guy like that. He might go old-school on you and make you a pair of cement boots.”
Micah stuck his head out of the closet, looking at her around the door. “Where did you get the idea that we were going to steal from him?”
“His name is on that list you have!”
His head lowered, and he looked at the bedroom’s carpeting. “There are fifty names on that list.”
“Some of the rest are connected, too. I know some of them and have heard of more. Are you planning on stealing art from fifty highly ranked Mafia bosses? Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
Micah chuckled and walked out of the closet, now wearing navy blue trousers matching his suit jacket. “Absolutely not.”
“Which question were you answering?”
“I assure you, staying alive is at the top of my priority list.”
“Then you’re trying to steal art. I am not a thief. I told you I would not steal anything, especially from Salvatore Grande.”
“We’re not going to steal it. We’ll ask him to give it to us very nicely.”
“You can’t con a Mob boss.”
“No, you can’t con an honest person. Mafia members are, by definition, not honest.”
“I didn’t mean that Mafia bosses can’t be conned. I meant that you can’t. I mean that you’ll end up dead. They aren’t stupid, you know.”
“People don’t get conned because they’re stupid. People get conned because they’re human. Cons prey on fear, greed, or altruism.”
“Don’t con-splain me, Micah. I know all about it. I am not going to be a part of conning Salvatore Grande. If I die the same way my father did, he will have died for nothing.”
Micah was watching her very closely. “I couldn’t find anything about your father’s death, Kylie.”
“Yeah, that’s because he was murdered. No one came to his funeral, either.”
Micah blinked and looked at the floor, a horrified flinch.
Yeah, well, Micah hadn’t seen what it looked like, and it hadn’t been his father. He could flinch all he damn well wanted.
After a beat to recover his delicate non-connected sensibilities, Micah sighed, and he strolled over to stand between her and the bedroom door again. “And yet you work for a guy with Mafia connections.”
“I don’t work for him,” Kylie snapped. “Mr. Grande takes a cut, and we don’t get hassled by the police.”
Micah smiled at her. “How would you like to not have to deal with Salvatore Grande ever again?”
That warm smile that reached his teal-glittering eyes and seemed to shine calming light through the room sent shivers down Kylie’s spine. She could smile like that, too, when a mark was ready for the big ask.
She said, “You keep saying stuff like that, and yet you’ve told me no details about what you want me to do.”
“You don’t need to—”
“The hell, I don’t need to know.”
“It’s better if you only—”
Kylie snatched up her bag from the floor. “I’m outta here.”
“No, no.” Micah held his hands in front of him as if that would stop a determined Jersey girl. “Stay. I’ll explain as much as I can.”
Kylie dropped her bag on the floor and sat on the end of the bed, crossing her arms and legs around herself. “Start explaining.”
“The piece of art that is beside Salvatore Grande’s name on the spreadsheet—”
“Annunciation by Lorenzo di Credi,” Kylie reminded him. “Di Credi was an Old Master and a student in the same workshop as Leonardo da Vinci. And then, when their master, Andrea del Verrocchio, was going to die, he thought di Credi was the best artist out of the bunch and tapped him to take over the workshop.”
Micah narrowed his eyes at her. “That’s some specific knowledge for someone who says they aren’t an art thief.”
Kylie shrugged. “I’m an Italian Catholic girl. I know a lot about Italy.”
“Have you ever been to Italy?”
She laughed. “I’ve never been out of the United States. Have you?”
“I’ve traveled. Anyway, it is believed that Salvatore Grande received the Old Master painting Annunciation by Lorenzo di Credi as payment for services rendered in the garbage business.”
There it was again, that New York or New Jersey inflection around the words garbage business. Maybe even Boston.
Kylie said, “So, you’re telling me that the Philadelphia Mafia boss, Salvatore ‘The Gecko’ Grande, has a five-hundred-year-old painting just hanging on the wall in his shitty little office in downtown Philly.”
“Old Masters turn up in all kinds of places. A new one was discovered in a Swiss bank vault in 2013 that was only known from sketches,” Micah said. “A portrait of Isabella d’Este, Marquess of Mantua. The sketch for it hangs in the Louvre. That brought the number of known paintings by da Vinci to twenty-three. It’s not all that surprising that a mafia kingpin would take one in payment and hang it on his wall.”
“I’ve seen that painting, the one of the angel with the rainbow wings telling Mary that she’s going to have a baby even though she’s a virgin. He doesn’t even keep it in a dehumidifier or anything. His air conditioning isn’t even very good in that old building. If it’s really worth what you say, he should have it in a vault or something.”
“Some wealthy people buy irreplaceable works of art and destroy them, just to show how powerful they are. It’s a part of the mental illness of most billionaires. They’re all psychopaths.”
“It sounds like you know a lot about billionaires.”
Micah continued, “The di Credi painting Annunciation was stolen from the Uzbek State Art Museum in Uzbekistan about twenty years ago. For fifteen years, employees at the museum created forgeries of dozens of priceless works of art, swapped the fake paintings for the authentic art on the museum walls, and then sold the originals.”
Kylie leaned forward. “Holy crap.”
“The fact that every single one of those Old Masters and several pieces of modern art was sold for less than a thousand dollars apiece speaks more to the desperation of the people who worked there than to greed. When the same thing happened at the State Art and Sculpture Museum in Ankara, Turkey, restorers and managers stole three hundred and two pieces and sold them for hundreds of thousands of dollars each.”
She felt her jaw drop. “I am in the wrong business.”
Micah said, “Thieves did it in Spain a few years ago, too. Two hundred and twenty-some objects are missing from the Hermitage Museum in Russia, and five hundred million items have been stolen from Russian museums since 1990. Over three million paintings. Thirty-seven thousand icons. Altogether, they are worth more than a billion dollars. And it appears Salvatore Grande has acquired one of Uzbekistan’s stolen artworks.”
“Sounds like you know a whole lot about stolen art.”
Micah shrugged. “In the circles I travel in, art collecting is discussed, and people purchase art both legally and from the black market. Authenticating art is more important to them than whether it was acquired legally or ethically.”
Kylie asked, “What are you going to do, steal it back and give it to Uzbekistan? Or Italy? Italy would love to get another Old Master painting to hang in its museums. They’re still salty that the Louvre has the Mona Lisa.”
A smile ghosted over Micah’s lips, and he inhaled and paused like he was deciding whether or not to speak, saying, “No, we’re not giving anything away. We’re going to convince Salvatore Grande that the one he has is a forgery, and we’re going to offer to take it off his hands and sell it to some other stooge.”
“The Gecko is smarter than that. He’s probably had it checked out twenty different ways before he accepted it as payment.”
“Stolen paintings often come with little provenance, which is why it’s so easy to pass off forgeries on the art black market. Those experts who advertise they can ‘sense the hand of the Old Master in the paint’ are con artists, too. If you pay them enough, they’ll authenticate a child’s scribble with an orange crayon as an Old Master.”
“Game recognizes game, huh, Micah?” she snarked.
He kept talking. “Scientific analysis of the materials like the paint and the wood is blowing the lid off these forgeries. The only kind of blue paint artists had five hundred years ago was lapis lazuli ground into distilled linseed oil. So, if you find Sherwin-Williams Cashmere Interior Acrylic Latex in Dignity Blue on your Caravaggio, maybe it’s not the real thing.”
“But if Salvatore Grande has the real painting, then the testing will come back as lapis lazuli in linseed oil,” Kylie pointed out.
Micah grinned. “That’s where Shine Industries and our new art authentication service come in.”
“Art authentication? Is that what you do?”
“No. However, I’ll offer Grande a free analysis to certify his painting is authentic, and then I’ll have bad news for him.”
“You’ve got this all worked out. You don’t need my help,” Kylie said.
“Oh, but I do. I need your connections to Salvador Grande to get in to see him.”
Something was wrong here, but Kylie couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Yes, she could facilitate a meeting with Salvatore Grande, and Salvatore had a painting that Micah wanted. But the artwork was supposed to be genuine. It really was an Old Master. Selling it to somebody else would be selling a real Old Master to someone who wanted one. “So, are we just swindling Salvatore Grande? Is that the point of all this?”
“That’s the first part of the plan.”
“I don’t know, Micah. There seems to be so much that you’re not telling me. You hung me out to dry once, and I don’t know why I should trust that you won’t do it again. I know I’m harping on this, but it keeps coming up. I’m not even sure Micah Shine is your real name, and ‘Shine Industries’ sounds so cheesy that it could practically be a supervillain’s smokescreen factory in a Marvel movie.”
He frowned. “I showed you my driver’s license and my passport.”
Kylie looked up at him. “Obviously, I know how easy it is to get a fake ID.”
Micah tilted his head and nodded. “Yeah, okay. Look, I’ve already deposited money in a bank account for you. Move money from that account to another of your bank accounts.”
Kylie flipped her hands in the air, exasperated. “I’m poor, Micah. I don’t have ‘other bank accounts.’ I don’t have any bank account because they all want ID and will slap you with fees if you don’t keep at least a hundred dollars in your account. A lot of times, I don’t have a hundred dollars lying around to just sit in the bank. I cash my paltry paycheck from the Tropicana at one of those payday loan places that takes a cut of the amount. Most of my pay from my waitressing job is in tips, so that’s cash. But the IRS takes taxes out of my paycheck based on a percentage of how much food I serve and therefore what my tips must be, whether the customers give me that much or not. Sometimes my ‘paycheck’ is only five bucks. I make sure the marks give me cash so they can’t stop the check or suck the money back out of my account with an app or something, but Salvatore Grande’s operation gets a percentage of that. I pay my rent with cash because my landlord is cheating on his taxes, but he still hikes the rent every chance he gets. Everybody wants a piece of me, you know? It costs a lot to be poor in America.”
Micah walked over and sat on the bed beside her. “I can get the money for you in cash.”
Kylie scoffed at him, “You’re going to give me five hundred large in cash. You gonna buy me a Louis Vuitton suitcase to carry it around in, too? Or a forklift?”
Micah chuckled. “In C-notes, half a million dollars will only weigh slightly over ten pounds. You’ll just need a carry-on bag.”
“You sure know a lot about how much large sums of cash weigh for a guy who isn’t a criminal.”
“I’ll show you how to close out that account at Banque Ammann and wire the money back to me, and I’ll give you half a million dollars in cash.”
“You must be out of your frickin’ mind.”
“It might be easier to do a buck twenty-five per week.”
Kylie crossed her arms and stared at the door. “Just like a shoobie, thinking I have someplace to stash half a million dollars.”
He frowned, but he was smiling, too. “Okay, I know what a benny is, meaning a New Yorker who comes to New Jersey from the acronym from the first few stops on the train line that runs from New York down the shore—Bayonne, Elizabeth, Newark, and New York—but what the hell is a shoobie?”
Kylie shrugged. “Tourists from Philadelphia who rode the train across Jersey to go down the shore for the last hundred years. They all brought their lunch in a shoebox. So, shoobie.”
“I’m not from Philadelphia,” Micah said.
Wow. Information. He must have slipped. “Evidently not if you’re going after Salvador Grande. Anyone local would know better than that.”
“The main question is, are you in, or are you out?” Micah asked.
What the frickin’ hell. “This goes against my better judgment, Micah Shine, but if you can pony up a buck twenty-five per week in cash, I’m in for all that we negotiated before.”
“Excellent.”
“But I want to see that first hundred and twenty-five large before I do a damn thing.”
“I’ll have the first installment soon.”
“And it better not be counterfeit.”
If she survived Micah’s scheme, five hundred thousand dollars would get her far away from Salvatore Grande to someplace where she could start a new life and look for her little sister.
If she didn’t gamble on this, Kylie would be trapped under Salvatore Grande’s thumb in Atlantic City forever.
It was worth the risk.
“So, what’s our next move?” she asked.
“How do you pass your contributions to Salvatore Grande?” Micah asked her.
Kylie shrugged. “I usually meet him at Mass in Philly on Sunday mornings and slip him an envelope. I didn’t meet my girls last night to know what their take for the week is. We usually meet on Saturday nights at two o’clock to discuss, but I texted them last night so they’d know I wasn’t coming. If I’m going to Mass, I’d better get moving and have some money to give him.”
“You said before that you’d been in his office.”
“If I can’t go to Philly for Mass on Sunday mornings, I have to go to his office on Monday or Tuesday afternoon to hand over our contribution to the cause.”
Micah raised an eyebrow at her. “What’s the cause?”
“I don’t know, this year’s Lamborghini? How should I know what he spends his money on?”
Micah nodded and seemed to contemplate the doorway. “You can’t make it to Mass today. You will need to go to his office tomorrow, and you’ll need to very carefully take stock of everything in his office, from where the Annunciation is hanging to their computer system and any security you see.”
“What, you’re not going to walk in there with me and scam him?”
Micah smiled. “Gathering information is first.”
Yeah, Kylie needed some damn information.
She asked, “So who you going to sell the stolen di Credi to?”
Micah’s sly smile was funny, especially when he flicked his dark gold eyebrows upward like he was proud of himself. “The Sovereign Prince of Monaco.”
“Who?” Kylie asked.
Micah frowned like she’d said something wrong. “Monaco. The prince who is a like a king there,” Micah said, starting to frown. “We’re going to sell it to Prince Maxence of Monaco.”
“That doesn’t even sound like a real country. Isn’t that in Africa, something about rockin’ the Kasbah?”
“That’s Morocco, but Morocco is a Mediterranean country, too. So, you’re close. A friend who lives in Monaco says that people confuse the two all the time.”
“But it has a king,” she said.
“A prince, but he’s like a king.”
“You know this is the twenty-first century, right? Countries don’t have kings or king-like princes anymore.”
“And yet there are royal families. England has one. The Netherlands. Norway. Thailand. Bhutan. Lesotho. And Morocco, oddly enough.”
“Yeah, but they’re all just tarted-up robber barons who got rich on colonialism and think they’re still hot crap.” Kylie was doing her GED World History homework.
Micah laughed out loud. “Don’t tell certain friends of mine, but for many of them, you’re right. Except for the Prince of Monaco, who actually rules his country, still. But it’s the richest country in the world, so he’s doing a pretty good job of it.”
“Yeah, ‘kay. And you’re going to swindle him?”
“No, he’s going to buy the painting from us.”
Kylie still felt like she was missing something. The whole plan seemed like it was full of flaws. “Yeah, okay, buddy.”