The Perfect Con
Raleigh Blake
Contents
Copyright
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About this book
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Also by Raleigh Blake
About the Author
Copyright © 2016 by Raleigh Blake
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
***This stand-alone book is full of shameless instalove, drama, scorching hot sex, and filthy language. No cliffhanger, no cheating, and a definite HEA.
Find out more about the author and her upcoming books online at www.raleighblake.com
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About this book
Wrath. Vengeance. Payback. Is there a problem here? Oh yes, her name is Sofia.
Leo
My plan was simple: REVENGE.
I'm not a peaceful man. Clenched jaw, cracked knuckles, astronomically high blood pressure - that's me in a nutshell.
So when a rival crime family snatches a two-million dollar heist from under my nose, revenge is what they have coming, in spades.
I’d trap my enemy's niece in my next heist, then feed her to the feds. Except instead of fooling her, I got caught in her spell - or perfect ex-ballerina body and the mind-blowing sex.
It was supposed to be the perfect con. Where the fuck did it all go wrong?
Sofia
This was meant to be my summer of fun. Forget my two-timing ex, lounge on the beach, party like a wild animal.
It all came to a gorgeous stop when I saw him for the first time. Waves crashed. Stars fell. The fucking angels sang.
He had a proposition for me, and I couldn't say yes fast enough. I'm a risk taker and a thrill seeker. His heist sounded like the perfect summer bash. Even if it was a mistake - I wanted to make that mistake.
I was supposed to steal the heart-sized jewel worth millions of dollars for him. Instead, he stole my heart.
She’s the weakness in his perfect plan. Will he stay with his goal and get his revenge? Or will it all crumble down, for the sake of love?
1
PROLOGUE: Payback is a bitch
“The Bible and other self-help or enlightenment books cite the Seven Deadly Sins. They are: pride, greed, lust, envy, wrath, sloth, and gluttony. That pretty much covers everything we do that is sinful…or fun, for that matter.”
David Mustaine
Introducing Bad Boy Confessions, a series of seven books based on the seven deadly sins. Each book's main male character will personify one cardinal sin…
There are seven deadly sins, and seven anti-heroes based on those sins. You can try to warn them that they’ll ruin themselves, but they won’t listen to anyone—except for, maybe, that one woman. The only thing in heaven and earth that has the power to transform a sinner’s heart: love. And amazing sex.
Pride: sniff of disdain, sneer of judgment. His steely gray eyes reveal what his broad chest never will: there’s no room in his heart for a creature as flawed as a woman.
Greed: the only thing this man wants to do with his tongue is lick his thumb, and leaf through his precious wad of dollars. He doesn’t need to spend it. He just needs to have it.
Lust: never without a bottle of liquor in his hand nor a gleam in his eye, this insatiable stallion can slam any woman into his bed like he’s trying to qualify for the fucking Olympics—and he’s never going to stop.
Envy: he’s intent on snatching up anything that tries to pass him by, whether it be a slick sports car, a pair of limited edition sneakers, or a woman.
Sloth: long naps on the couch and breakfast at noon. This man has never had a reason to grow up, and he insists that he never will.
Gluttony: he doesn’t know when to say stop. There is never too much wine in his glass and the night is always young.
And wrath... Clenched jaw, cracked knuckles. Men who make bad decisions in the name of revenge, who become liabilities to themselves. Men like Leo.
Leonardo Battista has problems. Beneath his carefully polished veneer of fourteen thousand dollar suits and gin and tonics, he has astronomical blood pressure and he just quit smoking. In a word, wrath. He’s got it bad.
2
Leo
“You kill my dog, you better hide your cat.”
Muhammad Ali
He was supposed to call an hour ago.
Get the stuff, go to the safe house, make the damn call. An hour ago at the fucking latest.
Maybe he took the goods for himself. Maybe he got caught. Maybe he was dead.
He’d better fucking be dead.
I took a sip of my coffee, cringed, and stared out into the slate gray downpour which had culminated early that Sunday morning.
Aurora Beach is supposed to be a tropical paradise on the coast of Florida. People come here with the expectation of resorts fringed in emerald palm fronds, lightly misted with an oppressive yet sexy humidity, champagne-infused daiquiris on the table and some guy named Juan Pablo who has a five o’clock shadow and never wears shoes, ever the hippie. But, for the people already living in Aurora Beach, there is another side to paradise. Gators. Shitty traffic. And driving rain at ungodly hours.
And every former smoker knows the ire of watching rainfall without the accompaniment of a cigarette. Don’t even talk to me about those stupid electronic cigarettes. It is not the same.
“Hey, Leo, w’sup,” my brother, Gabe, greeted from behind. I didn’t look from the window.
“Just waiting,” I said.
“Mm.” There was the sound of a crisp apple being shorn in two by someone’s massive mouth that never learned the common courtesy of closing itself to chew. “Well, uhhh, let me know how it goes, will ya?”
Now I glared over my shoulder. Argh. He was wearing sunglasses at nine o’clock in the morning, his hair unkempt, his smile shameless. I loved my little brother because we would always be family, bound by blood, forever, but sometimes, I longed for the days when applying an
asinine headlock to the little twerp didn’t threaten my own flawless maturity of thirty-one years.
“That’s it?” I asked him mildly. “‘Let you know how it fucking goes?”
Gabe’s mouth flopped open and shut. Argh. “Well, uh, yeah,” he said. “Why?”
I flicked the dregs of my coffee cup into the sink and pivoted from the window, marching to where Gabe was leaning so arrogantly on the kitchen counter. My kitchen counter, mind you.
We were waiting on a phone call from Lorenzo “Spider” Iglesias, who had earned his nickname by climbing walls and slithering under fences most of his life. He should have been pounding down the highway with a trunk full of heiress Gertrude van Buiten’s—born in 1932—jewelry two hours ago, and now, he should’ve been at the safe house in Cape Alegre.
“It’s nine o’clock, god dammit!” I seethed, hurling the empty coffee cup at my own wall clock. The faceplate shattered neatly—which provided some sense of relief for me—and both the mug and the dented clock clattered to the kitchen floor. I spread my palms over the counter, attempted to relax my shoulders, and stared down at the tile floor. Then I took a deep, cleansing breath. My last physical, Dr. Ariza had noted my blood pressure as the highest he’d ever seen in a perfectly healthy thirty-year-old. I cleared my throat and looked up at Gabe. “Do you get it?”
Gabe shrugged and looked me up and down. I saw myself reflected in the frosty gray of his aviators. I saw the vein dancing at my temple, saw the rage blush creeping toward my cropped hairline.
All my other underlings would shrink at my approach—but not Gabe. You lose a certain factor of intimidation after someone has seen you sob with frustration over—well—a C+ in History.
“Nine, nine, nine,” Gabe mused. He shrugged. “Too early for a belt? I dunno, brother. You got me.”
“Spider should’ve made the call by now,” I growled. My blood pressure ticked up and intensified the temperature under the pressed white collar of my shirt. “He was going from van Buiten’s to the safe house in Cape Alegre. Lock the box. Drive to the corner phone. Make the call. An hour ago. An hour ago at the fucking latest, Gabe.”
Gabe’s thick eyebrows raised from behind his mirror shades. “Mm,” he said. Always mm. Didn’t he ever get rattled? How could he stand to see a carefully constructed campaign—a plot worth over two million dollars, a plot that had taken us weeks to perfect—just fumble and crumble away from us, like it was nothing more strategic than a last-minute grocery store run without a list? “Well, it’s coming down pretty hard out there,” he said, one shoulder half-raising in a half-assed half-shrug. “Maybe he stopped to get some chow?”
My fist shot out and instinctively snatched at the collar of his lousy, stupid, club t-shirt, pulling him up into a more respectful position than that hungover slouch.
“If Spider deviated a hair from the plan,” I growled, “he knew that he wouldn’t be able to show his face in Aurora Beach again without major reconstructive surgery.”
The house phone jangled.
“See?” Gabe said. I let him go as if his shirt was filthy—and it probably was, anyway—and sneered, turning toward the ringing phone, a wireless unit for the wall I had purchased ages ago.
“Wrong phone,” I muttered.
“What?”
“Spider was supposed to call the fucking burner.” I snatched up the house phone. “Battista residence,” I snapped.
“Oh, um, hello,” a weathered female voice answered me. My eyebrows lowered suspiciously. It was Gertrude van Buiten. I knew her voice, though we had never met. She was in her eighties, lived in an island mansion yet rarely left her bedroom, and was the heiress of a small fortune in antique jewelry. My brother was the one who knew her. He was her trusted “interior decorator,” who had spent the past five months conceptualizing her remodeled foyer, and she knew him as Dominic del Papas. He went with her for massages and pedicures. They had lunch together on Sundays. He’d even resisted sleeping with her physical therapist, some yoga instructor named Luciana, for the sake of our project. Or so he claimed. I somehow doubted he was ever able to deny his urges.
Dad would have been proud—if Gabe could have made a single sacrifice without moaning and wailing about it.
“I’m trying to reach a Mr. del Papas,” van Buiten was saying into the phone. “Is this the right number?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I pressed the receiver into my shoulder. “It’s van Buiten,” I hissed.
“Perfect.” Gabe reached for the phone. “Told you everything was fine. She’s calling to let me know she was robbed of her old lady fortune. What a sweet old bag.”
But my frown was steadfast. “It still doesn’t make sense.” I handed him the phone and stood exactly where I was, index finger bent against my chin, listening to everything that transpired. Gabe became Dominic on the phone, schmoozing, gasping, then consoling, offering to do anything he could to help. He handed me the phone, and I hung it up. “Well?”
Gabe clapped me on the shoulder. “We’re a go on campaign Old Bag.” He grinned. “She was calling to cancel lunch. Said she was robbed last night. Has no idea how they got in, or out, but her safe is empty. She has no idea what to do. She feels helpless and alone. I told her to watch some soaps and calm down and I’d see her Monday.” Gabe flicked his apple core into the trash and leaned up from the counter, stepping toward the den. “But alas, Gertie, there will be no Monday for us. I vote that you make us some victory pancakes.”
I grabbed Gabe’s arm as he stepped, shoving him against the counter. It wasn’t really my brother I wanted to pulverize, it was Spider, but right now, with no goddamn answers, anybody would do. “Don’t you get it?” I said. “The stuff is gone, and Spider is gone, and nobody is at the goddamn safe house.”
Gabe scoffed breathlessly. “Relax, bro,” he mumbled, and I was finally hearing the fear in his voice I had been craving. “Wouldn’t Spider have gotten thoroughly vetted when Castillo used him? We know he’s good. You don’t drive for Ronaldo Castillo without being good. He worked at their house for four years.” I slowly released Gabe’s arm, and he shrugged out the wrinkle on his shirt, his brow furrowed with concern.
“Four years,” I repeated softly. “That’s a long time to work for someone. A long time. Do you think—?” I raised my eyebrows and clenched my jaw, letting silence speak for me. Had Spider betrayed us for the largest crime family in South Florida, the Castillos?
Gabe, as usual, didn’t care. “Castillo works in hospitality, not precious metals,” he said. Hospitality was the protection and extortion racket, though I suspected there were other branches of operation about which we did not know. “No, I don’t think.”
“He wouldn’t keep the haul, dumb-ass,” I seethed. “They’d sell it off, and two million can make a man really damn hospitable, can’t it?”
“Honestly, I doubt Castillo would even care,” Gabe replied. “You know he’s stretching out. Bigger fish to fry.”
“I need a cigarette,” I grumbled, even though I quit a month ago.
I was positive that Gabe was wrong. Castillo ran more campaigns in this state—hell, in this country—than we could ever hope to manage, but that didn’t mean he’d let a measly couple million go uncollected if it was offered to him. I didn’t even consider the possibility that he had maintained some kind of professional relationship with someone like Spider, the lowest tier on the criminal totem pole. I was still certain, but maybe Spider owed him. Maybe he offered up the score.
Dammit, fuck quitting. I needed that cigarette.
I crossed the kitchen, into the dining room, where my leather messenger bag was still slung across the back of the head chair. I dug in it for a discarded pack of cigarettes. There had to be one in there. At least one. I roared with frustration and slammed the chair beneath the table again. The sheer force of the gesture sent the bag swinging, and it pulled the chair down with a clatter.
I glared at the wreckage.
“Plus, there’s that fancy niece of h
is, the ballerina, staying for the summer,” Gabe called to me from the kitchen. “He’s probably gonna be on his best behavior and try not to stir this pot too hard.”
I righted the chair and cleared my throat. “Who?”
“You know her, she’s been in the paper—remember, that thing you and other people over sixty-five read in the morning,” Gabe called again. “Really curly. Legs like a freaking mantis. Decent rack. You don’t remember her? She was on the first season of So You Think You Can Dance? Anyway, the daughter Castillo never had. He’ll be out of the game for her sake. Hey, where are we on those pancakes, man? Is that happening, or should I bother Max?”
I squeezed my lips and walked with a newfound calm, back into the kitchen. “The two million is likely gone,” I deduced thoughtfully, “but perhaps I can take something even more valuable from him. What do you know about this girl?”
Gabe grinned. “You dog,” he said. “You sure you’re up to it? Chicas are my game. I think you’re a little rusty.”
“I’m not going to fuck her, you idiot,” I scoffed, crossing to the fridge and pulling it open. I set a carton of fresh milk onto the wooden island at the center of the room. “This isn’t high school. Nobody cares about a lady’s honor. This is fucking revenge.” Next, I pulled out the eggs, and set them alongside the milk. I braced my hands on the island and smiled. “I’m talking about ‘introducing’ her to Cyrus.”
“Ooohhh.”
Cyrus de Silva was my federal agent. Well, technically, he was just a federal agent, not mine per se, but he had been trying to connect me to tangible evidence for so long, I thought of him as mine. The way a man might think of a brain-dead cockatoo as his pet. He wouldn’t ever trace me back to the actions of the Battista operation, but I’d be willing to toss him a fresh kill to take to his department’s doorstep, pretending it was his own. The daughter Castillo never had would make a decent sacrifice. All I had to do was convince her to do as I said.
The Perfect Con (A Bad Boy Romance Novel) (Bad Boy Confessions Book 1) Page 1
