“SO. THIS IS the thousandth floor.”
“I know.” Elise echoed Calliope’s tone of momentary surprise. “I expected more diamonds.”
Calliope and her mom had just been ushered into the living room from the private elevator bank, complete with a real, human elevator attendant—that had to be just for parties, Calliope reasoned; surely he didn’t do that job all the time. She shook her head in wry amusement. “It’s a cocktail party, Mom, not a gala. This isn’t the right occasion for diamonds.”
“You never know,” her mom said, reaching into her purse to trade her enormous diamond bracelet for a more discreet gold one. She always traveled with varying levels of jewelry, ever since the time in Paris that they showed up to a party shockingly overdressed.
No, it hadn’t been the lack of carats that prompted Calliope’s comment. She’d just expected the Tower’s penthouse apartment to feel more, well … more.
Beneath the festive wreaths and glowing lights festooned around the room, the massive poinsettias and the enormous Christmas tree that took up one whole corner of the living room, the thousandth floor looked to Calliope like any other of the countless expensive apartments she’d seen. It was just another room full of stuffy antiques and crystal candlesticks and wallpaper in muted colors, the same couture heels stepping on the same carpets the world over. And what was with all the mirrors? Calliope loved looking at herself as much as the next girl, but the one time she didn’t care about her reflection was this high up. She wanted to look out—at the world, the light, the stars.
What a damn shame, to have the best views in the world, only to cover your walls with mirrors and brocade curtains.
“I’m going scouting. Wish me luck,” Elise said briskly, her attention already roving restlessly over the various guests.
“You don’t need it, but good luck.”
Calliope watched as her mom advanced across the room with a near savage intensity, her eyes narrowing as she assessed various potential marks, talking to some of them for a few moments before tossing them aside and moving on. She was looking for the perfect target: rich enough to be worth the effort, but not so rich that it would be impossible to get close to him or her. And of course, foolish enough to fall for the stories she would inevitably tell.
At times like this, Calliope loved watching her mother at work. There was a deliberateness to all her movements—to her laughter, the way she tossed her tawny tousled hair—that drew eyes to her like a magnet.
As her mom dissolved into conversation with a group of partygoers, Calliope drifted toward the edge of the room. In her experience, detaching yourself was the best way to read the intricacies of every party, all the little currents of attraction and alliances and drama. And you never knew who might appear once you pulled yourself away from the action, made yourself a little more approachable.
Almost immediately she caught sight of Avery Fuller moving through the crowds. It was as if Avery had her own personal spotlight trained on her: illuminating her flawless features, making her ivory cheekbones even more pronounced, her eyes an even brighter blue. Calliope would have resented Avery for being so impossibly beautiful, if she weren’t so deeply confident in her own charms—which were different, certainly, but no less effective.
She started toward Avery, thinking she might as well thank her for the invitation, only to stop in her tracks as Avery made eye contact with someone across the room. A look of such love suffused her face that Calliope knew she’d blundered into a sacred, private moment. She quickly turned her head the same direction as Avery, piqued with curiosity about who could possibly inspire that level of devotion. But the crowd was too thick and swirling for her to see.
A sharp cough sounded across the room, and even beneath all the cacophony—the exclamations of greeting; the clipped business discussions and liquid, languid flirtations; the shaking of cocktails and strumming of the string quartet in the corner—the sound vibrated through Calliope’s consciousness with an electric shock. She responded to that cough more instinctively than she did to her name, real or assumed. That cough meant that her mom needed Calliope for backup. Now.
At least this guy was good-looking, Calliope thought, when she found her mom in conversation with an older gentleman. He had chiseled features and close-cut gray hair, which made him handsome in a distinguished sort of way, even if his plain dark suit was rather staid. Elise was laughing at some joke he’d told, looking exotic and exciting in her bright green dress and vivid smile. Calliope imagined that she could already see her mother sharpening her claws, readying herself to move in for the kill.
“Hello,” Calliope said politely as she approached. It was the safest greeting, since she never really knew what role she’d been cast in for this con until Elise prompted her.
“Darling, I’d love for you to meet Nadav Mizrahi,” Elise exclaimed, and turned to the man she was speaking with. “Nadav, this is my daughter.”
“Calliope Brown. Pleasure to meet you,” she said, stepping forward to shake Nadav’s hand. She was grateful to be playing a daughter again this time. That was always the most fun.
Sometimes Elise cast her as a cousin or friend instead—or worse, in some completely unrelated role, like a new assistant in the mark’s office, or a maid. Elise insisted that she assigned roles based on her read of the situation, but Calliope suspected that she sometimes picked them simply because being the mom made her feel old. Not that Elise was old at all. Hell, she’d only been nineteen, barely older than Calliope was now, when she got pregnant with Calliope. Now there was a sobering thought.
“I have a daughter about your age. Her name is Livya,” Nadav volunteered, with a warm smile. Well, that explained it.
“Mr. Mizrahi works in cybernetics. He’s only recently moved to New York from Tel Aviv,” Elise added.
That was why Elise had homed in on him with such deadly skill. She could smell new blood a mile away. Newcomers were more trusting of strangers, since to them, everyone was a stranger. They were far less likely to notice any missteps.
A hovertray floated past, laden with crystal flutes of something pink and fizzy. Calliope plucked three of them deftly off the top. “Mr. Mizrahi,” she said, handing him a drink. “I’m not very familiar with cybernetics. Can you explain the basics?”
“Well, cybernetics is technically defined as the study of subsystems in both man and machine, but I work in a division that attempts to replicate simple patterns …”
Calliope smiled even as she tuned out his monologue. Give a mark the chance to show off, to spout a little bit of specialized knowledge, and he or she automatically felt affection toward you. After all, there was no topic of conversation that people enjoyed talking about more than themselves.
“And how have you enjoyed New York?” Calliope asked at a break in the conversation, taking a sip of her drink. There were sticky sugar crystals on the rim and bright red pomegranate seeds clustered at the bottom.
And so she and her mom went back and forth, settling into their familiar, practiced rhythm. They flirted and teased and peppered Nadav with questions, and no one but Calliope could sense the cold ruthlessness behind it all. She watched how her mother’s pale green eyes—not their original color, of course—barely flicked away from Mizrahi’s, even when his gaze was directed somewhere else.
It’s all about the eye contact, Calliope remembered her mom saying, her first lesson in the art of seduction. Look directly into their eyes until they can’t look away.
And then, unexpectedly, Calliope heard a familiar voice behind her.
She made a little gesture to her mom and turned slowly, dragging out the moment before he recognized her. It had only been five months, yet he looked older, and somehow sharper. His shadowed beard from the previous summer was gone, his eyes glassy in a way they hadn’t been before. She’d never seen him in a suit.
The only boy who’d ever gotten the better of her; and here he was, halfway around the world.
She saw the moment he registered her presence. He looked as stunned as she felt. “Calliope?”
“Travis?” she asked, which was the name he’d given her this summer, though she’d suspected at the time it wasn’t real. Then again, neither was hers. Thank god she’d been using Calliope so much lately.
He winced, and looked around as if to see whether anyone had heard. “It’s Atlas, actually. I wasn’t quite honest with you this summer.”
“You lied to me about your name?” she said indignantly, though of course she didn’t mind. If anything, she was intrigued.
“It’s a long story. But, Calliope …” He ran a hand through his hair, suddenly awkward. “What are you doing here?”
She tipped back the rest of her pomegranate champagne, then deposited the empty flute on a passing tray. “At the moment, I’m at a party,” she replied flippantly. “What about you?”
“I live here,” Atlas answered.
Holy. Shit. Calliope prided herself on being prepared for anything, but even she needed a moment to process this turn of events. The boy she’d met this summer, who’d bummed around Africa with her like a pair of nomads, was a Fuller. He wasn’t just rich—his family was in its own stratosphere of wealth, so high that they had their own zip code. Literally.
She could work this to her advantage. She wasn’t sure how quite yet, but she felt confident that a situation would arise, some way that she could walk away from Atlas richer than when she’d met him.
“All that time we spent haggling over the price of beer, and you live here?” She laughed.
Atlas joined in, shaking his head appreciatively. “God, you haven’t changed at all. But what are you doing in New York?” he persisted.
“Why don’t you tell me why you were hiding your name, and I’ll tell you what brought me here?” Calliope challenged, even as she tried to remember what exactly she’d told him about herself. She smiled—her absolute best smile, the one she held in reserve for special occasions, which blossomed into something so bright and dazzling, that most people had to look away. Atlas held her gaze. She wanted him all the more for it.
The truth was, she’d wanted Atlas from the first moment she saw him.
She’d been standing in the British Air lounge at the Nairobi airport, trying to figure out where to go next, when he walked past, a tattered backpack slung over one shoulder. Every instinct in her body—honed to precision after years of practice—screamed at her to go go go in pursuit of him. So she did, tailing him all the way to a safari lodge, where she watched him apply for a job as a valet. He was hired on the spot.
She kept watching.
He was a mark, all right, for all that he was wearing a regulation khaki uniform, greeting guests, helping carry their luggage. He came from money. Calliope could see it in his brilliant smile, in the way he held his head, the way his eyes traveled over the room, confident and easy, but somehow not overly entitled. She just hadn’t guessed how very much money.
She’d showed up at the lodge’s employee party that weekend, wearing a crimson silk dress that draped all the way to the floor, hugging the curves of her hips and her chest. She wasn’t wearing any underwear and the dress made that fact abundantly clear. But as her mom always said, you only got one good chance to bait the hook.
The party was far behind the lodge, past the enormous shed where they kept the flexiglass safari hovers. It was more crowded than she’d expected: dozens of young, good-looking employees were gathered around one of those fake bonfires—the holographic kind that threw off real heat—all dancing and laughing and drinking a bright lemony liquid. Calliope wordlessly took a cup and leaned back against a fence post. Her expert eyes picked him out at once. He was standing with several friends, grinning at something they had said, when he looked up and saw her.
A few other people approached, but Calliope waved them off. She crossed her legs to better reveal the slit in her dress, her long legs beneath. Calliope never made the first move, at least, not with boys. She’d found that they bought into a romance more quickly when they were the ones that came to you.
“You won’t dance?” he asked when he’d finally come to stand near her. He sounded American. Good. She could pass for anything, but she always preferred being from London; and American boys were usually fascinated by that husky, sexy accent.
“Not with anyone who’s asked me so far,” she replied, raising one eyebrow.
“Dance with me.” There it was again, that self-assurance, tinged with just a hint of recklessness. He was acting out of character. He was trying to escape something—a terrible thing he’d done, maybe, or a relationship that had ended badly. Well, she should know; she was running from a mistake herself.
Calliope let him lead her past the fire. The little bell earrings she’d bought in the open-air market that morning jangled with each step. Music blared from speakers; it was instrumental and wild, with a drumbeat pounding relentlessly through it. “I’m Calliope,” she decided. It had been one of her favorite aliases, ever since she read it in an old-fashioned play, and she always felt like she had good luck as Calliope. The shadows from the holo-fire flickered over the boy’s face. He had prominent cheekbones, a high forehead, a light dusting of freckles beneath his slight sunburn.
“Travis.” She thought she heard a falsehood in his voice. He wasn’t practiced at lying. Unlike Calliope, who’d been telling lies for so long she’d half forgotten how to tell the truth.
“Nice to meet you,” she told him.
When the party drew to a close, Travis didn’t invite her over. Calliope found to her surprise that she was glad of it. But as they said good-bye, she realized that her mom had been right: cons were much easier to manage when the mark was ugly. This boy was too attractive for her own good.
Now, as Calliope’s eyes traveled over Atlas—the one boy she’d never been able to hook, never even kissed—she knew she was tempting fate.
She couldn’t predict what he might do, and that made him dangerous. Calliope and Elise didn’t like the unknown. They didn’t like not being in control.
Calliope tossed her head restlessly, a little bit of a challenge in it. She’d slipped up with Atlas once, but now she was wiser, and determined. There never had been a boy she couldn’t get, once she set her mind to it.
Atlas didn’t stand a chance.