The Billionaire and the Con Artist: A Bad Boy Romance (Bad Girls Series Book 1) Read online

  The Billionaire and the Con Artist

  Bad Girls Series

  Leanne Brice

  Contents

  Copyright

  Mailing List

  Author’s Note

  Synopsis

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Part 1

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Part 2

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Part 3

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Leanne Brice

  Copyright © 2016 by Leanne Brice

  All rights reserved.

  This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

  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 written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For permission requests, contact [email protected].

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Resplendent Media.

  First Edition: August 2016

  Created with Vellum

  Mailing List

  Join Leanne’s mailing list for news about upcoming releases and giveaways!

  Author’s Note

  This work is pure fantasy. Unrealistic parts? You betcha! :)

  Neither the author nor publisher approves of or recommends behavior carried out by these fictional characters in these imagined worlds, and some realistic concerns, such as pregnancy and STDs, will only be mentioned if they are relevant to the story.

  Basically, this book is for entertainment purposes only and is intended for mature audiences.

  Thanks for reading! :)

  - Leanne

  Synopsis

  She could have been the one ... until she ran off with all his cash!

  AXEL

  Meeting April Sumner during a weekend in Vegas? My lucky day.

  I don’t date. I would make an exception for April, though—she’s the kind of girl I’d marry.

  Of course, I don’t feel quite as confident once she runs off with all my cash…

  APRIL

  He’s handsome, he’s loaded, and he’ll be my amusement for the night.

  Axel Addison is the perfect target: an unsuspecting bad boy who thinks I only want him for his looks.

  But I like pretty things. And Axel Addison’s money will pay for them!

  Let the games begin…

  The Billionaire and the Con Artist is a light and fun, steamy bad boy billionaire read that touches on a few disturbing themes.

  A fool and his money are soon parted.

  Prologue

  April

  I guess I’m probably going to die, I thought as I sat shivering next to the garbage bin I just checked for food, knees pulled up to my chest, my skinny arms wrapped around them.

  Maybe I should have just stayed. It wasn’t so bad, was it?

  A brief warmth passed through me at the memory of what it was like to be inside a cozy house, to have a consistent place to go home to every day. A familiar room.

  The bedroom was all mine too—I didn’t have to share my clothes or desk or anything.

  I had a solid roof over my head, at least two square meals a day.

  I could easily grab blankets if it got too cold, turn on a fan if it got too warm.

  I had quick, easy access to snacks...

  I remembered my foster father and shivered again, this time, not from the blistering cold.

  I hadn’t thought about where I’d go, what I’d do once I fled my foster home—I only knew I had to get out of there.

  And now, after living on the streets, sneaking into buildings and sleeping on hard floors, subsisting on shoplifting and scraps, I wondered if it was a wise decision.

  I had pretty much all I needed in that house. They hadn’t even beaten me!

  Sure, my foster mom didn’t believe me or care about the night visits from my foster dad, but she had cared about making sure I was fed. That I had pencils and books for school.

  This is so stupid, I thought, pulling my knees tighter as I tried to keep myself warm. It really shouldn’t rain on Christmas Day.

  I wondered if it had rained the year before and I just hadn’t noticed because I was too busy opening presents, and I cursed myself from fleeing a good thing once again.

  “Hey,” a voice breezed in, lightly penetrating my miserable fog.

  I was sure I was hearing things when the voice drifted over to me, or at least sure it wasn’t being directed at me if it was real.

  Since becoming a drifter, I realized I had become sort of invisible to the general public, an unremarkable part of the scenery.

  No one tended to notice me, despite the fact that I was practically a child and obviously very alone.

  I mean, a child to them—I was fifteen years old, pretty much a grown woman.

  "Hey, kid," I heard the feminine voice say again, and I looked up to find an actual woman staring at me, one who looked very real and not like a hunger-induced apparition at all.

  One who wasn’t that old, but certainly wasn’t young like me.

  In her twenties, maybe?

  I couldn’t really tell.

  People came in stark categories to me—kid, almost-adult, adult, and ancient.

  The woman wasn’t a kid or almost-adult, and she certainly wasn’t ancient, so as far as I was concerned, she could be anywhere between twenty and forty.

  She had light brownish eyes, dark hair and a facial scar that made it even harder to guess her age, but she was still pretty.

  "You must be so cold," the woman said sympathetically. "And hungry. I can help you. Let’s get you warm and fed and cozy. Come with me."

  The woman straightened up and extended her hand, smiling maternally.

  I stared at the woman’s hand for a moment before taking it, never actually considering not going with her, of course—just momentarily trapped in disbelief that someone was actually reaching out to me. Someone wanted to help me!

  I didn’t know this woman from Adam, but I just knew this kind stranger could help me stay alive.

  The hazel-eyed woman would keep me safe.

  Part I

  Laying Plans

  If you must play, decide upon three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time.

  Chinese Proverb

  Chapter 1

  April

  5 years later…

  I take a deep breath as I exit my unremarkable, gray-stoned apartment building, unsure whether I’ll ever return to it or not.

  I told my roommate I was going home to Nebraska for a few days—a total lie
, of course.

  I learned long ago it’s rarely beneficial to be upfront; in fact, the truth can and will work against you at every opportunity.

  My roommate doesn’t need to know my true destination—if anyone comes looking for me for whatever reason, he’ll just end up sending them on a wild goose chase.

  Haha! Nebraska.

  It’s my own personal little joke.

  Anyway, he got last month’s rent from me, and I haven’t left a mess or anything behind so he’ll be fine if I never come back—I paid him upfront in cash for four months, first and last.

  I just never wanted him to know my real name.

  My sob story convinced him that I was in dire straits, a sympathetic figure that he was happy to take in, barely able to contain his surprise that a girl like me took up his Craigslist offer.

  Once we met, it was all good—my assessment of him said I had nothing to fear of the shy-looking, pudgy nerd, and he was even more convinced of my damsel-in-distress state once he took in my petite, youthful form and the lost puppy eyes I gave him.

  Plus being faced with a lot of cash can magically stop people from asking too many questions. Especially guys; girls tend to be way nosier.

  The cash was courtesy of a GoFundMe campaign, by the way.

  Look, if someone can raise tens of thousands of dollars on Kickstarter to make a bowl of potato salad, anything goes when it comes to crowdfunding, and you would not believe how many guys are supportive of boob jobs.

  Thanks, pervy Good Samaritans!

  I have no intention of getting a boob job, though, despite my fabricated A-cup sob story.

  I did send my biggest backers a photo of a sexy nude rack so they could be happy they helped out a poor flat-chested young girl in need and jack off to the thought of their generosity and the lewd visual for infinity.

  The before and after photos were more than easy to obtain, and anyway, none of it matters, ultimately—I got what I wanted, they got what they needed.

  People love easy ways of feeling good about themselves, and I’m more than happy to give it to them.

  My current trip is being funded by bleeding heart animal lovers who can’t resist the photo of a pretty young blond girl crying over her sick dog.

  Thanks, stock photos!

  I can’t just rely on GoFundMe and Kickstarters, of course—especially since it’s best to keep it moving; I’ll leave too many traces tapping the same pool.

  I continue toward the bus stop, everything that matters to me in my nondescript backpack, but I halt in my tracks as an unexpected wave of joy and relief washes over me at the sight of a familiar ‘face.’

  I watch Lorax as he (or she? I never figured it out) scuttles his fat body toward the nearest garbage bin, a large piece of donut in its tiny rodent jaws.

  I recognize the rat by his sheer size at first—he’s practically the size of a cat—and then confirm identity by the dent in his tail.

  I named him Lorax after the character in some book one of my foster moms read me when I was twelve.

  Yes, I’m aware it’s a kids book below what should have been my reading level then, but I was only just learning to read at the time—my biological mom had home-schooled me, leaving out the whole literacy part, and then one day, she dropped me off at some fire station and I haven’t seen her since.

  Oh, that’s where Nebraska comes in—the state had a Safe-haven law at the time, allowing people to drop off any kid under eighteen, so my mom got in there before they were all, Whoops! Didn’t really mean for a bunch of toddlers, tweens, and teens to get legally abandoned.

  The funny thing is, we weren’t even from there—she drove all the way there to do it.

  But hey, when opportunity knocks, you better goddamn answer, am I right?

  Anyway, the law soon changed to specify that only babies under a month could be given up, but by then, I had been returned to my state of origin to become a ward of that state, and the rest, as they say, is history.

  Now that I’m heading to Vegas for the first time, immediate future unclear, I’m happy for the chance to say goodbye to Lorax—it gives me some sort of closure on this chapter of my life.

  I suppose I’ve come to think of him as a pet I keep on a very long invisible leash.

  “Maybe I’ll see you around,” I say affectionately to him before continuing my path to the bus stop.

  Trust me—it doesn’t matter if someone notices I’m not actually talking to a person, or even if they realize I’m talking to a rat.

  This is Los Angeles—you wouldn’t believe how many people are here talking to themselves, blue tooth or not; in fact, forget blue tooth and inside voices accidentally becoming outside ones—with vagrants galore having a grand old time chatting up the air or a pipe in a wall, nothing to see here.

  I’m vibrating with excitement as I head to the Downtown L.A. bus station.

  It’s like my body is way ahead of my mind—like it senses something major about to happen, but in a good way, and I’m ready for whatever’s going down.

  I think it means I’m going to make a buttload of money and won’t have to worry about my daily take for a while. I know there’s a huge concentration of potential marks in Vegas with the tourist turnover and other mega opportunities to score big.

  Most people go to Vegas to gamble, right? One way or another—their sex life, their money, their career. They’re taking a chance.

  I suppose that could be true of many other places, but Vegas is the place for dreams of scoring something huge.

  I’m going there to gamble, too—but I don’t take my chances with poker tables and lever-operated machines.

  My phone rings as I pay for my ride, and I know it’s either my best friend Taylor or spam that managed to find its way to my burner phone.

  I answer it on the fourth ring as I settle into my seat.

  “What’s up?” I answer, smiling because I recognize the number as Taylor’s after all.

  “Dude, we’re so gonna clean up,” she says to me. “I’m over five thousand dollars already.”

  “Five thousand dollars?” I sort of screech, earning the attention of several people near me.

  I compose myself quickly.

  I usually keep my cool pretty easily, but hell—that’s almost a year of rent for the apartment I shared in L.A.! Not that I’d actually stay there a year.

  I’m hoping this Vegas trip gets me out of there and into a better one. With a damned dishwasher.

  “Shit. Yeah, that’s definitely a good start,” I say. “How the hell did you do that?”

  Seriously, Taylor just got there less than half a day ago.

  At that rate, the week or so we plan to hang out there could set us up for a year!

  Heck, if it continues going that well, we could stay for longer and really start squirreling away some safety cash somewhere.

  “You know me,” she says, “a bit here, a bit there. We’re gonna celebrate the hell out of your birthday, girl. I can’t wait to see you. Love you.”

  My excitement soars.

  Taylor is like the big sister I never had.

  Pretty much everything I learned about surviving on my own, I learned from her.

  She took me under her wing when I was fifteen, and she taught me about making it out on the streets.

  Taylor is my hero.

  She once convinced an aged rock star she was one of his illegitimate kids—the result of some one night stand.

  She told him she wanted nothing from him, that she only wanted to see for herself if she could see any of herself in him, and yet somehow, she still ended up with a chunk of guilt cash from him.

  “I considered milking that cow a little longer but didn’t want to risk the whole thing unraveling—someone in his circle might insist on a DNA test or something.”

  She said she might go back to him at some point—when enough time has passed that he’d be open to dishing out some more—but she probably won’t; Taylor keeps it moving.

  I
believe that whole thing was just a test run for her anyway—I suspect she has a major identity con planned.

  She won’t run it by me or anything, though—when she’s all set to do something, she just does it. No need to involve another party who could become a weak link, a vein to tap.

  I get it.

  Anyway, I’m stoked Taylor thinks I’m ready to work Vegas with her; she’s a master.

  I doubt Taylor’s her real name but I’m not even gonna try to get that one out of her.

  She never even told me her real birthday.

  She said January first eventually, but I don’t think that’s true. Not that people aren’t born on January first, obviously—it just sounds like something you tell someone who insists they should know something about you that you disagree they should know.

  Taylor is determined to bury her past, and trust me, I totally understand the need to leave all traces of the previous you behind once you’ve decided to become something else.

  Still, I’ve known her for five years, and she refuses to let me throw her a party or buy her a gift.

  All I want to do is thank her for all she’s done for me.

  I may carry around fake IDs, but I’m celebrating my real birthday this weekend, and since it’s clear Taylor won’t give me her real birth date, I’ll just share mine with hers.

  No way I’m waiting for January first to come around again to try to get her something.

  She and I are never around each other around that time anyway—far too many opportunities abound around New Year’s—people drunk on hope and happiness or just plain liquor, vulnerable as hell.

  We can’t waste that kind of precious time on each other.