Grant Sparks knew how to run a con—long or short. After his initial terror and fury in prison, he calculated the way to survive meant running the longest continuous, multiarmed cons of his life.

Maybe of anyone’s lifetime.

He kept the gangs off his back—and kept himself out of the infirmary—by smuggling contraband inside. That meant bribing a couple of key prison personnel, but he didn’t have much trouble homing in on who he could get to do what, and what it took to incentivize them.

He still had contacts on the outside. He could order in a carton of reals, then jack up the price of an individual cigarette, split the profit with his source.

Booze and weed moved profitably, too. But he stayed away from hard drugs. Selling smokes would get him a slap. Selling smack? More prison time at best, a shank between the ribs at worst.

He took orders for items as diverse as hand cream and hot sauce, and earned a rep for reliable delivery.

He had protection, and nobody messed with him.

Making sure he also gained a rep for doing his assigned work without complaint, keeping his head down, following the rules came easily. He went to services every Sunday, after gradually letting the prison holy assholes convince him in the power of God and prayer and all that shit.

Reading—the Bible, the classics, books on self-awareness and improvement—helped him transfer from the prison laundry—a hellhole—to the library.

He worked out religiously, and became a de facto personal trainer, always helpful.

Because he needed to keep fully informed about certain people on the outside, he read smuggled-in tabloids, even read Variety. He knew the little brat who put him inside had made a couple of movies. He knew the bitch who’d screwed him over played the penitent mother with the press.

And it burned his ass to read about her engagement to some old, fucking billionaire. He hadn’t considered she had that much grifter in her. Maybe he admired it, on some level.

But either way, payback would come.

He saw an opportunity when he read the brat was in New York banging some dancer (probably gay). He spent some time working out how to give the little bitch a shot, who to assign, how much to pay for the job.

Making connections with anyone up for release had paid off in the past. He saw just how it could pay off now.

It took Cate less than two weeks to realize she hated school. Sitting in classrooms hour after hour listening to her instructor talk about things that—it turned out—didn’t interest her didn’t really open doors, she discovered.

It just closed her inside rooms someone else had designed.

Except for her French course. She liked learning a language, practicing the sounds of it, making sense of its rules and quirks.

Film Studies bored her senseless. She didn’t care about analyzing a film, finding hidden meanings and metaphors. To her, it dulled the magic that offered itself on-screen.

But she’d see it through, every course. Sullivans weren’t quitters, she told herself as she sat through another lecture.

“They expect me to know stuff because I acted, because my family’s in the business.”

She cuddled with Noah on his little bed on what she thought of as Blissful Mondays.

“You do know stuff.”

“Not the sort of things they want. In an acting class, I’d have more to say, I guess. But I don’t know why Alfred Hitchcock decided to film Psycho’s shower scene in those quick cuts, or why Spielberg let Dreyfuss’s character live at the end of Jaws. I just know they’re both really brilliant, scary movies.”

Lazily, he stroked her hair, now nearly to her shoulders. “Do you want to take an acting class?”

“No. That one’s all yours. You’re the one in the hottest ticket on Broadway. I—”

“What?”

She turned her head, kissed his shoulder. “Stupid to think I can’t bring it up, since all that crap’s faded off.”

“You said it would.” He turned to kiss her in turn. “I should’ve listened.”

“It was a kick in your gut, Noah.”

“Lower,” he said and teased a laugh out of her.

“I was going to say that people at college—even the dean of students—have asked if I can get them tickets to Mame.”

“We’ve always got a handful of VIP seats available.”

She shook her head. “Do it once, it would never stop. Oh, I have to go. I have a class at ten tomorrow morning, and I haven’t finished the reading.”

“I wish you’d stay.”

“I wish I could, but I have to finish this, and I told Lily I’d be in around midnight. It’s already midnight.”

She slid out of bed to dress, sighed when he did the same.

“You really don’t have to walk me to a cab, Noah.”

“My girl gets an escort.”

Sitting, she pulled on her shoes, watched him pull jeans on that lithe dancer’s body. “I really like being your girl.”

He walked her, as he did every Monday night, to Eighth so she could hail a cab going uptown. She remembered the first time, after their first time, in the chilly drizzle, the shine of wet pavement. Now they walked through the heat of a long summer night, the humidity baked in by clouds that blanked out the moon and stars.

“Text me when you get home,” he said, as he always did.

And they lingered over a last lovers’ kiss.

As she always did, she watched as he stood on the corner.

When the cab drove out of sight, Noah slipped his hands into his pockets, pulled out his earbuds to listen to a little 50 Cent on the way home. In his head, he choreographed steps to go with the beat, with the lyrics, considered asking his dance instructor to help him refine them.

They jumped him on Ninth Avenue.

Cate sent the text as she rode up in the elevator—and didn’t notice Noah didn’t send his usual smiley-face emoji in response, as she saw Lily sitting out on the terrace.

“Are you waiting up for me again?” she asked as she went out.

“What I’m doing is enjoying this heat and humidity. I’m a southern girl, and it takes me back home.”

“Is that why you have two glasses out here with that bottle of water?”

“Thought you might be thirsty when you got here.” She poured a glass to prove it. “And that you might sit with me for a few minutes.”

“Yes to both.” Though she thought about the reading she had yet to do, Cate sat.

“How’s Noah?”

“He’s good. We’re good,” she added, knowing that the question lay under the terrace-sitting. “Things got messed up for a while, and I can’t blame him. But it’s eased off. There’s no real story, and a lot of other drama to write about.”

“All right then. I can cross that off my list. Now, just how much do you hate these summer classes?”

Cate blew out a breath. “So I didn’t pull that one off. I don’t hate them, say, with the heat of a thousand suns. Or even a hot summer night in New York. I just don’t like them, or school. At all. I didn’t know I didn’t like school until I tried this. Oh, except for French. That’s my bright spot. J’adore parler français et penser en français.”

“I got the first part—you like talking French.”