Page 11 of No Longer Mine (Rags & Riches #2)

Chapter Nine

Scarlett

Cleo counted the money quickly, her sharp, purple bob swaying around her neck as she moved. Her fingers worked fast, the crisp bills sliding between them with practiced ease.

“Two hundred thousand sharp.”

She’d managed to sell everything—except the diamond ring. The rest came from a few other small jobs I’d pulled over the last month. Petty jobs. Easy ones that didn’t require much planning or risk.

Not like the one I’d botched.

Not like Dimitri Cristof’s.

I swallowed the irritation rising in my throat. None of this was for me. I wanted to donate it, slip it into one of the fundraisers I was supposed to attend this weekend. The irony burned—I had to stay far away from them because he was attending both.

A punishment of my own making.

Cleo snapped her fingers in front of my face. “You good, Red?”

I blinked, shaking the thoughts loose. “Yeah. Fine.”

She studied me with those eerie purple contacts, her head tilting slightly before she leaned back against the worn-out couch. “Who’s the money going to?”

I didn’t answer right away.

Instead, I let my gaze drift over the stacks of bills—neatly bundled, each one representing another layer of distance between me and the world I’d grown up in.

Cleo didn’t push.

Instead, she smirked. “Did you take some for yourself?”

I lifted a brow. “Did you?”

She grinned, flashing perfect white teeth. “Of course. And I made sure Oliver got his cut too.”

“Perfect,” I murmured. “Then I guess we’re all set.”

A beat of silence. Then?—

“Wanna go to the movies this weekend?”

I looked up, her tone light, almost hopeful.

I smiled. “That sounds like fun.”

Her shoulders slumped dramatically. “That means I’ll have to wear the wig and ditch the contacts, won’t I?”

“Probably wouldn’t hurt,” I said, bumping my shoulder against hers.

Cleo wasn’t her real name.

But then again, neither was mine.

I never asked what hers was. She never asked about mine. That was the deal. We were both orphans—both ghosts. Names meant attachments. Attachments meant weakness.

I kept my first name, though.

Scarlett.

It was the only thing my parents ever gave me that mattered. That meant something.

But my last name? That had been forged, carefully crafted by Oliver Park—the only family I’d ever known.

We met as kids in an orphanage, scrappy and too stubborn for our own good. Inseparable. Oliver, the tech genius. Cleo, the seller. And me, the one who stole the things she sold.

We were a perfect trio.

But my new identity meant I had to keep up appearances.

Unfortunately, that also meant Cleo couldn’t be Cleo.

At least, not when we were in public.

She sighed heavily, dragging a hand through her hair. “Fine. But you owe me popcorn.”

I smirked. “Deal.”

She flicked a bill from the stack and tucked it into her pocket. “And a drink.”

I rolled my eyes. “Don’t push it.”

Cleo just grinned. “Come on, Red. What else are you gonna do? Sit in your penthouse and mope about the man who almost caught you?”

I froze for half a second. Just enough for her to notice.

Her grin widened.

Shit.

She loved getting under my skin.

“You think he’s cute,” she teased, kicking her feet up onto the coffee table.

I leveled her with a look. “I think he’s a problem.”

“A problem or your problem?”

I ignored her, flipping through my phone instead. Dimitri’s schedule updated in real time, thanks to Benson’s obsessive level of security.

“It doesn’t matter because I won’t ever see him again.”

Cleo rolled her eyes. “Don’t be so sure of that.”

“What do you know?”

She shrugged. “I know that you have a very unhappy person who wanted dirt on Dimitri.”

It was my turn to roll my eyes. “Whatever, we didn’t even take the payment.”

“He isn’t satisfied, Red.” She shook her head. “This is bigger than anything we’ve done before. He is going to want you to go back.”

I closed my eyes. “Maybe I can try this weekend.”

Cleo made a face. “No, we are going to the movies. You can try another day when your chances of getting caught are even higher.”

My eyes widened. “Shut up!”

She cackled as she dodged my punch. “I mean, he is cute.”

I groaned. “I can’t have an attraction to one of my marks.”

“One day you’ll have to settle down and retire.”

I hated that she was agreeing with Oliver. “I’ll have to settle down with someone who isn’t one of my marks. Someone that isn’t rich or famous or a pompous ass.”

Dimitri Cristof was a lot of things. I’d watched him closely over the years but I wasn’t so certain he was a pompous ass, even if I wanted to pretend he was.

As of late, he seemed like a shell of himself.

He was bored at the events and barely sipped his champagne.

He was very unlike himself, and I wanted to know why.

I wanted to know more. But I couldn’t. This was very dangerous.

“Sounds boring.”

Boring was exactly what I needed to stay out of jail.