the global elite. It beckoned with a picturesque mountain-scape and glacial lake for swimming and boating, and shoreside parties; it gestured invitingly to high-end hotels and restaurants and boutique stores. A visiting millionaire or tycoon or socialite could enter the wealthy tourist precinct and find everything their privileged heart desired.
Come and visit, the city sweet-talked. Play with me.
Then her father played them.
It was twisted, really, that some of the movies Frankie had watched to master her accent were Hollywood cons. Frivolous, inane bullshit—they glorified something that had filled her entire childhood with dread. Her father was charismatic, sure, but he was also truly frightening. The way his mind worked—the howling wasteland of his conscience. He never raised a hand against Frankie or her mother—but he’d never let them believe that he wouldn’t.
She’d shuddered to be likened to him, yet had followed his every instruction.
Summertime was peak con season. Her dad prowled like a cat in a field of flightless birds. At every turn, he pinned another mark with the badger game, or a dropped wallet scam, or swindled them during currency exchange. Add several long-con romance scams strategically spread across different hotels and it was a sun-drenched criminal frenzy.
Like a good con man’s daughter, Frankie had perfected her roles. Every summer, they had become wealthy tourists from America, and in their tale of woe, his wife—Frankie’s mother—had either died the year before or abandoned them for another man. As a result, Frankie’s father had either been grieving or broken and betrayed, and could never quite believe how the single, late-forties, rich female target made his heart come alive again.
Carefully selected targets. The stories and disguises were only part of the final act—the real play had been in the setup. He had taught Frankie how to sway the reluctant hand of digital privacy; how to stalk through data encryption and wave over her shoulder to broken firewalls. He’d browse upcoming hotel bookings like a man perusing prostitute listings, short-listing women who suited his perverted needs for wealth, single relationship status, and a tendency toward philanthropy.
Her father had a suite of hotel managers in his pocket. Without ever being guests, he and Frankie had made use of the restaurants, lounges, and pools. As the cons had developed and the women fell for her father’s soft, hopeful heart, he’d start to send Frankie away to the hotel’s school holiday club—code for bugger off—and she’d go home to her mum and not know what to say. More than once Frankie had looked back to see him leading the woman to the hotel elevators, his hand already sliding over her ass. He’d con his way between their legs and into their trust, and once they’d made plans for the year ahead—discussed how it could work with Frankie’s schooling and his aggressive working hours—his trap would close.
It had always been money for Frankie’s top-tier private-school fees. If her mother had been dead, a lucrative but poorly-timed investment had temporarily left him in the red. If he’d had a wicked ex-wife, she’d closed his accounts and his lawyers needed a couple of days to sort it out. And those school fees had always been due the next day.
Funds transferred, the women had flown home and never heard from their gentle American lover again.
Quicker games were his bread and butter. He’d coordinate extortion on rich married men and pull holiday rental scams using luxury apartments that he’d scouted as temporarily vacant. Somehow, despite it all, they had never seemed to get any richer.
Frankie had been ten when her mother left for real. Everything had gotten worse. She had been trapped in thievery, making bad friends while he made worse enemies. He’d trained her good and proper, teaching her to read people, to play the right part, to misdirect their attention and move on.
The summer she’d turned sixteen, he arranged her first long con. She’d prepared to age up a couple of years, but none of the trust-fund teens or cashed-up college boys even asked. A lifetime of masquerading among the wealthy had equipped her with the skills to pass, so she watched her tongue, crossed her legs at the ankle, and complained that her father wouldn’t top up her card until they landed in Portofino. She’d longingly pointed out designer sunglasses and handbags and soon, a mark fell for it, buying her little gifts, big gifts, and she was delighted, acting as if she wanted to kiss him but couldn’t quite work up the courage.