THE CON GIRL AND THE BILLIONAIRE PRIEST

Chapter 4

Julie.

At 1:14pm, Julie tapped on the door of the priest’s office.

“Come in”, Kieran called out.

She walked in, looking elegant as usual in a navy blue suit and long straight hair that ran down her back. Although she’d done her homework, she was internally excited and couldn't wait to see what the day had in store for him.

This was the biggest job they'd ever handled and Andrea trusted her to execute it. Her cut would allow her to live the life of her dreams: vacations on fancy islands and shopping sprees in Milan.

Kieran stood up to welcome her before offering her a seat, brandishing a courteous smile.

“Ms. Brown.” He crossed the room and extended his hand. His voice carried a careful, contained stillness beneath the professional warmth that she couldn’t immediately place. “Thank you for coming in.”

“Father Dale.” She took his hand, and made herself hold his gaze the way Olivia Mullins would: direct, unbothered and radiating exactly the kind of calm competence that made people want to write checks.

“I appreciate you making time so soon. I understand there’s a great deal on your plate right now.”

“There is.” Something flickered behind his eyes, and was quickly gone. “Please, sit.”

She sat and he sat across from her. Kieran seemed at ease with her.

For one suspended moment, neither of them said anything at all, the silence stretching just a half-beat too long to be entirely comfortable.

Julie actually noticed the priest for a moment. He had deep blue eyes. He was rather a tall man, with a fit body frame, quite handsome and a gentleman in all honesty.

With the way his clearly defined jawline moved whenever he spoke and how he smiled warmly and invitingly, she was sure that ladies would have swooned over him if he hadn’t limited himself to such a reserved vocation.

She imagined Kieran pressing into her, hugging her firmly with his c**k struggling for release against her abdomen while lifting her up for a wild passionate kiss.

She imagined reaching out for his holy phallus to insert it into her sinful t**t for what she’ll term as redemptive s*x.

Julie quickly regained her senses. She never had such wild thoughts around her other ‘clients’.

She was often in control and was not supposed to be interested in looks or body. Money above everything. Securing the bag was paramount to the life she desired. Still, she worried that, beyond his careful stillness, the priest was unreadable.

She reminded herself that she had walked into rooms with more intimidating me and walked out with signatures, with trust, with entire fortunes reorganized around her careful, patient fiction, and there was no version of this meeting that should feel any different.

“I read through Bright Start Collective’s file this morning,” he said. His voice was perfectly level and perfectly professional, betraying nothing at all to someone trained, as thoroughly as Julie was, to notice the effort it took to sound that way.

“Impressive work. The orphanage buildings in particular.”

“We’re proud of them.” She opened her own folder, sliding photographs across the table with practiced ease, smiling children, half-built structures, the whole careful architecture of a lie built to look exactly like the truth.

“We’re hoping to expand significantly, and given the scale of your new estate, I thought a partnership might—”

“Have you been to Queens before, Ms. Brown?”

The question landed quietly, almost gently, but it stopped her cold all the same. She looked up from the photographs to find him watching her with an expression she couldn’t quite name — not quite an accusation, but something adjacent to it.

He seemed to be patient in searching, with the particular attention of a man giving her every opportunity to tell him the truth before he decided what to do about the lie.

Julie had built her entire career on the ability to lie without a flicker, and she reached for that skill now with an ease built from prolonged practice, even as some small, unfamiliar part of her recoiled from using it on him specifically.

“Of course,” she said, smooth and easy, and even managed a small, apologetic smile. “New York’s smaller than it looks, some days.”

“Some days,” he agreed, and let it go deliberately. A decision she watched him make in real time, before turning back to the photographs spread across the table between them as though nothing at all had shifted in the room.

But something had shifted. Julie could feel it, the way you feel the weather changing before the sky confirms it.

She understood, with a clarity that unsettled her more than the lie itself, that whatever was happening between them was beginning to look like chess.

For Kieran, it had very little to do with orphanages, or fortunes, or the careful architecture of Bright Start Collective.

He knew who she was from the very first handshake, but still chose, for reasons Julie couldn’t begin to guess at, to let her keep lying to him anyway.

“I’ll want to review the full partnership proposal in detail,” Kieran said, closing the folder with the same measured calm he’d carried through the entire meeting.

“There are conditions the estate requires for any formal agreement during the trustee period. I’ll have my liaison walk you through them this week.”

“Of course,” Julie said, gathering her own folder, standing when he stood, extending her hand for the second time in ten minutes and feeling, this time, the full weight of exactly how much he wasn’t telling her.

“It was good to meet you, Ms. Brown,” he said, and there was something underneath the polite formality of it, not quite a warning, not quite an invitation, something in between that she didn’t have a name for yet.

“Likewise, Father Dale.”

She left his office with her pulse steadier than it had any right to be, given her inability to read him, and it wasn’t until she was steps away, that she let herself breathe.

He suspects me.

She didn’t know if it was true and what he intended to do with it. For the first time in the five years of building herself into whoever a room required, Julie Brown found that she had absolutely no idea what her next move should be.

She thought about walking away from the job entirely. The thought lasted the length of the elevator ride. Andrea would want a reason, and there was no convincing reason that he would say she couldn’t handle or survive.

Outside, the afternoon had turned cold and bright, the kind of clean autumn light that made even Midtown look briefly forgivable.

Julie stood on the sidewalk a bit before she made herself move, replaying the handshake, the pause, the silence, and the unreadable weight of his question. Have you been to Queens before, Ms. Brown?

It wasn’t an accusation or a harmless question either. Something in between that she didn’t have a category for, and it was that unreadable stance, more than the fear of exposure, more than the size of the job, that stubbornly followed her home.

Whatever Kieran Dale suspected, whatever strange, careful patience that had kept him from confronting her in that office, she was still going ahead with the job. She still had to hear from his liaison and know what their conditions for a partnership were.

She can’t afford to fail. However, she and Andrea must begin to look at other options that would persuade the client.

From the van, Detective Farley studied her face. The priest seemed to have done well. For how long? He couldn’t tell. One thing was clear, the lady and Andrea Fabrizio were a dangerous group that could not be taken lightly.