Page 99 of Blue Moon

Little happened for the next forty minutes, and Ryder hoped Luna was getting some sleep. Romeo Serafini had spent most of the day shovelling carbs into her, which left Ryder both relieved that someone was looking out for her and irritated that it was an overly smooth Mafia-adjacent Casanova. She’d still had a headache when she went on stage, but she’d texted to say that she’d survived the show and was going straight to bed.

“Elene is here,” a male said. Guram, by process of elimination. “She just walked past me. Dark blue dress, silver shoes, silver purse. The shoes are like stilts—she won’t be running anywhere in them. She’s entering the restaurant now.”

Naira was sitting at the front of the café, working on her laptop, and a camera clipped to the device streamed a low-res image of Elene to Ryder’s phone as she greeted the maître d’ and followed him to a table by the window. Good for Naira, not so good for Khatia who was sitting at the rear.

“Hill was right about her being tall,” Naira murmured. “At least six feet with the shoes.”

Statistically, eighty percent of people lied on their dating profiles, but her physical attributes were the one area where Elene had told the truth. Excellent. The sedative dose they’d calculated would be appropriate.

“Target has picked up a menu.”

Ryder crunched a mint and used the camera on his phone to check his hair. Good to go. The limo pulled up outside, and he walked into the restaurant. Elene spotted him right away and waved, much to the maître d’s irritation. The man clearly wasn’t used to diners skipping his greeting. But Tripp only had eyes for one woman, and to be fair, she was the prettiest woman in the place. Not that Ryder would ever tell Khatia that—he liked his balls where they were, thanks.

“Hey, you look just like your picture.” He leaned in to kiss Elene on both cheeks.

“That is a surprise? We spoke on a video.”

“Most people use filters online. One time, I hooked up with— Never mind. We’re not here to talk about the past.” Tripp was such a fuckin’ asshole.

“Did you have a good journey?”

“Yeah, I partied all of Thursday night, so I slept the whole way. Jetlag’s a bitch, right?”

“Right. You didn’t get stuck in traffic?”

“No more than in Vegas. The roads are smaller though.” Tripp waved a server over. “Can we get some drinks?”

He answered in perfect English. “Of course, sir.”

“Ladies first.”

“A bottle of Borjomi, please.”

“And for you, sir?”

“What’s Borjomi?”

“Carbonated water, sir.”

“I’ll have regular water. Bring some wine too. Babe, you prefer red or white?”

“White.”

“Champagne?”

Elene beamed at him. “Of course.”

“A bottle of your best champagne, and can we get a basket of bread rolls?”

“Certainly, sir.”

Ryder wasn’t too worried about being likeable—Elene was after Tripp’s money, not his personality. All he had to do was be not entirely obnoxious, and she’d keep up the charade. Still, he asked her plenty of personal questions, both because women liked to talk about themselves and because he didn’t. But she’d taken a similar class—or possibly read a magazine if Luna’s “how to please a man” lessons from Imagine were any indication—and kept turning the conversation back to him. It was the same playbook she’d used on Hill.

“So you live in the north of Las Vegas?” she asked.

“Right on the edge, where civilisation meets sand.”

“You didn’t want to live nearer to the middle? By the casinos and the restaurants?”

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