Page 10 of The Woman with the Wallet

She glanced up at me, exhaling hard.

“There’s only one way,” she said, keeping unnerving eye contact. “They stole them.” She pinched the image in on my phone, looking at it for a long time before her head tipped up. Something in her gaze sent a shiver down my spine. “Not to be dramatic, babe,” she started. “But you’re in danger.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Max

In between thinking about how life-changing that kind of money could be, that was all I’d been able to think about.

That someone was now missing that same amount of money. And what they might be willing to do to get it back.

“Look, this isn’t some idiot amateur breaking into a diamond store, smashing the display case, and snatching whatever they could reach,” Lil went on. “This is the kind of shit that is kept in the safe in the back. So whoever pulled this off is an insider or sophisticated as fuck. I mean… I haven’t even heard of a big diamond heist. This shit should have been all over the news.”

“Unless…” I said.

“Yeah,” she said, passing me back my phone. “Unless.”

“If it is that…”

“Then you’re dealing with some sort of career criminal. It’s not easy to make those kinds of connections. To be able to pull something off under the radar. To keep it completely out of the news…”

“His name is Miko,” I told her.

“Miko. Interesting.”

“I stole his wallet because he was so hot that I wanted to fuck up his day.”

“Oh, you fucked it up, alright,” Lil said, wincing. “Miko doesn’t sound Russian to me. Maybe Eastern European. Unless he was Asian, because that could be, no?” she asked when I shook my head.

“No,” I said as my stomach felt suddenly full of lead. “No, he, ah, he looked like he stepped right out of a mob movie.”

“Oh,” Lil said, rocking back in her chair. “Shit.”

I slipped my phone away, wanting a sip of my coffee, but worried my hands might shake.

Because there weren’t a whole lot of rules when you operated in the criminal underworld. But one of them was simple and age-old.

You don’t fuck with the mafia.

“I could give it back,” I said, watching Lil for her reaction.

“I think you don’t really have any other choice. I mean, that’s a lot of diamonds. It would take a long time to unload all of that. And if the mob has feelers out and is looking for loose diamond sales…”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t have to tell you that they have their hands in everything. If my place had any sort of signage, I’m pretty sure they would shake me down for protection money.”

“How the fuck do I even go about giving this back? It’s not like they have a headquarters.”

“No,” she agreed. “But you have his wallet. And, I assume, his address.”

That I did.

“I don’t think you need to be pissing yourself,” Lil said, sensing my growing panic. “I mean, the mob is known for their code. And right at the top, just below loyalty, is no fucking with women or kids. And, you know, they’re criminals too. I thinkhe’d understand that you were just doing your hustle. And that once you saw what you had, you brought it right back.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, writing off the idea of being a chickenshit and hiring a courier to do the dirty work for me.

Lil was right.

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