Page 4 of The Woman with the Wallet

Miko.

Interesting name.

But not quite as interesting as something else I found inside that wallet…

CHAPTER TWO

Miko

“I swear to fucking God, Nero, if you killed a bunch of people again, I’m gonna lose my shit,” I said as I walked up to my brother, who was standing on the sidewalk outside of a random coffee shop with two cups in his hands. “I just barely stopped getting my ass handed to me from Cosimo about the last time.”

“For the record, it wasn’t a bunch. It was two. And shit got out of hand. It’s not like I went looking for a problem,” he said, passing me a paper coffee cup, the heat of it immediately warming my freezing hands. “Cold as fuck today,” Nero said.

“And you got me doing a meeting on the sidewalk why?” I asked, looking around the street, catching sight of a bit of New Year’s Eve confetti that had been missed during the clean-up a few days before.

“‘Cause we’re not supposed to talk business over the phone,” Nero said, shaking his head.

I had three brothers. All of ‘em would be going into the ‘Family’ business eventually, but Nero was the only one currently working for me. And I was working for Cosimo Costa, a high-ranking capo. But I had hopes that, soon, the books would open up, and I would be my own capo, would get my own crew.

My pain-in-the-ass little brothers would all likely be my first group of associates or soldiers, depending on how much time they had been doing jobs for the Costas.

It was why I was probably harder on Nero than I needed to be. Because until the day when I was the capo, that I was the one everyone was answering to, their actions reflected on meandCosimo. Their fuck-ups became my fuck-ups and, by extension, Cosimo’s fuck-ups.

So they needed to be good.

No, not just good.

Exceptional.

And after Nero’s screw-up a few months back with killing two guys he was just supposed to get some money from, I’d doubled down on rules with my brother.

So much so that the only time he was allowed to text me was about shit to do with our parents or sisters. And if he was calling about business, all he was allowed to do was give me a time and place.

Hence meeting on a crowded street during a frigid polar vortex.

“Alright, what is it then?” I asked, sipping the coffee that was steadily becoming lukewarm.

“Went to collect the money from those frat boy pricks who opened the brewery,” Nero started.

There were a lot of jobs guys working their way up in the Family could do. One of the most important jobs, though, was working as the bagman. Meaning, they were the ones who went into businesses that paid for the Family’s protection and collected the cash.

It was a pain-in-the-ass job that often required intimidation, if not outright violence, if someone was getting ideas of shorting us or deciding they were done paying as a whole.

The best bagmen didn’t have to knock anyone’s teeth in to get the results we all wanted. But they all had to be willing to do exactly that, should the situation call for it.

It sounded like the frat boys might be looking for a little roughing up.

“They didn’t want to pay?” I asked.

I’d been in his shoes plenty in the past. Working as a go-between for the public and the capos. Not knowing exactly how far to go, or if permission was needed to do some shit.

But I’d always had good instincts with that sort of thing.

I was worried that if Nero was coming to me asking about this sort of shit, that I’d messed up his instincts by making him come to me about too much.

“Actually, no. They paid. In small bills. Even put it in this nifty reusable bag,” he said, pulling a canvas tote out of his jacket that was wrapped tightly around a small pile of cash.

“Huh. Alright. What’s the problem then? Shouldn’t you be on your way to Cosimo to give him that?”

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