Page 16 of The Woman with the Wallet

I was going to figure this shit out.

I would get the wallet, sell the diamonds, and have a nice kick-up for Cosimo and Lorenzo. Plus a little bit left over for me.

“Doesn’t look like nothing. Looks like you got some shit going sideways.”

Shit.

The last thing I needed was him getting suspicious. Cosimo could be a dog with a bone when he was curious about something. I needed to give him something to make him drop it.

“It’s embarrassing as fuck,” I started, watching his brows lift.

“What is?”

“My wallet got lifted earlier today.”

“No fucking way,” Cosimo said, looking dangerously close to laughing. And he wasn’t a guy prone to humor.

“Cross my heart,” I said, shaking my head at the situation.

“Well, everyone has their hustle,” Cosimo said, shrugging.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“What’s the big deal? Cancel your shit. Couldn’t have had that much cash on you.”

“Nah.” Not cash, anyway. “But I had something… sentimental in it. Any chance you know someone offhand who could maybe get me the camera feeds or something?”

It wasn’t as easy to be a criminal in these days of cameras with facial recognition everywhere. As someone in the life, I hated it. But the cameras did come in handy when we were looking for someone too.

“Ah… isn’t one of Nico’s brothers handy with computers and shit? You could ask him.”

“Thanks, I’ll… that’s Nero,” I said when I heard his signature knock on the apartment door. “I’ll head out. He’s got shit to talk to you about.”

I passed my brother on the way out, giving him a nod of encouragement, then hit the street, heading in the direction of the closest of Nico’s siblings.

Moody-ass Gavino.

“This better be good,” a voice grumbled from the other side of the door when I knocked.

It wasn’t that Gav was busy. He rarely was. He just fucking hated interacting if he didn’t have to. Which was an unfortunate personality trait when he existed in a massive family.

“You,” Gav said, looking at me with dark blue eyes that he got from his mother. Like Nico and Cesare, he was tall and fit with dark hair and tanned skin. But unlike Nico, who wore his goodness on his sleeve, and Cesare, who wore his charm the same way, all Gavino had to offer was an air of annoyance. “Cosimo’s guy.”

“Miko,” I agreed, nodding.

“What do you want? I don’t have any work with Cosimo.”

Last I heard, he didn’t have any work with anyone. It was always one of his brothers who dragged him in on jobs. He would be a capo out of virtue of his birth, not necessarily because he busted his ass for it.

I could be resentful about that, but I knew what I was getting into from the jump. It was pointless to be frustrated about the very structure of the organization I wanted so badly to belong to.

“No. I actually just had a question. Cosimo mentioned that one of you guys was good with computers and hacking and shit like that.”

“That’s Zeno, not me,” Gav said, shaking his head. “I’ll give you his address, so you can go bother him instead of me.”

If I wasn’t close to losing my shit about the missing diamonds, I would have had a laugh about that. As it was, though, I memorized the address and rushed right back out, wanting to catch Zeno before he went out or went to bed.

If my memory of this branch of the family tree was correct, Zeno was the second-youngest of the siblings, older only than Lore, the Costa daughter who just married an Esposito to end the rivalry that had been around for over a decade.

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