Page 75 of The Woman with the Wallet

“It is. They’re stoked now,” I admitted. “But we did forget about one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Neither of them has a car.”

“Oh, shit, yeah. Well, that’s easy enough,” he said, reaching for his phone.

“Are you ordering a car service?”

“More or less,” he said with a devilish little smirk.

“What’s that smile about?” I asked.

“Sometimes there’s a perk to having so many siblings,” he said.

“No, don’t make one of them drive them. I’ll hire a car service.”

“Nero is the Family’s car service,” Miko said. Then, sensing I was about to put my foot down, “I’d feel better if they were with someone I know. At least until they are in Vermont. If you want to hire a service for their way home, I’m cool with that. But I want to know they’re safe. They will be with my brother.”

“Oh. Okay,” I agreed. “But can he maybe… act like a car service? Megs will be suspicious if he doesn’t.”

“Yeah, he’ll do that.”

“Wait. Does he look like you?”

To that, Miko shrugged as he did something on his phone. A second later, a man’s voice came from it.

“Why are you video calling me?” Nero, I assumed, asked.

“Say hi to Max,” Miko said, turning the screen to face me.

My immediate instinct was to look away, to hide my face, suddenly insecure about the bruises, even if I’d just spent the past few days not giving a shit who saw me.

“Camera’s off on our end,” he said, seeming to read my mind. Which was both endearing and worrisome.

I wasn’t easy to read.

That was my thing.

Being a closed book.

How was he able to read me so easily?

“Um… hi, Max,” Nero said, looking at the screen as he walked around his apartment. “Wish I could say it was nice to see you, but, well…”

If you really looked, yeah, you could definitely see the family resemblance. Maybe it was just my feelings for him that made me feel that way, but I thought Miko was hotter. Though, to be fair, Nero was younger. And everyone knew that guys just managed to get hotter year by year.

“I have to know, is your brother’s stubbornness a family trait?” I asked.

“Miko? Stubborn? Think you’re talking about one of the other brothers.”

“Um, hi, I’m here too,” Chuck said, clearly wanting to be included.

“Who is that?”

“No one you need to know about. Alright. I’m hanging up. Clear your schedule for tomorrow. Then swing by here to get the car ready.”

“I might have had plans tomorrow, y’know,” Nero said.

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