Page 110 of The Woman on the Jury

“Learned over the years that there’s not much I can’t figure out if I work at it. Or stick Miko on it,” I admitted.

“He really does seem to be really mature for his age, doesn’t he?” she asked.

“He’s been working hustles since he was in middle school. Made him hungry. He grew up fast. I’m dreading the day I gotta let him get his own crew,” I admitted. “Finding someone that good to work closely with me won’t be easy.”

Especially with my trust issues, Family or not.

“What about Venezio?” she asked.

“I like Venezio. And I think Miko bringing him to me was proof that he thinks he can take his place too. We’ll see. He’s still down for the time being.”

“I should probably go visit him, right? Now that I’m not a complete prisoner anymore,” she added with a look that said I better not deny her these requests.

“He’s a moody fuck right now, but if you wanna see him, we can drop in. Or have Miko drag his ass outta his apartment to meet us for dinner somewhere.”

“We can go out to dinner?” she asked, eyes brightening.

“Yeah… why couldn’t we?” I asked.

“Because… you know…” she said, gesturing out.

“A lot of my life involves situations where some people might want to hurt me, baby. If I let that impact how I live my life, I’d never leave home.”

The funny thing was, I had been letting it impact howshelived her life. Almost as if, from the beginning, I cared more about her life than I did my own.

“If you’re gonna be with me, there’s gonna have to be an understanding that there is no guarantee of safety all the time,” I told her, realizing this was a conversation we likely should have had before I told her I wanted her moving in.

“I mean… no one has any guarantee of safety, though,” she said. “Especially women,” she added. “I think maybe I am safer with you than I would be on my own, even without the brothers being in the picture.”

That was true.

Everyone knew not to fuck with mafia old women and kids. It seemed like the stories I knew of in the Family that involved the women getting hurt or taken all happened before they were, officially, mafia wives or mothers.

“That’s true,” I agreed. I wasn’t sure there would ever be a day when I was comfortable not having a guard on her. Though I wasn’t gonna freak her out by admitting that. “I’m not going to ever do something to put you at risk. If I’m saying going out to eat is safe, it is.”

“Do you think there will ever be a day when we don’t have to worry about these brothers?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“That’s… that’s a very definitive answer,” she said, brow raised.

“One way or another, they will stop being a problem eventually.” I watched as her mind worked through all the possible ways I could mean that. “Just a reminder that shit like this… that’s the life,” I said, not sure what feeling she landed on in the end.

“I knew that going in,” she reminded me. “I’ve known exactly what it meant since the moment I walked into that courtroom.”

“You never told me why you deadlocked that jury,” I said.

“The girl.”

“What’s that?”

“The girl. She came into the courthouse one day. Nicholas’s ex. She’d been bruised in one of the pictures with him. I figured that’s why you did it.”

“Part of it. Lily lives in the building. She’s hardly more than a kid. One night, I came home to find her passed out in the elevator, beaten and raped. By Nicholas and all her brothers.”

“Oh, my God,” she said, her hand going to her heart. “Oh, God. That’s so much worse than I thought.”

“Lily didn’t want to go to the police, didn’t want to stand trial. She just wanted to try to move past it. But I couldn’t let it rest. I meant to get them all. I would have, if I hadn’t been so impulsive. Things just didn’t work out that way.”

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