Page 112 of The Woman on the Jury

“No, baby. Why—“

“Robert,” she said, exhaling hard. “That was the one who attacked me,” she said, watching the footage of him being arrested, eyes huge, confused, not knowing what the hell was going on. “See his hand?” she asked, pointing to the TV where he had it wrapped up. “I hit it with a meat tenderizer.”

“I didn’t even know which one it was,” I admitted, reaching out to pull her closer. “We’re under strict ‘no kill’ orders about this,” I told her. “I don’t understand how this happened,” I admitted.

We were still watching the news when there was another knock at the door, prompting Miko to go answer.

Then in walked Silvano, someone who’d only been to my place, I don’t know, once in all the time that I’d been living here.

He walked casually in, like he belonged, grabbing himself a mug of coffee, then moving over into the living room, standing a few feet from Halle.

“Crazy shit, huh?” he asked, taking a sip of his coffee.

My gaze shot to Miko, wanting to know if his mind was going in the same direction as mine. I found his brows raised, his gaze moving from Silvano to me.

Sil had done it.

Sil had killed the three brothers.

And framed the fourth.

Because if there was one person who knew how to get away with murder, it was the man the Family hired to clean up crime scenes for the rest of us.

The thing was, Silvano wasn’t a killer.

He was just the cleaning crew.

But he’d done it.

For Halle, sure.

But also for me.

“Lorenzo thought anything happening to the brothers would put the heat back on the Family,” I said, choosing my words carefully.

“Oh, yeah? Well, good thing it was the other brother to whack them all,” he said, shrugging.

“Sil…” I said, shaking my head at him.

“Seems like there’s self-defense wounds and under nail scrapings and shit. Sounds pretty open-and-shut to me. No deadlocked juries with this one.”

Honestly, if there was a single person in the world who could get away with this, it was Silvano.

He’d never see the inside of a courtroom.

But justice was finally served.

Lily would be able to regain more of her life.

Halle would have her freedom back.

It was over.

And I didn’t have to do a goddamn thing.

“Sounds like me and you gotta take a trip to see the Boss today,” I said, looking at Silvano’s profile.

“I can handle it,” Silvano said, shrugging. Though, technically, he’d never been in trouble with Lorenzo before. Unlike the rest of us, Silvano didn’t run a crew. He just worked when someone had a clean-up job for him. There was nothing to ever be in trouble for.

---