Page 15 of The Woman on the Jury

I left him half an hour later when the meds and the long night finally caught up with him, making him pass out and rest.

The last thing I wanted was to go back to the shop. But I did need to check around, make sure the most expensive items weren’t missing. Those, I’d been sure to catalog first when I started working there.

I was just about to reach down to pull up the security gate when I saw them.

Four men.

Standing across the street.

And something about them had goosebumps rising all over my body.

I chanced a second look.

And recognition hit.

Then I was turning and running.

Toward the subway.

Where I would find people.

And in them, at least the illusion of safety.

Though I knew New Yorkers too well to assume anyone would step in to save me if it came to that. I’d seen too many awful things over the years.

The perk of the subway was also getting the fuck out of my neighborhood, so I could sit somewhere and think.

My first instinct was to go to the police, of course.

The problem was, I had no proof that they were doing anything wrong. I couldn’t explain the chilling look on their faces to the cops. Even if they believed me, there was nothing they could do.

There was, as far as I could tell, no video footage of them.

They’d caught my grandfather from behind, so that he couldn’t even fight back. There’d been nothing under his nails or anything like that.

Yet, I knew it, damnit.

It had been them.

Somehow, they’d found out that I’d been the one to deadlock the jury.

I was the reason their brother’s killer was a free man.

Which really just left me with one choice, didn’t it?

To go to their brother’s murderer for help…

CHAPTER FOUR

Cosimo

“Leon, I don’t want your fucking excuses. I want results,” I said, staring down the man who was standing at the side of my table.

Leon was one of my most seasoned soldiers, one with a couple dozen associates under him. And I was starting to wonder if his seniority had given him a false fucking sense of security when it came to what was expected of him.

That, or he’d simply been slacking when I hadn’t been around to breathe down his neck.

The money he was kicking up was laughable. Especially when you considered that I had to take my cut, then kick the rest up the chain to Lorenzo.

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