Page 4 of The Woman on the Jury

Even if the prosecution’s case was circumstantial at best.

He’d done it.

But not because of organized crime.

Not because of some beef.

No.

He’d killed him because of what Nicholas was doing to his girlfriend, a girl who couldn’t be much older than eighteen. Someone who couldn’t stand up for herself.

So Cosimo had done it for her.

And maybe it wasn’t how most people felt, but as a daughter who had watched her mother get relentlessly abused by a man for years, and no one stepped in to help her, yeah, I had to say that Cosimo Costa was innocent in my book.

I didn’t give a fuck what anyone else had to say about it.

Even if the jury deadlocked because of it…

CHAPTER TWO

Cosimo

I was free.

Free.

No ankle monitor.

No rules about not leaving my apartment.

I could just… go back to my life.

My defense team was split on what they thought would happen next.

A hopelessly deadlocked jury meant that the prosecution could take me back to trial again at any time. The question was whether or not they would.

One of my attorneys thought it was likely.

But the newer member of the defense team, someone who was related to the Family through marriage, Vega, thought it was unlikely, given that the evidence stacked against me was flimsy and circumstantial at best.

That said, the D.A’s office was unpredictable.

And they were always out to lock up wise guys.

A feather in their cap or some shit like that.

Even if, objectively, this didn’t have shit to do with organized crime.

That said, everything I did had to do with the Family. Which was why I knew what my first stop had to be once I left the courthouse.

To Lorenzo’s Brownstone.

To deal with the fallout of my actions.

Contrary to what you might see in film or on TV, you couldn’t just go around killing people when you were in the mafia. You had to run that shit past theCapo dei capibefore you did it.

The thing was, I hadn’t.

---