Page 51 of The Woman on the Jury

Because this was a penthouse apartment.

It had to be in the millions.

A multi-million-dollar apartment, thousands of dollars for each suit he wore, the watches, the shoes, the damn cufflinks.

Cosimo Costa was the kind of wealthy that almost felt fictional to someone who’d never personally even had a taste of it.

I wouldn’t say I’d been poor, per se, but I’d struggled a lot in my life. I’d been a full-time student and busted my ass at jobs to try to pay for all that schooling without having too many loans to weigh me down until freaking retirement.

But I was forever trying to turn off lights to save on the bill, to thrift things when I could, to use something until it fell apart.

This kind of luxury was foreign to me.

Left alone, I went ahead and let my eyes drift closed, and tried to take several deep breaths to try to bring some order back to my overwrought system.

I kind of felt like I should be a hell of a lot more hysterical than I was right then. Maybe it was just the shock of it all.

I mean, the initial attack was bad enough.

But then having to drag a severely wounded Venezio into the car while being chased?

Then needing todrivewhen I only had a cursory understanding of how a car worked.

It was all just a lot.

I had to give myself some time to decompress.

I imagined it would all come flooding back eventually.

At some point, I couldn’t take the uncertainty anymore, and made my way out into the common area.

And, yeah, holy shit.

The entire apartment seemed like it was out of a magazine.

I’d been right about thinking it was all gray and black.

It was.

The walls were a deep gray. The fireplace was massive and black. The furniture in the living room was all light gray.

Even the kitchen was set into the same tones with dark gray cabinets above and below, and a massive black island with a slate countertop. Each of the cabinets was lit with some hidden lighting, giving the space a warmer feel. In fact, there were a lot of accent lights in that yellowy-white that made it feel a lot more homey.

Over the top of the apartment where the guest room I’d been in was located was a loft with glass railings to make the spaces melt into each other.

I imagined the primary suite would be found up there. And it must have been massive to take up all that space.

Beyond the actual bones and decor of the place, the massive floor-to-ceiling windows brought the city in, and somehow also made the space feel even larger.

If I wasn’t mistaken, to the side of the kitchen was also a private balcony.

God, if I lived here, I would never want to leave.

I couldn’t spend any more time looking around, though, with Venezio injured far worse than I could have anticipated.

I didn’t even know the man, but my heart ached for him.

And not to mention the guilt that flooded my system. There was no denying that there was only one reason he was injured right now.

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