Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 77579 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77579 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
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 the Capo dei capi before you did it.
The thing was, I hadn’t.
I couldn’t have.
Because I knew what the answer was going to be.
Fuck no.
It wasn’t that they wouldn’t empathize with the situation, that they wouldn’t want to do the same thing, but they wouldn’t be able to condone it. To risk it.
So, well, I just… did it.
I didn’t plan on getting caught. But… shit happens. What can I say? It was getting harder and harder in this world to do anything without some trail leading back to you.
In the Family, we usually had ways to cover our tracks.
Namely, Silvano.
My step-brother.
The bane of my fucking existence most of the time.
But it wasn’t brotherly bullshit that had me not calling him.
It was the whole ‘not involving the Family’ thing.
“I will be in touch,” my lawyer said, giving me a firm handshake.
“Yes?” I asked, catching the eye of my other attorney, the woman named Vega with flame-red hair, and a ton of tattoos under her professional suit, who was sitting in because… I dunno… she was the cousin to someone in the family or some shit like that.
“You know, if you weren’t a complete and utter dick, I would climb you like a tree,” she said, looking up at me with a nod.
Despite myself, I felt my lips curve up a bit at that.
“Good to know,” I agreed, nodding.
“Yeah, I mean, it’s got to be good to know that it isn’t your looks that are holding you back from massive amounts of pussy.”
“Just my personality,” I said.
“Exactly,” she said, smiling. “Well, catch you around, Big Guy. Try not to murder anyone else, okay?” she asked, then turned and walked down the courthouse steps, making a beeline for the closest hot dog vendor.
How she kept a body like that, eating like she ate, was beyond me.
“Fuck,” I hissed, rolling my neck, as I looked up at the sky.
Fall was in full swing but leaning colder, like winter was right around the corner.
I knew I was supposed to be happy that the holidays were coming soon, and that I would be free for them. All I could seem to muster, though, was an almost overwhelming sense of dread.
I’d turned everyone away after my arrest and during my house arrest. Refusing to see anyone. Not even accepting meals when they’d been dropped off.
I thought I was going away.
Twenty-five years, at least.
I figured it would be better to cut everyone off before that happened, to make the transition easier.
But here I was.
Somehow… free.
Even though the jury consultant my legal team hired told us that there was, essentially, no chance at freedom from what they could gather through their analytics.
I couldn’t say I’d paid them enough attention to come to my own decisions about them.
I just figured my team was right.
But here I was.
Free.
Fuck-knew how.
Now… now I guess I had to repair all the shit I’d damaged since I went away.
Starting with my ma.
Step-mom, technically, but she’d been my only mom for most of my life. She’d been the soft spot in a hard-as-fuck childhood.