Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 77344 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77344 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
“You have really been stretched thin lately,” Megs piled on.
Megs worked for a nonprofit, doing what she liked most—helping people.
I was the only one still hustling to string together my income. Though, admittedly, the money was much better these days. And the pickpocketing of the ultra-wealthy was more for sport than anything.
“What’d you steal last night?” Megs asked when Nicole excused herself to go take a shower.
While we both loved and trusted Nicole, neither of us actually told her the details of what I did for a living.
Namely, stealing shit.
Not the wallets.
This was more like stealing back things someone’s ex, or former business partner, or friend had wrongly taken in the first place. And when the legal channels were exhausted, well, they called in me.
Of course, this meant I did tend to end up working for the rich guys I would normally be picking the pockets of, but this way, I got to fleece thousands out of them instead of a few hundred.
It was a surprisingly in-demand job for someone particularly skilled in it. I figured that not many people thought to pursue a career in stealing shit, save for career bank or store robbers.
Sure, that had been an option. But, morally, I knew most bodega owners were independent and barely getting by themselves. And I didn’t exactly fancy the idea of getting shot by police while robbing a bank.
My job did, of course, involve some risk. Rich people had their own security personnel, systems, or even dogs. One or two even had guns. But the nature of the work meant I had time to follow the targets, to stake out their places, to find my little windows for entry.
All that work beforehand was what kept me from home so much. The actual robberies were over in a matter of hours. But the prep could take weeks sometimes. And not all of it took place in the five boroughs. Long hours were part of the gig.
But the money made it all worth it to me.
“The ashes of a beloved dog,” I told Megs.
“Wait… what? Seriously?”
“Seriously. Apparently, Goober lived seventeen long, happy years with his dad. But his eventual wife hated the dog. And, apparently, her ex-husband. She stole the ashes and refused to give them back when she didn’t get the alimony she wanted.”
“Wow. That’s cold.”
“Right? She had him stored in a musty closet in her basement in upstate New York.”
“How much did you get for that job?”
“Eight grand,” I told her, smiling because I was still trying to wrap my head around that.
“He must have really loved that dog.”
“He cried when I brought him the urn,” I told her. “That was why I was in the Midtown area.”
“Where the hot guy annoyed you enough to steal his wallet,” she said, holding it out to me to take before Nicole asked about it.
I stuffed it into my pocket and nodded to her sign. “When’s the protest?”
“Tonight.”
“Peaceful, right?” I asked, knowing things had gotten dicey at a few of the protests she’d been to over the past year. Police in riot gear. Rubber bullets. Tear gas. Arrests.
“This is a strike. It shouldn’t be dangerous,” she said, shrugging. Because we both knew that even if there was the threat of injury or arrest, if she believed in the cause, she would be there with everyone else.
“Take a burner out of my drawer,” I demanded.
We both knew that one of the rules of attending protests was you left your phone home. But burners weren’t traceable, and she could use it to call me for help if she needed it.
“You know,” Megs said, shooting me a smile. “I’m twenty-four now. You don’t need to protect me anymore.”
“And yet…”
“And yet,” she agreed, shaking her head. “Go get some rest.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, refilling my cup with the fresh coffee before going into my room.
Where I didn’t rest.
Instead, I sat on the edge of my bed and reached for the wallet, flipping it open and seeing that annoyingly handsome face staring back at me from his license.
Miko.
Interesting name.
But not quite as interesting as something else I found inside that wallet…
CHAPTER TWO
Miko
“I swear to fucking God, Nero, if you killed a bunch of people again, I’m gonna lose my shit,” I said as I walked up to my brother, who was standing on the sidewalk outside of a random coffee shop with two cups in his hands. “I just barely stopped getting my ass handed to me from Cosimo about the last time.”
“For the record, it wasn’t a bunch. It was two. And shit got out of hand. It’s not like I went looking for a problem,” he said, passing me a paper coffee cup, the heat of it immediately warming my freezing hands. “Cold as fuck today,” Nero said.
“And you got me doing a meeting on the sidewalk why?” I asked, looking around the street, catching sight of a bit of New Year’s Eve confetti that had been missed during the clean-up a few days before.