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)
I would have called to cancel my cards and shrugged off the loss of cash. Gotten myself a new ID.
No big deal.
But this wasn’t any day.
This was the one goddamn day when I had something irreplaceable in that wallet, something that I was going to use to secure my place as a capo in the Costa Family.
“Fuck fuck fuck,” I hissed, rushing out of the door of the shop and making my way back toward where the run-in happened.
But she was gone.
Of course she was.
She was clearly a pro.
And she’d just made off with the score of her entire fucking career.
CHAPTER THREE
Max
Not quite believing my eyes, I zipped the coin compartment in the wallet before climbing off the bed, walking over to my bedroom door, and locking it.
The last thing I needed was Nicole—who was the sweetest girl but also kind of loosey-goosey with the concept of knocking before entering—to come barging in, see what I’d found, and start demanding answers.
I felt bad sometimes, knowing that Megs was lying to both of her partners about my job. But it was literally the only secret she kept from anyone. And we both knew it was what allowed us to afford a decently sized apartment, since both their salaries were likely too modest to afford anything other than a studio.
So, when we discussed my job in their company—which was almost never—we just said I was a courier.
It wasn’t, in the strictest sense, a lie.
When pressed about my odd hours, we simply said that rich people were demanding. Which was also true. And that, to make the big bucks, I had to be on call whenever they needed me to move shit from point A to point B.
It wasn’t a perfect system, but it was surprisingly infrequent that anyone actually asked specifics about my job. If anything, they were just saying that I worked too much. And when their boyfriend was in town, he—being a fellow workaholic—was always was quick to jump in and defend me.
Lock secured, I kicked off my shoes, turned on the big light, then grabbed a simple black pillowcase from my closet to spread on my bed.
Then, stomach clenching, I reached again for the wallet, unzipping the coin pocket, and carefully shaking the contents onto the pillowcase.
There they fell.
Dozens of brilliant little diamonds.
Diamonds.
The man’s coin purse was full of actual diamonds.
Or, at least, that was what my less-than-expert eyes said.
I grabbed the largest one I could find and walked over to the side of the room, careful to keep a grip on it as I ran the pointed end across the very corner of the window, and scratching it down.
Sure enough, there was a scratch.
It wasn’t exactly conclusive. There were other gems that could scratch glass.
So I raised the diamond to my mouth, huffed some air onto it, and watching how quickly the fog faded.
“Hm,” I murmured when it almost immediately cleared.
Those were really the only tests I could do at home without any equipment. But I was leaning toward them being genuine.
Diamonds weren’t exactly my specialty, despite working closely for very wealthy men and women for years. If you held up your engagement ring to me and I saw it all sparkling and catching the light, I would assume it was a diamond. Even if it was cubic zirconia or moissanite.
The only way I could know for certain was to grab one of the diamonds—logically, the smallest of the bunch—and take it to an actual expert.
Decision made, I swept all the other diamonds back up, putting them into the coin purse, save for the tiny one I carefully tucked into my own wallet.
I slipped my feet back into my boots and made my way to the door.
I was all of one foot into the hallway when Nicole and Megs appeared in the opening, arms folded.
“Go back to bed,” Nicole demanded with a brow raised.
“Normally, you know I don’t even try to tell you what to do,” Megs chimed in. “But it’s been over twenty-four hours without sleep. You need some rest. Whatever the work is, it can wait until tomorrow.”
Megs almost never put her foot down about anything. She was content to be the easy-going little sister, letting me be the controlling and demanding one.
But every now and again—especially when she thought I was being a danger to myself in some way—she dug in her heels.
This was one of those times.
I could see her thoughts in her eyes.
Namely, that I’d just made eight grand, so there was no reason I couldn’t take a couple of hours to recover before I got back to work.
I couldn’t exactly tell her that I was running out because I had, potentially, stumbled into, what? A quarter-million-dollar stash of diamonds. Maybe more.
I didn’t even try to contain the sigh that escaped me.
“I know sleep is hard sometimes,” Megs said, eyes softening.