Page 2 of Nico

It’s just your imagination, I tried to convince myself. Everything that happened tonight made me paranoid.

But I couldn’t get rid of the feeling of being watched, my skin tingling with awareness. Thunder shuddered the earth, the sound of the waves violent against the shore.

“Bianca?” My husband’s voice came from behind me.

I jumped in fear, snapping my head in his direction. He stood right behind me on the porch, his hair still wet.

“You shouldn’t be out here,” I scolded him softly. “I don’t want you to catch a cold.”

His immune system was weak. Compromised, more like it. The treatments have barely started, but it was taking a toll on him.

“We are not giving that money back,” he uttered, that stubbornness I came to know well edged on his young face.

“William, we have to.” My voice cracked. I was scared. Scared of losing my husband. Scared of the mafia and their ruthlessness. Scared of consequences. “You know as well as I do, that money has to be returned. It’s not ours. You working with them is a mistake. Bad news.”

He shook his head in disagreement, but he knew I was right. It was in his eyes, along with the exhaustion of the last few months.

You’d never know my husband was gravely ill, his system fighting a deadly cancer. Not unless you’ve known him for as long as I have. Not unless you lived with him. He hid it, but he tired faster, slept harder, and barely ate.

“We need the money for treatments,” he reasoned. I could see he was tired; the cancer was slowly eating at his strength and his youth. He aged at least ten years in the last few months. His head tilted to the bag that still stood next to the door, where I insisted it stayed until they returned it. “And for you, in case, if I-”

“Don’t say it,” I whispered, my heart squeezing in my chest. “Don’t you fucking dare say it.”

“Baby, you know what the doctors said.”

Yes, I fucking knew what they said, but I refused to believe there was no hope. There had to be something that we could do. Hope still lingered in me, that he’d pull through. We still had so much to work out. We needed another chance to make up for the time we’d allowed the distance to grow between us.

He has to pull through.

He came up to me, wrapped his arms around me. I buried my face into his chest, inhaling his scent while my throat constricted with sobs I kept in.

“Bianca, I want you to be taken care of,” he whispered into my hair, his voice tired. “I want to make sure you and the girls are okay when I’m gone.”

Sobs won the battle, and I buried my head into his chest as tears streamed down my face. “Don’t talk like that,” I begged, my voice hoarse. “Please, William. You have to get better. We can find a doctor that has a cure,” I rasped shakily.

He wrapped me tightly into his arms, with the same strength he used to have, feeding my hope as he pressed his lips softly onto my forehead.

His kiss on my forehead was the first goodbye.

ChapterOne

BIANCA

Sixteen months later

Greece is nice this time of year.

The skies are blue.

And the seas are stormy.

The words swirled through my head like an eerie children's song in a horror movie. The fear was almost a paralyzing thought of what would follow them if I ever heard it aloud. Although at this very moment, I craved blue skies and just a little hope.

I rushed through the streets, a light drizzle making this afternoon wet and slightly chilly. Finding parking was such a pain in the city. By the time I finally found it, I was a few blocks away from the meeting spot. I lived only an hour from Washington D.C., but I rarely came to the city anymore. I preferred the suburbs with less congestion and less people. Especially lately. I didn’t care to be around anyone, except for my girls.

It had been fifteen months, three weeks, and five days since I lost my husband. Never in a million years had I thought I'd be a widow at twenty-six. I was told my life had barely begun, but lately, it was as if my life ended. I felt anxious, exhausted, and alone.

It was mid-September and the recent weather mostly consisted of rain, very much reflective of my melancholic mood. It was as if it had been raining since the day William died. Even sunny days seemed gloomy, overcast with clouds that seemed to follow me everywhere.