Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 75748 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75748 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Nico Costa has spent years burying the way he felt about his friend’s wife. He was there the day they married. He watched her build a life with a man who didn’t deserve her. And now that man is dead—gunned down in a hit no one is willing to talk about, let alone look into.
When Nico steps in to help Blair with a few loose ends, he doesn’t expect to keep getting pulled back in. Back into her life. Back into the feelings he thought he'd buried. Back into a mystery darker than either of them knew.
And as secrets about her late husband start to unravel, so do their carefully kept boundaries.
She’s grieving the man she thought she knew.
He’s uncovering the plot that got him killed.
And neither of them are ready for how far they’ll go to finally have each other.
* this book can be read as a standalone *
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
CHAPTER ONE
Nico
The dead don’t care about punctuality.
It was those left to miss him that had me running through the crowds of umbrellas on the street to race toward the church. Rain splattered my black suit and dripped down my unshaven face.
It had been a long three days since I’d gotten the news—straight from the five o’clock news. These days, news cycles work faster than common decency.
No one should find out that the friend they’ve had since they were five years old had been gunned down on the street from a slick-haired man with mock sympathy in his eyes and judgment held tight in the corners of his lips.
What was he doing out on the street at four in the morning?
What was he into that had people wanting him dead?
They were questions everyone was likely thinking, to be fair. Including the people sitting inside the church that frowned down on the city, ancient and judgmental of everything it had seen since the first massive sandstone brick was laid several hundred years before.
I glanced up, taking a deep breath, then forcing my legs to take me up the steps.
I’d been to plenty of funerals in my day. It came with the territory when you spend your life in a profession that all but guaranteed bloodshed.
That said, this was the first funeral I’d attended since my grandparents passed that belonged to someone I’d known almost all my life, someone who I cared for on more than just a surface level.
The heavy doors groaned open, like they, too, were heavy with grief.
The welcome sign had my step stuttering.
Celebrating the life of Matthew Ferraro.
I recognized the picture that had been used. It had been taken the day before his wedding, snapped by his younger brother just after announcing they were all heading to a strip club, despite Matt promising his fiancée that we were just going out for steak and drinks.
He was smiling big.
I remember I’d been the only one frowning about the whole situation.
I knew instantly that the photo had been chosen by Matt’s family, not his wife. She would have picked something more polished. Maybe one of their wedding snaps. Or, at least, a picture of him with his face shaved and his hair combed.
Though, I had to admit, it was probably the picture that represented the man best. Carefree, unguarded, maybe a bit mischievous.
I forced my gaze away, dipping my finger into the holy water at the entrance and made the sign of the cross like muscle memory before stepping toward the side.
Mary sat watch over the flickering votives in their red glass holders.
I lit one flame for Matthew.
And one for everyone left behind to miss him.
Turning back, I wiped lingering water from my face and looked down the center aisle, the old wooden pews pouring out toward each side.
This wasn’t a Family funeral—packed to the rafters with family, friends, and associates.
This was a small, intimate affair.
And I couldn’t help but notice that Matthew’s family—mother, father, brother, and two aunts—sat to the right.
Leaving Matt’s wife to sit alone on the left, where she’d likely arrived first and sat.
The rift between Matthew’s family and his wife had been there since the beginning—fostered and encouraged by Matt’s mom.
But it felt especially cruel, in their shared grief, to sit apart.
My gaze slid to the left, finding Matt’s widow sitting alone in the front pew.
Her head was ducked.
And I hated that I noticed how the light inside the church bounced off the colorful stained glass and danced on her dark strands—pulled tight into a low bun.
That was the kind of thing I had to work not to pay attention to when Matt was alive. And it was something I really needed not to notice now that he was dead.
Pining for your dead friend’s widow was fucking unhinged.
The ceremony still hadn’t started, so I made my way down the aisle toward Matt’s mom.
As soon as Ronny spotted me, her hands reached for mine, clutching a damp handkerchief between our skin.
Crouching down, I gave her hands a squeeze.
“I’m so sorry, Ronny,” I said, noting her swollen lids and red-stained cheeks. “He loved you so much.”
“He loved you too, Nico. His one true friend.”
“You know I’m here for you if you need anything.”
Her hands squeezed mine again before releasing me to cry quietly into her hands as I moved down the aisle, speaking to Matt’s father, brother, and aunts before making my way toward the side.
I meant to simply slip into a pew behind them.
I was closer to the Ferraro family than I was to Blair.
But I found myself making a big circle around the church, coming down the other side toward the front row.
Silently, I slid in next to Matt’s widow, being careful to leave several inches of space between us, knowing it was dangerous to touch her.
It was bad enough that I could smell that subtle chocolate scent that I knew came from her skin. “She rubs that chocolate lotion all over her. You can smell it best on her neck, behind her knees…”