Nonnina was waiting for Luca to arrive. She couldn't sleep a wink. Whenever he wasn't home after dark, she was always worried. The man had been shot more times than she could count.
She sat in her chair by the window, rosary wound around her fingers. Every passing car made her straighten. Every distant siren tightened her chest.
He had once spent a year in the hospital, recovering from a gunshot. Tubes everywhere, machines breathing when his lungs refused to, doctors whispering words they thought she couldn't hear.
He had once been in jail for months. That nearly broke her more than the bullets ever did. Jail meant walls she couldn't cross, doors she couldn't push open. It meant waiting for phone calls that came too short and ended too fast. It meant reading his moods through the tone of a single "I'm fine, Nonnina," knowing damn well he wasn't.
So she worried. Constantly. Worry had become her second heartbeat.
