Chapter 1
A rare day off.
Tony Dinozzo rose early as if for work only to remember he had been granted one of his rare days off. The first in a long while. Unable to sink back into sleep in his warm duvet, he rose and washed and dressed into his casual clothes before walking down the block to his local coffee stop on the corner.
As he entered, Maggie the Scottish barista, turned and smiled at him, her flaming red hair and blue eyes gleaming in the early morning light. "Good morning to ye, Tony. What can I get ye?"
"Morning, Mags. My usual please..." Tony began as he scanned the rows of breakfast muffins and delights in the cabinet before him. "And one of your banana and blueberry granola muffins, please."
"Coming right up," Maggie smiled as she began on his usual white mochiato with an extra shot at the coffee machine. "Day off today, Tony?"
"Yeah, one of those rare and beloved days. This is my first for six weeks."
"I gathered. Here ye go. $3.75, please." Maggie smiled as she punched the numbers into her cash register and placed one of the muffins into a brown paper bag for Tony. He handed her the money and cast her a wink.
"Thank you, sweetheart." He flirted.
"My pleasure, Tony." Maggie replied and blew him a kiss in a friendly way as he left her coffee shop. Tony smiled and laughed slightly to himself as he returned to his apartment to begin his day properly.
Six weeks without a day off really gets to you. You don't really have time to clean- except doing your dishes and your laundry and taking out the trash- but not enough to clean your place properly, like scrubbing the kitchen floor or cleaning the bathroom or hoovering your carpets. That was what Tony intended to do today- clean his apartment from top to bottom and clear out loads of the stuff he didn't need. A clean apartment means a clean conscience, Abby always said. She had offered to clean his apartment for him a week ago but Tony had refused knowing she had enough to do with helping the nuns and helping at the animal sanctuary she was involved in.
It was as he was cleaning he ran across the photo album he had buried a long time ago, he held it gingerly between his fingers, before he slumped into a chair and cried.
