Disclaimer: Anyone recognizable belongs to Janet Evanovich.

A/N: this is my first FanFiction. I'm a little terrified sharing with the world. I will try to update as much as possible but it might not be possible because of my small humans. Rated M to be safe. I have not decided if this will be a HEA yet, but I'm leaning towards it. This is completely unbetad, by the way, so sorry for any mistakes

Chapter One

Grief is a funny thing. Not literally, of course, but philosophically strange. It makes even the most level headed individual act out of character, and I have never been accused of being level headed. As a matter of fact, I giggled to myself, the adjective most used to describe me is probably crazy. I waved off the look I was being given for giggling in the middle of a funeral and swiped the tears off my face.

The fact that it's my husband of less than six weeks funeral makes my giggle even more awkward and out of character. I was not a giggler to begin with, and funerals always made me sob. I stood, sat, and kneeled through the mass like I was supposed to, next to my saintly mother in law and her bat shit crazy mother in law. I was in a fog, not hearing the words the priest was saying, but reflecting back on the last time the church had been so full and I'd been in attendance.

Six weeks earlier

It was my wedding day. My second wedding day, in fact, but the only one I thought really mattered. My first marriage had been a disaster of epic proportions but this one… this one would last. I was marrying the love of my life, my childhood sweetheart, the guy who never failed to engage my most passionate emotions. Anger, love, lust… stubbornness, too, because it took him five solid years to get me here to this point.

I was marrying Joseph Anthony Morelli, and I couldn't wait to change my last name from Plum to Morelli. I couldn't wait to spend the rest of my life by this mans side.

And all of that would start as soon as I got into the off white mermaid style gown I had picked out, and I walked down the aisle. Thirty minutes and counting until that would happen. My hair was done up in a long half up half down updo, with some of my crazy brown curls artfully arranged around my face. I had pearls woven into the up portion of the updo, and my great grandmothers pearls around my throat. It was the only jewelry I was wearing, and I was honored that my father had searched them out to offer them to me.

My make up was subtle; just enough eyeliner and mascara to highlight my sea blue eyes. I wore a pale pink lip color to offset my alabaster skin. My mom and grandma had helped me put the finishing touches on my wedding ensemble with my something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue. My great grandmas pearls were obviously the old, and my grandma mazur had gotten me a new lace garter as my something new. My mom gave me the ribbon from her bouquet as my borrowed. My wedding shoes, five inch high heels with a single strap were my something blue.

When I stood back and looked at myself in the mirror of the bridal suite in the back of the church, my eyes teared up. I looked happy and radiant. I looked like I was ready. And, I thought, I was. I was finally ready to be Mrs. Joseph Morelli.

If only I knew I wouldn't get to enjoy it very long.

The present

After the funeral, I hosted a luncheon at the house I shared with Joe. People brought food, condolences, and curiosity. This was the Burg after all, and what better to gossip about than one of those Morelli boys. Double gossip whammy when the dead guy was a newly married homicide detective who'd been murdered in the very house that the luncheon was being held in.

I did my best to block the gossips, and the memories, out while I did my stalwart duty with my dead husbands mother bitching in my ear about everything I should have done before inviting company in. I stood tall and proud as I shook hands with everyone and worked my way around the room, even though I was dying inside. I accepted condolences and I dodged questions gracefully, or at least as gracefully as I could.

"What was it like finding poor Joseph dead in your home?"

"Was there a lot of blood? Where did he die? Like what room? Cmon Stephanie, you can't keep all the gossip to yourself. This is news! We all deserve to know!"

What is it like finding your husband dead in your kitchen? It's fucking horrifying, I wanted to snap. It's like having the one good thing, and the one safe place, ripped from you all at once. It's the feeling of never being able to walk into your kitchen without seeing the love of your life staring blankly at the ceiling in a puddle of blood. His brown eyes lifeless while his right pointer finger lays limply in the center of a heart he drew in his own blood, because he knew he was going to die and his last thought was clearly of you.

But I didn't say that. I knew better. I had to live with that all on my own.

One week earlier

I'd come home from work early. Joe and I had reached an agreement about my former job two years ago, when we got engaged. He had sat me down and instead of his usual Italian outburst with the yelling and the arm waving, we had managed a civil conversation.

"Stephanie, I love you. I want to spend my life with you. But I want there to be a LIFE to spend with you. Your job is dangerous, you don't take nearly enough precautions, and you have an alarming propensity of blowing up cars." This was about the point I started to get angry. But then, "I'd like you to consider getting your PI license. You have great instincts, you never fail to find anyone your looking for, and you'd be much safer doing that than being a bounty hunter. I don't expect you to quit working and be Suzy Homemaker because I know that isn't you, but I would hope that if we ever decided to start a family you'd stay away from the riskier cases while they were young."

I had agreed to do it, and originally worked for a PI firm that was highly rated in Trenton before finally branching out on my own. I was the only PI in a tristate area to solve every single case put in front of me, and the Trenton PD eventually started to contract my services. I made good money safely for the first time ever. The agreement with Joe, when I started the job, was that unless I was doing surveillance I had to be home by six and he would always try to do the same so we could have dinner together.

So, I'd gotten home that night at four thirty having cleared my desk early. I knew something was wrong as soon as I opened the front door. The house felt still, yet sinister. My spidey senses were going haywire and I immediately started cataloging changes to my living room and dining room. There was a couch cushion on the floor, and a lamp had been shattered. There was blood on my dining room table; I mentally noted dining room tables just weren't good luck for me and my marriages since husband number one cheated on me on the one we had and the knife used to murder husband number two was left on the one I was looking at then.

There were bloody handprints on the wall leading into the kitchen and there, on my new tiled floor, was my new husband. Staring blankly at the ceiling, right pointer finger in the center of a heart drawn with his blood. I knew he was gone from the amount of blood, and the blank stare, and the sudden emptiness of my soul. I stood back in the doorway between dining room and kitchen, examining the scene visually because I was going to find the son of a bitch who killed Joe myself. I tried using my cell phone to call the station but had no signal. Whoever did this was sloppy, Because they left their signal jammer in a cops house, a cop they killed.

They'd stabbed Joe at least four times from what I could tell, in different parts of his chest. They had left the knife, although I assumed they hadn't left finger prints because it looked wiped down. They'd left a jammer, which could be traced. This person was sloppy, cocky, and I was going to make hellfire rain down upon them.

I waited while the crime scene techs processed the scene. I called Angie, Joe's mom, and told her I'd be over shortly. I knew the chief had already given her the news and I needed to melt down in a safe place and I knew that with her, there was no place safer. And as soon as I got to her home, and she opened the doors, I fell into her arms and fell apart.

Because my husband, and father of the child he had no idea I was carrying, was gone.