Just One Year

CHAPTER ONE

WHEN I WAS LITTLE, I always thought adulthood would be fun and exciting, full of the kind of things I saw on television shows that I definitely shouldn't have been watching and totally engrained in my little, pea-sized brain. I hadn't expected, however, to be seated across from my late father's best friend, watching as he carefully began to unseal a manila envelope that contained my future.

Fidgeting in my seat, I tried to inconspicuously raise a hand to my face and wipe at the sleep dust in the corner of my eye. I had just came in last night on a last minute flight, and the effects of waking up three hours earlier were starting to get to me, my eyes beginning to burn and a desperate need for caffeine slowly creeping in my system.

"Tired?"

I lowered my hand, smiling sheepishly. "Just a little."

"Don't worry, I'll try to get out of your hair as fast as I can." Grabbing the contents inside the envelope, he finally pulled out the short stack and gave the front page a quick skim. "Wouldn't want to keep the birthday girl waiting any longer, after all."

It was strange to have finally approached this moment. In the years and months leading up to this, I had always thought of this as some far away, semi-fantasy event that I'd dream of but never actually come close to. To finally gain access to my trust fund, and on my twenty-first birthday of all days, was purely beyond me. Just the anticipation of it alone was enough to keep me awake, perking up in my seat as I readied for whatever he would read out to me, for whatever my father had laid out years and years ago.

I could tell by the way he read it that Mr. Nicoli, or Demitri as my father had always called him, had been acquainted with the documents before. I wasn't surprised either; my father and him were the best of friends up until my father passed away three years ago and he had ultimately entrusted him with the documents and trust until I came of age. I had no doubts about me that when my father decided to draft up the stipulations and conditions, Demitri was there right beside him.

The only thing that remained was finding out what exactly lay in those documents.

He had yet to read it out loud, as if waiting for something to happen. I wanted to remain polite, but after a few quiet and painfully long minutes had passed I couldn't help but feel a bit impatient. In a sense, it was a bit warranted, especially with the journey I had taken here and the lack of sleep, but I did feel a little shame. It felt wrong to be so antsy when it came to money, even while I knew Demitri wasn't someone who'd be phased by it.

As a matter of fact, I was meeting him in the very building he owned today, something that had yet to fully process in my brain.

The Nicolis were a well established family, and had a massive multinational holding company that had invested and claimed ownership of more companies than I could keep track of. The very reason I had been able to get here as fast as I could to meet with Demitri at the New York branch of Nicoli Enterprises, was in part due to that, with their family owning the airline I had flown in on and the hotel I was staying at while I was in the city. It felt weird to connect him to that though. Growing up, I had never been aware to just how extremely wealthy he was, and my father never brought it to my attention. I just knew Demitri as my father's friend from their college days, and it was that way up until I wound up stumbling across an article of a Nicoli business acquisition as a teen, Demitri pictured right underneath the headline. By then, I had long since been face to face and much less alone in a room with him. This was our first time meeting in almost six years, and the friendly uncle figure I once knew and the businessman in front of me were still hard to intertwine.

At least, until he smiled, all toothy and happy as ever. Save for the crinkles in the corner of his eyes now, he looked just the same as he did when I was growing up.