The Girl I Didn't Kill For (Jessie & Nick Book 2)

by Annabelle Costa

  When we finally part for air, Nick’s brow is sweaty and his hair is tousled from my hands. He’s breathing hard as he grins at me. “It’s hard to catch my breath after that.”

  I return his grin, and now we’re both smiling like a couple of idiots. “So… where are we going to be living together?”

  “Sicily.”

  “Sicily,” I say thoughtfully. “I suppose I’ll need to speak Italian then?”

  “I’ll teach you.”

  I laugh. “Okay, teach me something.”

  “Well, ‘hello’ is ‘ciao,’” he says. “But you can also say ‘buongiorno’ if it’s the morning.”

  “Buongiorno, got it. Now teach me a whole sentence.”

  “Sei la donna più bella del mondo,” Nick says in what sounds like a good Italian accent to me, although I remember him saying that his family kidded him about speaking Italian like an American.

  “What does that mean?”

  He grins. “It means, ‘You are the most beautiful woman in the world.’”

  I laugh again. “Now when would I ever need to say that?”

  “Who knows? This is Western Europe we’re talking about.”

  I run my finger along the line of his jaw. “How do you say, ‘I love you, Nick’?”

  The smile fades from his face. “It’s ‘ti amo, Nico.’”

  “Ti amo, Nico,” I whisper.

  “Ti amo, Jessie.”

  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to leave New York. I’d always wanted to visit Italy, but going to live there permanently is a scary thought. But knowing I’ll be there with Nick makes it all okay. And I think he feels the same way.

  Chapter 45

  Nick

  Even though I have more important things to think about right now, I can’t stop thinking about Jessie Schultz.

  When she showed up last night and told me she believed I didn’t kill Seth, and even if I had to go to Sicily, she’d come with me—well, it was one of the greatest moments of my whole goddamn life. Anything that happens to me will be okay if Jessie is with me. If it ends up that I need to leave the country, then I’ll be able to deal with it. It’s not what I want, but really, the only thing I want is her. The only thing that’s important, anyway.

  My office is quiet now. Wendy is off for the day, and Chrissy has gone to retrieve my passport. I’ve got lots of work to do, but every time I try to focus, I think of Jessie. She told me she loved me, and I said it back. She’s the only woman I ever said it to. And if she died tomorrow, she’d still be the only woman I’d ever say it to. If she were gone, that would be it for me. I know it now.

  I wanted so bad to ask her up to my place. I almost did. But I figured if cops were watching, it wouldn’t look so good. It’s hard to wait, but I’ve waited this long. For now, we gotta play it safe. Kissing her was enough for now—it was amazing.

  I hear a door opening—Chrissy must be back with my passport. I let out a breath of relief—she got it without any problems. I’d been real worried about it.

  She knocks once and opens the door to my office without waiting for an answer. She’s not dressed particularly sexily today—just a plain blue dress—but Chrissy always looks great. She’s smart too. In so many ways, she’s the perfect woman. Anyone else would think I was out of my mind with the number of times I’ve turned her down.

  “Here’s your passport, boss.” Chrissy fans herself with it briefly before laying it down on my desk. “Got it without any problems.”

  “Good.”

  She chews on her lip. “It sucks that you gotta leave the country, Nick. I’ll really miss you.”

  I shrug. “Yeah, well. It’s gotta be this way.”

  Her brows scrunch together. “Isn’t there any other way?”

  I look up at Chrissy’s small but perky breasts, pushed together so that even in her modest dress, she’s got good cleavage going on. “There’s one way.”

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  I pull a red folder out of the top drawer of my desk. TJ brought it to me earlier today. It’s a detailed account of the activities of Christina Cagliari. Chrissy—my best friend, like a sister to me. It was hard to read—by the time I got to the end of it, I felt sick.

  Not Chrissy. No fucking way. I’d almost rather it have been Tony.

  “You tell the police the truth,” I say quietly. “That you shot Seth Parsons.”

  She lets out a laugh. “Excuse me?”

  “Quit it, Chrissy.” I slide the folder across the desk at her, pushing my passport out of the way. “I know what you did.”

  All the color drains from Chrissy’s face. She puts her hand on my desk, and for a second, I think she might pass out. “Can… can I sit?” she manages.

  “Knock yourself out.”

  She sinks down into one of the chairs in front of my desk. Her hands are shaking and she won’t look at me, but I don’t blame her for that one. She doesn’t look at the folder and I don’t blame her for that either. She knows what’s in it.

  “You gotta understand, Nick…” she begins.

  “Tell me,” I say. “Tell me what I gotta understand, Chrissy.”

  She takes a shaky breath. “They were going to kill me.”

  “You mean John Lombardi.” It’s not a question. Everything is in the folder that TJ handed me. I can’t believe I almost didn’t have him check her out. I never thought she’d do this to me.

  “Yeah,” she says. “John Lombardi.”

  I let out a sigh. “You owed him money.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you couldn’t pay it back.”

  “No. I couldn’t.”

  I shake my head at her. “Shit, Chrissy. You should have just asked me. I would have lent you the money. You know I would’ve.”

  Her dark eyes flash. “It was half a million dollars, Nick.”

  Jesus. I didn’t know it was that much. It was only eleven thousand the first time she came to me, the day I hired her. I paid it off then and made her promise she’d quit gambling.

  “Exactly,” she snorts.

  “I thought you gave up gambling?”

  “Guess not.”

  I try to imagine what I would’ve said if Chrissy came to me with this problem. Half a million in the hole. The loan sharks on her tail, threatening her life and her health.

  “I would have given it to you,” I say. “I wouldn’t have let them hurt you.”

  Chrissy’s eyes fill with tears. She swipes at them with the back of her bare arm. “I’m sorry, Nick. I… I didn’t know it would come to this. I figured you’d just get out of it. You got like a million lawyers.”

  “Well, you did a damn good job framing me,” I point out. “I’m guessing Seth was in on it too, huh?”

  She hesitates then nods. “Yeah. They came to him because they knew about his debts, and I told them it was the best way to get to you. I knew Jessie was going to break up with him and when she was going to do it. So he staged getting drunk and trying to strangle her.”

  “That fucker,” I say under my breath.

  “I knew you’d go crazy when you found out and want to go see him,” she says. “Seth thought we were luring you somewhere to kill you. He didn’t know the real plan, obviously.” She swallows hard enough that I can hear it. “I brought your gun to his apartment right after he told me Jessie was gone. He let me in, and I… I…”

  “You killed him,” I finish for her.

  Her eyes stare down at the carpet. “I didn’t want to do it.”

  “But you did.”

  “It was him or you, okay?” Chrissy wipes her eyes again. “That’s what Lombardi originally wanted—he wanted you dead. He wanted me to shoot you in the head. I convinced him this would be better. I said if he killed you, Tony would never forgive that. That this way would take you out of the picture and then Tony would sell him the properties he wanted.”

  “Christ,” I mutter, finally realizing just how stupid my brother’s mistake was when he insisted on consid
ering Lombardi’s offer at that meeting after I said it was off the table. It nearly got me killed.

  “I didn’t want you to get hurt, Nick,” she whispers. “You know how I feel about you. I… fuck, if you didn’t have it so bad for Jess… you know, I was always so goddamn jealous of her. I was in love with you since we were in first grade, and then she shows up and she’s all you can think about…”

  I shake my head. What the hell is she babbling about? “Chrissy, come on…”

  “No, it’s fine, it’s just that…” She rubs at her red nose. “I never got what you saw in her over me… I always thought you’d eventually wise up and realize…”

  “Realize what?”

  She lowers her eyes. “Nothing. Never mind. Just trying to explain myself, I guess.”

  I stare at Chrissy, mulling over her words. It’s not such a big surprise. Chrissy and I—we made sense together. We’ve kissed before lots of times, but for me, the passion was never there. Chrissy was never The One for me. It was always Jessie.

  Chrissy could have killed me. Lombardi would have protected her—she very well could have gotten away with it. She talked him out of it, and obviously, I’m grateful. But I still can’t forgive what she did to me. If she hadn’t been so goddamn irresponsible at the casinos, she wouldn’t have been in that position to begin with.

  “It’s okay, Chrissy,” I finally say. “You did what you did, so…”

  She’s quiet for a moment, biting her lip as she sits before me. When she finally lifts her eyes, I can see they’re bloodshot. “I’ll go to the police,” she says. “I’ll tell them everything.”

  I shake my head. “No, you won’t.”

  “I will.”

  “No. Because Lombardi’s watching you, and if he sees you anywhere near a police station, you’re dead before you get through the door.”

  And this is the part where I save her life.

  She sucks in a breath. “Are you serious?”

  I shrug. “Why not? Seth was dispensable, and so are you. In fact, at this point, I’d say you’re a liability to them. I didn’t even know if you’d make it back here with the passport.”

  Her eyes widen—she knows I’m right. She’ll be lucky if he lets her live through the week.

  “What do I do?” she asks me.

  “I got a detective on his way here now,” I say. “You talk to him. You tell him everything you know. Everything. You help them out, and they can bring Lombardi down for good.”

  “Okay,” Chrissy says in a tiny voice. “I’ll do it.”

  I toss the passport into a drawer in my desk. I’m not going to need it anymore. Not yet, anyway.

  You never know in my business.

  Chapter 46

  Jessie

  It’s weird being back in my old neighborhood.

  I’m at the corner store in Bensonhurst, buying some butter and a box of spaghetti. Mr. Lorenzo is at the counter, just like he was every time I came here when I was a kid. And he’s just as bald and skeletal as he was back in 1994. He grins at me when I come to the counter to pay for my purchases.

  “Little Jessica Schultz,” Mr. Lorenzo says. “Look at you—all grown up!”

  I force a smile. I feel too old for the “all grown up” comments, but I’ll let it slide. “That’s right.”

  “How come you never visit?” he complains.

  I’ve been back in Bensonhurst for day trips to visit my mother, but this is the longest consecutive amount of time I’ve been here since high school. And living in my mother’s apartment, sleeping in my old bedroom, is really weird. She didn’t change much about the room, leaving my old twin bed intact with the same creaky mattress, the same music posters on the wall (Whitney Huston and Bonnie Tyler), and even the clothes in the drawers are untouched for the past fourteen years.

  Sometimes I’ll wake up during the night, freaked out that the last fourteen years were all a dream and I’m still a teenager living at home with my parents.

  “I come back sometimes,” I mumble, as I pass Mr. Lorenzo a few crumpled bills. “To visit my mother. She’s all alone here.”

  Mr. Lorenzo’s face grows somber. “Yes. I’m so sorry about your father.”

  He doesn’t know my father was a bully, who used to beat up on his wife and daughter. No point in bringing that up now. My father is long gone.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  Sometimes I wonder: how would I feel if the last fourteen years really were a dream? There are plenty of things in the last decade and a half that I’d like to erase from my past—my fiancé nearly strangling me to death, followed by his murder, ranks way up there. But there are a lot of great things in my life too. My job singing at Nick’s clubs. The amazing kiss I shared with Nick the other night. Nick.

  Nick, Nick, Nick.

  He’s what’s good in my life. And I wouldn’t want to undo any of it.

  Last night we talked on the phone, and I told him I was thinking about going to stay with Chrissy instead of my mother, but he told me he didn’t want me to do that. “Stay put,” he said firmly. “Don’t go near Chrissy.”

  I didn’t know what he meant by that, and I was afraid to ask. Nick and Chrissy are so close—it’s a relationship I’ve always been uneasy about. She wants him. I have no doubt in my mind she’d give up her swinging single life in a heartbeat to be with him. She’s the perfect girl for him in so many ways, but he doesn’t want her. He wants me.

  God, I can’t stop thinking about him. I don’t want to leave the country, but I’ll do it in a heartbeat to be with him. I’ll give up everything if it means we can be together. Finally.

  I leave Mr. Lorenzo’s store with my purchases tucked in a brown paper sack. I hear the familiar sound of the door jingling as it swings closed, giving me a sense of déjà vu. But it doesn’t give me nearly as much déjà vu as seeing Nick on the sidewalk, looking at me.

  Okay, it’s not exactly déjà vu. Yes, I’ve been with Nick on this very sidewalk a million times before. But he was a baby-faced teenager back then, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and standing on his own two feet. Now he’s “all grown up,” wearing a crazy expensive dark gray suit, and sitting in his wheelchair. It’s different and yet somehow it’s the same. When I look into his eyes, I know he’s the same person he always was. But different.

  “Nick,” I murmur. “I thought… we weren’t going to see each other for a little while…”

  A smile touches his lips. “I had to see you. Couldn’t help it.”

  I feel the same way.

  I walk over to him, the brown bag clutched in my increasingly sweaty palm. I can’t help but smile. “I found my passport,” I tell him.

  He gazes up at me with those dark, sexy eyes. “Passport?” he repeats.

  “Yes,” I say. I raise my eyebrows at him, suddenly nervous. “You still want me to come with you to Sicily, right?”

  He didn’t change his mind, did he? Is there some new reason why we can’t be together? If there is, I don’t think I can take it.

  “Oh.” He grins at me. “That’s off the table, actually.”

  I stare at him. “Off the table?”

  “Yeah.” His grin widens. “We get to stay here.”

  “Both of us?”

  “Both of us.”

  I can see from looking at his face that something has changed. When I confronted him in his car the other day, he looked wrecked. Haunted. But now—it’s like a weight has been lifted from his shoulders. What changed?

  “What about the murder trial?” I ask.

  He waves his hand. “Also off the table.”

  Off the table?

  “So… they know who killed Seth?”

  He hesitates, his eyes darkening. “It’s what you thought. The mob got to him.”

  Our eyes meet. There’s something he’s not telling me, but I know he must have his reasons. I don’t need to know everything. I don’t want to know everything. I know Nick’s a good guy. I know he didn’t kill Seth. That’s enough.

/>   “So.” He lifts his dark eyebrows. “Can I escort you home?”

  I smile at him. “I think I know the way by now.”

  He smiles back at me. “Can’t hurt.”

  He wheels beside me as we head down the block, back to my mother’s apartment. I remember when we were kids, how much I wished he’d lean forward and kiss me. I remember the day he finally did it. How he’d teased me about the song I’d been singing to myself before he leaned forward and…

  “You’re singing,” he says.

  I stop walking and blink at him in surprise. I hadn’t even noticed. “I was?”

  “Yeah.” He smiles crookedly. “You were singing ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart.’”

  “Oh.” My cheeks redden. “I guess… I just was thinking about… you know, the past.”

  “The past?”

  “Like…” I take a step towards him. “The first time you kissed me. And how I’d been singing that song and hoping you’d kiss me. But I wasn’t sure if you wanted to.”

  “You kidding me?” he laughs. “I wanted to kiss you from the moment I first saw you.”

  “You did?”

  “Of course I did.” He hesitates, rubbing his jaw with his thumb. “I never told you this, but… the first thing I thought to myself when I saw you was, ‘This is the girl I’m going to marry.’”

  Now it’s my turn to laugh. “You did not. No fourteen-year-old boy thinks something like that.”

  His eyes widen. “I know. That’s why I never said anything to anyone—the guys would have skewered me. But…I thought it.” He frowns at me. “There were a lot of things I wanted in life. I wanted to work with my father and I wanted to be successful in business, but what I wanted more than anything was always you.”

  Nick is staring up at me with those dark, penetrating eyes. That day when we were teenagers, he’d leaned forward and kissed me. But now he can’t do that.

  I can see in his eyes how much he wants to do it. And how frustrated he is that he can’t.