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

  The Girl I Didn’t Kill For

  a novel by

  Annabelle Costa

  The Girl I Didn’t Kill For

  © 2017 by Annabelle Costa. All rights reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without express written permission from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, incidents and places are the products of the authors’ imagination, and are not to be construed as real. None of the characters in the book is based on an actual person. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and unintentional.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue: 2010

  Chapter 1: 2009, One Year Earlier

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17: 2010

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Epilogue: One year later

  Prologue: 2010

  Nick

  The cops have come to arrest me.

  I know it’s them the second I hear that knock on the door. Cops have a knock I’d know in my sleep. That solid firm knock you can hear anywhere in the apartment—they don’t bother with the doorbell. I heard that knock many times before. I heard it when they took my father away. I heard it more times than I can count on my hands each time my brother Tony got busted.

  But I never thought it would ever be me.

  There’s two of them standing at the door—a man and a woman. The man’s got a pair of cuffs on his belt and it makes me sick.

  “Nicolas Moretti?” the male cop asks me.

  “That’s me,” I say. I’m playing it cool—acting like I’m not scared as shit. This is actually happening. These cops are taking me to jail. It’s not a summons, which I got a bunch of times before—I’m going to jail. Jail.

  “Mr. Moretti, we have a warrant for your arrest,” the male cop says.

  This is the part where they’re supposed to cuff me and take me away in front of all my neighbors. Except the two of them just stare at me dumbly like they’re not sure what they’re supposed to do. You’d think when they came to arrest Nick Moretti, they’d have come better prepared. It’s not like they don’t know who I am—I’d bet every cop in the city knows my name.

  The male cop—his badge I can now see reads O’Neil—pulls the cuffs off his belt. And that’s when I really start shitting my pants. They’re going to cuff me. They’re really doing this.

  But O’Neil hesitates. He looks at the female cop, Conti, and she looks equally baffled. They should be reading me my rights now, although come to think of it, they didn’t read Pop his rights when they busted him either. They got to do it before they question you though. I know that much. But the confusion of how to arrest me has thrown them off.

  “You don’t gotta cuff me,” I tell them. My Brooklyn accent is slipping out because I’m nervous. I lost it during all those years in college and when I went to Harvard Business School. I worked hard not to sound like some two-bit street gangster. But when I’m stressed or anxious, it comes back like it was never gone in the first place. I hate it. I don’t want to sound like a thug—I want to sound like what I am, which is one of the most successful businessmen in the city. A guy who they’d allow the dignity of not being forced out of his home in shackles.

  “We do,” Conti tells me, although she sounds apologetic. She’s young, maybe early twenties, and she’d be pretty if her hair weren’t pulled back in the most severe bun I ever seen. Not as pretty as Jessie though. Nobody is.

  I swallow a lump in my throat as I realize I can’t talk them out of this. They got their orders. Still, I give one last appeal: “But if you do, I won’t be able to…”

  They look down at me, acknowledging the situation—the fact that I’m sitting in a wheelchair. I can’t walk, and if they cuff my wrists, that’s it. I won’t be able to move. The thought of it makes me sick.

  “We gotta,” O’Neil tells me.

  I take deep breaths, trying not to panic. I pull off the tie that’s hanging loose around my neck and suddenly feels like it’s choking me—they won’t let me keep a tie in a jail cell anyway. It doesn’t help me now that I’m wearing an expensive shirt and pants, and shoes that cost more than the shirt and the pants put together. It doesn’t matter when they’re busting me for Murder One.

  “I need stuff if you’re going to take me,” I tell them. “Medical stuff. Okay?”

  O’Neil nods and Conti looks embarrassed. I can see they’re trying to figure out if they should trust me to get the stuff on my own or if they should go with me. Do they think I’m going to grab some gun I got hidden away and start shooting at them? Yeah, I got a gun hidden away—two, actually. But I’m not dumb enough to start shooting at some cops. I’m Nick Moretti, not some loser on the street selling crack.

  Or maybe they think I’m going to make a getaway. I’m in an apartment on the thirty-second story. Do they think I’m going to jump out the window and fly away to a Caribbean island? I’m in a goddamn wheelchair—even getting out the window if I were on the first floor would be an impossible challenge. All I want is to get my pills and shit out of the bathroom in privacy, but it’s getting obvious I won’t even get that.

  O’Neil follows me to the bathroom down the hallway. It isn’t going to take long because I already got a month’s worth of extra supplies stuffed into a duffel bag under the bathroom sink. Sometimes I gotta go fast, so I’ve got it all packed. It wouldn’t work to be rushing on some trip and discover I forgot one of my medications.

  O’Neil eyes the bag with suspicion. “I got to check that out.”

  I don’t want him to, but not because I got a gun or drugs in there. I don’t want him rifling through my bottles of pills. Maybe I’m in a wheelchair, but I try to project to the world that I’m a tough guy. A tough guy doesn’t take five medications. He doesn’t need a bunch of catheters whenever he goes on a trip.

  But I can’t say no to a cop, so I thrust the bag in his direction. “Be my guest, Officer.”

  He gives it a cursory look while I stare down at my hands. I don’t want to be cuffed. Christ, it’s bad enough they’re doing this to me. Soon as I get to the cell, I’m going to ask to call my lawyer. I’ll be back home in an hour—not even long enough to use the contents of this bag. I’ll make these assholes sorry they did this to me.

  “It’s fine,” O’Neil says, handing me back my bag.

  And then we’re back in the living room and it’s the moment of truth. O’Neil gets out the cuffs and my
heart is slamming so hard in my chest, I think I could drop dead of a heart attack. No. Fuck no.

  “Hold out your hands, Mr. Moretti,” O’Neil says.

  “Don’t do this,” I appeal to them one last time.

  O’Neil shakes his head. “I’m sorry.”

  I do as they say. I hold out my hands, and O’Neil snaps the cuffs into place. He makes them loose, but they still bite into my wrists. My brother Tony says he’s still got a place on the back of his left hand that he can’t feel on account of his handcuffs being too tight once. But Tony was a thug and pissed off the cops. I’m no thug. I’m one of the most important men in the whole goddamn city. And now the cops wheeling me out of my apartment building with cuffs on my hands will be all over the front page of The New York Post tomorrow morning.

  I rest my hands in my lap, on top of the duffel bag. A sweat breaks out on my forehead, and I try to calm myself down. But it’s hard. The cops will have to push me down to their car, and they’re going to have to lift me inside. And the media sharks downstairs will get it all on tape.

  “How do we push the chair?” Conti asks me.

  “The handles are folded down,” I tell her.

  I didn’t want handles on my chair, but there are rare times when they’re necessary. Like now. When my hands are cuffed and the cops need to push me to their car.

  I feel myself moving—Conti is pushing me. This is really happening. I’m really going to be booked on a Murder One charge. I’m going to sit in a jail cell just like my brother did and my father did. I got the best lawyer in the city, but I’m not sure if even he can get me out of this one. The evidence is damning.

  And the worst part?

  I’m innocent.

  Chapter 1: 2009, One Year Earlier

  Nick

  It’s a business lunch, but I can see my guest is having trouble focusing on business. The waitresses in this joint are wearing skirts so short you can nearly see their underwear and shirts so low-cut you almost get a flash of nipple. Carlo Bianchi is old enough to be the father of any one of these girls, but he can’t stop staring.

  And that’s just fine. Anything that makes Bianchi happy works for me.

  “I can’t believe I never been here before!” Bianchi says to me, although his eyes are trained on the ass of a blond waitress. He’s even forgotten about the juicy, medium-rare steak sitting in front of him. “Where’d you hear about this place?”

  “I own it, actually. The building, at least.”

  My family owns a handful of buildings that house restaurants, and this is one of them. It’s good when I want to take a suit out for a meal and make sure we get the VIP treatment. I’m hitting Bianchi up for a lot of cash right now, so he’s gotta know I’m important—someone he can trust to hand over his money to.

  And he can trust me. I’m not some idiot who’s gonna lose him his money.

  “You got great taste, Moretti,” Bianchi says with an approving nod that causes his jowls to shake.

  “Thanks.” I grin at him. “Means a lot coming from you.”

  While Bianchi’s attention is distracted again by a passing waitress, I do a quick weight shift in my chair. Because I can’t feel where I’m sitting, I need to shift my position in the chair every fifteen minutes or so to keep from getting a pressure sore. But I don’t need Bianchi to see that. Right now, I can’t afford anything that will make me look weak. The chair is already a strike against me—I’m trying my best not to call attention to it, but it’s not like I can hide the fact that I need it. That’s not an option.

  When I shift my weight, my legs shift too. Since I can’t move them on my own, they just move with my upper body. Thankfully, they usually shift back into place on their own. If they don’t, it’s another quick movement to make sure they’re not crooked—like I said, I don’t need anything to make me look weak. I can’t hide from Bianchi that I can’t walk, but I don’t have to let on that I can’t move or feel anything from the mid-chest down.

  “So I had my lawyer look over the papers you sent me,” he says as he chews on a chunk of his steak. A droplet of blood trails down the side of his chin and he wipes it off with the back of his hand. Carlo Bianchi isn’t known for having great manners, but he is known for being very, very rich. I asked Pop once how a guy like Bianchi made himself so much dough, but he wouldn’t say. I’m guessing it was through activities a lot less legal than the hotel I’m asking him to front money for.

  “Yeah?” I say, like I couldn’t care less. Even though I’m hanging on his every word.

  “He knew all about you,” he says between swallows.

  My stomach sinks. “Yeah?”

  I got a reputation that’s good and bad. Good because I made a lot of money for a lot of people. Bad because I don’t put up with bullshit. You make a deal with me, you’re holding up your end of the deal to my satisfaction. End of story. I got plenty of guys to make sure that’s the case, and I’ve got enough connections now to back myself up, even without my father’s help.

  Nobody disrespects me. Nobody calls me “kid” anymore. They better never call me “cripple” if they want to keep their balls.

  “Yeah, he knew about you,” Bianchi says darkly. But then his face breaks into a smile. “He said you were one smart sonuvabitch. He said I’d have to be outta my mind not to invest.”

  I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. I had other guys I could’ve hit up for money, but once word got out Bianchi said no, it would get a lot harder.

  Bianchi holds out his hand and I shake it, making sure my grip strength just matches his. He’s a big guy, but I’m younger and I got a lot more upper body power than he does from years of pushing my chair around.

  “Now that we got business out of the way…” He licks his lips greedily. “You know any of these girls?”

  “Sure I do.”

  He raises his unruly black eyebrows at me. “You been with any of them?”

  I scan the restaurant. My eyes briefly rest on a brunette with big tits carrying a bottle of wine, who I remember having a good time with one night a few months ago. I was here late doing some deal and she joined me after my dinner guest left and her shift ended. We had a couple of drinks together, then before I knew it, she was on my lap. It was just one night, but it was a good night. She told me no guy’d ever made her scream that loud.

  The waitress notices me looking and winks at me. “Yeah. A couple,” I say.

  He grins. “Got any recommendations?”

  Another perk of renting to the owners of this place—I could fix up a date between Bianchi and his waitress of choice. None of them will say no to me—I’m their boss’s boss. Even so, I can’t resist saying, “But isn’t there a Mrs. Bianchi?”

  He roars with laughter. “Oh, you’re a funny guy, Moretti! I like you.”

  I return his smile. I don’t usually joke around with my business partners, but this deal put me in a good mood.

  “How ‘bout you?” Bianchi asks me. “You married?”

  I shake my head no. There have been plenty of girls—I don’t even want to admit how many—but I’ve never been married or even close. There’s only one woman I ever met that I wanted to get hitched to. And that’s Jessica Schultz.

  I really blew that one.

  I fell in love with Jessie nearly twenty years ago. From the moment I first saw her, I knew she was the girl I wanted to marry. For three years, her father kept us apart because he didn’t want his daughter hanging around a gangster—not that I was one.

  Not back then, anyway.

  And right when we were going to graduate and be together… well, this happened to me. I ended up in this goddamn chair and I couldn’t face her anymore.

  It took me ten years to get up the nerve to try to see her again. I drove all the way back to Brooklyn for her father’s funeral. And then…

  I did the dumbest thing I’d ever done in my whole life. Something where you can’t just send a dozen roses and put it behind you. But I thought I c
ould get her to forgive me. I really believed I could do it.

  Yet here I am, three years later. Alone.

  “You got the right idea, Moretti.” Bianchi shoves a bite of garlic mashed potatoes into his mouth. “Hold out as long as you can. Enjoy your freedom.”

  I don’t want my freedom. I just want Jessie.

  But I’m worried that ship has sailed.

  Chapter 2

  Jessie

  Seeing my friend Chrissy always makes me feel bad about myself, especially if I haven’t seen her in several weeks. Chrissy is too pretty.

  I never thought I’d ever forgive Chrissy Cagliari for what she did to me. Namely, she brought Nick Moretti, the boy I’d been in love with through all of high school, to my father’s funeral, and then I caught the two of them making out in the parking lot—he was practically undressing her. It was one of those scenes I kept visualizing over and over again until I wanted to scrub my eyes with soap.

  That was three years ago.

  Nick tried his best to make amends. He sent me cards and flowers. He sent a giant fruit basket. He emailed me. He called and left pleading messages for me to call him back. If he had shown up at my doorstep, it would have been harder not to forgive him, but that was one thing he never did.

  I knew what he was nervous about. It was the same thing that kept us apart ten years ago—his unwillingness to let go of his hang-up about not being able to walk. He wanted me, but was still too scared to let me see him in a wheelchair. He wanted me, but apparently not badly enough. So that was that.

  Chrissy, on the other hand, knew better. She stayed away.

  Then about six months ago, I ran into her by chance on the busy streets of Times Square. She apologized profusely for what had happened, and I had to admit she hadn’t really done anything wrong. She made out with a guy I hadn’t dated in ten years. And yes, she did it at my father’s funeral, but to be fair, she knew better than anyone I hated my father. So I forgave her, and we became fast friends once again.