Jillian felt as if she had been sucker punched. The insult staggered her. It felt as if the slave was suddenly the plantation owner and was gloating about it! Was Tommy out of his natural mind? You don’t give the likes of her this kind of authority! She looked at that Grace McKinsey with pure hatred in her eyes.
“If you’re the majority owner now,” Jillian asked, contempt dripping from her fake, ballooned lips, “then what does that make me?”
“The minority owner,” Grace didn’t hesitate to say.
Jillian again couldn’t believe it. Why the arrogance of her!
“It also makes Grace,” Tommy pointed out, causing eyes to look over at him, “Trammel’s new Chief Executive Officer.”
Jillian looked at Tommy, her hate now directed toward him. “Are you out of your fucking mind?” she asked, her pretense at dignity now completely gone. “I’m the Chief Executive Officer!”
“Not anymore,” Grace said, with the eyes, as if watching a tennis match, now watching her. “The majority determines the leadership. Since I own the majority of the shares, I’m not splitting my vote. I have asked Tommy to remain as our chairman for now, and I have appointed myself as CEO.”
Jillian couldn’t believe it. She just couldn’t believe it. “Oh, really now?” she asked. “And what position, Madam CEO, are you going to give me? Tommy’s got the chairmanship. You’re supposedly the CEO. The only major position left is Chief Financial Officer, and I don’t want that position.”
“Good, because you’re not getting it,” Grace said so matter-of-factly that it made Jillian’s skin crawl. “The Executive Vice President position, as currently held by Cameron, is yours if you care to have it.” Tommy looked at Grace. He hadn’t expected her to offer Jillian any position. “If you don’t want that either, then I’ll find somebody else.”
“But Cameron’s the vice president,” Jillian said with a frown. “My son is the VP.”
“Not anymore he’s not,” Grace said pointedly. “He will not be collecting a paycheck and doing nothing for Trammel ever again.” Grace looked Jillian dead on. “That’s over,” she made clear. “Trammel is no longer his piggy bank.”
Although every member of the board agreed wholeheartedly with Grace, they weren’t ready to pick sides just yet. They knew Jillian. They couldn’t imagine her going down without a fight.
Grace, however, wasn’t going to continue arguing with her either. She stood up. “As you know, Tommy’s people were kind enough to conduct an extensive audit of Trammel a few months back. I will be reviewing that audit in detail, and as soon as I can see for myself the financial health of this company, I will reconvene the board to discuss my recommendations. Recommendations, by the way, that will be implemented.” Then Grace inwardly exhaled. “Are there any questions?” she asked.
Jillian was floored. She stood there as if she was suspended in her own disbelief. And the other board members too, who knew now that they would keep their jobs only at the pleasure of the new majority owner, looked to be in shock too. They expected some sort of announcement at this meeting, but they hadn’t expected this. They were too stunned, and too afraid, to say a word to their new leader.
“I’ll be in my office if you have any questions,” Grace said as she began grabbing her briefcase and purse. She was so nervous that her hands were trying to shake furiously, but she managed to keep them steady as she went. “Have a nice day,” she said to one and all, and then left the board room. She purposely did not look over at Tommy. Nobody was going to respect a puppet, and she had to prove to them that she wasn’t Tommy’s.
Tommy also had the same thought in mind. That was why he didn’t follow her out. He wanted to make clear that she was now leading the charge here at Trammel and they’d better get used to it. Yet as soon as the door was closed behind her, they pounced, with the main question being one of class. How could Jillian’s chief of staff, they kept asking, suddenly become her boss?
“Miss McKinsey explained how,” Tommy replied as he made a slow walk back to the head of the table.
“But she’s your girlfriend, Tommy, is that not true? How can you mix business with pleasure by letting your girlfriend run our company?”
“She’s my fiancée,” he corrected the member. “And it’s her company now.”
But Jillian only heard the first part. She wasn’t trying to hear the second part. “Your fiancée?” she asked. “You plan to marry that?”
Tommy looked at her. “I plan to marry Grace McKinsey. I asked her to marry me, and to my shock and privilege, she said yes. We are to be married.”
“But. . .” Jillian was shaking her head. It seemed as if the entire world had changed in a day. “When?” she asked.
“That’s none of your concern,” Tommy made clear. “I only brought it up,” he said, “because I wanted to make sure you understood who you were now dealing with.” Tommy said this in no uncertain terms, directed completely at Jillian.
Jillian’s face reddened. The nerve he had, she thought. But he continued to have that nerve as he answered a few minor concerns, informed them that Grace would convene a meeting in the future possibly on short notice so they needed to be mindful, and then he left them to their shock and disbelief.
He thought about going to Grace’s office to see how she was holding up, but he decided against it. She had this well in hand and he had to allow her to keep it well in hand. He, instead, stepped onto the elevator, and left Trammel altogether.
But he wasn’t ten minutes in his limo, heading to his own office, when he received a phone call from Kelli Montiscue, an old acquaintance of his who once upon a time was his number one lady.
“Is it true?” she asked him as if they’d been discussing it already. He was seated in the backseat of his limousine reading over some paperwork, when the call came in.
“Is what true?” he asked, although he had a good idea. But he never hedged bets against himself. He wanted to make certain what exactly the question entailed.
“You’re engaged? You’re getting married?” She said engaged and married as if they were bad words.
Tommy, however, didn’t hesitate. “Yes,” he said.
There was now a hesitation on her part. Then he heard sniffling. He stopped reading his reports and paid attention to his phone call. “Kell?” he asked.
“Why would you . . . How could you?” she finally asked. “How could you do this to me?”
Tommy frowned. “To you?” he asked. “What am I doing to you? We haven’t been together in months.”
“But how could you marry somebody else? After Shanks I thought . . . I thought. . .”
Tommy had heard it before from more than a few of his previous girlfriends. After he dumped Shanks they assumed they had the inside track should he want to go serious with somebody again. They were wrong. All of them. “You thought what?”
“I thought I would be. . . I thought I was the one, Tommy. We’ve been together for so long. I gave you the best years of my life. Now I’m some old hag nobody wants.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” he said, although it ached him to know that she felt that way. Kelli was a gorgeous girl, smart and sharp. But she was a model. And when you start pushing forty, modeling was no longer a plausible option. It was like an athlete. Thirty-nine wasn’t old per se, but it was old in the game. Kelli was old in the game. She knew it, and Tommy did too. “You’re a beautiful woman, and always will be,” he said to reassure her. “You’ll make any man very happy.”
“I don’t want to make any man happy! I want to make you happy, Tommy! I’m supposed to be next, not her!”
Tommy frowned. “Stop talking nonsense, now, Kell, I mean it. We had sex, that was the sum and substance of our relationship and you know it. And you agreed to it beforehand.”
“But I wasn’t thirty-nine beforehand! I wasn’t some old maid beforehand! I waited patiently on you. You once told me I was your favorite, Tommy. You once told me that.”
Tommy closed his eyes
and rubbed his forehead. She probably wasn’t the only one he had told that to. And although he didn’t remember telling her any such thing, he was willing to bet what they were doing when he told her. They were fucking. Undoubtedly.
And it only made him all the more certain of just how right Grace was. Open relationships were a fool’s game.
Then Kelli said, “I can’t live without you, Tommy,” and his heart squeezed.
“You’ll live just fine, trust me,” he said. “You’re a beautiful lady with a beautiful future ahead of you. Even after modeling.”
“I can’t live without you, Tommy,” she said again, as if he was talking nonsense while she was making a statement of fact.
Tommy’s heart pounded. “Now stop that kind of talk, Kell, I mean it. You know how I get on your case when you get like that. So cut it out. You hear me?” He waited, but she made no response. “Kelli? Kelli? Kell?”
But the line went dead. Tommy, now irritated, angry, but also super-worried, slammed the phone down too. He started not to do anything. He didn’t need this aggravation. But he couldn’t just leave her distressed that way. He had to make sure she was okay. He knew Kelli. He knew how dramatic she could get. He pressed the intercom button. “Albert,” he said to his driver, “take me to Kelli’s house.
“Miss Montiscue, sir?”
“Yes,” Tommy said. And then added, “as quickly as possible,” before pressing off.
CHAPTER SIX
The door to Grace’s office flew open. Nayla Santiago, Grace’s best friend and the logistics supervisor at Trammel, hurried inside. “Tell me it’s true,” she said as soon as the door slammed shut. She leaned against it as if she needed the support to remain upright.
Grace was seated behind her desk, reviewing the Gabrini audit that Tommy ordered months ago. She looked up at her friend, knowing she had to handle this with the same seriousness she handled Jillian. “Good morning,” she said.
“Good morning, good morning. Tell me it’s true, girl.”
“Tell you what’s true?”
“That Tommy gave you Trammel. I heard Tommy gave you Trammel! Is it true?”
Grace found the way she put it an odd way to say it, but she nodded. There was no point denying it. “Yes,” she said.
“Ah girl!” Nayla said with a loud handclap and a grin. “We about to get paid up in here!” She hurried up to Grace’s desk. “All those bitches like Jillian can just kiss our asses now! It’s our time now!”
“What Tommy also gave to me,” Grace said, her voice purposely measured, “was responsibility for Trammel’s success.”
Nayla’s smile remained, but it wasn’t nearly as unbridled as it was when she first walked in. She knew Grace could be a party-kill and couldn’t even take a joke sometimes, and this was apparently one of those times.
“And I’m sure that you,” Grace continued, “as my closest and dearest friend, will be supportive and do all you can to help make that responsibility, Trammel’s success, a reality. Because I really need you to step up, Nay. Because if I can’t trust my oldest friend to stand by me, who can I trust?”
Grace stared at Nayla after she asked that question. She saw a flash of contempt on Nayla’s small, round face, although she never stopped smiling.
“You can trust me,” Nayla said with that smile. “What? You know you can trust me. And you know I’ll stand by you, girl, you know that. But I can do a better job standing by you if you promote me to one of those top line jobs.”
Grace was about to shake her head, but Nayla waved off the shake. “Think about it now,” Nayla continued. “If I’m in the top leadership then I can really stand by your ass and make sure none of these bitches up in here try to sabotage your success or do anything to hurt this company. And you know I pay attention to everything. You know I do. I can be your right hand woman, Grace. We can reverse all the damage Jillian did to this company, and we can reverse it together.”
But Grace knew better. She knew promoting friends and showing that level of favoritism would only alienate the majority of the people in this company and would turn her tenure into a mitigated disaster. She would lose the respect she desperately needed to earn, and that lack of loyalty and respect would further hamper Trammel’s success. Late last night she had thought about this long and hard. Late last night Nayla, and how Nayla would undoubtedly react to the news, was on her mind.
“I can’t show any special treatment toward anybody, Nay,” she decided to say plainly. “Especially not toward my closest friend. And I’m sure you, as my friend, would want me to be fair to everybody and not show any favoritism to anyone.”
“I want you to be fair, of course I do. I want everybody to be fair. But to me . . . But . . .” Nayla hesitated.
“But what?” Grace asked her.
“But I think it’s fair for you to promote me. I think I deserve a promotion.”
“Well, I think you don’t,” Grace said pointedly. She knew going in Nayla would try this. She knew her friend too well. “Not yet, anyway,” she added. “But if you work hard and prove to me you’re ready to go to that next level, then I won’t hesitate to see what I can do on your behalf. I won’t hesitate. But you and I both know that you’re not there yet, Nay. Not yet.”
The contempt was now obvious on Nayla’s face, even though she was still smiling greatly. “I don’t think you’re ready to take over this whole company, either,” Nayla said, “but that didn’t stop Tommy from putting you in charge anyway. I figure, as your best friend, I deserve at least that same kind of consideration. Nobody’s one hundred percent ready to do anything. Including you. Especially you. But at least Tommy thought enough of you to give you this chance.”
“And I’ll give you a chance. If you prove yourself worthy of it.”
“Yeah, okay,” Nay said dismissively.
“And, Nay,” Grace continued, “my father helped Clive Birch start this company from the ground up. I’ve been around Trammel since I was a kid. I know this company inside and out. Don’t compare your situation to mine.”
It felt like a slap in the face to Nayla. But she continued to smile anyway. “Okay, well, whatever,” Nayla said, backing up to leave. She knew exactly what she was up against now. “I just wanted to congratulate you and let you know that my door is always open if you need any assistance. But since you just said you know it all, I guess you won’t need it.”
“That’s not what I said, Nay.”
“That’s what I heard, Grace. But I’m not mad at you. You’re the head bitch in charge now and you’re being the bitch. That’s okay. I get it.”
But Grace knew she didn’t get a thing. Grace also knew arguing with her about it wasn’t going to help a thing, either. “Thank-you,” she decided to say, “for your offer of assistance.”
“Any assistance at all,” Nayla added as she approached the door. “Alrighty then. Well. I’d better get back to work.” Nayla glanced back at Grace and smiled. “You have a good day.”
“You too. And thanks, Nay, for your understanding. I really appreciate---”
“Sure thing,” Nayla said, interrupting her, and then hurrying out of the door and closing it with what Grace could only interpret as a slam.
By the time Nayla made it downstairs and was walking through the door of her own office, Jared, the head of Sales, was coming up behind her. Nayla glanced back. He was a tall, lean white guy who tried too hard to act black. He was a man Nayla occasionally messed around with whenever they could steal away long enough from work. But she never found him appealing enough to take it beyond that.
“How did it go?” he asked as they both entered her office.
“How did what go?” Nayla asked as she walked around to her desk.
“Has she changed? Is this sudden good fortune going to her head yet?”
“Is it going there?” Nayla asked with incredulity in her voice, as she stood behind her desk. “It’s already gone there.”
“Just that fast?”
�
�Just that fast, Jared. They say she’s looking to fire people who aren’t doing their so-called jobs, and you know what that means. You and me both will be on that chopping block.”
“Oh, we got to get that bitch,” Jared said with certainty.
“You know I know it,” Nayla agreed. “You should have heard how she treated me, Jarr. She made me feel like I was nothing in her view. Like I was garbage in her eyes.”
“And you’re her best friend.”
“And I’m her best friend, right! But she went off on me. All I asked was if she could give me a chance at earning a promotion. And she said no.”
“She said no?”
“She said no. She said I better be glad I don’t lose the job I have.”
“Shut up!”
“She said I can’t compare myself to her because she’s up there with Tommy Gabrini and I’m down here with everybody else.”
“Oh, no that heifer didn’t!”
“Oh, yes that heifer did,” Nayla insisted, although she knew she was lying. “She went off on me, Jarr. And then she had the nerve to say to me that if she needed any assistance she wanted to be able to come to me.”
“To steal your knowledge.”
“To steal my knowledge, right,” Nayla agreed. “She was awful. She’s going to be worse than Jillian.”
“Don’t say that, Nay. Because if that’s true, we’ve got to get that bitch.”
“We’ve got to get her then.”
“We’ve got to get that bitch,” Jared repeated as he and Nayla stared at each other, with both of them, for their own good, inwardly plotting and scheming already.
The door to Kelli Montiscue’s big home was finally opened after many knocks and rings by Tommy. His limousine sat in her driveway, with his driver at the ready, and he knew he had no time for this. He had meetings to conduct and arrangements to make before he left for New York later today, and the last thing he should be doing was appeasing some former lover.
TOMMY GABRINI 2: A PLACE IN HIS HEART Page 6
