Gemma understood Sal’s passion, but she couldn’t feel it. All she felt was a sense of grief, as if something had died inside of her. Perhaps her own innocence regarding Sal. Perhaps her own naiveté that she could marry a man like him, a man with so much baggage, and not get weighed down herself.
She stood up, and walked over to his office window. She looked out over the city and the busy landscape. Sal came up beside her, but he didn’t offer any words of comfort, he didn’t offer any empty promises. He just stood beside her. Which was exactly what she wanted.
They would stand that way for over an hour, just the two of them, as both felt that sense of loss. For Gemma, it was all about the realization of her life path. It was as if she had married a man in the army, and he was fighting some disastrous war, but he couldn’t go AWOL and just leave. He was in it for life. And she wanted him out. She wanted him safe. She wanted his past to not be his past, and his future to be brighter. But she also knew she didn’t marry a religious leader. She married a Gabrini. His name would keep him in for life. Her name would keep her in for life.
For Sal, it was all about Gemma. It was all about the realization that his beautiful wife wasn’t in Kansas anymore. Every Gabrini woman had to face this day. Some could handle it, like Trina, and some couldn’t. But he was betting on Gemma. He was betting that she could take it. She was not going to break his heart.
But when her cell phone rang, and she actually jumped startled, he felt that small bit of doubt return.
Gemma answered her phone. “This is Gemma,” she said. And then she exhaled. “Okay, Barb, thanks. Call Ted and have him notify Rabina.”
She ended the call, and looked at Sal. “The verdict is in,” she said. “I’ve got to go. Court will be back in session in an hour.”
“I’ll go with you,” Sal said.
But Gemma stopped him right there. “No, you will not,” she said. She had not let him off the hook. Not by a long shot. Tampering with a jury went against everything Gemma believed in. She looked her husband squarely in the eyes. “You’ve done enough,” she said to him. And left.
“We the jury,” the court clerk read, “in the above entitled action, find the defendant, Rabina Shaw Chen, not guilty.”
As soon as the verdict was read, Rabina jumped up and down in rapture in the almost empty courtroom. She hugged Gemma and thanked her, but Gemma would have none of that. She, instead, looked at Rabina. “Fuck with my husband regarding that tape,” she said to her, “and he’ll be the last man you ever fuck with.”
Rabina was stunned to hear such language from such a prim and proper lady as Gemma Gabrini, but she figured Sal had rubbed off on her. But it didn’t matter. She was free. That was all that mattered to her!
Gemma gathered up her paperwork and, oddly enough, she beat her own client out of the courtroom. Ted was in the hall, too nervous, she guessed, to show his face inside. But apparently he knew the outcome because he was elated too. “Great job, Gemma!” he said to her.
Gemma looked at him with disdain in her eyes. “You go to hell,” she said, and she didn’t care that people in the corridor heard her. She meant every word.
And she left. This was no victory for her. She didn’t know which jurors had been bought or threatened or both, and she didn’t care. The fact that the criminal justice system had been perverted, and her husband was a part of the perversion, was all she could think about. And they wanted to celebrate. They wanted to pretend that woman was freed based on facts and evidence and Gemma’s courtroom skills. When they all knew that nothing could be further from the truth.
She headed out of the courthouse toward the parking lot. But before she could get anywhere near her car, she saw Sal. He got out of his Porsche that was parked far closer than her car, and walked toward her. But she expected to feel the same about him as she did about Ted and Rabina. She didn’t think she could hardly face him.
But as he walked toward her, and as his face betrayed his inner dread and gave him the look, not of the strong, confident man he usually displayed, but of a very frightened, aging, lonely man, her heart grew faint. Ted and Rabina were snakes in the grass as far as she was concerned. But Sal wasn’t. And she knew he wasn’t. And she knew, given his big heart, that there was no way he killed those people unless those people left him absolutely no other choice. Not that she condoned that kind of behavior either. The police should have been involved. But she understood it because Sal was involved in it.
When he arrived in front of her, looking as if he just knew he’d just lost his best friend, she stopped too.
“I wished with everything within me that I didn’t have to do the things I sometimes have to do, Gemma,” he said. “But there’s nobody else. I have to be the one. I rigged that jury to protect my men and yeah, to protect my own ass too, and I’d do it again if I had to. I need you to understand that. But I never do anything to anybody who didn’t try to do it to me first. I don’t start, but I finish. And I finish hard. That’s me, Gemma. This is the man you married.”
Tears were in Gemma’s eyes. Because she knew he was right. She knew every word he said was true. “Are you going to let Rabina get away again?” she asked him.
Sal shook his head. “She’s not going anywhere. My men are on her tail right now to take her to my plane. We’re going to fly to Taiwan tonight and retrieve that tape. She’s not going anywhere without me.”
Gemma nodded. “Good.”
“And don’t worry. We’ll get every copy. And if we don’t, when we finish with those fuckers, anybody else who might have a copy will change their minds about ever letting it be known.”
It sounded dangerous and it sounded clever. But Gemma knew Sal was only doing what he had to do. She stared at him, as a surge of emotion overtook her, and she dropped her briefcase and pulled him into her arms. “My husband,” she said as she held him. “Right or wrong.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Two weeks later, the bedroom door opened quietly, and Blanche Delilah walked in. She knew he was sound asleep, she heard him snoring as soon as she made it upstairs. She walked up to the foot of the bed and looked at him. Sal Gabrini, she thought. The most powerful man she’d ever known. She’d had many men in her life, but none of them could touch Sal in the looks department, in the lovemaking department, in any department. Then she slowly pulled away the sheet that covered his naked body. And looked at his rock-hard muscles, and at his manhood. She nodded her head approvingly. Nor had she ever had a man as well-endowed.
And that was what she wanted. To feel his dick inside of her again. They were in Chicago, in a home he owned but allowed her to live in whenever he was not in town. But he was in town on business this week. And told her to scram, the way he always did, until he left town again. And like always, she dutifully left.
But now she was back, despite his order. She couldn’t stay away. She was horny, she wanted it badly, and he was going to give it to her whether he wanted to or not.
She dropped her mink coat to the ground, revealing her naked, pink body, and then she walked around to the side of the bed, sat down, and gingerly took his dick in her hand.
She licked her lips as she held him. She closed her eyes as she felt every vein in his rod. Then she leaned down and began licking him. She looked up at him, every time he stirred, but he remained asleep. By the time she was in full-fledge sucking mode, he began to murmur, as if he was just beginning to feel it too. And his dick came alive, and became aroused.
“Gemma,” she heard him murmur under his breath as she sucked him. But Blanche didn’t care. She wasn’t in love with the man. She just wanted his dick. She just wanted to get him big, and to get him inside of her. Then a thought occurred to her that made her smile: What it would be, she wondered, to become pregnant with Sal Gabrini’s child!
And it worked. He murmured his wife’s name one more time, but Blanche was already wet and ready. And so was his dick.
She quietly got onto the bed and straddled him. She positioned her n
aked body directly above his stiff penis, and held it, ready to guide it in.
But Sal opened his eyes.
As soon as he did, and he saw Blanche on top of him, and naked as a jaybird, he knocked her off of him so violently that she fell all the way over the bed and onto the floor.
Sal jumped up. “Sonafabitch!” he yelled as he grabbed his gun from under his side pillow and hurried up to Blanche, pointing it at her. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he asked, still stunned.
“What are you doing, Sal?” Blanche yelled back. “Put that gun away!”
“Get up!” he ordered her. Sal was serious now.
“Put that gun away!” Blanche insisted again, terrified now.
“I’m not putting shit away. Get your ass up!”
Blanche slowly stood up, raking her long, blonde hair back as she sat on the edge of the bed. She was still shaken, and monumentally disappointed.
“What did you think you were doing?” he asked her.
Blanche was disheartened now. What seemed like a good idea at the time, seemed like a lousy idea now. And she didn’t want to talk about it.
Sal realized she was naked, as her pink breasts stood stiff at attention, despite the tension. “Where are you clothes?” he asked her.
She didn’t respond.
“Where are your clothes?” he asked again. Then he noticed the mink coat on the floor. He grabbed it and threw it to her. “Put it on,” he ordered.
Blanche was over it now. She put it on.
Sal finally stopped pointing his gun at her. But his disappointment in her remained. “This is how you repay me, Blanche? This is how you do it? Ralphie died.”
“You killed him!”
“That’s a gotdamn lie!” Sal shot back. “He wasn’t even on one of my missions when they iced him, and you know it!”
Then he calmed back down. “Ralphie died and I took you in. I let you stay here, rent-free, whenever I wasn’t in town, which was most of the time. And what do you do? Pull a stunt like this? I’m a married man but you don’t give shit about that!” Just the thought of it irked Sal. And he’d had enough. “Get out!” he ordered.
When she didn’t move, he grabbed her by the arm. “Now!” he said and began dragging her out of the bedroom. “You aren’t welcome to stay in my home another night!”
“What are you talking about?” Blanche asked as he hurried her along the corridor.
“What do you think? I’m kicking your ass out. You’re getting out of here.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now!”
“But . . . you can’t do this to me!”
He began dragging her down the stairs. “Watch me,” he said. And hurried her to the front door.
“But what about my things?”
“Come tomorrow. My agent will be here. He’ll supervise your removal,” he said as he opened the front door. His dick was dangling and the cold November air that met him when he opened that door chilled him to the bone. “Your free ride is over,” he said to her.
“You’re wrong for this, Sal,” she said to him, anger and sadness in her voice.
“Yeah, right. You come into my home uninvited, try to have your way with me, but I’m wrong? Get the fuck out of my house!”
And he threw her, and her mink coat, out into the cold.
When he slammed and locked the door, and made his way back upstairs, he peed, got back into bed, and then exhaled.
And called his wife.
She was in the parking lot of the courthouse, heading for her car, telling him about some crack head she was defending where the judge and prosecutor were conspiring to get her tossed from the case.
Then something went terribly wrong. Sal heard what sounded like an angry man call her a bitch. Then he heard her screaming for help. Then nothing. Nothing at all.
He jumped out of bed. “Gem? Gem? What the fuck, Gem, answer me!”
But no answer came. He and his wife had had a rough few months. She stood by him after that jury tampering when she could have kicked him to the curb. But she would never do this. Something awful had just happened. Sal could feel it in his bones.
“Gemma!” he kept yelling into that cell phone. He wasn’t hanging up, he didn’t care what happened. But he knew he couldn’t let emotions get the best of him. They were trying, but he had to beat them back. He had to be methodical about this. For Gemma, he had to treat this situation the way he treated all those other mind blowing situations he had to handle in the past. He was a handler. That was what he did.
He ran to his closet, grabbed his suitcase, and rummaged through it until he found his second phone. Still crying out Gemma’s name on his first phone, he quickly phoned his cousin Reno with his second one.
Reno Gabrini walked through his massive casino with Jimmy Mack Gabrini, his oldest son. Jimmy was a handsome, biracial young man, and he walked beside his father with a slowly gait. Because it wasn’t a pleasant walk. His father was on his case.
“You see me pulling that shit?” Reno was asking his son. “You see me hiring my drinking partners and my party buddies in my business?”
Jimmy Mack wanted to roll his eyes, but he knew his father would knock them off of his face.
“Well do you?” Reno asked him.
“No, sir. I don’t see you hiring your drinking partners and party buddies in your business.”
“Then stop hiring them in yours! I didn’t let you run that business to run it in the ground. I expect your ass to have good sense, Jimmy Mack, or I’ll take it from you.” Reno’s cell phone began to ring. He looked at the Caller ID. “Now fire their asses and hire people who know what the fuck they’re doing!” When Reno saw that is was his cousin Sal calling, he answered. “I’m busy, Sal,” Reno said.
“Gemma’s in trouble,” Sal said.
Reno stopped in his tracks. Jimmy stopped too. “What kind of trouble?”
“I don’t know. Get to the courthouse. She was in the parking lot. She was walking to her car.”
Reno hit Jimmy on his stomach and began running for the exit. Jimmy ran behind him. “What you think happened?” Reno was asking Sal as he ran.
“I don’t know. I was talking to her and then I heard some male’s voice, then I heard her cry help, and then nothing. Fucking nothing! And still nothing. I still have her on the line.”
“Where are you?”
“Chicago,” Sal said, “but I’m heading back now. Call me as soon as you find out anything.”
“I’m on it,” Reno said, and killed the call. He and Jimmy might have ran out of the casino, but they ran even faster through the hotel lobby, jumping into Jimmy’s Camaro, which was illegally parked near the entrance, and taking off.
“What’s going on, Dad?” Jimmy asked his father as his father drove. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” Reno said as he swerved out of the curb and flew out of the driveway of his hotel and casino. “But I’m going to find out.”
And he drove like a madman; he drove along the Vegas Strip as if it was his wife in danger because he knew Sal would do the same for him. And because it was Gemma.
When the Camaro finally made it to the courthouse, and Reno drove through rows and rows of cars and trucks until they found Gemma’s BMW, it was immediately obvious that something had gone terribly wrong. Reno stopped his son’s car behind Gemma’s, he and Jimmy Mack jumped out, but their hearts were racing. Bullet holes could be seen on the driver side door.
Reno ran up to the door and opened it to confirm what they saw was what they saw: bullet holes. Reno looked around inside the car, and saw her briefcase and purse on the backseat. Then he looked around the parking lot. He and Jimmy started running up and down the rows, with Reno taking one row, Jimmy taking another row, making certain that somebody didn’t have her hidden out in their car or truck right now.
But they found nothing. People were walking around, going about their daily business, as if nothing earth shattering could have possibly happened ther
e.
“Dad!” Jimmy called out as they both arrived back near Gemma’s car.
“Found something?” Reno asked as he hurried over to his son. He was no sprinter, but he was fast.
When he arrived at his son’s side, Jimmy pointed to the ground. “That’s Aunt Gemma’s phone right there,” Jimmy said.
Reno knew it too. Gemma was the only grown woman he knew to have a cell phone covered with pictures of cabbage patch dolls.
Reno’s heart grew faint as he picked it up. He felt even worse when he could hear Sal’s voice on the other end, in that controlled panic voice of his, as if he had been talking into this phone nonstop since Gemma apparently dropped it. “Hello?” Sal was saying. “Hello?”
“Sal,” Reno said, “it’s me.”
“You found her?” Sal asked excitedly.
“No,” Reno said dejectedly. “Just her phone.”
“Her phone?” Sal knew what that meant. Gemma went no-where without her phone. “She’s not there?”
“She’s not here.”
“Did you look around, Reno?”
“Yes, I looked around! Jimmy’s with me and he looked around too. She’s not here, Sal.” Then he exhaled. He didn’t want to tell Sal what else he found, but he had to. “There’s more,” he said.
“Tell me,” Sal responded as if he was holding his breath.
“We found bullet holes.”
“Jesus. Where?”
“In the driver side door of Gem’s car,” Reno replied. “And I’m talking a hail of bullets blew holes in that door.”
“Blood?” Sal asked. “Did you find any blood?”
Reno shook his head. “No blood, thank God. Nowhere around here is any blood. So they apparently missed her. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t take her.”
Sal knew it too. He was in his limo, with his driver rushing him to the airstrip in Chicago to board his private plane. He was in the backseat, dressed haphazardly in a wrinkled suit, which was saying something for a meticulous dresser like Sal. And he was leaned forward, his head bowed, the palm of his hand squeezing his forehead. He wanted his wife. All he wanted was to know that his wife was okay; that those bastards wasn’t harming his wife.
Until You Come Back To Me, Book 5 Page 12
