“Fucking genius, I thought,” Ted responded to Reno. Then he looked at Sal again. “It was Santino’s trump card in case you tried some shit with him. It was his insurance. But every man has a price. Santino’s was half a million. So I bought it from him. And it became our insurance.”
“What were you trying to insure?” Tommy asked him.
“That Sal Gabrini would put his considerable authority behind tampering with whichever jurors we felt were the leaders of the pack and could persuade the other jurors.”
“To vote not guilty at Rabina Chen’s trial?” Tommy asked him.
“Precisely,” Ted said, and then smiled. “And it worked like a charm. Rabina was set free, and Sal took a trip to Taiwan and retrieved his tape.
“Why?” Sal asked again. ‘’Why would you care about Chen being free? You love her like that?”
“I don’t love her at all,” Ted lied, “give me more credit than that. My heart is with the sisters, my African queens. I don’t cross the color line like you Gabrinis so famously love to do. You’re the fucking Kardashians of the Mob!”
“Why would you pay half a million to spring Rabina Chen?” Sal asked again.
“Because she’s my runner. She’s my middle-man. I run that trafficking operation you thought those Asians ran. But that’s my operation. I run that. I needed Rab free to keep my hundred million dollar operation running smoothly. Giving some creep like Santino Druce a half a million of that hundred million was a good purchase. Good insurance, if you like.”
Sal looked at Ted with nothing but disgust in his eyes. “So all of those hoops you had me jumping through, including that trip to Taiwan to get a tape you could have handed over right here in the states, and the way we had to kill every Asian sonafabitch in sight after we retrieved that tape, was about what?”
“It was a clever way to give you that tape,” Ted proudly said, “and to make you feel that the enemy, your enemy, the mastermind behind the tape, had been eliminated. It was a way to make you feel that you could sleep at night knowing you got rid of the vermin that would deign to blackmail you. So to speak.”
“You mean vermin like you?” Sal asked, pulling out his gun.
Ted’s eyes stretched. “What are you doing?”
“You mean eliminate the mastermind like you?”
“Wait a minute. Mr. Gabrini, let’s reason now.”
“Oh, I’m Mister Gabrini now? I’m no longer the joke you played? I’m no longer the fool you sent across the world for the hell of it? I’m Mister to you now?”
“You were always Mister to me,” Ted said, staring at that gun, his heart hammering.
“Well you’re still vermin to me. You’re still the mastermind, the enemy that has to be eliminated to me.”
“No!” Ted cried, but it was only an echo. Sal shot him and shot him and shot him, without a second’s hesitation. He was tired of this shit. These assholes were playing him like he was some chump, sending him around the world to get around the corner only to find that he had wasted more time and his wife was still missing. He was tired of this shit!
But after Reno pulled over by the first wooded area they came to, and Tommy kicked Ted Coggan’s dead body out of the Van and the Van drove off, none of them felt triumphant, least of which Sal. Because Sal felt scared. He felt as if he was settling scores, but the biggest score he had to settle-that touchdown called Gemma’s return-was just as elusive now as when she first went missing.
“I want my wife!” Sal screamed out with such emotion as they drove back to the airstrip that even Reno felt its’ sting. Tommy took his brother’s hand, and held onto it.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It was a small, eleven-hundred square foot block house on a quiet residential street in Vegas. A normal-looking house in a working class neighborhood with closed blinds at every window and one vehicle, a cargo van, in the driveway. Inside the small, quiet, normal house were windows with sound-proofed, eight-inch thick wood covering every window, and every bedroom locked, from the outside.
In the second bedroom of the small, quiet, normal house was Sal Gabrini’s wife, sitting on a twin bed, her legs drawn up and her back against the wall. They shot her with a pellet gun when they first abducted her, leaving her temporarily immobile, and the sting still resonated in her back. But she otherwise physically okay.
Mentally was another story. Because the only two things she could not stop thinking about, during the entire time they had her in that filthy room, was how was she going to get herself out of this, and Sal.
She thought constantly about Sal. She knew the kind of man he was. She knew he was sick with worry, and was probably losing it, as a new day dawned and there was still no sign of her. She knew he was on the case, but how was he going to be able to find her? She didn’t even know where she was, who took her, or why. They hadn’t told her anything!
Another hour came or went, or at least that was the passage of time Gemma guessed that it was, when the door to the bedroom was unlocked, and then opened. The man Gemma heard one of her captors call Screw was the only face she had been seeing, and before her kidnapping, she had never seen his face before. But it wasn’t Screw who walked in this time. To her shock, it was her mentor. It was Judge Rory Calhoun.
At first Gemma’s heart leaped with joy. She was being rescued! But then she saw the look in his eyes, and remembered their last encounter when he tried to kiss her, and she knew Sal would not have sanctioned him anywhere near any rescue attempt. She was not looking in the face of a rescuer. She was looking in the face of her kidnapper. She knew it as sure as she knew her name. And her heart sank like a stone. She would have preferred fifty gunmen walk through that door, than Rory Calhoun.
He closed the door behind him, and walked over to the bed. She stared at him with unblinking eyes as he stood before her. Then he opened his suit coat and placed his hands on his hips, revealing a holstered gun. She looked down at the gun, horrified, and then back up at him. “Just in case,” he said with a smile, “you think you can overpower me. You may try, but you will more than likely not succeed. And you would be dead for your effort.”
He smiled again, and it was a smile that was now so reptilian to Gemma that she could not believe she had not seen this side of him before. His handsome face now looked sinister and evil. His black skin that used to be so smooth and glorious and beautiful, made hers crawl.
But he didn’t care about the monumental shift she was experiencing before his very eyes. He hadn’t changed; he was always an asshole. Her perception of him, from idol to idiot, was the only thing that changed. “What’s the first thing I taught you when you clerked for me, Gemmanette?” he asked her. “I taught you to never attempt a demonstration that you are not one hundred percent confident will produce the desired result.”
“Why are you doing this?” Gemma asked him.
Rory actually thought about it. “It’s complicated,” he said.
“Why are you doing this?” Gemma asked him again. “Because I rebuffed your advances?”
Rory smiled, and then he laughed. “You cannot possibly be that self-absorbed,” he responded. “You actually think I would risk my life, my livelihood, my everything for you? Get real, Gemmanette! You’re the one who had a crush on me back then. You’re the one who would have given me your body if I would have wanted it. But I nurtured you. I treated you with dignity. That was why you loved me and respected me, because you knew I didn’t take advantage of you. I looked out for you.”
“Then how can you do this to me now?” Gemma asked, with pain in her voice. “Why aren’t you looking out for me now?”
Gemma could see a flash of regret in Rory’s eyes. There was still some humanity there. “Because I have a boss too. And my boss wanted you captured and detained.”
“Who is your boss?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“What does he want with me?”
“That’s for me to know, and for you to, eventually, find out.” Then
he glanced down at her body as if he knew her body had something to do with what that boss of his wanted with her, and he rubbed his forehead. Then he exhaled, as if there was nothing he could do about it, and looked menacing again. “I just wanted to let you know,” he said, “that we will be moving you within the hour.”
Moving her, Gemma thought. That meant the boss had arrived and was waiting. That meant whatever all of this was about, was about to go down. And she became desperate. She wanted to panic, but she knew that would only make her weaker. And as Rory turned to leave, she knew she had to act and act fast.
“I’ll suck your dick,” she blurted out to him, “if you let me go.” She knew she was throwing a rock down a sinkhole, but it was the only weapon she had. She saw that look in his eyes in his hotel room that time. He wanted her then. He might still want her.
And at least Rory stopped walking. He didn’t dismiss her proposition outright. He turned and looked at her.
“You have an hour,” she said. “There’s a lot I can do to you in an hour.”
He looked down, at her body. He always craved it, even when she clerked for him. But he had morals then. He was an ethical man back then. But that was before everything changed. Now he didn’t give a damn. Now, just looking at gorgeous Gemma, he knew he still wanted her and there were no morals and ethics or concern for her future standing in his way. He knew this would probably be his last chance to fuck her. He knew this would probably be her last chance to get fucked.
He walked up to her, pulled out his aroused dick, and allowed her to pleasure him. He wasn’t about to let her go after she did her duty, he wasn’t that crazy by any stretch of anybody’s imagination, but Gemma didn’t know that. Because she still had morals, and she still was an ethical person. Because she probably thought he still had some humanity, some courage left to show. She was wrong, he thought, as she pleasured him.
She wasn’t wrong, Gemma thought, as she sucked her mentor’s dick. She knew what she was doing too. She wanted him relaxed. She wanted to lull him into that false sense of lust. And he was getting there fast, as if he wanted a rush job. He even held her head and began pushing it further and further down on his rod, a rod that reeked of salty sweat and pre-cum, a rod that made her want to gag. But she didn’t. She pleasured him in a way that she knew was getting through to him. He even sighed his approval and slowly closed his eyes.
And that was when Gemma made her move. She moved her mouth up further, until his penis was firmly between her teeth, and then she bit down on him so hard that he immediately began bleeding out.
Rory screamed the scream of a lion, and flung his dick out of her mouth. He bent over in the kind of pain that took him to his knees, and then onto the floor.
Gemma grabbed his gun as he was going down. He couldn’t even fight her for it, as both his hands tried to staunch the flow of blood that he knew would kill him almost as fast as a bullet would. Gemma grabbed the keys he also had, the keys he used to unlock her bedroom door, and she took off out of the bedroom, down the hall, and out of the house altogether. She thought there would be resistance. She thought there would be an army of men upfront, waiting to put a quick end to her quick getaway. But no one was there. Was this a one man operation?
The only transportation at the house was a cargo van. She ran to it, praying that one of the keys in her hand was the key to that van. But when she opened the unlocked door, she suddenly got another thought. The men who kidnapped her, that man called Screw and his partners, could be waiting inside the very van she just entered. She pointed her gun toward the back when she entered. But no-one was there.
She got in, and began to search the set of keys until she found the right one. And she cranked it up. But as soon as she cranked up, men appeared from the backyard. One of those men was Screw. And when he realized she was behind the wheel of the van, and was getting away, he and his partners pulled their weapons and began to fire. Gemma slung the van in reverse, slammed on the gas, and took off, driving on two wheels and nearly flipping the van, and nearly ending any chance she had of escape. But she was too determined to succeed to fail. She course-corrected and swerved her way down the road of that quiet, normal neighborhood and away from that quiet, normal house of horrors. Her getaway would have looked normal too, except for the hail of bullets peppering the street behind her.
It was eleven o clock at night. It was the second night of Gemma’s absence. Sal, Reno, and Tommy had been blanketing the city again, visiting everybody who ever knew Gemma, and every crook she ever represented. But they found nothing. Now they were back home, in Sal and Gemma’s living room, and the entire house was littered with the pain and anguish of the people inhabiting it. Tommy was there, of course. Sal knew he wasn’t going anywhere until Gemma was safe again. Reno and Jimmy were still there, with Jimmy hanging outside with security.
Trina had to leave, to care for and protect her and Reno’s minor children. She was more than capable of protecting them, nobody messed with Trina, and Reno knew she was more than capable. But he was a very cautious man when it came to his family. That was why, despite Trina’s abilities, he still had his men guarding her and his children as if they were guarding the Pope, the President, and the Queen of England all at the same time. Jimmy’s wife Valerie was also under guard at the PaLargio, just in case.
Gemma’s parents were also at Sal and Gemma’s home. Rodney and Cassie Jones sat in that living room in a state of dread and anguish too. No calls had come in. No ransom notes had been received. It was as if they snatched Gemma, and the snatching itself was the victory. It was as if they already had what they wanted. And Sal knew, as Rodney and Cassie stared at no one but him, they placed all of the blame, and all of the shame, right at his feet.
Tommy looked at his brother. If pain had a classic look, it was on Sal’s face. He was beyond anguished. Every moment where there was no news meant another moment where Sal came closer to his breaking point. Tommy sat beside him. Tommy walked beside him. Tommy wasn’t letting him out of his sight. Sal had not even drifted off to sleep for one second of this ordeal and Tommy, who dearly loved Gemma too, stayed awake right alongside him.
Reno stayed awake too. He loved Gemma perhaps even more than Tommy did. He often spoke of the special bond he had with Gemma. He knew her first, when he hired her to do some legal work for him, and he always seemed protective of her. Tommy knew he was anguished too. They had no clues, no more places to search, and their men in the field, and they had hundreds, kept reporting back with nothing to report. At some point, they knew, they would have to get the authorities involved. But they were going to resist that temptation to the bitter end. For a Gabrini to call in the Feds meant disaster. It meant that it was the fourth quarter, the home team was down by a touchdown but was sixty yards away from the goal line, and they were throwing a Hail Mary into the end zone. Calling in the Feds would be like throwing in the towel.
But then the front door flew open and Jimmy Mack ran in. “Aunt Gemma’s home!” he screamed. “Aunt Gemma’s home!”
Sal was gone as soon as he said the word home the first time. He ran out of that door, across the front porch and down the stairs, to the cargo van that Gemma was just beginning to get out of. His men, who was guarding his estate, had already protectively surrounded her. It was the kind of news, the kind of sight that his dreams had been made of. She was home. Gemma was back. Despite her exhaustion, despite his exhaustion, they both ran to each other as soon as they laid eyes on each other.
And when they met, when they finally were face to face again, they just stood there, looking at each other, afraid to touch out of fear that it was all a dream.
Then Sal touched her face. And she touched his face. And tears were in their eyes. Sal lifted her off the ground, twirled her around as if she was a feather, and then finally stopped long enough to kiss her. She had already wiped her mouth of the filth that was Rory Calhoun’s dick, and she gladly welcomed her husband’s kiss.
Tommy and Reno and Gemma’
s parents were overcome with relief too. Rodney broke away, and ran to his daughter. And as soon as he got up to her, he pulled her away from Sal and pulled her into his arms. Cassie ran up and hugged her too. And Sal didn’t mind. She was safe. She was under his protection again. Reno and Tommy came up, hugging her too, and he felt like a proud father. He felt as if they were rewarding him by crying and being so happy to see his wife again.
But Sal began looking around too. Who had abducted her? Where in the world did she get that van from? Had they followed her home?
“Let’s take it inside,” he ordered, and everybody obeyed him. They formed a human circle around Gemma, and they all entered the home.
Once inside, Gemma’s parents wanted her to go upstairs, take a shower, and refresh herself. But Gemma politely declined. She knew Sal, Reno, and Tommy needed intel, they needed to know all she knew, and she sat in the living room instead, and told them.
“It was Rory Calhoun, Sal,” she said.
“Sonafabitch!” Reno couldn’t believe it. “He was the first one we questioned!”
“Where is he now?” Sal asked. “Did you ice that motherfucker?”
Cassie looked at Rodney. The idea that their daughter would “ice” somebody was abhorrent to her. But Rodney was with Sal on this one. “Well did you?” he asked his daughter.
Gemma frowned. “No,” she said. She knew she couldn’t kill him. Not him. “I just wanted to get away from there.”
Sal could tell there was more to that story, but that part would be between him and her. “Where did he have you?”
“At this tiny house on Broadbank Street. I saw the street name when I was getting away.”
“Broadbank?” Reno asked. “Where the fuck is Broadbank?”
But Sal was already on the phone, calling his chief in the field. “Get to Broadbank,” he ordered. “What color was the house, Gemma?” he asked his wife.
“White. All white. Third from the corner.”
“The house is all white, third from the corner.”
Until You Come Back To Me, Book 5 Page 16
