Sal Gabrini 3: Hard Love

by Mallory Monroe

  But Sprig seemed to be still reeling from the way he had grabbed her. She looked at his hand on her arm. When he finally removed it, she looked at him. “Get the fuck out of my house,” she said, “and get the fuck out now.”

  She didn’t yell it, or scream it. She merely said it. Firmly. Bluntly. Nastily.

  Sal knew he was getting nowhere fast with her. She didn’t give a damn about him and wasn’t about to help him in any way, shape, or form. He should have known.

  He took Gemma’s hand again. “Let’s go,” he said, as he began escorting her out.

  But Gemma broke away from him and went up to Sprig. She could hold her tongue no longer. “What kind of mother are you?” she asked her. “Sal came here to help you against everybody’s better judgment, and he nearly died trying. He nearly lost his life right here in your living room, because of you, and you treat him as if he’s the enemy! As if he’s the one who did something to you! And now you’re offended because he touched you? How can you be so cruel?”

  But Sprig remained unrepentant. “Yeah, you love him to death right now. He’s your main man. But keep living. Keep hanging out with the Gabrinis. Your love will sour. They’ll teach you to hate them just as surely as they taught you how to love them! Keep hanging with him. Just keep on.”

  Gemma frowned. “You speak as if he’s not your son. You speak as if you didn’t give birth to him.”

  “I birth him,” Sprig admitted. “But that’s all I did. I had him. His father raised him. He’s his father’s son through and through. He even looks like him. He’s no son of mine. Not anymore. Now get him out of my house and take your black ass with him!”

  Sal was about to charge his mother, but Gemma held him back. She now regretted confronting the woman, but she felt he needed to hear the unvarnished truth. “She’s not worth it, Sal,” she said. “She just showed us what she’s really made of.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Sprig asked. “And what am I made of Gemma Jones, you with your fancy law degree. What am I made of?”

  Gemma looked back at her. “Nothing,” she said.

  Sal looked at his mother too, because that word described exactly how he felt about her now. His own father hated him, but he was holding out hope somehow that his mother didn’t too. He knew better all along, but that hope was there. His mother was beautiful and smart, he used to tell himself, and because of those gifts she had to leave her two sons and live her life. A woman like her couldn’t be put in a cage. She was too beautiful, she had too much going for her, she had too much to give. But now, looking at her, he knew better. That hope, as misplaced as it was all along, was now gone. Hope was gone. His mother wasn’t some great woman who needed to be free. His mother, he was now willing to admit, wasn’t shit.

  He and Gemma left Sprig’s house and got in the Maserati. But, to Gemma’s surprise, they didn’t head to the airstrip to fly back to Seattle. They, instead, headed to the B & B.

  “Why there?” Gemma asked him as he drove. “You think by tomorrow she’s going to change her tune?”

  “Hell no,” Sal said as he drove. She had to continually remind him that speeding in a town like this would get him nothing but more notice than the fact that he was driving a Maserati was getting him anyway, and a ticket. He didn’t mind the ticket, but he didn’t need the extra notice. He would continually slow back down.

  “So why are we spending the night?” Gemma asked him.

  “What, you’re ready to go back? I didn’t want you to come to begin with.”

  “I know you didn’t. But no way were you coming back to this place without me.”

  Sal looked at Gemma. This was one of those areas where he had his concerns about her. “What if I would have put my foot down,” he asked, “and told you I didn’t care what you wanted to do, you weren’t coming? Would you have come then?”

  Gemma stared at him, and then looked out at the night before them. “I don’t know,” she said.

  It wasn’t the answer Sal wanted to hear, but at least it was honest. He exhaled. “We put a GPS on her car. I have men in position ready to follow her every move. Her words may not tell me what I need to know, but I’m hoping her actions will.”

  “Eventually,” Gemma said.

  “You’re right, it could take a while. But if I leave town it’ll take longer. She has to feel the pressure of my presence.”

  “So you believe you were the target of that shooting?”

  Sal nodded. “I do,” he said. “They could have took her out anytime. And you too when I left town. But only after I returned from Boston did the shooting started. I was the target.”

  “But you think she’s protecting somebody?”

  “I know so. That’s the only answer for all of her it’s Nicky the Noose bullshit. She’s protecting somebody, even if that somebody is herself.”

  “Which it probably is,” Gemma said with a smile. “Who else would she be willing to protect? Who else is she going to love if she can’t love a loveable guy like you?”

  Sal laughed, that was his Gemma, and he took her hand. “My sentiment exactly,” he said with a squeeze.

  Later that night, at the B & B, Gemma was naked in bed on her stomach, and Sal was naked in bed on top of her. His dick was between her crack, but had not yet entered her, and both of their eyes were closed.

  But Gemma knew his mind was on Sprig. That woman was awful, just evil personified to her, but that didn’t erase the fact that she was Sal’s mother. Sal couldn’t so easily dismiss her. He wasn’t made like that. She knew his father hated him, she’d seen that hate up close and personal, but she also knew that Sal wanted his love, and his mother’s love, desperately. He even held out hope that his mother had changed when she called and asked him to come. But instead of changing, she appeared to have gotten worst. And that was a terrible realization for a man like Sal.

  And that was why, when his dick finally entered her with such a hard thrust that it hurt her, she didn’t complain. Because it wasn’t about her and she knew it. It was all about the remains of the day. It was all about a man, an emotional, moral man like Sal, living with the fact that neither one of his parents gave a damn about him.

  He fucked her hard the entire time. He grunted with every stroke. He groaned with every feeling that kept intensifying. He laid on top of her, holding her down, and fucked the shit out of her. Even the bed wasn’t spared, as it rocked in heavy bounces against the hardwood floor. He was putting a whipping on her unlike any he had ever put on her before. He was slapping her ass with every stroke he made. He was breathing so hard and groaning so fiercely that she worried that he was going to collapse on top of her.

  The other residents had to have heard them, there was no way they could not have, but Sal kept putting it on her. She was the only thing real to him right now. She was the only thing tangible and loving. And Gemma knew he was testing that love. Gemma knew he was trying to see if she could hate him too.

  But she didn’t hate him. She was too big a girl to be that easily cowered. She, in fact, began to respond to his roughness. She began to grunt and groan too. And it was her response, it was the fact that nothing was going to scare her away from him, that made him cry. He cried as he fucked her. And when they came, he told her he loved her and kept repeating it, as if he had to convince her, as if he had to convince himself that, despite the lack of love in his past, he could actually love somebody.

  Before their cum was finished, Gemma had taken over. And was telling him that she loved him more.

  “I love you, Gemma,” he would say.

  “I love you more,” she would say.

  And it wasn’t an indictment for them, it wasn’t some cliché. It was their life. He felt he had to let her know, despite his own parents seeing nothing to love in him, that he was capable of love. She felt she had to let him know that she loved him, despite everything, and her love couldn’t be broken.

  Even though it was the roughest sex they had ever had, it was the most endearing round of sex they�
�d ever experienced. They gave each other what they needed that night.

  For the first time in a long time, they made nothing more than love.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Sal’s hand searched around the nightstand until he found his ringing cell phone. He and Gemma were spooning in bed, and they both had been fast asleep when the ringing started. Gemma was still asleep.

  “Yeah?” Sal finally said when he was able to handle the phone.

  “She’s on the move, boss,” Sal’s man Ace said into the phone.

  Sal didn’t know what time it was, but he knew it had to be late. “This time of night?”

  “We get not a peep from her all night, then suddenly she’s on the move.”

  “Stay on her and keep me posted.”

  “Will do, boss,” Ace said, and Sal killed the call.

  As he gathered Gemma in his arms again, she snuggled closer against him. “Who was it?” she asked him, her voice groggy and hoarse.

  “Nobody,” Sal said. “Go back to sleep.”

  Gemma snuggled even closer and didn’t argue with him. She gladly went back to sleep.

  But her sleep was short-lived. A mere twenty minutes later, Sal’s cell phone was ringing again.

  This time Gemma was more awake than Sal and she reached for it, and boldly answered it. There was a time when she would have never purposely answered his cell phone. That time was gone. “Hello?” she asked into the phone.

  “Who’s this?” the male’s voice on the other end asked.

  “Who are you?” Gemma asked.

  “Oh. Miss Jones, I’m sorry. Usually boss, I mean Sal answers, I’m sorry. This is Ace. You don’t know me, I don’t think, but . . could I speak with boss, I mean Sal, please?”

  Gemma smiled. She pushed her ass against Sal’s stomach. “Wake up, boss,” she said. “It’s for you.”

  Sal woke up and answered the phone. “Yeah?” he said.

  “She drove to this house on Ionia Street. But it feels strange, boss. She’s just sitting in the car.”

  That was strange to Sal too, especially this time of night. “How far is this Ionia Street from where I am?”

  “A few blocks. Not that far.”

  “Where are you parked?”

  “At the end of the street where’s there’s a vacant lot. No houses. She or nobody else can see me.”

  “Keep it that way.”

  “I’ve been tailing cars all my life, boss. You know I know what I’m doing.”

  “That’s why I hired you,” Sal said, got the address and plugged it into his phone’s GPS, and got out of bed.

  Gemma looked at his lean but muscular body. In the two months that shooting had him debilitated, he lost some weight. But he was already gaining it back. She could tell, not in his stomach, but in his biceps. They were looking as big and imposingly powerful as ever.

  Gemma looked down, at his long, dangling penis, and she began to feel that itch again. But just as she was about to lick her lip at just the sight of it, he slipped into his pants and ended the peepshow.

  “Where are you going?” she asked him.

  “Ionia Street.”

  “What’s on Ionia Street?”

  “A house. Ma went there.”

  “Why?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “But I mean why would you need to go at this point if she only went to somebody’s house?”

  Sal looked at his Rolex as he put it on his wrist. It was a quarter to three in the morning. “This time of night isn’t visiting hours.”

  Sal slipped on his pullover shirt and leaned down and kissed her on the lips. “You stay here. I’ve got a man outside this room, and one in the lobby. You’ll be okay. But keep your ass put.”

  “No, Sal,” she said with a sarcastic smile, “I’m going to go right now and get my hair and nails done. Of course I’m keeping my ass put, what do you take me for? A lady of the evening?”

  “Ha!” Sal said with a laugh. “I’ll kick your ass up and down this bitch if you even think about that particular profession.”

  Gemma laughed, Sal kissed her again, and then he was off.

  Sal parked his car behind Ace’s Toyota Camry, and then Ace got out and walked to the Maserati.

  “Not a bad neighborhood,” Sal said, looking around.

  “More respectable than where she lives,” Ace said. He was a tall, well-built Italian who seemed to have an eternal grimace on his face.

  “She went inside?”

  “Not yet. She’s still in the car.”

  Sal looked at him. “Still in the car? You’re sure?”

  “I’m positive, boss. She’s still sitting in that car, as if she was trying to make her mind up about something.”

  Sal exhaled. He was getting a bad feeling about this. He was also getting the feeling that he needed to be closer. The end of the street wasn’t going to work if something went down. “Change cars with me,” he said, removing one of three guns he kept in the glove compartment. “She knows this car. I want you to take this car and go back to the Bed and Breakfast.”

  “Why would I need to go there?”

  “Because my lady’s there and I’m not,” Sal said, putting the gun in the small of his back and getting out of the car. “I can handle this. I want to make sure there’s no bait and switch shit going on. I want to make sure they aren’t getting me here so they can do damage to her there.”

  “You think they’re after her?”

  “No, but I don’t want to take any chances. Not with her.”

  “But I’m confused, boss. I thought she was already under guard.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not there to be her ultimate guard. I want you to guard her the way I would guard her.”

  “As if my life depended on it?”

  “Right,” Sal said.

  Ace understood. “Will do, boss,” he said. Then he got in Sal’s Maserati and left the scene. Sal got into the Camry and drove slowly toward the house where Sprig’s Ford Focus was parked.

  He parked two houses back and waited. He could see that she was on the phone. She wasn’t just idly sitting by as Ace had assumed. She appeared to be in a very heated conversation. For nearly ten minutes she argued on that phone. And then finally she threw the phone down and hurried out of the car.

  What immediately caught Sal’s attention was the fact that Sprig had some sort of object at her side, and it wasn’t a pocketbook. Sal squinted to see what it was. And then, for one brief moment when the street light cast down upon her shadow at just the right angle, he saw it. He saw that she was hurrying up to that front door, and she had a gun in her hand.

  “Gotdammit!” Sal yelled and hurriedly placed the vehicle in Drive. He sped up to the house and drove up behind Sprig’s car. But by then, Sprig was already inside of the house.

  As soon as Sal got out of his car, he could hear gunfire erupting. He pulled his gun out of the small of his back and ran. All he could think about was his mother. Did she shoot somebody, or was somebody shooting her? He ran up to the porch and kicked in the door.

  When he ran inside, he saw a man, a familiar man, lying on the stained carpet, his lifeless body riddled with bullets. Sal realized the man was Craig, the guy Sprig was fighting the first time Sal came to Jericho. The man that was supposed to be Sprig’s boyfriend. And then he looked over and saw his mother, standing there, the gun in her hands, staring down at the lifeless body.

  “What have you done?” Sal asked her, stunned that she would have killed him. But she was in another world. She looked at Sal as if she didn’t know him.

  And then sirens could be heard. How in the world could there be sirens this quickly? Had the local cops been following him?

  He immediately took the gun from his mother. His heart was pounding as he saw how helpless she looked, as if the reality of what she had done was just dawning on her. He knew what that felt like. It felt like hell on top of hell.

  The sound of footsteps could be heard outside and then the poli
ce, two uniformed officers, appeared at the broken down door.

  “Freeze!” yelled one, his gun pointed at Sal. “Drop the weapons!”

  Sal tossed both guns onto the carpet and put up his hands. Sprig was still too stunned to move.

  But the officers knew Sprig. They worked for her nephew. They also knew Craig. They knew him just as well. Sal was the only unknown entity there.

  “Who did this?” one of the officers, the oldest one, asked.

  Let her rot in hell, Sal knew he should have said. Wash your hands of that hateful bitch and let her rot in hell. But he wasn’t made like that. That hateful bitch was his mother. No matter what, she was his mother.

  “I did,” he said.

  As if they knew it all along, and his admission only confirmed what they had suspected, they immediately grabbed him like the thug they took him for, and threw him to the floor.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Sal stood at the window inside the police chief’s office and looked out at the darkness of the night. Jericho was asleep, but by daybreak Sal was certain his little adventure at Craig’s house would be the talk of the town just as that drive by at Sprig’s house had been some two months prior. Even Brent Sinatra, who ran the town, commented on the irony as he entered the office.

  “Nothing happens in Jericho,” he said as he headed for his desk, “until you show up.”

  Sal continued to look out of the window. “Not by design I assure you.”

  “Drunks and skunks,” Brent said, sitting behind his desk.

  Sal looked at him. “Excuse me?”

  “That’s what I have to deal with. Drunks on weekends and our little skunk problem through the week. And I thought I had them both under control. Then a Gabrini shows up.”

  “You had your men following me, didn’t you?”

  “Absolutely,” Brent responded with his usual bluntness. “Was I wrong?”

  Sal couldn’t argue with that. “Where’s my mother?” he asked.