Sal Gabrini 3: Hard Love

by Mallory Monroe

  Sal began to come toward her. But Sprig pressed the gun against Gemma’s forehead. “Don’t try it,” she warned. “Don’t you dare try it! You destroyed my life, now it’s payback time!”

  Gemma saw it in Sal’s eyes. She began to shake her head. Don’t let it be, she begged with her own eyes. Don’t do it again. Not again. Don’t let him have to kill his mother too!

  But Sprig left him no choice. She cocked the trigger to fire the gun, and Sal, terrified for Gemma, thread the needle and shot his mother through the forehead. One inch in either direction, and it would have been Gemma. His mother looked at her son, and then fell.

  Sal ran to Gemma, and untied her hands and removed her mouth gag. She let out a hard breath. “Oh, Sal,” she said, her heart broken for him. He had to kill his father to save Tommy. Now he had to kill his mother to save her. It wasn’t fair. Tears were running down her face, because it wasn’t fair!

  Sal ran to the front door and looked out, to make sure that Darcy character was gone. He was gone. Then he called Brent and told him, as best he could, where they were.

  And then he looked at his mother. And that ton of bricks moment hit him.

  “I’m so sorry, Sal,” Gemma said. “I’m sorry she forced you to make a choice.”

  “Her or you?” he asked. Then he shook his head. He was done with trying to find humanity in people who hated his guts. “That was no choice,” he said. “That was my pleasure.”

  Then he repeated himself, as if his own words were foreign to him.

  EPILOGUE

  “You know what I want?” Sal asked Gemma as they reclined in his upstairs Jacuzzi.

  “What?” she asked him.

  “A nice glass of wine.”

  Gemma smiled. She was thinking the same thing. “I’ll get it,” she said, was about to stand, but he sat her back down.

  “Not just yet,” he said. “I want to hold you still.”

  She leaned back against him and allowed him to continue holding her. They were on the private balcony, outside of his bedroom, and the night was warm.

  “This is so nice, Sal,” she said. “It’s been so stressful these last couple of months. Now we’ll finally seeing the daylight again.”

  “And I plan to keep it that way. No more running off and saving the day for me.”

  Gemma laughed. “Good,” she said. Then she frowned. “It’s still a shame it had to end that way.”

  “She was bent on revenge. She blamed my old man for all that sadistic shit he did to her, and she was right to blame him. But because I supposedly told my old man that she was making out with some neighbor, she feels I’m the one who caused him to take his craziness to another level.”

  Gemma shook her head.

  “And you know what’s remarkable?” Sal asked.

  “What?”

  “It wasn’t even me. It was Tommy.”

  Gemma turned toward him. “Tommy? How do you know that?”

  “He told me so. And he said Ma knew it was him at the time, but like everything else in our childhood, she chose to blame me. I guess it was easier for them to blame me.”

  Gemma didn’t understand that. “I hate to say this about anybody,” she said, “but I do believe this world is better off without either one of your folks in it.”

  Sal smiled sadly. “Yeah.”

  “And what about that Darby or Darcy person? The one that came to the B & B and kidnapped me?”

  “I still can’t believe he single-handedly killed all three of my men.”

  “But he did.”

  “She said he harmed people for a living.” Then Sal exhaled. “He’s still on the run. They think he’s out of Jersey, but nobody knows him. So they’re still searching. My people, Tommy’s people, Reno’s people. So don’t worry, we’ll find his ass.”

  “I know,” Gemma said. Then she shook her head. “Just thinking about the evil in this world depresses me sometimes.”

  Sal held her tighter. “Don’t let it,” he said. “Think about yourself and know that there are still good people on this planet too.”

  “Like you,” Gemma said.

  “You’re about the only one who shares that opinion. Everybody else thinks I’m a thug.”

  “You’re that too,” Gemma said and Sal laughed and slapped her naked behind.

  “Anyway,” she said, “there’s a bottle of wine calling our name. Let me go get it.”

  “Be quick about it,” Sal said.

  “I was born quick,” Gemma said as she stood up, her wet, sleek, naked body arousing Sal as she walked away.

  She headed downstairs, to his massive bar. The house was back to normal. Gone were the hospital beds and nurses. Gone were the machines and the sounds of machines. Life at the Wingate was simple again. Finally.

  When she left off of the balcony, Sal reached into the pocket of the bathrobe he had lying by the Jacuzzi. He pulled out the big, diamond ring. His heart was pounding. They’d been back from Jericho for nearly a week. He had fully expected Gemma to race back to her life in Vegas, since she’d been away from her practice for over two months, but she didn’t. And he didn’t race back to resume his full schedule here in Seattle either. It was as if they didn’t want to part. So they stayed together constantly. Eventually they would have to get back to it. She had a law practice to run and he had many matters on his plate, more than many, that needed his attention.

  But right now he felt he had to do it. He knew it would be selfish on his part. He knew he was about to ask a hell of a lot from her. But his mother was right. He loved this woman more than life itself. And he had to make her his. She had to become Mrs. Salvatore Gabrini before it devastated him. He wasn’t going to demand that she give up her hard-fought career for him. He would never be that selfish. But the idea that she would be practicing law in Vegas, while he would be doing his thing in Seattle, and there would be no tie that bound them together, wasn’t acceptable to him anymore. She could literally see other men and potentially fall in love with one of those jokers, because there was no tie. There was no ring. There was no marriage. He couldn’t take that chance. He had to make it official.

  Back at the downstairs bar, Gemma finished pouring the two glasses of wine and, with the bottle in tow, headed back upstairs. She wasn’t thinking about marriage at that very moment, but she already knew it was just a matter of time before they would get to that point. She still didn’t know if she was ready to go that far. But she knew that day was coming.

  She made it back upstairs, but before she even made it back into the bedroom, her cell phone started ringing. She could hear it ringing at least, but she first had to find it. Their clothes had been thrown around the room as Sal had undressed her rather hastily. She had to search for her slacks, found them on the chair. She sat the bottle of wine and the two drinks on the table, and then pulled out her phone.

  “Yes? Hello?” She answered just before it went to Voice Mail.

  It was Rodney Jones, her father. “Hello.”

  “Dad, hi. Mom okay?”

  “She’s fine. Everybody’s fine. How are you? Still in Seattle?”

  “I’m good, and yes, I’m still here.”

  “How’s Sal?”

  “He’s okay. He’s progressing excellently.”

  “Good.”

  Then there was a moment of deadness.

  Gemma stood there, waiting for more. She was wet and naked and wanted to get back to Sal. But she didn’t want to rush her father either. But when the silence ensued, she had no choice. “So what’s up?” she asked him.

  “My friend told me a few things about him, Gemma.”

  Gemma hesitated. His friend. The former field director for the FBI no doubt. He had already told her that this person was going to ask around about Sal. “What things?” she asked.

  A heavy, burdensome sigh from her father. “He says Sal, your Sal, doesn’t associate with the mob.”

  That should please her father. But he didn’t sound pleased. “Okay,” she said
.

  “He doesn’t associate with the mob,” her father said, “because he is the mob, Gemma.”

  Gemma’s heart dropped.

  “Sal, according to this guy,” her father continued, “is a mob boss. From what I was told, Salvatore Gabrini was once a made man whose godfather died, and then he took over. He’s a mob boss, baby.”

  “And this guy is certain of this?”

  “Nothing’s certain, no. But that was the conclusion the FBI reached one time.”

  Gemma frowned. “A conclusion they reached one time? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “They don’t leave footprints, Gemma. It’s never that simple with guys like him. He’s a legitimate businessman, yes, he is, but that doesn’t mean he’s not Mafia too.”

  Gemma closed her eyes.

  “And please don’t tell me he’s not because he told you he wasn’t. They can’t come out and tell anybody such a thing. Not even his brother would know the full extent of his activities. You said yourself you don’t know.”

  “And I don’t,” Gemma said, opening her eyes. “But I don’t know what you want me to say. I don’t know what you want from me, Daddy.”

  “I want you to be careful,” Rodney said. “I raised you not to be an emotional girl, but a thoughtful one. I need you to be thoughtful, Gem. I need you to show some strength and be smart regarding this man. I want you to live a full, happy life. I don’t want you to do anything that you might later regret.”

  Gemma closed her eyes again. Living was easy, except when love was involved. “I won’t,” she promised.

  “Just promise me that, baby.”

  “I promise you that.”

  It seemed to satisfy him, because he spoke of other things, talked a little about her mother, and then they ended the call.

  Gemma gathered up the two drinks, leaving the bottle, and then headed for the balcony. She understood what her father was saying. He was warning her. He was telling her that loving Sal was the risk to end all risks and even with that, it probably was not going to end well. He was telling her, in essence, that she had fallen in love with the absolute wrong man.

  She went back onto the balcony, handed Sal the drinks, and got back into the Jacuzzi. This time she was facing him.

  “A toast,” he said, as he handed her one of the glasses.

  “To what?” she asked.

  “To you, what else?” He said this as if it should have been obvious.

  Gemma joined him in the toast.

  Then Sal put down the glass. The time was now. He took the ring out of his bathrobe pocket, and presented it to her.

  Gemma saw the ring and exhaled. She knew this day would come, but she didn’t expect it would be this day.

  “Gemma Jones,” Sal said, “I’m not going to beat around the bush here. I couldn’t even if I wanted to. Will you marry me?”

  Gemma had always thought that this would be a dreadful moment. She had expected to be nervous and scared and filled with dread. But she wasn’t any of those things. When she saw that ring, and saw Sal’s gorgeous, hopeful face, she was none of those things.

  Her father had said she shouldn’t do anything she might later regret, and he was right. Because regardless of any bad reports about Sal’s connections, she knew she would have regretted with bitter regret had she turned down his proposal.

  So she didn’t.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I will.”

  But it was Sal who couldn’t believe it. “Yes?”

  She smiled. “Yes.”

  “You mean yes?”

  She laughed. “Yes, Sal. I mean yes.”

  “Yes,” he said, as if he was still stunned. Then, as if it had just hit him like a sledgehammer, he jumped out of the Jacuzzi. “She said yes! She said yes!”

  He ran off of the balcony, and as butt naked as the day he was born, down the stairs and out of the apartment, to broadcast the news.

  In his joyfulness, he had dropped the ring. Gemma picked it up and stared at it. Mrs. Salvatore Luciano Gabrini, she thought. If he made it back to her in one piece, she thought laughingly, and if he didn’t get arrested for indecent exposure, they were going to celebrate this engagement. They were going to have the wedding to stop all other weddings. She was going to make sure that Serious Sal, the one they always blamed, the one who always did the dirty work, the one who always ended up with the short end of the stick, had him some joy in his life for a change.

  When she looked back up, he was standing in the doorway, looking serious again. “I almost made a fool out of myself,” he said. “What’s wrong with me?”

  Gemma laughed. He looked so serious that she couldn’t help but laugh. “Nothing,” she said. “Absolutely nothing.”

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