TOMMY GABRINI
A FAMILY MAN
BY
MALLORY MONROE
Copyright©2019 Mallory Monroe
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AUSTIN BROOK PUBLISHING
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THE AUTHOR AND AUSTIN BROOK PUBLISHING.
This novel is a work of fiction. All characters are fictitious. Any similarities to anyone living or dead are completely accidental. The specific mention of known places or venues are not meant to be exact replicas of those places, but are purposely embellished or imagined for the story’s sake.
THE TOMMY GABRINI SERIES
IN ORDER
1. ROMANCING TOMMY GABRINI
2. TOMMY GABRINI: A PLACE IN HIS HEART
3. TOMMY GABRINI: GRACE UNDER FIRE
4. TOMMY GABRINI: DAPPER TOM BEGIN AGAIN
5. TOMMY GABRINI: THE GRACE FACTOR
6. TOMMY GABRINI: EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE
7. TOMMY GABRINI: NO MORE MISTER NICE GUY
8. SAL AND TOMMY GABRINI: A BROTHER’S LOVE
9. TOMMY GABRINI: A FAMILY MAN
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
EPILOGUE
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PROLOGUE
Sal Gabrini, the head of the Gabrini Crime Family, did not plan to spend another day in Seattle, away from his home base in Vegas. But when his brother called, he knew he had to get there. But that didn’t mean he wanted to be there. He was on his third cup of coffee, pumping that sugary shit into his system like it was water, and had to cancel three different meetings on his own turf. But as it always had been in Sal’s life, and he suspected always would be: Tommy came first.
“Keep the motor running,” he said to his driver as he got out of the limousine, although he knew, based on what Tommy told him over the phone, it wasn’t going to be that short and sweet. But they couldn’t stop a guy from hoping.
He buttoned his double-breasted suitcoat, walked across the sidewalk, and walked into the massive Gabrini Capitol corporate headquarters building like a man ready to walk back out. It was a business he helped Tommy grow from a security-tech firm into the corporate giant it was today. It was a business where he still held, behind Tommy, the second-most shares. And although it wasn’t even noon yet, the lobby was packed with people already. It was bustling with activity.
“Uncle Sal!”
Sal turned to the sound of a voice yelling from across the lobby, near the entrance into the building’s numerous cafés and coffee shops. When he saw that it was Jimmy Gabrini, the oldest son of Sal’s first cousin and Vegas casino mogul Reno Gabrini, he smiled. He would never admit it out loud, but Jimmy was his favorite. “What you doing here?” he asked when the young man ran up to him.
“I was about to ask you that same question,” Jimmy said with a charming smile as he and his uncle hugged. “I flew in last night. I meet with Uncle Tommy every Monday to keep him up-to-date on the Vegas office.” Jimmy, as senior VP, ran Tommy’s Vegas office. “If I would have known you were coming to town, I would have caught a ride with you.”
“Like I wanted your ass on my plane,” Sal said, and Jimmy laughed. Sal smiled, too, as he affectionately placed his muscular arm around Jimmy’s neck in a wrestling manner, and ruffled his curly hair. Sal released him and then they made their way to the private elevator across from the Human Resources department: Tommy’s elevator.
Jimmy was a good-looking biracial young man who got the job running the Vegas branch of GCI on Sal’s recommendation. When Jimmy worked in his father’s hotel and casino business, he couldn’t seem to do anything right. Smart and adaptable, he got with Tommy and soared.
“You still didn’t answer my question,” Jimmy said to Sal as they rode the elevator to the top floor.
“You didn’t ask me a question,” Sal said.
Jimmy thought he had. Then he realized he was about to, but Sal had beat him to the punch. “That’s right, I didn’t,” he said. “But what are you doing here? That’s my question.”
“Tommy called. Got some shit going down he wanted me to look into.”
“Don’t say? Like what?”
Sal looked at Jimmy as if he had just insulted him. “None of your fucking business,” he said. “What are you asking me that for? You’re legit. Let’s keep it that way. You don’t need to know anything about anything that doesn’t have to do with GCI. Got it?”
Sal was as bad as Jimmy’s father. They were determined to keep him on the straight and narrow, and keep him out of the family’s other business ventures, if it was the last thing they did. “Yes, sir, Uncle Sal,” he said as they rode the rest of the way up in silence.
Although Jimmy always referred to him as Uncle Sal, Sal wasn’t his uncle at all: he was his much-older cousin. But in the Gabrini family, uncle was used as a title of respect for those who’d earned it. Sal, along with his brother Tommy and Jimmy’s father Reno, earned that title long ago.
The elevator stopped, the doors opened, and Sal and Jimmy made their way across the corridor, greeting some of the executive staff it took to run the place, and made their way into the office of the CEO.
When they entered the office, Tommy was sitting on the front edge of his desk talking softly with Branson Nash, his head of security and close friend, who stood beside him.
Jimmy smiled when he saw Tommy. Nobody styled the way that man did, he thought. Because despite whatever troubles Tommy might have had on yesterday, he still managed to be on-fleek today. His blue suit coat, with a peach-colored handkerchief in the chest pocket, had been taken off and was hanging, not over his chair the way Jimmy’s father tossed his around, but on a hangar outside of the door of his office coat closet. He wore blue trousers, a darker-blue dress shirt topped off with dark-blue-and-peach-colored stylish suspenders that highlighted his muscular upper frame. His tie was peach: the same color as the handkerchief in the chest pocket of his suit coat, and his belt was blue, along with his shoes. On anybody else, those colors might seem matchy-matchy and not work at all. But on Uncle Tommy, Jimmy felt, they worked to perfection.
When Tommy saw Jimmy walk into his office with Sal, he stood from the edge of his desk and smiled. “T
he star has arrived!” he said happily and walked toward two of his favorite people on earth.
“What’s up, Uncle Tommy?” Jimmy said smilingly as the two men hugged each other.
Tommy smelled good, too, Jimmy thought, as they stopped hugging. He looked at his uncle, still smiling. He’d never seen a more beautiful person in this world. But the crazy thing about it: Tommy didn’t see his beauty as a blessing the way most great-looking people did. He saw it, strangely to Jimmy, as a curse.
“Have a seat,” Tommy said to Jimmy, and Jimmy sat in one of the chairs in front of Tommy’s big desk. But Sal just looked at his brother.
“What?” Tommy asked him. He looked down, to make sure his fly wasn’t open.
“What am I standing here?” Sal asked. “You welcome Jimmy Mack like he’s a juicy steak somebody just dropped on your plate. But me? Like they dropped chopped liver on your ass.”
Tommy and Jimmy laughed.
“He’s smoked salmon and what am I supposed to be?” Sal asked. “Beef jerky?”
“Salvatore Luciano,” Tommy said, still laughing and shaking his head, and then he hugged his brother too. “Nobody will confuse you with beef jerky. A drama king, maybe. But not beef jerky!”
Sal smiled, too, and sat in the chair next to Jimmy.
“What’s up, Bran?” Jimmy asked the security chief. “I don’t usually see you around here.”
“How are you, Jimmy? Long time, no see. What’s up, Sal?”
“Trying to make it in this harsh and cruel world like everybody else,” Sal said, and Branson laughed. “What the fuck you think is up?”
Tommy leaned against the front of his desk, stretched his long legs out, and folded his arms. “Where did you two meet up?” he asked his guests.
“Lobby,” Jimmy said. “I didn’t know Uncle Sal was coming to town or I wouldn’t have flown commercial. I would have caught a ride on his plane.”
But Sal looked at Jimmy. “What’s with you and my plane?” he asked. “You could have taken your old man’s plane. Why didn’t you borrow Reno’s ride?”
“Pop don’t play that,” Jimmy said.
“And Sal knows it,” said Tommy.
Sal waved them both off, as if they were the ones who didn’t know. Then his look turned serious. “What we got so far?” he asked his brother.
Tommy shook his head. “Nothing so far.”
Sal frowned. He looked at Branson Nash. “What’s your problem, Bran? You got nothing?”
“We’re on it, Sal,” Branson said. He knew how tough Sal could be on guys who didn’t give his brother what he thought wasn’t a hundred percent. “We’ve got every available man on it. We’ll get to the bottom of it.”
“The bottom of what?” Jimmy asked. He knew they weren’t going to go into any specific details about what happened because he was in the room, but he already knew something major had to have happened or Sal Gabrini wouldn’t be there.
And, as he knew they would, they ignored his question.
“What are you thinking, Tommy?” Sal asked. “You think DeLuca’s behind that shit too?”
“We can’t begin to know that,” Tommy said. “At least not yet. But I’ve got my men on it.”
“You got your men on it,” Sal said derisively. “A bunch of college eggheads, your men. You need my men on it.”
Tommy smiled, but they all knew Tommy’s men were just as rough and tough as Sal’s mob guys. Tommy’s men had all been mob, or ex-cons, once upon a time too.
“Anyway,” Branson said, “I’ll get back on the case. I’ll let you know if anything breaks, Boss,” he added, to Tommy, said goodbye to Sal and Jimmy, and left.
But he wasn’t two minutes out of the office, as Tommy had turned the conversation to Jimmy’s update on the Vegas office, when Tommy’s cell phone began ringing. Because it was the ringtone reserved exclusively for his wife or children, he answered quickly. “Hey!”
“Is this Tommy Gabrini?”
Tommy frowned. It wasn’t Grace. It wasn’t the children. “Who is this?” he asked.
“We have your family.”
Tommy jumped up from the edge of his desk as his heart went still. Sal and Jimmy jumped up too. This was the second call exactly like this in as many days. It was the very reason Sal was still in Seattle to begin with. Tommy fell for that hoax before. But was it a hoax this time?
“Where are they?” Tommy asked anxiously. “Where’s my family?”
“You have thirty seconds to transfer twenty-five million dollars into account number 7772357. I repeat: 7772357. Yesterday, it was 8882357. Do not confuse the two. Today, you must transfer the money into account number 7772357.”
“But where are they?” Tommy immediately placed his hand over the receiver and urgently mouthed, call my family! to Sal and Jimmy.
Sal quickly pulled out his cell phone and hurriedly tried to phone Grace, while Jimmy pulled out his phone and called Destiny, but neither got an answer. Both phones went straight to Voice Mail. Which wasn’t surprising. Grace was at work running Trammel Trucking, and Destiny was in school.
“I’ll call Jules,” Sal whispered anxiously to Jimmy. Jules Matteo was in charge of Grace Gabrini’s security detail.
“Who’s over the kids?” Jimmy asked Sal in an equally anxious voice.
“Vin this week,” Sal said quickly, and Jimmy got on his phone too. All Gabrinis and Sinatras had the phone numbers for every family member’s security detail chief. Jimmy found the relevant name in his Contacts, and pressed the button quickly.
“You pulled that shit on me before,” Tommy was saying to his caller, playing for time. “Why should I believe you now?”
“You have nineteen seconds left,” the caller said. “Now eighteen seconds left.”
“Let me talk to my wife,” Tommy said, unable to stop his heart from pounding. “Let me talk to my wife or my children. Let me talk to somebody in my family since you claim you have them. Put them on the phone!”
“Sixteen seconds.”
“Why won’t you let me talk to them?” Tommy was beginning to panic. He was moving his hand in a circling motion, urging Sal and Jimmy to go faster. They had to go faster!
But they were going as fast as they could. They had even moved further back in the office, out of earshot of Tommy’s caller.
“Fifteen seconds.”
“I need proof of life,” Tommy said to the caller. “How do you expect me to believe you if you won’t give me proof of life?!”
“This is not a game,” the man said. “Fourteen seconds,” the man said. “This, my friend, is the real thing. Thirteen seconds.”
Sal was able to get Jules Matteo, Grace’s security chief, on the line. “We need eyeballs on Mrs. Gabrini now,” he said lowly, but anxiously. “And when I say it’s an emergency, your ass better believe it is!”
“I’m on it, sir,” Jules said over the phone, and Sal could hear him running.
Jimmy reached Vincenzo Reye as well. “It’s an emergency, Vin,” he said. “We need you to get eyes on Destiny now.”
“She’s in class, sir,” Vincenzo responded.
“Now, man, now!” Jimmy yelled, but had to quickly lower his voice. “I told you it’s an emergency!”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Gabrini,” Vincenzo said. Jimmy was a senior VP. He was younger than Vin, but he had clout and Vin knew it. And he was a Gabrini on top of that. Vin’s job was to be stationed outside of Destiny’s classroom. Jimmy could hear him hurrying too.
“Nine seconds,” the caller said to Tommy.
Tommy’s heart was hammering. “Just put my wife on the line,” he said. “Or my children! Just put somebody on the line!”
“Eight seconds.”
“Give me something, dammit!” Tommy yelled. “Give me some fucking proof!”
“Six seconds.”
Tommy, in full panic mode now, pulled up the corporate transfer systems on his phone, or CTS, a government invention where Fortune 500 companies could transfer massive amounts of f
unds within seconds.
But then Sal got a confirmation. “You see her yourself?” Sal asked Jules.
“I’m eyeballing her right now,” Jules said over the phone. “And TJ’s with her in her office. They’re fine, sir!”
Sal gave Tommy the thumbs up. “Grace and TJ eyeballed!” he yelled.
“And Destiny?” Tommy mouthed.
“Four seconds.”
“I’m inside the classroom,” Vincenzo said into the phone to Jimmy. “Destiny’s here. I’m looking at her right now. She’s okay!”
“Three seconds.”
“Destiny’s okay!” Jimmy yelled to Tommy, and Tommy loudly sighed relief.
“Two seconds,” the caller said.
“Not falling for it, motherfucker!” Tommy yelled into the phone. “Not this time!”
Then, a voice was heard over the phone that chilled Tommy to his bone.
“Help us, Daddy.”
It was Destiny’s voice.
Tommy’s heart dropped. Sal and Jimmy ran up to the desk. Tommy looked at Jimmy. How could it be? He said Vin had eyeballed her!
“Tommy, help us!”
It was Grace’s voice.
“God, no,” Tommy said.
“Say hello to Vin and Jules,” the man said on the phone. “They’re on my team now!”
“Hello, Mr. Gabrini.” It was Vincenzo’s voice.
“Kiss my ass, Mr. Gabrini.” It was Jules’s voice. “We got you good,” he added, and both men laughed.
Sal was stupefied. He talked to Jules. He just talked to Jules! He wasn’t at Trammel Trucking like he was supposed to be? “What the fuck?” he yelled.
“One second,” said the caller.
“Wait!” Tommy cried.
“Your time is up, Mr. Gabrini,” the caller said. “Who’s the motherfucker now?”
“Tommy!” Grace cried.
“Daddy!” Destiny and TJ cried.
“I’m sending it,” Tommy yelled, fumbling to finish his CTS transaction. “I’m sending the money now!”
The phone didn’t go dead. But it was worse. A gunshot was heard.
Tommy Gabrini: A Family Man Page 1
