“Nooo!” Tommy yelled with such agony in his voice that it sounded as if that bullet had reached through the phone and shot him!
Then another gunshot. And another one. Then one after the other one after the other one.
“Nooo!” Tommy cried out again in anguish. “Please, no!”
Sal ran behind the desk and grabbed the phone from him. “Who the fuck is this?” he yelled. “Do you know who you’re fucking with? We’ll track you down like a motherfucking animal and skin your ass alive!”
Jimmy placed his hands over his head. He could not believe what was happening!
But the gunshots kept ringing out. All they could hear now were the sound of gunshots. One after the other one, and over and over again. It was overkill. It was purposeful. It was killing Tommy!
Jimmy was stunned.
Sal was speechless.
And Tommy grabbed the phone from Sal and was still trying to negotiate. He couldn’t stop negotiating, promising to give fifty million. A hundred million. Whatever they wanted. Just let his family live!
But it was too late.
And they all knew right then and there: it wasn’t about the money anyway.
Tommy stopped negotiating when the last shot was fired.
Because the silence that followed those gunshots, that eerie, unnatural silence, spoke loudly.
But no way were they dead. Despite those shots, Tommy refused to believe that it was possible.
The heads of every one of the Gabrini and Sinatra families were contacted, and they were all on their way. And they all knew what was to come.
Grace Gabrini, the wife of Tommy Gabrini, was missing. Their children were missing. Hell was about to go into session in Seattle.
CHAPTER ONE
THREE WEEKS EARLIER
The Maserati Quattroporte GTS whipped in and out of traffic, zoomed through yellow lights, and up-shifted around curves as if they were straightaways at Talladega. Tommy Gabrini was determined to get there. He was late, but he was going to get there.
He sped into the parking lot, parked and got out of his vehicle with no time to waste. He hurried across the sidewalk, his suit coat flapping in the wind, and was raking his fingers through his thick, windblown hair, as he entered through the automatic doors.
It was the first one. Nothing special, most men would say, but Tommy Gabrini wasn’t most men. He had promised to be there.
“Right this way, sir,” the slender receptionist said to him as soon as he entered the building and walked up to the reception desk. “We were expecting you.”
Tommy followed her through a side door, down a long corridor, and then up to Examination Room B three doors around a second corridor. When he opened the door, and saw his wife lying on the examination table, and Soniqua Frazier, her doctor, seated on a stool talking with her, a part of him was elated. But a part of him was filled with dread too. It was all his idea, this decision they made, but it was his wife who had to carry the load.
“Have I missed it?” he asked as he made his way around the table and over to Grace.
Grace Gabrini, his African-American wife, smiled as he placed her hand in his. It always warmed Tommy’s heart when he saw her bright-white smile. “You haven’t missed a thing,” she said to him.
“Your wife made it clear to me that I was not going to start until you got here period,” Doctor Frazier, an attractive black lady, said. “And that was an order.”
Tommy laughed. “Sounds like Grace,” he said. “But I do apologize for being late, Doc.”
“It’s quite alright,” the doctor said, with a wave of the hand. “It’s not the gender reveal one yet. You didn’t have to come to this one at all.”
“Oh, yes he did,” said Grace firmly, and Tommy laughed. “Babies one and two were our deal,” Grace continued. “We both were in on both of those decisions. But he’s the one that wants a house full of children. He’s the one that wanted this baby number three. His behind is coming to every one of these appointments.”
“And I’ll be coming with bells on my toes,” Tommy said jokingly.
“You’d better,” said Grace.
The doctor laughed. “Shall we begin?” she asked, which they were happy to agree to, and the early-stage transvaginal ultrasound began.
“It’s very early, keep in mind,” the doctor was saying as she inserted a wand-shaped probe into Grace’s vagina and moved the probe around. The images she was capturing showed up on the monitor. “You’re only six weeks in. But we should be able to see the gestational sac in just a sec.”
Tommy pulled out a pair of glasses and put them on, to get the best view, and leaned closer to the monitor. And it paid off. He saw the sac before Grace could. “There it is!” he said excitedly.
“You’re right,” said the doctor. “And there’s the yolk sac. Good. Very good.”
“You see it, babe?” Tommy asked.
Grace had to squint her eyes to see any of it. And then she smiled too. “There it is,” she said excitedly. Although they had been to this rodeo twice before, with two healthy, beautiful children to show for it, Grace’s age made this pregnancy higher risk.
Tommy, who was older than Grace, seemed far more worried than Grace was. “I have a question, Doc,” he said to the OB/GYN as she assured them everything, such as they could see at that early stage, looked fine.
“Ask away,” she responded.
“Why isn’t she showing yet?” Tommy asked. “She’s not showing at all. Look.” Tommy lifted Grace’s blouse and placed his hand on her belly. “She’s flat as a pancake. Shouldn’t she be showing something by now?”
“No,” said the doctor without hesitation. “She’s only six weeks in. With her previous pregnancies, Grace usually starts showing around twelve or thirteen weeks. Give her time. Sometimes there’s nothing to see there because, guess what? There’s nothing to see there.”
Grace smiled. “I told him that. He says it’s because I’m not eating enough, which I am! But now that you’ve said it, he’ll believe it.”
Doctor Frazier smiled too. “Men,” she said, and even Tommy laughed.
After the ultrasound, Tommy walked Grace to her Lexus in the parking lot of Doc Frazier’s medical practice, feeling as if they were finally on the right track. With his hand on the small of Grace’s back, he loved the fresh, perfumed smell of her, and the feel of her bone-thin back against his hand. He also loved the fact that she was wearing an outfit he had purchased for her: a soft yellow A-line sheath dress that hugged her curves beautifully, a puce-colored scarf around her neck, and a pair of puce-and-white stilettos.
He could dress Grace better than he could dress himself, he felt, and was always proud to see her in one of his purchases. It had been his experience that most women didn’t like their men even attempting to dress them, but Grace seemed to love it. “You know fashion, Tommy,” she once told him. “Lord knows you’ve dated enough super models to know fashion inside-out,” she added, to which Tommy laughed at the time.
But she was right. He knew fashion like the back of his hand. Would probably have been a fashion designer had he not been a Gabrini and life had taken him in a different direction. But Grace was not the kind of woman who was into materialistic things, but was of very high ethical and moral character; the kind of woman he’d always wanted as his wife and the mother of his children. With Grace, he finally had his muse.
He also was apologizing, again, for running so late.
“But you made it,” Grace said. “That’s what matters. I’m glad you were able to come.”
Tommy didn’t mention how he nearly killed himself doing so, as he opened her car door. “Where are you headed now?” he asked her.
“Back to the office,” Grace said. “I’ve got a meeting at four-thirty, which I plan to wrap up rather quickly. Then I’m heading home. You?”
“I’ve got to check out some land in Bellevue.”
Grace stared at him. “But you’ll be home for dinner, Tommy, right?”
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br /> Tommy nodded. “I’ll try my best.”
Grace would have preferred a more definitive answer. “The kids would love it. So would I.”
Tommy knew it. He nodded again. “I’ll be there,” he said more definitively.
Grace smiled. Her daddy always told her you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. “Thanks!” she said sweetly, and they kissed.
But Tommy lingered in his kiss. “We need to get away,” he said.
“I agree. All you have to do is set it up. You know I’m always game.”
Tommy smiled. That was what he loved most about Grace. She was totally devoted to him and to their family. He kissed her again, and then let her go. She drove off, and he headed for his own car.
His cell phone was ringing just as he got into his Maserati and pulled out of the parking lot behind his wife. It used to feel strange to him, having a wife and kids, but now it just felt good. Like an accomplishment. He was pleased.
He pressed the button on his car’s dashboard when he saw who was phoning him. “Hey, Kore,” he said.
“You’re on your way?” It was Kory Zuckerman, his brand-new CFO.
“I just left the restaurant,” Tommy said. He and Grace both ended up at a red light. There was one car in between them as they waited for the light to change. “Why, what’s up?” he asked.
“If we can acquire this property,” Kory said, “we may be onto something fantastic. You’ll want to see this. Our advance guys did not do this property justice in their write-ups. Even the clearing shouldn’t be a regulatory hassle like many of our bigger projects. We’d stay on budget easily.”
“My concern is the location,” Tommy said. “How’s traffic?”
“Better than expected. Much better, in fact. And if we convert the main space to a high-end mall, you won’t have to worry about that at all. I can see us building an entire community around our mall. It’ll be like owning a town. But you’ll have to buy it all, and jump on it quickly too. This is some prime real estate here.”
Tommy was pleased. “I’m on my way,” he said as the light turned green and Grace proceeded under the light. Tommy ended the call.
But just as he did, he could see a car speeding on the side street to the right of Grace’s car. And the car was speeding into the intersection that Grace had just entered. And he realized, within that split second, that that car was going to run the red light. His heart fell.
“Grace,” he said in a voice that was barely a whisper, as if he could warn her from the front seat of his own car. “Grace!”
And it happened. The car ran that red light and kept speeding. Tommy couldn’t believe his eyes as the car crashed into the side of Grace’s Lexus with a ferocious crash, and then exploded into a ball of fire as it dragged Grace’s car yards down the road with it.
Tommy fumbled with his seatbelt, trying to get out of his car as fast as he could, but it wouldn’t release. He was trying too hard!
Finally, it did release and he jumped out, leaving his car door wide open, and ran with all the speed his body had within it toward his wife and her car. His heart was pounding. All he could think about was Grace. Grace and their unborn baby. He saw that collision. He was seeing that fire! He ran so fast he outran two teenagers attempting to get to the horrific scene too. All he could think about was Grace!
The smoke was debilitating, forcing him to run around the car on fire and get to Grace’s car from the back side. That driver’s side wasn’t hit, but the impact of the crash had jammed the locks. Grace had already gotten out of her seatbelt, and was trying with all she had to open her jammed door.
To Tommy’s relief, she was alive. But that fire was getting worse and he knew it could engulf Grace and her car at any moment.
He pulled on that door and pulled on that door. Those two teenage boys had gotten over there and were trying to pull too. But they were of no help because that door was not budging. The back-driver side door that they all were pulling on, too, wasn’t opening either.
Tommy therefore leaned his tall body back, took his shoe, and began ramming the back-driver side window. But it wouldn’t collapse.
Then the urgency changed. The fire caught a spark from the rubber of one of Grace’s passenger side blown tires and began to spread. And the passenger side of her car ignited.
“Tommy!” Grace was crying, banging on the window. “It’s on fire, Tommy!”
Tommy was panicking, too, when he remembered he had one more alternative, and he knew he had to go there now. He wasn’t risking Grace’s life a second longer.
“Back up!” he yelled to those well-meaning but otherwise useless teenagers. Both boys backed up. Tommy then pulled out the loaded revolver he always had on his person, and pumped rounds and rounds of bullets into the back driver-side glass, causing onlookers to scatter in fear. But he wouldn’t stop shooting until he had a result. The glass shattered, but the fire had engulfed half of Grace’s car and was in danger of igniting the whole thing.
When that glass shattered, Grace, as terrified of what could happen as Tommy was, began climbing furiously over the seat to the backseat. Tommy grabbed her out of that shattered window and then ran with her in his arms. Ran as fast as he could because he knew what was about to happen.
And just as they were across the street and stumbling onto the grass, the car that hit Grace’s car exploded into an enormous fireball, and consumed Grace’s Lexus as if both cars were one.
Tommy and Grace, on the ground, looked at both cars in horror. It was a terrible scene. But Grace, and hopefully their unborn baby, were safe.
They stood up, and Tommy kept an arm around his devastated wife. She was safe, and he was grateful. But what would have happened to her, he couldn’t stop himself from wondering, if he hadn’t been there?
“She was driving so fast,” Grace said to him as what sounded like hundreds of sirens could be heard in the distance. “I didn’t see her coming until it was too late. I couldn’t get out of her way. I tried to speed through, but I couldn’t. She was going too fast!”
Tommy wrapped Grace into his arms. “I saw the whole thing, babe,” he said to her. “It wasn’t your fault. There was absolutely nothing you could have done. Nothing.”
But it was little consolation to Grace, and he knew it. That was why, when she broke free from him and went to join a small group that spontaneously held hands and began praying for the unfortunate soul that was trapped in the car that exploded, he let her. He would have joined in, too, had he been worthy. But he wasn’t.
Too much blood on his own soul, he felt, to be praying about somebody else’s.
CHAPTER TWO
“The wife of Seattle business mogul Tommy Gabrini was involved in a fatal car accident this afternoon when a local woman reportedly ran a red light and crashed into Mrs. Gabrini’s Lexus, leaving both cars engulfed in flames. The driver, identified as Joanne Mayflower of Ballard, was pronounced dead at the scene. Mrs. Gabrini, miraculously, was not injured.”
It was on a quick, breaking news loop of the local news and calls were pouring in, back to back to back, as Tommy and Grace, after being questioned by police, drove home. Calls from Grace’s friends, from Tommy’s friends, from their senior staffs. Everybody saw that horrific scene on TV and called to make sure Grace was really okay.
For Grace, it was heartening and disheartening too. She felt their love and concern and appreciated it. But many of the callers wanted them to relive the accident, giving them a blow-by-blow, when that was the last thing they wanted to do.
And when they arrived at their Seattle estate, even the front gate security guard voiced his concern. “Glad to see you back home, ma’am,” he said to Grace, which only added to the truth that she almost didn’t make it back home. That she might not have seen their children ever again. Just the thought was chilling for her. But she smiled and thanked the young guard, understanding that he didn’t mean to exacerbate her agony, and Tommy drove on through.
Tommy had been h
olding Grace’s hand from the moment the cops cleared her to leave and she got into his car. Her car was totaled and had been towed away, but her heart was still with that woman who blew through that light, and caught her horrific fate.
When Tommy stopped his Maserati at the entrance to the main house, he was still the doting husband. He hurried around the car and opened the door for Grace, assisting her out by holding her hand. It reminded Grace of the time when she was in her ninth month of pregnancy with their first child, Destiny, and Tommy thought if she so much as stumbled, it could kill her and the baby. He was treating her just that gingerly.
“I’ll call Doc Frazier,” Tommy said. “Let her get over here and exam you.”
“I’m fine, Tommy.”
“I didn’t say you wasn’t. But I still want that exam.”
Grace wasn’t going to argue with him, although she was absolutely certain nothing was physically wrong with her or the baby.
“What would you like to do?” Tommy asked as they made their way up to the entrance doors.
“Take a long, hot bath,” Grace said, her small body leaned against Tommy’s bigger frame, “and then curl up and sleep until next July.”
Tommy nodded, but he knew Grace. He’d be surprised if she went to bed at all.
But when they entered their home, and the children raced up to them, crying for their mother, Grace, so grateful that she had made it home to see their beautiful faces again, fell on her knees hugging them.
“I’m okay,” she said to young Thomas Gabrini, Junior, called TJ, who wasn’t five yet. “I’m okay,” she said to Destiny, who had turned into a beautiful adolescent girl. Destiny looked shaken. Grace rubbed her long, thick hair. Both children had tears in their eyes. “Mommy’s okay,” she reassured them.
Henry, their house manager, was there, too, along with the children’s two nannies, and all three of them stood there with grateful looks on their faces. But Tommy was upset. He pulled Henry aside.
“I thought I phoned and told you that my children were not to watch any newscasts.”
Tommy Gabrini: A Family Man Page 2
