“Go now!” he yelled at Reno, but Reno was already running along the backside of the hedges toward the front of the property.
Mick and Sal, wasting no time because they knew they had no time to waste, immediately began shooting from behind the hedges at the men near the back entrance, picking them off one by one. The men engaged them, unsure just how many were out there, and the gunfight was on.
Some men did escape and enter from the backside of the house, just as Reno was entering from the front side.
Inside the house, Tommy, with Jillian as his prisoner, was on the second-floor landing heading toward the room where he heard the noise in the first place. It was in a room he remembered as Jillian’s upstairs private parlor room.
But when he kicked open the door, and placed Jillian’s body in front of his own, he was shocked at what he found. Joe DeLuca wasn’t in that room. But Tommy’s longtime house manager Henry was in that room, along with Henry’s brand-new girlfriend. Also, he found two young men in their late teens, presumably Jules’s sons, and a woman Tommy recognized as Vin’s wife. They all were tied up. They all had tape over their mouths. They all looked terrified.
But Tommy’s eyes focused on Henry. And Henry’s eyes weren’t terrified and grateful like the others. Henry’s eyes were darting, and they kept darting toward the double doors that Tommy knew led to a bedroom. And his head kept motioning in that direction too.
But just as Tommy was about to go to Henry’s side and remove the tape from his mouth, so that he could clue Tommy in, gunfire erupted downstairs. Tommy, still with Jillian as his shield, ran across the landing to the railing, looked over, and saw Reno engaged in a gun battle with a group of men.
Tommy, assisting Reno, started shooting down at as many men as he could from his perch upstairs. When some of the men started shooting back, Jillian started screaming and trying to get away from Tommy, but Tommy kept firing away. And kept her as his protection.
But Reno had picked off most of the men, and when the last man standing downstairs attempted to fire his last shot upstairs, Tommy picked him off.
When Reno looked up, to see if Tommy was okay, Tommy motioned for him to go back outside because the gun battle out there was still raging. Reno didn’t hesitate. He ran toward the back door.
But he didn’t have to go outside. The backdoor was still wide open, from when those men had run through it, and Reno had a ringside seat.
With about four men still standing, Reno picked off two of them at close range. Sal got the other one. And then, just as the final one attempted to run inside for cover, Reno took him out too.
Then Reno motioned for Mick and Sal to come on inside, and he ran upstairs.
Upstairs, Tommy was back in the parlor, making his way toward the double doors that Henry’s eyes made clear was where danger awaited.
But Tommy was no fool. He waited for backup. An army of men could be waiting in that room, or just Joe DeLuca himself. But either way, he was taking no chances.
When Reno made it up the stairs and into the parlor room, he was shocked to see Henry and the other prisoners. But his focus was on Tommy. He had to protect Tommy at all costs. He hurried over to the double doors.
When Tommy knew that Reno was in place, he pressed his gun against Jillian’s head. “Who’s in that room?” he asked her.
Jillian had tears in her eyes. All of her pride, her arrogance, her smiles were gone.
When Reno saw that she was crying, he frowned. “You decided to go after a Gabrini, woman. What the fuck you thought was gonna happen? Play with fire, your ass gonna burn. And we’re about to light you up.”
By that time, Mick and Sal had entered the home and ran upstairs too. When they entered the room, Sal was shocked to see old Henry sitting there. Mick didn’t give a fuck. He hurried to the double doors.
Tommy, seeing that his backup was in place, looked at Jillian again. “Who’s in there?” he asked her again. “Is it DeLuca?”
But Jillian was beside herself with anguish. Her plan, her well-laid plan was up in smoke. “You took everything I have,” she said. “Everything!”
But Tommy wasn’t trying to hear her excuses. He kicked the door in with his own expensive shoes and, as soon as those double doors flew open, he threw Jillian into the line of fire. And she was shot up repeatedly, from the left and the right. Which was what Tommy and company needed to know. It wasn’t just DeLuca in that room, but another army of men.
Tommy and Reno, with their guns drawn and ready, entered from the right side. Mick and Sal, likewise ready, entered from the left side. And all four of them started shooting. It was a gun battle at close range, with a lot of going in and backing out, but Tommy and company were winning the battle.
But when Tommy saw Joe DeLuca dive into the adjacent bathroom, where he knew there was a window, he knew he had to stop his ass. There was no way he was going to allow Jillian’s partner in crime to get away with terrorizing his family!
With Mick, Sal, and Reno still battling, he took off back through the parlor, across the landing, and down the stairs. He ran out of the backdoor, running over bodies to get out there, and headed for the side of the house where he knew that bathroom was located. It was also where he knew the fire escape was located.
And his instincts proved to be spot on. Joe DeLuca was jumping down from the bottom rung of the fire escape ladder, no easy feat for his big bulk, just as Tommy made it around the side of the house.
DeLuca fired shots at Tommy, forcing Tommy to quickly move back behind the back side of the house, and then DeLuca took off running toward the front.
Tommy ran along the side and then around the front, too. When he saw DeLuca getting into a vehicle, as if he thought he was going to do his dirt and just drive away, Tommy dived onto the hood of that car as DeLuca started backing out.
Tommy began kicking in the windshield with his shoes, holding onto the windshield wipers, as the car swerved across the property and began to pick up speed. That was when Tommy shot at DeLuca. He had two thoughts in mind: kill that bastard or, at least, shatter that windshield.
But DeLuca swerved the car just as he fired his weapon and the bullet missed DeLuca outright. And it was Tommy’s last bullet!
But the pounding on that windshield with his shoes, and then that gunshot, was enough for the windshield to shatter. And that shattering was enough for Tommy to kick again, and the entire windshield dismantled.
When the windshield gave way, Tommy jumped into the car where DeLuca was driving, and wrestled with him for control of the vehicle.
The car was still on Jillian’s massive property, swerving wildly across the grounds, as the two men fought valiantly. But Tommy was not going to be defeated. While he grabbed the steering wheel with one hand, he attempted to open the driver side door with the other hand.
When the door gave way and swung open, Tommy then used all the strength he had to push DeLuca out of the moving vehicle. DeLuca fell hard onto the grounds and rolled several times. But it was what Tommy wanted. That bastard wasn’t going to drive away from this!
But when Tommy looked away from DeLuca to steer the car to safety, he realized the car was still going strong, and was heading straight for the concrete wall of the concrete home. He slammed on brakes, attempting to stop the car in its tracks, and to swerve away from that wall, but the car was going too fast.
Just as Mick, Reno, and Sal ran out of the house, the car sped toward the house, and crashed with a crash so abrupt and so violent, that the back of the car lifted up and remained in that upright position.
“Tommy!” Sal cried, and he and Reno beat Mick running to his aid. But all three men could hear their hearts pounding as they ran.
But Tommy was already climbing out of that car. He had a family. He had a score to settle with DeLuca. He couldn’t let that be his end!
When he got out of the car, he was staggering, but okay. “Where is he?” he asked, looking for DeLuca. “Where’s that fucker?”
When
he realized DeLuca was still down some forty feet away from where the car crashed, he hurried to him.
“Tommy, wait!” Sal insisted, but Tommy didn’t wait. Sal and Reno were about to hurry over there with him, but Mick pulled them back. “This is Tommy’s battle,” he said. “Let him fight it.”
Mick knew how overprotective both Reno and Sal were of Tommy, and Reno and Sal knew it too. They stayed where they were stopped.
Tommy didn’t need their help anyway. Adrenalin, and the love of his family, a family Jillian and DeLuca had tried to destroy, was driving him. And despite his pain, and despite his exhaustion, he couldn’t get to that man fast enough.
When he made it to DeLuca’s side, he was pleased to see that DeLuca was still very much alive. But it was an NFL situation, a not for long situation because Tommy grabbed him up and began beating the life out of him. He beat DeLuca with everything he had left within him. He was beating DeLuca so ferociously in his face, in the same spot over and over again, that DeLuca fell to his knees in agony. And Tommy fell on his knees, too, and kept beating his ass.
“You want to be the big man in Seattle? You want to play games with my family’s life to be the big man in Seattle? How big are you now, motherfucker? How big are you now?!”
And then Tommy served up what would become the fatal blow.
DeLuca’s eyes rolled to the back of his head, and then his head lobbed back too.
When it was over, Tommy stayed right where he was, staring at him. And then he stood up. He was breathing so hard he could hardly regulate himself.
Mick, Sal, and Reno made their way to Tommy’s side, and stared down at Joe DeLuca too.
Tommy couldn’t take his eyes off of him. “They keep coming for us,” he said.
“And in ways we can’t even imagine they’d come,” said Mick.
Then Tommy exhaled. He was tired of this shit.
“How can you be a good man,” he asked, “and a Gabrini too?”
Reno and Sal looked at Tommy, a man they both loved and admired above any man on the face of this earth. They knew all about the battles between right and wrong and good and evil that they all had to wage every single day of their lives. Enemies were coming for them, coming sometimes in all directions, and they had to fight back. They knew the anguish that very fight had been causing Tommy lately.
“All this shit we have to handle,” Tommy said. “Day in and day out. People coming for us we didn’t even know had a beef with us. And we have to handle this shit. We have to! How is it possible,” Tommy asked again, “for a Gabrini man to be a good man?”
Reno already knew the answer. He’d asked that question himself a long time ago. “It’s not possible,” Reno answered bluntly, and Tommy didn’t even look his way.
Because it was nothing shocking in his answer at all.
Because Tommy knew, too, it was nothing but the truth.
EPILOGUE
“I got another one, Daddy, I got one!”
“Then pull it! Reel it in,” Tommy said anxiously as he hurried behind little TJ and helped him reel in what could be his biggest catch to date.
“Be careful, Junior!” Grace said to their son as he fought to reel that fish in.
“Don’t lose it, TJ!” Destiny said to her baby brother, as she, too, watched him reel it in.
They were on Tommy’s yacht in the Leeward Islands, off the coast of Antiqua, fishing. It was a planned trip, after Tommy’s body recovered from the emotional and physical stress of his family’s abduction, and they were having a blast. But for little TJ to be the one to get yet another catch, was amazing to them.
“Hold on, son,” Tommy said as he helped TJ with his rod.
But TJ was doing just fine. And when a beautiful wahoo fish came out of the water, flapping and restless, Tommy and TJ were ecstatic. Tommy took over, to ensure that baby wasn’t lost, and reeled it on in.
Grace and Destiny, at first happy, too. But when they saw that angry fish come out of that water and onto their boat, they panicked. And ran for cover. It looked too much like a shark to them! Tommy and TJ laughed.
But it was the kind of vacation they were having: fun, fun, and more fun. The skies were blue. The waters were calm. It was a wonderful break.
And even later that night, while Tommy’s sailing crew skippered the yacht, and while the children were below deck fast asleep in their beds, Tommy and Grace retired to their own cabin, with windows all around them, and relaxed. They sat on the window seat, hugged together, with Tommy in his cardigan sweater and Grace in boat shorts. Grace was sitting between his legs, and they were enjoying every second of their much-needed time away.
Tommy was rubbing Grace’s belly, as if he was rubbing their actual baby, as they looked out over the horizon. The lights of so many other boats illuminated across the waters, creating a remarkable glow in the night, and they felt serene. It was peaceful there.
“I could stay right here forever,” Grace said.
“As could I,” Tommy agreed.
“A toast,” Grace said, holding up her glass of juice against his glass of wine, “to vacation time.”
Tommy smiled and their glasses clanked.
After a moment of more peace and quiet, Grace spoke again. “What was their plan?” she asked him.
“Destruction,” Tommy said. “That’s always the plan. And, thankfully, it always backfires.”
“I’m just glad we got out of there alive.” Then she looked at Tommy. “And they had all of those people as their captives. Even Henry. It was crazy.”
“That was the reason why Henry took that hundred thousand from me. They promised to release his girlfriend if he paid them that amount.”
“Why would he believe them?”
“Fear,” Tommy said. “Why else? I did the same thing, remember, when I paid those idiots five million dollars.”
“Will we ever get that money back?”
“The lawyers are working on it. We’ll see.”
Grace shook her head. “It’s some evil people in this world.”
“Yes, it is. But the good news is they got theirs,” Tommy said. “They always do. Never forget that.”
“What about Jillian’s son Dale? Did he get his?”
“Yes,” Tommy said.
“But I thought he claimed he had nothing to do with it.”
“He wasn’t a key player. But he knew what they were up to. And besides,” Tommy started to say but didn’t finish.
“Besides what?” Grace asked.
“He was a stone that couldn’t be left unturned,” Tommy said. “We can’t be in the sympathy business, Grace,” he said. “It’ll get us killed.”
“I know. It’s awful. But I know.”
Then Grace thought about one more player. “What about Jules?” she asked. “What happened to him? He was just looking out for his family too, like Henry was looking out for his girlfriend. What became of Jules?”
There was a time when Tommy would not have responded to that. He would do everything in his power to shield Grace from the horrors of what being a Gabrini truly meant. But not anymore. “He had to be handled, babe,” he said.
Grace looked at Tommy. “But why?”
“Because he lied to me when he returned to the house. He lied to me when he didn’t know if you and the children were still in danger. I couldn’t allow that to stand. Henry never lied to me. He never put you in danger. He did their bidding not realizing they were targeting us. They were using him as a way for me to turn on him. Then they thought he’d be useful as payback. But Henry isn’t made that way. He has limits. Henry’s case is different.”
Grace nodded. “As it should be,” she said.
“We can leave no stones unturned, Grace,” Tommy said to her again. “Or they’ll turn on us.”
“I know, Tommy. I’ve been a Gabrini long enough, and saw what happens too many times when we give our enemies a pass, to know it’s true.”
“But let’s not talk about them,” Tommy said as he sa
t his glass aside. “Because right now,” he added, sitting Grace’s glass down, too, and wrapping her into his arms, “I want only one memory. Not of what they tried to do to us,” he said, “but of what we can do to each other.”
Grace smiled and looked him in his eyes. “I think we can do a lot to each other,” she said happily.
“I know we can,” Tommy agreed. “Nobody does me better, Grace,” he said, and kissed her with a lingering, passionate kiss.
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Tommy Gabrini: A Family Man Page 17
