Romancing Sal Gabrini 2: A Woman's Touch (15 page)

“Oh.
 
That bothered you?”

“Of
course it bothered us!
 
Gemma isn’t the
one-night-stand type.
 
She committed
herself to you, we could tell that easily.
 
But we didn’t see any evidence that it was being reciprocated.
  
It automatically raised red flags.”

Sal smiled.
 
“So what you’re saying is that if I would
have met with you guys sooner, your hot seat grilling would not have been
necessary?”

Rodney
laughed.
  
“Something like that, yes.”

“And
I was avoiding it to avoid the grilling, but by avoiding it I was inviting the
grilling.”
 
Sal shook his head.
 
“That’s me.
 
Always a day late and a dollar short.”

Rodney
considered him.
 
“I know you’ve had
challenges in your life, Sal,” he said.
 
“With your father,” he added.

Sal
looked at him.
 
Gemma had apparently told
him about his less-than-stellar parents.
 
“Yeah, you can say that.”

“She
believes it’s affecting how you can respond to her.
 
But she believes you love her.
 
Do you?”

“I’m
not used to it,” Sal said.
 
“Love I
mean.
 
And I’ll be the first to admit
that, most of the time, I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.
 
But yeah, I do love her.
 
A lot.
 
And coming from me, that’s saying a lot.
 
Trust me.”

Rodney
considered this man called Sal.
 
“If I
may be honest with you, Sal, also?”

“Please.”

“You’re
nothing like the kind of man I had hoped would want to be with my daughter.”

“You
mean because I’m not black?”

“That’s
a part of it, sure.
 
I’m sure your folks
weren’t urging you to get with non-Italian ladies.”

Sal
smiled.
 
He certainly had that right.

“But
that’s only part of it,” Rodney said.
 
“I
expected Gemma to marry a professional man.
 
A doctor or a lawyer like her, or a businessman, yes, but not one so . .
.”

“Italian?”

Rodney
decided to be blunt.
 
“Suspicious,” he
said.
 

Sal
didn’t fight it.
 
He nodded instead.
 
“I got you,” he said.
 
“But you’ve got to understand that I’ll never
do anything to hurt Gem, or to put her in harm’s way.”

Rodney
looked at him.
 
Then he extended his
hand. “Do I have your word on that, Mr. Gabrini?”

“Yes,
sir,” Sal said, gladly shaking his hand.
 
“You have my word.”

It
wasn’t everything for Rodney Jones, he still would have preferred his daughter
hook up with a man who looked more like him and behaved more like him, but he’d
heard from many different sources that Sal Gabrini, if he was anything, was a
man of his word.
 
So it was something.

ELEVEN

The
plane landed back in Vegas late that Sunday evening.
 
Gemma was on the seat across from Sal, her
feet up and her eyes closed.
 
Sal was
working on paperwork, his reading glasses on and his eyes tired.

He
looked at her over his reading glasses.
 
“Babe,” he said, waking her.
 
When
she opened her big eyes, he smiled, felt a warmth inside.
 
“You’re home,” he said.

“We’re
here already?” she asked, stretching and looking out of the window.

“We’re
here.”

She
looked at him.
 
Loved the way he looked
so serious and professional in those reading glasses.
 
“I wish you could stay another day.
 
Do you have to go back tonight?”

Sal
considered her.
 
He’d never had any woman
love him the way Gemma did.
  
“Come
here,” he said to her.

Gemma
unbuckled her seatbelt and made her way over to Sal.
 
He placed his papers onto the seat beside him
and pulled her down onto his lap.
 
He
looked in her eyes.

“There’s
no other place I’d rather be,” he said, “than to be with you.
 
You know that.
 
But Tommy will kick my ass if I stay away
from the office another day.
 
Because
believe it or not, there are actually certain clients who won’t do business
with anybody but me.”

It
was nothing hard to believe to Gemma. “They trust you,” she said.

“Yeah,”
Sal said, pleased that she understood.
 
“They trust me.”

“Like
I trust you.”

This
touched Sal.
 
“Yeah,” he said.
 
“Like that.”

Gemma
smiled and kissed him. “Stay worthy of that trust, big guy,” she warned, “or
there’s going to be situations and complications.”

Sal
laughed.
 
“Oh, yeah?
 
And what you’re gonna do, with your little
self?”

“I’m
telling you now.
 
You don’t want to see
that side of me, pal.”
 
Sal was laughing
up a storm.
 
“Let a heifer touch my man,”
Gemma continued.
 
“They’ll be
circumstances and situations.”

“I
thought you said situations and complications.”

“Those
too,” Gemma said, unable to suppress her own smile.

Sal
pulled her against him. “You’re a mess, you know that?”

“But
your mess, right?”

Sal
stared at her.
 
And his smile was
gone.
 
“Yeah,” he said.
 
“Mine.”

Gemma
saw the seriousness in his deep blue eyes.
 
It was daunting.
 
She kissed
him.
 
“Call me when you land,” she said,
and stood up.

“Let
me walk you to the car,” he said, moving to stand.

“No
need for that,” she said.
 

But
Sal, being Sal, stood up anyway.
 
“There
is a need, what are you talking?
 
You
think I’m gonna let you walk off of this plane alone and I just sit my fat ass
back and watch you?”
 
He took her by the
elbow.
 
“You know me better than that,”
he said.

Gemma
smiled as he escorted her off of the plane while the plane attendant carried
her luggage to the waiting limo.
 

But
as soon as he walked her to the waiting limousine, kissed her again, and then
stood there until the limo pulled off and she was clean out of sight, his phone
that had been buzzing ever since he got off of the plane, started buzzing
again.
 
But this time, walking back to
the plane, he answered it.
 
It was Chazz.

“What
is it now?” Sal asked him.

“We
know who ambushed us in Jersey,” Chazz said.

Sal’s
walk hesitated, but he kept going.
 
“Who?”

“You
aren’t gonna believe this, boss.”

“Who?”

“Danny
Bronco.”

Sal
stopped in his tracks.
 
“Whatta are you
toying with me?
 
What are you fucking
with me for?”

“Danny
Bronco, boss.
 
I’m telling you the
facts.”

“Danny
Bronco had a contract out on Patty’s kid.
 
We iced him already, I witnessed it myself.
 
Now get your facts straight!”

“I’m
telling you what I know.
 
Danny Bronco
set it up.
 
That’s what the word is on
the street, that’s what every one of our sources are telling us, and you know
they know what they’re talking about.”

“You’ve
seen him?”

“I’m
working on it.
 
Give me a couple days,
I’ll take care of that too.”

Sal
was still too stunned to respond.
 
What
kind of crazy shit was this, he thought.

“Your
people iced somebody all right,” Chazz went on, “but it wasn’t Danny Bronco.”

Sal still
just stood there, on that tarmac in Vegas, on a cool Sunday night, thinking.

“When
we eyeball him,” Chazz asked, “want us to bring him in?”

“What?”
Sal asked.
 
His mind had left the
conversation and was focused on that hit, and how it all went down.

“I
said when we get Bronco, do you want us to bring him in?”

Sal
began walking again.
 
“No,” he said.
 
“Get me pictures of him.
 
This could be some kind of set up.
 
Get plenty of pictures.”

“Something’s
going down, boss.
 
We don’t know what,
but something funny’s going down.”

“Yeah,”
Sal said.
 
“And the joke’s gonna be on
those motherfuckers.
 
Whoever they
are.
 
Get me those pictures,” he ordered
again, and then killed the call.

When
he boarded his plane, he sat down, leaned his head back, and then angrily took
his papers and flung them across the cabin.

After
his conversation with Sal, Chazz Charski killed the call too and then turned
toward his host.
  
The man behind the
desk, Fabio Menza, was leaned back.
 
But
unlike Chazz, there wasn’t a smile on his face.
 
This was too important for laughs.

But
Chazz was animated.
 
“Didn’t I tell you
he’ll go for it?” he asked.
 
“Didn’t I
tell you?”

“You
done good,” Fab said, “I’ll give you that.
 
You got us in.
 
But this is just
the opening round.
 
This is just the
fuck with his mind
round.
 
We got him thinking about Danny and if it’s
true or not.
 
We got him distracted.”

“I
still don’t get it,” the third man in the room said, and Fab and Chazz both
looked in his direction.
 
The third man
was Patty Pacheco, who had broken out of prison, who had just gotten a hundred
thousand dollars from Sal to get lost.

“What
you don’t get?” Fab asked him.

“He
wants pictures,” Patty said.
 
“How are we
gonna get pictures of a dead man?”

“We
won’t need pictures.
 
Trust me on
that.
 
He thinks a dead man ambushed him,
what do we need pictures for?”

Patty
laughed.
 
“I got you, boss.”

“And
the beautiful thing about all of this?
 
Me, you, and Chazz, we aren’t even on his radar screen of suspects.
 
And you and Sal, he’s still taking your calls.
 
I know what I’m doing, you got me?
 
I didn’t break you out of prison because I
like you, and I didn’t hire Chazz to double cross Sal because I think he’s
worth a shit.
 
I don’t give a fuck about
either one of yous.”

“But
what is all of this about?” Patty asked.
 
“When are you gonna clue us in?”

“You’ll
get in when you get in,” Fab said.
 
“This
ain’t got nothing to do with you.
 
You’re
free, you got that guilt money from Sal, you just lay low like you’re doing and
wait for my next order.”

“What
about me, boss?” Chazz asked.
 
“What am I
supposed to do?”

“You
lay low too,” Fab said.
 
“And tell Will
to do the same.
 
I didn’t hire him for
the hell of it either.
 
He has an inside
connection to Sal Gabrini, that’s his only claim to fame as far as I’m
concerned.
 
The day he lose that
connection and try to double cross me the way he’s double crossing Sal, will be
the day he dies.
 
You remind him of
that.
 
Remind yourselves of it, too,” Fab
added to both Patty and Chazz.
 
“Sal’s
reach in the legit world may be further than mine, but he ain’t got shit on me
in the underground world.
 
And that’s the
world that counts.
 
That’s the world that
can sneak up on you when you least expect it, and turn your entire world upside
down.”

Then
Fab finally smiled.
 
“And when that happens,”
he said, “I’m going to enjoy every second of it.”

As
soon as Gemma walked into her quiet home, there was a different dynamic.
 
Sal had been here all week, and now he was
gone, and his absence was as tangible as the flesh on her body.
 
But she didn’t dwell on it.
 
She parked her suitcase in the foyer and got
busy cleaning her house.
 
She collected
all of the glasses they had used, cleaned off the center island in the kitchen,
and turned on the dishwasher.
 
By the
time she made it upstairs, and was about to head to the bathroom, to freshen it
up too, she noticed a wad of cash on her nightstand.
 

She
walked over to it and picked it up.
 
After flicking through it, she realized there were two thousand dollars
in that wad.
 
At first she almost
panicked, as she wondered if Sal had mistakenly left it.
 
But then she smiled.
 
He left it, all right, but there was no
mistake in it.
 
He knew exactly what he
was doing.
 

Then
she thought about him.
 
And the good man
she was beginning to know for certain that he was.
 
She always dreamed of finding somebody
special, but she never dreamed he would come in a package quite like Sal.
 
But there he was.
 
The one man she once thought might have been
a racist, turned out to be the best man of them all.
 
And so thoughtful, she thought, as she looked
at that money again.
 
He realized it was
too soon for him to be paying off all of her bills like that, and forcing her
to be completely in his debt, but that wasn’t going to stop him from looking
out for her.
 
He wanted to take care of
her, even if he had to sneak and do it.
 
This was all so new to Gemma.
 
She
wasn’t accustomed to anybody doing anything for her.
 
But as she took that wad of money and put it
away, for a rainy day, she knew she could get used to this level of care.
 
Easily, she thought.
 

Then
she plopped down on the bed and smiled.
 
At least it went better than expected with her parents.
 
There was some stress, especially between Sal
and her father, but he didn’t reject Sal outright or anything.
 
He’d come around, Gemma was convinced of it.

But
she missed Sal.
 
She even grabbed the
pillow that he had slept on, and smelled it.
 
It smelled like Sal’s cologne.
 
Her entire bedroom smelled like Sal’s cologne.
 
Then she hugged the pillow, laid back on her bed,
and closed her eyes.

She
missed her man.

Three
hours later, her man stepped out of the limo in front of the luxurious Wingate
apartment building in downtown Seattle, buttoned his suit coat, and walked
across the sidewalk.

“Welcome
back, Mr. Gabrini,” the Doorman said, opening the door wide.
 
Sal mumbled that it was good to be back as he
entered the elegant lobby.
 
He was too
tired for niceties and the Doorman smiled.
 
He was accustomed to his moods.