TOMMY GABRINI 2: A PLACE IN HIS HEART (19 page)

Tommy’s
heart dropped through his shoe.
 
Sal even
had to sit down on the desk.
 
“What the
fuck,” he said, and looked at his brother again.

This
time Tommy did look away from that TV screen, and returned his stare.

While
the story was still breaking, Grace was in her office meeting with Nayla.
 
Nayla was still reeling from her demotion,
but only now had calmed down enough, she claimed, to finally address what she
considered to be a blatant betrayal.
 

Grace
looked across her desk at her longtime friend as soon as she used that
word.
 
“Betrayal, Nay?
 
Seriously?”

“Yes!”
Nayla said firmly.
 
“Absolutely!
 
We were friends.
 
Close friends.
 
But you backstabbed me, Grace, I’m not going
to act like that’s not what it felt like.
 
It felt like a backstab.
 
Like a
betrayal.”

Grace
couldn’t put her hand on what exactly was going on here, but it felt strange to
her.
 
Nayla’s demotion happened weeks
ago, but all of a sudden she was in Grace’s office questioning her about
it?
 
And using such incendiary
language?
 
It all felt kind of staged to
Grace.
 
Kind of forced.

“Let
me get this straight,” Grace said, to make sure she wasn’t missing something
here.
 
“You’re saying I betrayed and
backstabbed you because I refuse to let you show up for work unless you do some
work?
 
Is that what you call a betrayal
and a backstab?”

“Don’t
get it twisted, Grace.
 
You know that’s
not what I’m saying.
 
What I’m saying is
that my work ethic wasn’t an issue at all before you took over.
 
Jillian never said I wasn’t doing my job.”

Grace
frowned.
 
“But you wasn’t doing your job,
Nay, whether Jillian said anything about it or not.”

“But
yet in still she never mentioned it.
 
Wonder why?
 
But a sister gets the
gig and suddenly I’m the problem?
 
I’m
the issue?
 
When I’m no worse than
anybody else around here? But you pick on
me
?”

Grace
could not believe that comment.
 
“I’m
picking on you now?”

“Yeah,
you’re picking on me!”

Grace
had far too much to do already, but she couldn’t let that one slide.
 
She stood up, walked over to a file cabinet,
unlocked it, pulled out a folder, a thick one, and then walked back to her
desk.

“What’s
that supposed to be?” Nayla asked her.

“Your
department’s dossier,” Grace said.
 
She
didn’t sit back down, but stood behind her desk as she opened the file.

Nayla
looked at her.
 
“So you’ve been checking
up on me, is that it?”

“Actually
this was compiled before I took over,” Grace said and looked at her.
 
“While Jillian was in charge.”
 

Grace
then opened the folder.
 
She flipped
through pages to the back of the stack of pages.
 
“In summary,” she said, looking at the page,
“your department, under your leadership, had the lowest productivity ratio of
any other department in this company.
 
Your department, under your leadership, had the lowest worker
satisfaction index.
 
Your department had
cost overruns every single month that you were in charge.”
 
Grace again looked at her.
 
“The only department to ever have month after
month overruns.”
 

Then
Grace looked back down at the dossier.
 
“Your workers complained that you were never there.
 
Drivers complained that you never returned
their emails or phone calls.
 
You were
cited numerous times for being disrespectful to your support staff.”
 
Grace looked at her.
 
“And I can go on.
 
If it had been anybody else with a report
like this, Nay, anybody else, I would have fired them without batting an
eye.
 
And they would have deserved to be
fired.
 
But I demoted you instead, and
gave you a chance to redeem yourself.”

“To
redeem myself?” Nayla asked, astounded by the nerve of her former friend.
 
“Who are you to talk about redemption?
 
You’re the one who needs redeeming!
 
You’re the one who got a little power and
started acting like some slave master.
 
Who the fuck do you think you are?”

Grace
was done.
 
She was sick and tired of
these so-called friends treating her like some dog just because she wasn’t
taking their bullshit.
 
“I’m the CEO of
Trammel,” Grace said firmly.
 
“That’s who
I am.
 
I’m the lady, or the bitch if you
prefer, who just fired you.
 
That’s who I
am.”

Nayla
stood up.
 
“You just fired me?” she
asked.
 
“Is that what you just said?
 
I’ll tell you what you can do with your firing.
 
You can take your firing and stick it up your
black ass, since no real man wants to get up in it anyway!
 
They gave you a little power and it
immediately went straight to your head!”

“No,
Nay. It wasn’t my head.
 
It was my
eyes.
 
My eyes finally opened and saw you
for who you really are.
 
That’s what
really went down.
 
Now get out of my
office.”

Nayla
stared at her, as if she had the option to stay, and then left Grace’s office,
slamming the door nearly off of its hinges as she did.

Grace
was about to drop to her seat, to regroup, but within seconds her new
secretary, Renee, hurried in.

“Are
you all right, Miss McKinsey?” she asked, her young eyes wide with concern.

“Yes,
Renee, I’m fine,” Grace said, although she knew she wasn’t fine at all.
 

“She
slammed the door and looked so angry.”

“Yes,
she was definitely angry.”

“Is
there anything I can do?”

Grace
thought about this.
 
Then she
decided.
 
“I want you to contact
Security,” she said.
 
“Tell them to go to
Nayla Santiago’s office, allow her to get her things, and then I want them to
escort her off of the premises.”

“Escort
her off?”

“That’s
right.”

“Yes,
ma’am,” Renee said.

“And
then contact the Human Resources Director, will you?
 
Tell him I want him in my office ASAP.”

“Yes,
ma’am,” the secretary said, and then hurried to do Grace’s bidding.

Grace,
weighed down by the burden of that emotional outburst with Nayla, plopped down
in her chair.

Fifteen
minutes later and the news of Nayla’s firing, along with that car crash
allegation, began spreading like wildfire around Trammel.
 
Jared was at the reception desk on the top
floor, having one of his daily gossip sessions with Carol, and he could hardly
contain his glee.
 
Although Carol
couldn’t stand Grace now either, she nonetheless believed you reaped what you
sowed.
 
She wasn’t about to be happy
about another person’s downfall.

“Have
you seen her?” Jared asked her.

“Not
since that newscast, no,” the receptionist said.
 
“She hasn’t come out of her office yet.”

Jared
nodded his blonde head.
 
“She’s in hiding,”
he said as if it were a fact.
 
“She’s too
ashamed to show her face.”

“I
don’t know about all of that,” Carol said.
 
“But I haven’t seen her.”

“Why
don’t you go in there and ask if there’s anything you can do for her,” Jared
said in a coaxing voice.
 
“And then
report back to me.”

“Yeah,
I’ll report back to you all right,” Carol said and he laughed.
 
“You must take me for a fool.
 
I’m not about to lose my job over you and
nobody else.
 
I have bills to pay.”

“I’m
just kidding!
 
But I know what I’m
talking about.
 
She’s only getting what
she deserves.”

Carol
looked at him.
 
How in the world would he
know what somebody else deserved?
 
“You
think those allegations are true?” she asked him.

“Hell
yeah they’re true!
 
Why else would the
guy make them if they wasn’t true?
 
She’s
guilty as sin!
 
You know it and I know it
too.”

“I
don’t know shit,” Carol said.
 
“Don’t
lump me in there with you.
 
I’ll just
wait and see how it unfolds, that’s all I’ve got to say.
 
I’m withholding judgment.”

“Withhold
it all you want.
 
But I’m telling you
it’s true.
 
Grace McKinsey is terrible
now.
 
Just vile.
 
She fired Nayla you know.”

The
receptionist nodded her head.
 
“I
heard.
 
I’m no fan of Nayla’s, because we
all know she hasn’t done a damn thing in all the time she’s been here, but they
were friends.
 
Longtime friends.
 
She was wrong to do her friend like that.”

“That
power’s gone to her head, I’m telling you,” Jared said.
 
“That’s why she demoted me.
 
Just because she could.”

Carol
looked at him doubtfully.
 
“That’s what
she told you?”

“That’s
what she said,” Jared lied convincingly.
  
“But you think I care?
 
I don’t
give a damn.
 
I don’t plan to be around
here forever anyway.
 
This place here is
not my final stop by any means.”

The
elevator doors binged open.
 
Whenever
that happened it was Carol’s job to look and make sure that whomever was
entering the top floor had a right to be there.
 
When she saw that it was Tommy and Sal Gabrini who had entered, she
motioned to Jared.
 
“Check it out,” she
said to him.

Jared
looked too.
 
Tommy Gabrini, one of those
fat cats who always walked as if he owned everything, was heading their way in
his rich silk suit and sparkling dress shoes.
 
Women fawned over Tommy Gabrini, and Jared, who fancied himself a ladies
man as well, couldn’t stand the sight of him for that very reason.
 
Whereas Jared had to beg the females
repeatedly to give him so much as a date, all Tommy Gabrini had to do was ask.
Sometimes he didn’t even have to do that.
 
The females asked him!
 
The
younger man with Tommy, who was equally well-appointed in his own expensive
outlay, was a stranger to Jared.

“Her
protector has arrived,” Carol said under her breath.
 
“Good afternoon, Mr. Gabrini,” she said
aloud, and with a grand smile.

“Hello,
Carol,” Tommy said as he and Sal approached the reception desk.
 
“Miss McKinsey in?”

“Yes,
sir.
 
Should I let her know you wish to
see her?”

“That
won’t be necessary,” Sal said firmly, as if that receptionist had some nerve
even suggesting announcing his brother.
 
Tommy and Sal kept walking.

Jared
leaned closer to Carol.
 
“I told you
those allegations were true.
 
Why else
would Tommy Gabrini come all this way?
 
This is big.
 
Grace McKinsey is in
trouble.”

Grace,
however, was still in her office working.
 
She was seated at the small conference table reviewing all of the
departmental dossiers.
 
She had pulled
the file on Logistics, so she therefore decided to take a look at all of the
departments.
 
When knocks were heard on
her door, she didn’t bother to look up.

“Yes?”
she asked.

The
door opened and Tommy and Sal walked in.
 
When Grace looked up and saw them, she knew immediately that something
was up.
 
It was rare enough to have Tommy
visiting Trammel in the middle of a workday, but to have Sal with him?