Until You Come Back To Me, Book 5 (14 page)

Sal
was on the phone, but he motioned Gemma to come on in.
 
And he didn’t hesitate.
 
“I’ll call you back,” he said on the phone,
and then hung up.

“Hey,
babe,” he said with a smile.
 
“I thought
you had closing arguments all day today.”

“It
didn’t take all day.”

“How
did it go?
 
Come here.”

Gemma
walked around his desk.
 
He pulled her
down on his lap, and kissed her.
 
“How
did it go?” he asked again.

“It
went well, I thought.
 
My closing was tight,
the prosecution’s closing was scattered, and the judge read the jury
instructions and then dismissed the jurors to the deliberation room.”

“That’s
good, right?
 
Or is it?”

“It
was good,” Gemma said.
 
“It was all
good.
 
Until my client told me to thank
you.”

Sal’s
heart dropped.
 
“To thank me?” he asked.

“To
thank you,” Gemma said. “She told me to thank you for coming through for her,
as she put it, with those jurors.”
 
Gemma
looked at him with undeniable concern in her eyes.
 
“What jurors, Sal?”

Sal could
beat that woman’s ass mentioning any of that to Gemma.
 
But she was a smart bitch, Sal thought.
 
She waited until the jury was deliberating.

“Sal?”
Gemma asked again.
 
“What was
Rabina
talking about?
 
What jurors?”

Sal
let out a harsh exhale. “I had a conversation with a few of the jurors.”

Gemma
frowned.
 
It couldn’t be!
 
“What kind of conversation?” she asked him.

“A
conversation,” he said.

“About
what?”

Sal
exhaled again.
 
“About the case, Gemma,
what else was it going to be about?”

Gemma
jumped up from his lap.
 
She was
dumbstruck.
 
“Are you telling me that you
tampered with my jury?”

“Tamper,”
Sal said.
 
“What tamper?
 
I had a conversation with a few of them.”

“Oh
my God!” Gemma cried, holding her forehead in disbelief.
 
“How could you, Sal?!
 
I could be disbarred for this!”

“Nobody’s
going to disbar you,” Sal said, standing too, “now you stop that now!
 
You know I wouldn’t put you in that kind of
risk.”

“But
you put me there!
 
By tampering with the
jury, I’m already there!”
 
Gemma still
couldn’t believe it.
 
“I’m going to be
disbarred!”

“No,
you’re not!
 
They won’t say a word, and
you know Chen won’t.”

Gemma
looked at him.
 
Was he that far
gone?
 
“Don’t you understand?
 
They don’t have to say a word. I have to say
that word!
 
I have to notify the court of
what has happened, Sal.
 
You don’t
realize what you’ve done!”

Sal
went to grab her but she jerked away from him.
 
“You could go to jail for jury tampering.
 
That’s a serious crime, Sal!”

Sal
grabbed hold of her.
 
“You stop that
now.”

“You
could go to jail!”

“Stop
it!” Sal ordered as he shook her.
 
“Look
at me,” he said.

Gemma
couldn’t look at him.
 
She was too busy
looking at all of the implications.

“Look
at me, Gemma,” he said again.

She
finally turned her big eyes toward him.
 
She was amazed at the confidence in his own eyes.
 
It did work to keep her from total panic.

“What
do I do for a living, Gem?” he asked her.

But
her brain was still too scattered.

“Answer
the question.
 
What do I do for a
living?”

Her
distress was too heightened.
 
Sal knew he
had to answer that question himself.
 
“I
handle things, Gemma,” he said.
 
“That’s
what I do. I handle things for the Gabrini Corporation in Seattle, and I handle
things for my own private ventures across this country.
 
I handle things.
 
I handled this.
 
I know what I’m doing.”

Although
Gemma was still floating around in a world of doubt and confusion, she had one
thought of clarity.
 
“Why?” she asked her
husband.

Sal
found it an odd question, but given her distress, he understood.
 
“Why do I handle things?”

Gemma
searched his eyes for clues.
 
“Why are
you handling things for
Rabina
?” she asked him.

Sal
had stepped right into that one.
 
And as
he looked into her troubled, stormy eyes, he knew he couldn’t bullshit
her.
 
Not about this.
 
He frowned.
 
“It’s not what you think,” he said.

“You
said you weren’t having an affair with her.”

“I’m
not.
 
It’s not about that.”

“Then
what is it about?”
 
Gemma wanted to
know.
 
She had to know.
 
He couldn’t get away with ambiguity this
time.
 
Everything she worked for was on
the line.
 
His own freedom was on the
line!
 
“What is it about, Sal?” she asked
again.

Sal
ran his hand through his thick hair.
 
“Sit down,” he said to her.

“I
can stand.”

Sal
looked at her with that hard, cold look.
 

She
sat down in the chair behind his desk.
 
He leaned against the desk, facing her, his legs stretched out.
 
But it still would be a few moments before he
began talking.
 
“I met
Rabina
Chen several months ago.”

“Where?”

“In
California.”

“On
business?”

“No.
 
I received a call about a tape.”

A
tape?
 
Gemma didn’t expect him to say
that.
 
“What kind of a tape?”

“A
videotape,” Sal said.

Gemma
stared at her husband.
 
Was all of this
about sex after all?
 
Some sex tape
somebody had on him?
 
“What was on the
tape?” she asked him.

Sal
hated to go there, but he knew he had to.
 
Gemma was involved now. Heavily involved.
 
“
Rabina
and her
people, whoever they are, managed to get their hands on video showing me . . .”

Gemma’s
heart began to pound.
 
“Showing you
what?
 
Having sex with somebody?”
 
Somehow she was wishing that was it.
 
She was so far gone with concern that she was
hoping it was a sex tape!

“It
shows me killing a man, Gemma.”

Gemma’s
heart dropped.
 
“Killing a man?”

“He
was a piece of scum, and he got what he deserved.
 
But the Feds won’t see it that way.”

“But
how did she get such a tape?”

“I
don’t know.
 
We haven’t been able to
trace her associates yet, and we’ve been trying for months.”

“And
she’s blackmailing you with this murder tape?
 
This tape of you murdering a man?”

“Murdering
several men.”

Gemma
couldn’t believe it.
 
Not that she didn’t
know what Sal was up to when he had these excursions beyond his duties at
Gabrini, Inc.
 
But the idea that he had
been filmed, that there was tape out there, that he could potentially get the
Death Penalty if those tapes surfaced, stunned the life out of her.
 
She looked at him.
 
No wonder he seemed under so much pressure
lately!
 
“What are we going to do?” she
asked.

Sal
took her hand.
 
The idea that she said
we
warmed his heart.
 
But he couldn’t let her think that meant he
was letting her into that part of his life.
 
He wasn’t about to.
 
“First of
all,” he said, “
we
aren’t going to do
anything.
 
You’re going to continue to do
what you’re doing.
 
Second of all, I need
you to understand that every single one of those men I had to kill, had to be
killed.
 
These were no choir boys.
 
These were no innocents.
 
They were stone cold killers who were trying
to take me out before me and my men took them out.
 
And third, I’m going to handle it.
 
Don’t you worry.
 
I have to.
 
My men are on those tapes too, and nobody’s fingering them.
 
They will not go down.”

Gemma
understood Sal’s passion, but she couldn’t feel it.
 
All she felt was a sense of grief, as if
something had died inside of her.
 
Perhaps
her own innocence regarding Sal.
 
Perhaps
her own naiveté that she could marry a man like him, a man with so much
baggage, and not get weighed down herself.
 

She
stood up, and walked over to his office window.
 
She looked out over the city and the busy landscape.
 
Sal came up beside her, but he didn’t offer
any words of comfort, he didn’t offer any empty promises.
 
He just stood beside her.
 
Which was exactly what she wanted.

They
would stand that way for over an hour, just the two of them, as both felt that
sense of loss.
 
For Gemma, it was all
about the realization of her life path.
 
It was as if she had married a man in the army, and he was fighting some
disastrous war, but he couldn’t go AWOL and just leave.
 
He was in it for life.
 
And she wanted him out.
 
She wanted him safe.
 
She wanted his past to not be his past, and
his future to be brighter.
 
But she also
knew she didn’t marry a religious leader.
 
She married a Gabrini.
 
His name
would keep him in for life.
 
Her name
would keep her in for life.
 

For
Sal, it was all about Gemma.
 
It was all
about the realization that his beautiful wife wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
 
Every Gabrini woman had to face this day.
 
Some could handle it, like Trina, and some
couldn’t.
 
But he was betting on
Gemma.
 
He was betting that she could
take it.
 
She was not going to break his
heart.

But
when her cell phone rang, and she actually jumped startled, he felt that small
bit of doubt return.

Gemma
answered her phone. “This is Gemma,” she said.
 
And then she exhaled.
 
“Okay,
Barb, thanks.
 
Call Ted and have him
notify
Rabina
.”

She
ended the call, and looked at Sal.
 
“The
verdict is in,” she said.
 
“I’ve got to
go.
 
Court will be back in session in an
hour.”

“I’ll
go with you,” Sal said.

But
Gemma stopped him right there.
 
“No, you
will not,” she said.
  
She had not let
him off the hook.
 
Not by a long
shot.
 
Tampering with a jury went against
everything Gemma believed in.
 
She looked
her husband squarely in the eyes.
 
“You’ve done enough,” she said to him.
 
And left.

“We
the jury,” the court clerk read, “in the above entitled action, find the
defendant,
Rabina
Shaw Chen, not guilty.”

As
soon as the verdict was read,
Rabina
jumped up and
down in rapture in the almost empty courtroom.
 
She hugged Gemma and thanked her, but Gemma would have none of
that.
 
She, instead, looked at
Rabina
.
 
“Fuck with
my husband regarding that tape,” she said to her, “and he’ll be the last man
you ever fuck with.”