Until You Come Back To Me, Book 5 (15 page)

Rabina
was stunned to hear such language from such a prim and proper lady as
Gemma Gabrini, but she figured Sal had rubbed off on her.
 
But it didn’t matter.
 
She was free. That was all that mattered to
her!

Gemma
gathered up her paperwork and, oddly enough, she beat her own client out of the
courtroom.
 
Ted was in the hall, too
nervous, she guessed, to show his face inside.
 
But apparently he knew the outcome because he was elated too.
 
“Great job, Gemma!” he said to her.

Gemma
looked at him with disdain in her eyes.
 
“You go to hell,” she said, and she didn’t care that people in the
corridor heard her.
 
She meant every
word.
 

And
she left.
 
This was no victory for
her.
 
She didn’t know which jurors had
been bought or threatened or both, and she didn’t care.
 
The fact that the criminal justice system had
been perverted, and her husband was a part of the perversion, was all she could
think about.
 
And they wanted to
celebrate.
 
They wanted to pretend that
woman was freed based on facts and evidence and Gemma’s courtroom skills.
 
When they all knew that nothing could be
further from the truth.

She
headed out of the courthouse toward the parking lot.
 
But before she could get anywhere near her
car, she saw Sal.
 
He got out of his
Porsche that was parked far closer than her car, and walked toward her.
 
But she expected to feel the same about him as
she did about Ted and
Rabina
.
 
She didn’t think she could hardly face him.

But
as he walked toward her, and as his face betrayed his inner dread and gave him
the look, not of the strong, confident man he usually displayed, but of a very
frightened, aging, lonely man, her heart grew faint.
 
Ted and
Rabina
were
snakes in the grass as far as she was concerned.
 
But Sal wasn’t.
 
And she knew he wasn’t. And she knew, given
his big heart, that there was no way he killed those people unless those people
left him absolutely no other choice.
 
Not
that she condoned that kind of behavior either.
 
The police should have been involved.
 
But she understood it because Sal was involved in it.

When
he arrived in front of her, looking as if he just knew he’d just lost his best
friend, she stopped too.

“I
wished with everything within me that I didn’t have to do the things I
sometimes have to do, Gemma,” he said.
  
“But there’s nobody else.
 
I have
to be the one.
 
I rigged that jury to
protect my men and yeah, to protect my own ass too, and I’d do it again if I
had to.
 
I need you to understand
that.
 
But I never do anything to anybody
who didn’t try to do it to me first.
 
I
don’t start, but I finish.
 
And I finish
hard.
 
That’s me, Gemma.
 
This is the man you married.”

Tears
were in Gemma’s eyes.
 
Because she knew
he was right.
 
She knew every word he
said was true.
 
“Are you going to let
Rabina
get away again?” she asked him.

Sal
shook his head.
 
“She’s not going
anywhere.
 
My men are on her tail right
now to take her to my plane.
 
We’re going
to fly to Taiwan tonight and retrieve that tape.
 
She’s not going anywhere without me.”

Gemma
nodded.
 
“Good.”
 

“And
don’t worry.
 
We’ll get every copy.
 
And if we don’t, when we finish with those
fuckers, anybody else who might have a copy will change their minds about ever
letting it be known.”

It
sounded dangerous and it sounded clever.
 
But Gemma knew Sal was only doing what he had to do.
 
She stared at him, as a surge of emotion overtook
her, and she dropped her briefcase and pulled him into her arms.
 
“My husband,” she said as she held him.
 
“Right or wrong.”

Two weeks later, the bedroom door opened quietly, and Blanche
Delilah walked in.
 
She knew he was sound
asleep, she heard him snoring as soon as she made it upstairs.
  
She walked up to the foot of the bed and
looked at him.
 
Sal Gabrini
, she thought.
 
The most powerful man she’d ever known.
 
She’d had many men in her life, but none of them could touch Sal in the
looks department, in the lovemaking department, in any department.
 
Then she slowly pulled away the sheet that
covered his naked body.
 
And looked at
his rock-hard muscles, and at his manhood.
 
She nodded her head approvingly.
 
Nor had she ever had a man as well-endowed.

And
that was what she wanted.
 
To feel his
dick inside of her again.
 
They were in
Chicago, in a home he owned but allowed her to live in whenever he was not in
town.
 
But he was in town on business
this week.
 
And told her to scram, the
way he always did, until he left town again.
 
And like always, she dutifully left.
 

But
now she was back, despite his order.
 
She
couldn’t stay away.
 
She was horny, she
wanted it badly, and he was going to give it to her whether he wanted to or not.

She
dropped her mink coat to the ground, revealing her naked, pink body, and then
she walked around to the side of the bed, sat down, and gingerly took his dick
in her hand.

She
licked her lips as she held him.
 
She
closed her eyes as she felt every vein in his rod.
 
Then she leaned down and began licking
him.
 
She looked up at him, every time he
stirred, but he remained asleep.
 
By the
time she was in full-fledge sucking mode, he began to murmur, as if he was just
beginning to feel it too.
 
And his dick came
alive, and became aroused.

“Gemma,”
she heard him murmur under his breath as she sucked him.
 
But Blanche didn’t care.
 
She wasn’t in love with the man.
 
She just wanted his dick.
 
She just wanted to get him big, and to get
him inside of her.
 
Then a thought
occurred to her that made her smile: What it would be, she wondered, to become
pregnant with Sal Gabrini’s child!

And
it worked.
 
He murmured his wife’s name
one more time, but Blanche was already wet and ready.
 
And so was his dick.

She
quietly got onto the bed and straddled him.
 
She positioned her naked body directly above his stiff penis, and held
it, ready to guide it in.
 

But
Sal opened his eyes.
 

As
soon as he did, and he saw Blanche on top of him, and naked as a jaybird, he
knocked her off of him so violently that she fell all the way over the bed and
onto the floor.

Sal
jumped up.
 
“Sonafabitch!” he yelled as
he grabbed his gun from under his side pillow and hurried up to Blanche,
pointing it at her.
 
“What the fuck is
wrong with you?” he asked, still stunned.

“What
are you doing, Sal?” Blanche yelled back.
 
“Put that gun away!”

“Get
up!” he ordered her.
 
Sal was serious
now.
 

“Put
that gun away!” Blanche insisted again, terrified now.

“I’m
not putting shit away.
 
Get your ass up!”

Blanche
slowly stood up, raking her long, blonde hair back as she sat on the edge of
the bed.
  
She was still shaken, and
monumentally disappointed.

“What
did you think you were doing?” he asked her.

Blanche
was disheartened now.
 
What seemed like a
good idea at the time, seemed like a lousy idea now.
 
And she didn’t want to talk about it.

Sal
realized she was naked, as her pink breasts stood stiff at attention, despite
the tension.
 
“Where are you clothes?” he
asked her.

She
didn’t respond.

“Where
are your clothes?” he asked again.
 
Then
he noticed the mink coat on the floor.
 
He grabbed it and threw it to her.
 
“Put it on,” he ordered.

Blanche
was over it now.
 
She put it on.

Sal
finally stopped pointing his gun at her.
 
But his disappointment in her remained.
 
“This is how you repay me, Blanche?
 
This is how you do it?
 
Ralphie
died.”

“You
killed him!”

“That’s
a
got
damn lie!” Sal shot back.
 
“He wasn’t even on one of my missions when
they iced him, and you know it!”

Then
he calmed back down.
 
“
Ralphie
died and I took you in.
 
I let you stay here, rent-free, whenever I
wasn’t in town, which was most of the time.
 
And what do you do?
 
Pull a stunt
like this?
 
I’m a married man but you
don’t give shit about that!”
 
Just the
thought of it irked Sal.
 
And he’d had
enough.
 
“Get out!” he ordered.

When
she didn’t move, he grabbed her by the arm. “Now!” he said and began dragging
her out of the bedroom.
 
“You aren’t
welcome to stay in my home another night!”

“What
are you talking about?” Blanche asked as he hurried her along the corridor.

“What
do you think?
 
I’m kicking your ass
out.
 
You’re getting out of here.”

“Now?”

“Yes,
now!”

“But
. . . you can’t do this to me!”

He
began dragging her down the stairs.
 
“Watch me,” he said.
 
And hurried
her to the front door.

“But
what about my things?”

“Come
tomorrow.
 
My agent will be here.
 
He’ll supervise your removal,” he said as he
opened the front door.
 
His dick was
dangling and the cold November air that met him when he opened that door
chilled him to the bone.
 
 
“Your free ride is over,” he said to her.

“You’re
wrong for this, Sal,” she said to him, anger and sadness in her voice.

“Yeah,
right.
 
You come into my home uninvited,
try to have your way with me, but I’m wrong?
 
Get the fuck out of my house!”

And
he threw her, and her mink coat, out into the cold.

When
he slammed and locked the door, and made his way back upstairs, he peed, got
back into bed, and then exhaled.
 

And
called his wife.

She
was in the parking lot of the courthouse, heading for her car, telling him
about some crack head she was defending where the judge and prosecutor were
conspiring to get her tossed from the case.

Then
something went terribly wrong.
 
Sal heard
what sounded like an angry man call her a bitch.
 
Then he heard her screaming for help.
 
Then nothing.
 
Nothing at all.
 

He
jumped out of bed.
 
“Gem?
 
Gem?
 
What the fuck, Gem, answer me!”

But
no answer came.
 
He and his wife had had
a rough few months.
 
She stood by him
after that jury tampering when she could have kicked him to the curb.
 
But she would never do this.
 
Something awful had just happened.
 
Sal could feel it in his bones.

“Gemma!”
he kept yelling into that cell phone.
 
He
wasn’t hanging up, he didn’t care what happened.
 
But he knew he couldn’t let emotions get the
best of him.
 
They were trying, but he
had to beat them back.
 
He had to be
methodical about this.
 
For Gemma, he had
to treat this situation the way he treated all those other mind blowing
situations he had to handle in the past.
 
He was a handler.
 
That was what
he did.

He
ran to his closet, grabbed his suitcase, and rummaged through it until he found
his second phone.
 
Still crying out
Gemma’s name on his first phone, he quickly phoned his cousin Reno with his
second one.

Reno Gabrini
walked through his massive casino with Jimmy Mack Gabrini, his oldest son.
 
Jimmy was a handsome, biracial young man, and
he walked beside his father with a slowly gait.
 
Because it wasn’t a pleasant walk.
 
His father was on his case.

“You
see me pulling that shit?” Reno was asking his son.
 
“You see me hiring my drinking partners and
my party buddies in my business?”

Jimmy
Mack wanted to roll his eyes, but he knew his father would knock them off of
his face.

“Well
do you?” Reno asked him.

“No,
sir.
 
I don’t see you hiring your
drinking partners and party buddies in your business.”

“Then
stop hiring them in yours!
 
I didn’t let
you run that business to run it in the ground.
 
I expect your ass to have good sense, Jimmy Mack, or I’ll take it from
you.”
 
Reno’s cell phone began to
ring.
 
He looked at the Caller ID.
 
“Now fire their asses and hire people who
know what the fuck they’re doing!”
 
When
Reno saw that is was his cousin Sal calling, he answered.
 
“I’m busy, Sal,” Reno said.

“Gemma’s
in trouble,” Sal said.
 

Reno
stopped in his tracks.
 
Jimmy stopped
too.
 
“What kind of trouble?”

“I
don’t know.
 
Get to the courthouse.
 
She was in the parking lot.
 
She was walking to her car.”

Reno
hit Jimmy on his stomach and began running for the exit.
 
Jimmy ran behind him.
 
“What you think happened?” Reno was asking
Sal as he ran.

“I
don’t know.
 
I was talking to her and
then I heard some male’s voice, then I heard her cry help, and then
nothing.
 
Fucking nothing!
 
And still nothing.
 
I still have her on the line.”

“Where
are you?”

“Chicago,”
Sal said, “but I’m heading back now.
 
Call me as soon as you find out anything.”

“I’m
on it,” Reno said, and killed the call.
 
He and Jimmy might have ran out of the casino, but they ran even faster
through the hotel lobby, jumping into Jimmy’s Camaro, which was illegally
parked near the entrance, and taking off.
 

“What’s
going on, Dad?” Jimmy asked his father as his father drove.
 
“What’s happening?”

“I
don’t know,” Reno said as he swerved out of the curb and flew out of the
driveway of his hotel and casino.
 
“But
I’m going to find out.”
 

And
he drove like a madman; he drove along the Vegas Strip as if it was his wife in
danger because he knew Sal would do the same for him.
 
And because it was Gemma.

When
the Camaro finally made it to the courthouse, and Reno drove through rows and
rows of cars and trucks until they found Gemma’s BMW, it was immediately
obvious that something had gone terribly wrong.
 
Reno stopped his son’s car behind Gemma’s, he and Jimmy Mack jumped out,
but their hearts were racing.
 
Bullet
holes could be seen on the driver side door.

Reno
ran up to the door and opened it to confirm what they saw was what they saw:
bullet holes.
 
Reno looked around inside
the car, and saw her briefcase and purse on the backseat.
 
Then he looked around the parking lot.
 
He and Jimmy started running up and down the
rows, with Reno taking one row, Jimmy taking another row, making certain that
somebody didn’t have her hidden out in their car or truck right now.
 

But
they found nothing.
 
People were walking
around, going about their daily business, as if nothing earth shattering could
have possibly happened there.