TOMMY GABRINI 2: A PLACE IN HIS HEART (18 page)

She
began to stir as he thought about his options, and then she opened her
eyes.
 
But only slightly.
 
When she saw that Tommy was back with her,
safe and sound, she smiled, closed her eyes again, and turned over.
 
But when she turned over, she snuggled closer
against him, causing her ass to jut against his penis.
 
Why, he thought, did she want to do
that?
 
There was no way he could let that
ride.
 

He
therefore lifted her gown, just enough to uncover her bare ass, and pulled down
his briefs.
 
He teased her long enough
with in and out pokes of his dick, arousing himself even more in the process,
until she was moist enough for him to ease on in.
 

She
moaned that sensual moan he loved when he began to stroke her.
 
It was an easy fuck, but an intense one, as
they lay there, with his arms wrapped around her.
 
He made the kind of love to her that he knew
was more soothing than sensual.
 
It was a
joining love.
 
It was Tommy inside of
Grace with a powerful need to be there.
 
Nothing more, nothing less.

As
her moans increased and her body began to stretch to that wonderful feel of his
sex, however, he closed his eyes and kept it steady.
 
He wanted to keep it easy.
 
He stroked her, and fondled her breasts, and
massaged her deep within her cunt, fucking her long and hard and easy.
 
And instead of climaxing them, it relaxed
both of them.
 
Grace couldn’t stop
stretching her body, and moaning even more, as he fucked her.
 
It was so relaxing, in fact, that both of
them eventually drifted off as if they had no cares in this world.
 
They drifted off with the warmth of his dick
lodged deep inside of her.
 
And slept the
sleep of the truly exhausted.

CHAPTER TWELVE

A few
days later and Grace found herself walking into the Ekland shooting range with
Tommy at her side.
 
It was a gun range
primarily frequented by police officers, former and current, and everybody in
the building seemed to know Tommy from his own days on the force.

“Captain
Gabrini, hey!”

“How
are you, Captain Gabrini?”

“Good
to see you again, Cap.”

“Tommy,
long time no see,” the man Tommy had selected to train Grace said as he walked
up to them.
 
He was a short Italian, well
built, and he and Tommy shook hands.

“How’ve
you been, Coop?” Tommy asked him.

“I’ve
been great.
 
Still above ground, that’s
saying something.”

Tommy
laughed.
 
“I know you’re right.”

“And
this must be the little lady you told me about.”

Tommy
put his hand on the small of Grace’s back.
 
“Yes, this is Grace McKinsey.
 
My
fiancée.”

“Fiancée?
 
Well,” Coop said as he extended his
hand.
 
“Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”

“And
this is Coop, babe,” Tommy said.
 
“One of
my all-time cut partners.”

“Yeah,
we messed up a few joints in our day, Tommy, didn’t we?”
 
They both laughed.

“Nice
to meet you, Coop,” Grace said with a smile of her own.

Coop
looked at Tommy.
 
“Sure you deserve a
nice, beautiful lady like this?”

“Hell
no,” Tommy said in that laidback way of his that even men loved.

“Well,
we’d better get started,” Coop said.
 
“Come with me, please ma’am.”
 

Grace
began walking side by side with Coop.
 
Tommy followed behind them.

“So
you wanna learn how to shoot a firearm?”
 
Coop asked her.

“Something
small and simple, yes, sir.”

“Small
and simple?
 
Why small and simple?”

“Because
I don’t want to kill anybody,” she said, and Coop stopped walking, causing
Grace and Tommy to stop too.

“So
you’re saying to me,” Coop said, “that if some motherfucker break into your
house, pull a gun out on you, you don’t wanna kill his ass?”

Grace
smiled.
 
“What I mean is, I would rather
debilitate him long enough so that I can get away.”

“Even
though he may still be able to shoot you down while you’re getting away?”

Grace
looked to Tommy.

“A
twenty-two, Coop,” Tommy said.

“That’s
it?
 
That’s all?
 
You’re sure?”

“I’m
sure,” Tommy said.
 
It was bad enough
that Grace had to even be there.
 
He
certainly didn’t want her growing any appetite for violence, or violent
responses.
 
He had enough for both of
them.

And
it worked out for her.
 
Coop turned out
to be an excellent trainer, certainly far more patient than Tommy knew he would
have been, and Grace was getting the hang of it well.
 
Tommy stayed back, walking the plank, which
was a long corridor inside the shooting range.
 
He fielded phone call after phone call as he walked, handling business
even at the gun range.

While
Coop went to answer a phone call of his own, Grace continued to practice.
 
She was terrible, only occasionally, maybe
even accidentally, hitting her target, when someone tapped her on the
shoulder.
 
Thinking it was Coop, or maybe
Tommy, she turned with a smile on her face.
 

“I’ll
get better,” she said as she turned.
 
Until she realized it wasn’t Coop or Tommy.
 
It was, however, a Gabrini.
 
An older, attractive man who looked like Sal,
but she could see some Tommy in him too.
 
She removed her headset.

“Hi,”
she said.

“Hello
there.
 
I’m Ben Gabrini.”
 
He extended his hand.

“Grace
McKinsey,” she said as they shook.
 
“Nice
to meet you.”

“I
understand you came with my son.”

“I
did, yes.
 
So you’re Tommy’s father?”

“I
am.
 
And you’re one of his lady friends,
I take it.”

“I’m
his fiancée actually.”

There
was a definite change in expression in the man.
 
“His fiancée?”

“Yes,
sir.”
 
She should have been surprised
that Tommy never told his own father about their engagement, but she wasn’t
surprised at all.
 
Tommy’s relationship
with his father was very strained.
 
Almost nonexistent.

In
fact, when Tommy looked over and saw his father talking to Grace, he at first
couldn’t believe it.
 
Then his heart
pounded against his chest.

“Let
me call you back,” he said into his cell phone, and began moving without
waiting for an answer.
 
He killed the
call as he headed for Grace.
 
Benny
Gabrini, the chief of the Seattle police department, might have been a beloved
man at Ekland and around the entire city.
 
But he was despised by Tommy.

When
he made it up to his father, Benny smiled that charming smile of his.
 
He was a politician first and last, with
ambitions of one day becoming governor of the state.
 
“There he is,” he said to his son as if they were
close like that.

“What
do you want?” Tommy asked him.
 
Grace
always knew there was a serious rift between Tommy and his father.
 
She had hoped that it would mend.
 
But the way Tommy looked right now made that
highly unlikely.
 
Coop also returned, and
was just as surprised as Tommy to see Chief Gabrini there.

“I
was introducing myself,” Benny said.
 
“This girl here is running around claiming to be your fiancée.”

Grace
looked at Coop, who shook his head as if he knew how nasty Benny Gabrini could
be too.
 
Then she looked at her future
father-in-law.
 
“I’m
claiming
to be his fiancée?” she asked.
 
“Is that what you just said?”

“Is
there something wrong with your hearing?” the father asked her, still
smiling.
 
“Of course that’s what I
said.
 
I’m stunned you’re his fiancée.
 
That’s my point.”
 
He looked at Tommy and had the nerve to smile
even grander.
 
“Come on son,” he
said.
 
“Her?
 
You’re going to marry her?
 
You can do better than that!”

As
soon as those words dripped from his tongue, Tommy took his fist and decked his
own father.
 
Grace looked on in horror,
stunned that Tommy would have done such a thing, and Coop immediately pulled
Tommy back.

Tommy
jerked away from him, even as others assisted his father off of the floor.
 
Tommy reached his hand out to Grace.
 
“Let’s go,” he said to her.

Grace
wanted to remind Tommy that she wasn’t finished with her lessons yet, but she
saw that look in his eyes.
 
And it wasn’t
a look of anger, or even of hate.
 
It was
a look of great sadness.
 
There were old,
deep-seated issues Tommy had with his father and Grace wasn’t about to minimize
that pain.

Without
voicing a word of complaint, she took his hand, and left.

When
they got into his car, however, and he began driving away, she turned to
him.
 
“What was that all about?” she
asked him.

“I
don’t want him around you,” Tommy said.
 
“He doesn’t deserve it.”

“Why
doesn’t he?” she asked, but Tommy, like every time the topic of his father ever
came up, changed it.

“I’ll
have Coop set up some additional days to meet with you early next week,” he
said.
 
“You’ll get your lessons.”

“He’s
going to be my father-in-law, Tommy.
 
Even Sal took Gemma to meet him.”

“Yeah,
well, I’m not Sal,” Tommy said.
 
“My old
man is a sadistic bastard who will not be tainting you.”

Grace
looked at him.
 
He said it with such
finality.
 
Then she looked straight, at
the road ahead of them.
 
Denial never
worked.
 
But Tommy, she knew, had to
learn that for himself.

Two
weeks later and he was in his office, going over stat sheets, when Sal rushed
in.
 
“You need to watch this,” he said to
him.

Tommy
didn’t look up at his baby brother.
 
He
was too engrossed in the work before him.
 
“I need to watch what?” he asked.

Sal
hurried over to Tommy’s desk and pressed a button.
 
The doors to a cabinet high up on the wall
opened and a flat screen TV was revealed.
 
He clicked another button that turned on the TV, and then he pressed the
channel he wanted to see.
 
A local news
channel.
 
He pointed.
 
“This,” he said to his brother.
 
“A reporter friend of mine gave me the heads
up that this was about to air.
 
You need
to see this.”

Tommy
looked at Sal and then looked at the television he had all of a sudden turned
on.
 
A black man seemingly in his
thirties, a man he had never seen before, was speaking to a local reporter.

“I
didn’t want to do it,” he said.
 
“I
really didn’t.”
 

Tommy
frowned.
 
“What is this?” he asked, but
Sal shushed him.

The
man continued.
 
“But when I saw her a few
days ago on your newscast, and you were saying how she was turning Trammel
around, and she was giving back to the poor in the community, and how wonderful
she was, I knew I had to speak up.”

“So
you saw our report on Grace McKinsey,” the reporter asked, “and how she, as a
young executive, was attempting to do great things at Trammel?”

“Right.”

“But
you’re now saying we had it all wrong?”

“That’s
exactly what I’m saying,” the man said.
 
Sal glanced at Tommy.
 
Tommy was
staring at the man.

“We
were college friends, Grace and I,” he said, “and everything was always cool
between us.”

“You
were her lover?”

“No.
Nothing like that.
 
We were just
friends.
 
And as friends we went out
partying a lot.
 
Well, not a lot, but we
partied like most college kids did.
  
But
on this particular night we got pretty well stoned.
 
Me and her both.
 
Grace had a new car her daddy had given to
her and she wouldn’t let me drive it.
 
Not that I was sober, I wasn’t.
 
But I wasn’t as stoned as she was.
 
But she still insisting on driving the car.
 
And that’s when things went really wrong and
Grace crashed into this Van.
 
We both
were thrown from the car and passed out, and Grace ended up in a coma.
 
We were nearly killed.
 
But the pregnant lady in the Van, that
innocent lady, was killed.”
 
Sal again
looked at Tommy.
 
But Tommy still stared
at that man on that TV screen as if he couldn’t look away from him.

“It
was horrific,” the young man continued.
 
“But when I woke up, Grace’s father and this white man was at my
bedside.
 
They paid me to say that Grace
wasn’t the driver of the car, but that some other guy was.
 
They paid me to say that this mystery guy had
fled the scene and I only knew his nickname, not his real name.
 
They paid me thousands of dollars to say
that.
 
Since the DA couldn’t prove I was
lying, and they couldn’t find this other guy, and since this white guy had
connections in very high places, nobody was ever arrested for that lady’s
death.
 
Grace came out of her coma
remembering zero about that night.
 
But
later, when I told her what her father and that white man had paid me to say,
she didn’t do anything about it.
 
She
didn’t try to reach out to the family of that woman, she didn’t try to go to
the DA and set the record straight.
 
But
she was the driver of that car that night, and she knows she was.
 
She was the real murderer.”