TOMMY GABRINI 2: A PLACE IN HIS HEART (9 page)

CHAPTER SIX

The
door to Grace’s office flew open.
 
Nayla
Santiago, Grace’s best friend and the logistics supervisor at Trammel, hurried
inside.
 
“Tell me it’s true,” she said as
soon as the door slammed shut.
 
She leaned
against it as if she needed the support to remain upright.

Grace
was seated behind her desk, reviewing the Gabrini audit that Tommy ordered
months ago.
 
She looked up at her friend,
knowing she had to handle this with the same seriousness she handled
Jillian.
 
“Good morning,” she said.

“Good
morning, good morning.
 
Tell me it’s
true, girl.”

“Tell
you what’s true?”

“That
Tommy gave you Trammel.
 
I heard Tommy
gave you Trammel!
 
Is it true?”

Grace
found the way she put it an odd way to say it, but she nodded.
 
There was no point denying it.
 
“Yes,” she said.

“Ah
girl!” Nayla said with a loud handclap and a grin.
 
“We about to get paid up in here!”
 
She hurried up to Grace’s desk.
 
“All those bitches like Jillian can just kiss
our asses now!
 
It’s our time now!”

“What
Tommy also gave to me,” Grace said, her voice purposely measured, “was
responsibility for Trammel’s success.”

Nayla’s
smile remained, but it wasn’t nearly as unbridled as it was when she first
walked in.
 
She knew Grace could be a
party-kill and couldn’t even take a joke sometimes, and this was apparently one
of those times.

“And
I’m sure that you,” Grace continued, “as my closest and dearest friend, will be
supportive and do all you can to help make that responsibility, Trammel’s
success, a reality.
 
Because I really
need you to step up, Nay.
 
Because if I
can’t trust my oldest friend to stand by me, who can I trust?”

Grace
stared at Nayla after she asked that question.
 
She saw a flash of contempt on Nayla’s small, round face, although she never
stopped smiling.

“You
can trust me,” Nayla said with that smile.
 
“What?
 
You know you can trust
me.
 
And you know I’ll stand by you,
girl, you know that.
 
But I can do a
better job standing by you if you promote me to one of those top line jobs.”

Grace
was about to shake her head, but Nayla waved off the shake.
 
“Think about it now,” Nayla continued.
 
“If I’m in the top leadership then I can
really stand by your ass and make sure none of these bitches up in here try to
sabotage your success or do anything to hurt this company.
 
And you know I pay attention to
everything.
 
You know I do.
 
I can be your right hand woman, Grace.
 
We can reverse all the damage Jillian did to
this company, and we can reverse it together.”

But
Grace knew better.
 
She knew promoting
friends and showing that level of favoritism would only alienate the majority
of the people in this company and would turn her tenure into a mitigated
disaster.
 
She would lose the respect she
desperately needed to earn, and that lack of loyalty and respect would further
hamper Trammel’s success.
 
Late last
night she had thought about this long and hard.
 
Late last night Nayla, and how Nayla would undoubtedly react to the
news, was on her mind.
 

“I
can’t show any special treatment toward anybody, Nay,” she decided to say
plainly.
 
“Especially not toward my
closest friend.
 
And I’m sure you, as my
friend, would want me to be fair to everybody and not show any favoritism to
anyone.”

“I
want you to be fair, of course I do.
 
I
want everybody to be fair.
 
But
 
to me . . . But . . .” Nayla hesitated.

“But
what?” Grace asked her.

“But
I think it’s fair for you to promote me.
 
I think I deserve a promotion.”

“Well,
I think you don’t,” Grace said pointedly.
 
She knew going in Nayla would try this.
 
She knew her friend too well.
 
“Not yet, anyway,” she added.
 
“But if you work hard and prove to me you’re ready to go to that next
level, then I won’t hesitate to see what I can do on your behalf.
 
I won’t hesitate.
 
But you and I both know that you’re not there
yet, Nay.
  
Not yet.”

The
contempt was now obvious on Nayla’s face, even though she was still smiling
greatly.
 
“I don’t think you’re ready to
take over this whole company, either,” Nayla said, “but that didn’t stop Tommy
from putting you in charge anyway.
 
I
figure, as your best friend, I deserve at least that same kind of
consideration.
 
Nobody’s one hundred
percent ready to do anything.
 
Including
you.
 
Especially you.
 
But at least Tommy thought enough of you to
give you this chance.”

“And
I’ll give you a chance.
 
If you prove
yourself worthy of it.”

“Yeah,
okay,” Nay said dismissively.

“And,
Nay,” Grace continued, “my father helped Clive Birch start this company from
the ground up.
 
I’ve been around Trammel
since I was a kid.
 
I know this company
inside and out.
 
Don’t compare your
situation to mine.”

It
felt like a slap in the face to Nayla.
 
But she continued to smile anyway.
 
“Okay, well, whatever,” Nayla said, backing up to leave.
 
She knew exactly what she was up against
now.
 
“I just wanted to congratulate you
and let you know that my door is always open if you need any assistance.
 
But since you just said you know it all, I
guess you won’t need it.”

“That’s
not what I said, Nay.”

“That’s
what I heard, Grace.
 
But I’m not mad at
you.
 
You’re the head bitch in charge now
and you’re being the bitch.
 
That’s
okay.
 
I get it.”

But
Grace knew she didn’t get a thing.
 
Grace
also knew arguing with her about it wasn’t going to help a thing, either.
 
“Thank-you,” she decided to say, “for your offer
of assistance.”

“Any
assistance at all,” Nayla added as she approached the door.
 
“Alrighty then.
 
Well.
 
I’d better get back to work.”
 
Nayla glanced back at Grace and smiled.
 
“You have a good day.”

“You
too.
 
And thanks, Nay, for your
understanding.
 
I really appreciate---”

“Sure
thing,” Nayla said, interrupting her, and then hurrying out of the door and
closing it with what Grace could only interpret as a slam.

By
the time Nayla made it downstairs and was walking through the door of her own
office, Jared, the head of Sales, was coming up behind her.
 
Nayla glanced back.
 
He was a tall, lean white guy who tried too
hard to act black. He was a man Nayla occasionally messed around with whenever
they could steal away long enough from work.
 
But she never found him appealing enough to take it beyond that.

“How
did it go?” he asked as they both entered her office.

“How
did what go?” Nayla asked as she walked around to her desk.

“Has
she changed?
 
Is this sudden good fortune
going to her head yet?”

“Is
it going there?” Nayla asked with incredulity in her voice, as she stood behind
her desk.
 
“It’s already gone there.”

“Just
that fast?”

“Just
that fast, Jared.
 
They say she’s looking
to fire people who aren’t doing their so-called jobs, and you know what that
means.
 
You and me both will be on that
chopping block.”

“Oh,
we got to get that bitch,” Jared said with certainty.

“You
know I know it,” Nayla agreed.
 
“You
should have heard how she treated me, Jarr.
 
She made me feel like I was nothing in her view.
 
Like I was garbage in her eyes.”

“And
you’re her best friend.”

“And
I’m her best friend, right!
 
But she went
off on me.
 
All I asked was if she could
give me a chance at earning a promotion.
 
And she said no.”

“She
said no?”

“She
said no.
 
She said I better be glad I
don’t lose the job I have.”

“Shut
up!”

“She
said I can’t compare myself to her because she’s up there with Tommy Gabrini
and I’m down here with everybody else.”

“Oh,
no that heifer didn’t!”

“Oh,
yes that heifer did,” Nayla insisted, although she knew she was lying.
 
“She went off on me, Jarr.
 
And then she had the nerve to say to me that
if she needed any assistance she wanted to be able to come to me.”

“To
steal your knowledge.”

“To
steal my knowledge, right,” Nayla agreed.
 
“She was awful.
 
She’s going to be
worse than Jillian.”

“Don’t
say that, Nay.
 
Because if that’s true,
we’ve got to get that bitch.”

“We’ve
got to get her then.”

“We’ve
got to get that bitch,” Jared repeated as he and Nayla stared at each other,
with both of them, for their own good, inwardly plotting and scheming already.

The
door to Kelli Montiscue’s big home was finally opened after many knocks and
rings by Tommy.
 
His limousine sat in her
driveway, with his driver at the ready, and he knew he had no time for this.
 
He had meetings to conduct and arrangements
to make before he left for New York later today, and the last thing he should
be doing was appeasing some former lover.
 

But
he and Kelli went way back, back in the day when she was a gorgeous, aspiring
model, and he was a cop.
 
Yet now, when
she opened the door, her beautiful eyes puffy and red, her dark brown skin ashy
from all of the dried tears, she looked like a shell of the woman she used to
be.

She
looked at Tommy, and Tommy looked at her, and then she walked away from the
opened front door.

Tommy
hesitated.
 
He really didn’t need any
more drama this morning, but he didn’t change course and come this way for
nothing.
 
He walked into the house,
closing the door behind him.

As he
entered the home, Kelli was sitting on the leather couch in her spacious living
room, her feet flat to the floor.
 
She
wore a long t-shirt that dropped down just above the knees on her shapely legs,
and she fidgeted with a wad of tissue that was almost wet to shreds.
 
Tommy, with his hands in the pants pockets of
his expensive suit jiggling around change, walked slowly up to her and stood
there, looking down at her.
 
Then he
walked over to the powder room, grabbed a washcloth and wet it, and then walked
back over to her.
 
He lifted her chin and
began to wipe the dried tears from her beautiful dark face.
 
Fresh tears began to appear in her eyes.

“What
am I going to do without you, Tommy?” she asked him.

“Exactly
what you’ve been doing without me all of these months,” he said as he wiped, a
stern look on his own face.
 
He wasn’t
going to lead her on.
 
He had to settle
this now.

“But
I can’t make it without you.
 
If you get
married, you’ll never be back in my life.
 
What am I going to do without you?”

“You’re
going to survive.
 
And thrive.
 
Just as you’ve always done.
 
I’ve only been a small part of that life.”

“But
it’s the part I most need right now!
 
I
always knew I’d have you to turn to.
 
I
always knew you’d be by my side when nobody else cared.
 
I knew I could depend on you, Tommy.
 
How could you break my heart like this?”