Tommy Gabrini 3: Grace Under Fire (The Gabrini Men Series) (21 page)

SEVENTEEN

Deslyn
was asleep in bed when she suddenly felt a tug.
 
Before she realized what was going on, a strong hand grabbed her out of
bed and slammed her against the bedroom wall.
 
It was Tommy.
 
She smiled.
 
She actually smiled!
 
She didn’t see the danger, just the fact that
he was holding her again, and she could sniff that intoxicatingly romantic
cologne he favored.
 
But there was
nothing romantic about his presence in her bedroom this night.
 
She realized it when she actually looked into
his eyes.
 
There was no fondness
there.
 
Hate, maybe, but not love.

He
held his hand beneath her chin, lifting her face up to his.
 
She was beginning to cry.
 
She didn’t like this side of Tommy.
 
But he didn’t give a damn.
 
He wanted to be as clear as he possibly could
be to this woman and he didn’t care how impolite he appeared.
 

“Open
season on my wife is over,” he informed her.
 
“Any more phone calls; any more naked photographs; any more shit from
you,” he yelled as he slammed her harder against the wall, “and I will fucking
kill you.
 
I won’t hesitate.
 
I won’t remember old times’ sake, I don’t
give a flying fuck about old times!
 
I’ll
kill you, Des.
 
Fuck with my wife again,
and I’ll kill you.
 
Do you understand
me?”

She
was nodding and crying.
 
She couldn’t
believe Tommy would treat her this way, and because of that woman?

He
slammed her again. “Do you understand me, Des?”

“Yes!”
she screamed.
 
“Yes!”

“I’m
not fucking with y’all another second!
 
You will not ruin my marriage, you will not force my wife to leave me, I
will never leave my wife so stop this shit now!
 
She’s my life, and I’ll be damned if I let you or anybody else take her
away from me!
 
I’ll take you away from
here first!”

“I
don’t want you anymore,” Deslyn insisted. “I don’t want any man who doesn’t
want me!”

Tommy
released her.
 
She was hurt and angry
too.
 
But he was angry too.
 
They had driven his wife to places he never wanted
her to go, and he was pissed.
 
They had
to understand just how pissed he was.
 
He
hated to go there with her, he used to care a great deal for her, but he had to
go there.
 
He’d made his choice clear, he
thought, by marrying Grace.
 
But
apparently that wasn’t enough for some women.
 
But it was going to be enough.

“Don’t
make me prove my words, Des,” he warned her.
 
“But to protect my wife, and my marriage, I will hurt you.
 
You don’t know me like that.
 
Don’t learn too late.”

He
stared at her a moment longer, and then he left.

Sal
sat in the chair, while Grace, with her bare feet beneath her butt, sat on the
sofa.
 
She had a blanket around her and,
on Tommy’s orders, was being plowed with liquor.
 
Not to make her drunk, but to keep her sober
after a night like this.
 
Sal wasn’t
drinking anything.
 
He was too disturbed
by this turn of events.
 
He knew Grace
would one day encounter some horrific scenes in her life as a Gabrini, but he
hadn’t expected the horrific-ness to rise to this level.
 
Not this soon.

He
looked at her.
 
She was barely sipping
her drink, but her eyes still looked stunned.
 
She was in that afterglow.
 
She
was just coming to realize what she had done, and she had to face it.
 
What impressed Sal was how she was facing
it.
 
Head on.
 
No crying.
 
No bitterness.
 
No regrets.

But
the thought of what she had to endure broke his heart.
 
And it was that very reason why he could
never see himself marrying Gemma.
 
If he
had to keep their relationship just as it now was, and keep it that way as long
as he could without losing her altogether, he was willing to do so.
 
Because he knew the deal.
 
As soon as Gabrini would become her name, the
shit would change.
 
She would no longer
be a passive observer within the Gabrini world, but would become fair game
too.
 
Grace was proof.

“What
I don’t understand,” she said, “is why would Deena Driscoll harm Tam?
 
Why didn’t she go after me, or Tommy?”

“She
would have, if you hadn’t put an end to it yourself.
 
But she wanted you to suffer first, the way
she was suffering.
 
She was obsessed with
Alex Dawse.
 
It was the worse kept secret
in the fashion industry.
 
Even I knew
about it.
 
Alex didn’t give a damn about
her, and treated her like crap, but she loved her.”

“That’s
why she probably came to our house that first time, because Alex still wanted
Tommy.”

“Yep,”
Sal agreed.
 
“She probably wanted to make
sure Tommy wasn’t trying to go back to Alex the way Alex was apparently
assuming would happen.
 
So when Tommy
took Alex out, she decided she had to go after you.
 
To make him suffer.
 
Then she would go after him.
 
But you weren’t home.
 
Thank God, you had gone to Vegas.
 
So she changed the game.
 
Tam was there, it was convenient, so she
seized the opportunity.
 
You’d suffer,
since Tam was your half-sister, and then she’d take you out and Tommy will
suffer.
 

“Then
she’d take Tommy out,” Grace said sadly.

“Or
try to,” Sal said.
 
“She was going to
have to go through me first.
 
Nobody’s
touching Tommy.
 
But make no mistake
about it,” he added, “she was planning to torment you.
 
That’s why she held up that sign.
 
That’s why she wrote that shit on that
wall.
 
It was a game to her now.
 
That’s how sadistic that bitch was.”

Grace
shook her head at the awfulness of it all, and a stormy look appeared in her
eyes.
 

Sal
felt a need to reassure her.
 
He leaned
forward.
 
“I want you to know something,”
he said to her.
 
She looked at him.
 
“You did the right thing.
 
I know that sounds crazy, but if you wouldn’t
have done it to her, she would have done it to you.”

Grace
nodded.
 
“I know that,” she said.
 
“I knew it as soon as I saw Tam’s body.”

“She
meant business.”

“She
meant business, right,” Grace agreed.
 
“And the way I responded after that car accident with Alex Dawse, didn’t
help.
 
Responding like that empowered
them.
 
I became a shell of myself, and
even left my husband because of them.
 
They were winning, but instead of taking their victory and leaving us
alone, they decided to rub it in.
 
They
kept coming.”

“Because
it’s not one person, Grace.
 
It’s a lot
of people.
 
Tommy lived his life like a
man without a foundation.
 
And our old
man, he was to blame for that.
 
Our
mother too.
 
Neither one of them were
worth a damn.
 
But me and Tommy, we never
knew anything about commitment.
 
All we
knew about was getting what we wanted to have.
 
And the women we picked were the same way.
 
They didn’t want any committed
relationship.
 
They wanted sex.
 
Only problem is, Tommy was too good with
it.
 
He was slinging it like it was
nobody’s business and those ladies loved it.
 
They didn’t want to give that up.
 
And I told him it was going to happen.
 
I told him as soon as he put that ring on your finger, hell was going in
session.
 
And man did it go.”

Grace
couldn’t disagree with that, as she took another sip of her drink.

It
was be several more hours before Tommy returned.
 
The liquor had enough of a calming effect
that Grace soon fell asleep.
 
By the time
Tommy returned, she had been asleep for hours.

“Took
you a long time to supervise the disposing of two bodies,” Sal said.
 
“Unless you had other business,” he added.

“Where’s
Grace?” Tommy asked.

“Upstairs.
 
In bed.”

“Guest
bedroom?”

“Yep.
 
But what took you so long?
 
Had other business?”

“Plenty,”
Tommy replied, remembering all the different women he paid a visit to tonight,
with his unfriendly warning, as he headed upstairs.
 

As
soon as he entered the guest bedroom, he realized Grace wasn’t asleep after
all.
 
But was lying on the bed, clothed
in one of Sal’s dress shirts, staring at the ceiling.
 
But when she saw Tommy, she jumped up and ran
into his arms.
 
He lifted her off the
floor.
 
That was the tonic she really
needed: Tommy’s warm embrace.

She
pulled back.
 
“You took care of it?” she
asked him.

“It’s
done,” he said.
 
“There is no crime
scene, at least nowhere near our house, and the body has been disposed.”

“And
Tamara’s body?”

“Removed
also, with your apartment scrubbed clean.
 
Like Deena’s body, hers will also be placed to make it look as if she
was the victim of a random act of violence.
 
Which, given the fact that she had no knowledge of her killer, she
was.
 
Your mother will never know
anything differently.”

Grace
closed her eyes, thinking about her mother.
 
She opened them again.
 
“Once she
gets the news I’ll have to go to Oregon, to be with her and Ashley.”

“I
know.
 
We’ll go.”

Grace
considered him.
 
“I’m sorry, Tommy.
 
I know how much you cared about Deena.”

Tommy
frowned.
 
“What are you sorry about?
 
To hell with her!”

“I
know that’s right,” Sal’s voice was heard.
 
They turned around and saw Sal standing at the door.

Sal
didn’t take it back.
 
“She killed your
sister,” he said, “and would have taken you out too if you would have allowed
it.
 
You didn’t allow it.
 
You did what you had to do.”

“Sal
is right,” Tommy said.
 
“Don’t you dare
give Deena a second thought.
 
She
certainly wasn’t giving you or Tamara any consideration.”

“But
why her?”
 
Grace wanted to know.
 
“Why did she do it?”

“Revenge,”
Tommy said.
 
“She was in love with Alex
Dawse, and had been for years.
 
That’s
why she came to see me.
 
She wanted to
make sure if it didn’t work out with you, that I would continue to leave Alex
alone.”

“But
Alex had tried to kill me.
 
Didn’t she
understand you couldn’t let that stand?”

“Of
course she understood it.
 
But she felt
she couldn’t let Alex’s death stand either.
  
And she decided that you were the blame, and took it out on you.”

“And
then she’d come for Tommy,” Sal added.

“Right,”
Tommy agreed.

Grace
wrapped her arms around Tommy and laid her head on his shoulder.
 
Tommy knew what she needed.
 
He knew it the moment he held her in his
arms.
 
He looked back at Sal.
 
Sal knew it too.

“I’m
going, I’m going,” he said, and closed the bedroom door behind him.

When
Grace heard the door close, she lifted her head and looked at Tommy.
  
He placed his hands beneath her shirt and
began massaging her naked ass.
 
“It’s
been crazy,” he said, “but you’re going to be all right, Grace.”