Sal Gabrini: His House of Cards (15 page)

Then Sal
looked at Reno.
 
They were eyeball to
eyeball.
 
“How do you do it, Ree?” he
asked.

Reno stared at
his cousin.
 
“How do I do what?”

“Keep your
woman happy.
 
How do you keep Trina after
all these years?
 
How do you have this
perfect marriage?”

“First of
all,” Reno said, “there’s no such thing as a perfect marriage.
 
Trina’s left my ass countless times.”

“But she
always came back.”

Reno
nodded.
 
“Always.”

“Why?”

Reno
frowned.
 
“Love.
 
What else?”
 
Then his heart went out to Sal.
 
He’d rarely seen him so devastated.
 
“Love,” he said, “and a lot of hard work on my part.
 
You are going to have to work to win her
back, Sal.”

Sal listened
to him.

“There are
no shortcuts,” Reno continued.
 
“Gemma
Jones is not one of your men.
 
You can’t
make her do shit.
 
You’re going to have
to get off your ass and fight for her.”

Sal
nodded.
 
“I know,” he said.
 
“But sometimes I feel like I should let her
go.
 
All this shit I’m in.
 
All these enemies I have.
 
I should let her go.
 
She’ll be better off without me.”

It was a
truth every Gabrini man had to face.
 
But
Reno would have none of that for Sal.
 
“No, she wouldn’t,” he said heartfelt.
 
“She’s the best thing that ever happened to you, Sal.
 
That’s the truth.
 
But you’re the best thing that ever happened
to her.
 
That’s true too.
 
Fight for her, Sal.
 
Sometimes a woman just wants you to fight for
her.”

Over the
next few weeks, Sal did all he could to win Gemma back.
 
He tried several times to phone her.
 
Even more times he tried to see her.
 
But all of his efforts were rebuffed.
 
She needed time, she told him.
 
He had to be willing to give her time.

It was one
of the toughest things Sal had ever done.
 
But he abided by her wishes.
 
He
gave her time.
 
And life took on a
surreal feeling for Sal.
 
Day in and day
out it felt as if he was going through the motions of life rather than
living.
 
He had business out of town that
his lieutenants had to handle.
 
He wasn’t
about to leave town until his wife was back in his arms.
 
Instead of having one of his men keep an eye
on Gemma, to make sure she was okay, he kept an eye on her himself.
 
He continue to run the Vegas office of the
Gabrini Corporation.
 
He did what he had
to do.
 
But for the first time in their
marriage, he never once left town.

It wasn’t
until nineteen days after she had left him, when he was having lunch with a
business associate, did he even get a chance to see her up close.

He was at a
table in the restaurant, talking about a merger with his acquisitions manager,
when Gemma walked in with two other people: a man and a woman.
 
Since the courthouse were mere blocks away,
he assumed they were attorney friends of hers having lunch together.
 
But it was the weirdest feeling in the world
to Sal.
 
There was Gemma, looking
gorgeous in a blue skirt suit, as she allowed some man to hold her seat for
her.
 
And then she allowed that same man
to sit beside her, as if he was her man, and Sal could do nothing about it.

His heart
ached just watching her.
 
Word had
already spread that there was trouble in paradise, and his ex-girlfriends were
coming out of the woodwork trying to hook back up with Sal again.
 
Or, as one of them boldly said, she was
trying to hook back up with Sal’s big dick again.
 
Juicy and Long, she called it.
 
And she missed it.
 
But Sal wasn’t having any of it.
 
He told her and all the others that he wasn’t
available and to lose his number the way he told them to lose it long ago.
 
Whatever they heard about any breakup was
nothing more than a rumor.
 
He and his
wife, he told them, were never going to part.

But their
weeks of separation were not bearing that out.
 
He was in a restaurant with his wife, but they could not have been more
apart.
 
He kept taking peeps at her.
 
He knew he was behaving like some peeping
Tom, but he couldn’t help himself.

Although she
was smiling and talking with her colleagues, and seemingly carefree, he could
see the strain on her beautiful face.
 
And her body, though naturally slender, seemed frailer to him.
 
This separation was tearing her apart too.
 
And he hated himself even more for that.
 
Reno told him to stand and fight for
her.
 
Reno told him that he was the best
thing that ever happened to Gemma.
 
But
right now, seeing the pain he had caused her, he felt like the worse human
being alive.

To further
aggravate an already tough situation, his manager threw in his two cents.
 
“Isn’t that Mrs. Gabrini, sir?” he asked, as
he looked across the room at Gemma.
 
“Isn’t that your lovely wife?”

Sal ignored
him, and tried to ignore Gemma, but it was like ignoring a tiger on his
head.
 
He couldn’t ignore Gemma.

“I’ll be
back,” he finally said, tossed his napkin on the table, and made his way to her
table.
 
He knew she didn’t want to see
him.
 
He knew she might very well tell
him to take a hike.
 
But she was his wife
dammit.
 
He wasn’t about to pretend they
were strangers.

Gemma and
her colleagues were in the middle of a laughing session when he arrived at
their table.
 
Gemma was the first to see
him, and although she continued to smile, the strain on her face was even more
pronounced up close.
 
Her two colleagues
seemed to recognize him too, Gemma’s tough guy husband Sal Gabrini was well
known around that courthouse.
 
And they
also could feel the chill.

After
speaking to them, Sal turned to Gemma.
 
“Hey, how are you?” he asked her, as he placed his hands in his pants
pockets to keep himself from falling apart.
 
He wasn’t a man who could smile easily on his best day.
 
He didn’t even try to pretend on this awful
day.

Gemma’s
heartbeat quickened when she realized Sal was in the restaurant and was now
upon her.
 
And she felt awkward too.
 
“Hey,” she responded.

Her demeanor
was very polite.
 
To the uninformed
observer, like her two colleagues, it was a very cordial demeanor.
 
To Sal, who knew how warmly Gemma usually
greeted him, it felt like a knife in the gut.
 

But he
continued to maintain his composure.
 
“I
was having lunch with one of my managers.
 
I saw you over here.”

Gemma didn’t
respond to that.
 
He knew she wasn’t
ready for this.

Sal knew she
wasn’t about to come around in a setting like this, and he was about to just
leave her alone.
 
He spoke to her.
 
That was enough.
 
But then he glanced at the food in front of
her.
 
And he couldn’t help himself.
 
“That’s all you’re going to eat?” he
asked.
 
“That salad in front of you?”

Gemma knew
what was coming next.
 
Sal had this
outsized thing about her getting too thin.
 
“That’s all I want, yes.”

“You’re
losing weight,” he responded, as if she had just stepped off of a scale.
 
“You aren’t eating enough.”

“I’m okay,
Sal,” Gemma said firmly, almost harshly, and gave him a hard look.
 
He wasn’t thinking about her diet when he was
lying about that house.
 
He wasn’t
thinking about her wellbeing when he failed to mention Blanche Delilah.

But Sal
still had his pride.
 
He loved her and
their troubles were definitely his fault, but he wasn’t going to stand here and
let her talk to him any kind of way.
 
“Okay, well, I’ll leave you to it.
 
Have a nice day, guys,” he said to all three of them, and headed back to
his table.

Gemma felt
awful as she watched him leave.
 
But she
couldn’t possibly feel any worse than Sal.

But he
didn’t give up.
 
It would take more than
pride to make him quit.

Early the
next morning, Gemma woke up to an oddity that stunned her.

She got out
of her bed and put on her slippers.
 
She
slept in one of Sal’s dress shirts that had been hanging in the closet at her
old house, a shirt he left there before they were married.
 
Although they were separated, she slept in
his shirts to at least smell his presence.
 
But it wasn’t his presence she was smelling as she made her way
downstairs.
 
It was bacon.
 
She went into her kitchen.
 
Sal was at the stove.

He glanced
back at her, and then went back to his pots and pans.
 
She had just awakened, and that need for more
sleep still captured her, but he looked freshly scrubbed and bursting with
energy as he stood there in his pristine suit, his Rolex watch, and his
imported shoes.
 
And he was scrambling
eggs, something she couldn’t recall he ever did.
 
It was so surreal to Gemma that she didn’t
know what to say.

Sal glanced
back at her again.
 
“Thought I’d cook you
breakfast,” he said into the silence.

To his
credit, she thought, he wasn’t smiling and trying to behave as if nothing had
happened between them.
 
But it was still
crazy to her.

He continued
to look at her.
 
He always did love the
way she looked first thing in the morning.
 
Her hair on top of her head.
 
Her
beautiful eyes wide with surprise.
 
Her
gorgeous body tight and pliable, and undoubtedly wet and ready for him.
 
He looked down, at that body of hers and the
sexy fact that she was wearing one of his dress shirts. “Have a seat,” he said.

But Gemma
wasn’t about to lead him on.
 
“This isn’t
going to change anything, Sal,” she said.

“I didn’t
say it would.
 
But I want to feed
you.
 
You’re still my responsibility
whether you want to be or not.
 
You’re
looking frail.
 
I want to make sure you
eat.”

There were
easier ways, Gemma knew, than him coming to her house, letting himself in, and
cooking a full blown breakfast.
 
But when
did Sal ever do it the easy way?

She went to
the powder room off from the foyer and washed her face and hands.
 
She lingered, leaning against the sink, as
she tried to muster the energy it took to see the man she loved without
breaking down and giving in.
 
But that was
the quandary she found herself in.
 
What
could he ever say to her when it was his words that caused their separation in
the first place?

When she
arrived back in the kitchen, Sal had both plates of food on the table and was
waiting for her.
 
He stood up when she
returned, and sat down after she did.

It was a hearty
breakfast: bacon, eggs, and waffles.
 
She
wasn’t hungry.
 
She couldn’t eat all of
this food if her life depended on it.
 
But he didn’t have to do this for her.
 
She ate.

Sal sat down
across from her and ate too.
 
They ate
quietly.
 
He continued to take peeps at
her, and she continued to take peeps at him.
 
Until he exhaled.
 
“How have you
been sleeping?” he asked.
 
“Pretty good?”

“I would say
so,” she responded.

“I wish I
can say the same for myself.
 
I never
sleep well away from you.”

More
silence.

“How does it
taste?” he asked.
 
“I’m no great cook,
but I gave it my best.”

“It’s fine,”
Gemma said.
 
“And thank you for preparing
it.”

Sal
smiled.
 
“You know you’re welcome,
baby.
 
I’ll do anything for you.”

“Sal,” Gemma
said quickly, “this isn’t going to change anything.
 
I’m not ready yet.
 
You can’t just lie to me like that and expect
me to pretend it doesn’t hurt.
 
It hurts.
 
It’s devastating.
 
And you’ve got to give me time and space to
decide what I want to do.”

“That’s what
I’m doing.
 
But when I saw you yesterday
looking so thin I felt I had to do more.
 
I’m worried about you.”

“I’m
fine.
 
There’s no need to worry.
 
I’m . . .” And the reality of their situation
hit her hard.
 
Again.
 
She stood up, which caused Sal to stand
too.
 
“I’d better get ready for work,”
she said, and was about to head toward the stairs.

“Gem,” Sal
said so heartfelt that Gemma turned around.

Sal
exhaled.
 
“What can I say to make this
right?
 
Please tell me.”

“You can’t
say anything,” Gemma responded.
 
“That’s
the problem.
 
I don’t know if I can trust
what you say.
 
And I have to be able to
trust you or I don’t see how we can have a life together, Sal.
 
There has to be trust.”

Gemma stared
at him as if she needed him to understand what she was dealing with, and then
she headed back upstairs.

Sal stood
there wishing to hold her, and to comfort her, and to apologize a million times
over for the pain he put her through.
 
But he had to give her time.
 
Time
was always his enemy.
 
But he had to rely
on that enemy this time.