TOMMY GABRINI 2: A PLACE IN HIS HEART (17 page)

“What
the hell happened, Grace?” Sal asked as he sat in the chair flanking the sofa.

Grace
exhaled.
 
The idea of reliving that
nightmare was something she knew she had to do, as Tommy would insist she tell
him the whole story, but it wasn’t something she wanted to do.
 
“You guys want anything to drink?”

Tommy
looked at her.
 
He could see the fear
still in her eyes.
 
“Sure, babe,” he
said, patting her on her hip.

Grace
got up and went into the kitchen.
 
When
she was gone, Sal looked at Tommy and raised his eyebrows.
 
“She looks pretty bad,” he said.

“Yeah,”
Tommy replied.

“If
she looks like this, wonder how the other girl looks?”

“She’ll
look worse,” Tommy said, “when I’m finished with her.”

When
Grace returned, with the drinks, she sat beside Tommy.
 
And told them exactly what happened.

“But
did she say what it was about?”

Grace
shook her head.
 
“No.
 
I think she told the cops why, but she didn’t
tell me.”
 

“And
they wouldn’t let you press charges?” Sal asked.
 

“I
could press them, but according to those cops, she could press them on me too,
and they would have to take us both Downtown.
 
Trammel would take a hit if I got arrested on some domestic violence
nonsense.
 
I couldn’t take that risk.”

Tommy
patted her on the thigh.
 
“Good for you,”
he said.
 
“You have an acute business
sense, babe,” he said.

“Fuck
business sense,” Sal said, leaning forward.
 
“What are we going to do about it?”

Tommy,
who had his legs crossed and seemed more like a professor waiting to decide his
next move than a vengeful ex-lover, exhaled.
 
“Describe her,” he said to Grace.

Grace
described her, even down to the small gap between her teeth.
 
Tommy and Sal looked at each other.

“Kelli,”
they said in unison.
 
“The bitch,” Sal
added.

“Who’s
Kelli?” Grace asked.

“Kelli
Montiscue,” Sal said.
 
“One of Tommy’s
former longtime friends.”

“A
friend with benefits?” Grace asked.

“You
know it,” Sal said.
 
He didn’t care how
Tommy felt about his comment either.
 
Tommy, in Sal’s view, protected Grace too much.
  
She needed to know what she was up against.

Tommy
stood up.
 
He leaned down and kissed
Grace, careful to avoid her small cut.
 
“I’ll be back,” he said.

“Where
are you going?” she asked him.

“I’ll
be back,” he said again.

Sal
stood up too. “So what’s the plan?
 
What
are we going to do?”

“You’re
going to stay here with Grace.
 
I’m going
to take care of some business.”

Sal
saw that look in Tommy’s eyes.
 
He was
what their father called a backdoor asshole.
 
Whereas Sal would settle scores on the spot, upfront, often causing
considerable jeopardy to himself, Tommy would settle scores behind the scenes,
when the perp wasn’t expecting a score to be settled, and where he could exact
the harshest punishment.

Sal
never got in Tommy’s way when he had that look in his eyes, and Grace knew not
to either.
 
“Okay,” he said.
 
“I’ll wait here.”

Kelli
Montiscue was in her bathtub nursing her wounds.
 
It had been an awful scene.
 
She had gone over there to talk, just talk
some sense into the girl.
 
But as soon as
she saw her face, and saw that freshness, that innocence that she knew Tommy
would like, she couldn’t hold back.
 
She
had to lash out.
 
What she never expected
was that the girl, Grace, would lash out too.
 
And nearly kill her.
 
The bitch!

The
doorbell started ringing just as she was about to really relax, and she knew it
was probably Tommy.
 
He was going to be
upset, she knew that too, but she was also knew she had to bring it.
 
She had to convince him somehow that she was
the woman for him, not that plain Jane bitch.
 
She came a dime a dozen, but a woman like her, she felt, a woman who had
once been the toast of the fashion world, was priceless.

She
got out of the tub, grabbed her bathrobe, slipped into her bath slippers, and
made her way to her front door.
 
As soon
as she opened it, and saw Tommy, she actually smiled.
 
Tommy couldn’t believe it.

“I
know you’re mad,” she said with a grin, “but I can explain.”

She
opened the door further, and he walked in.
 
Although he was raging inside, nothing on his exterior alerted Kelli to
that reality.
 
She actually thought that
she could explain it away.
 
She actually
thought that she could say just the right words, or display just the right breast,
to change Tommy’s heart.
 
Her thought
process could not have been more wrong.

As
soon as the door shut, and she turned toward him, he grabbed her by the catch
of her throat and slung her against that door.
 
“Tommy!” she screamed.
 
“You’re
hurting me!”

Tommy
stared her in her eyes.
 
He made sure she
was looking at him.
 
It was this side of
Tommy, this ruthless, animalistic side, that every woman who had ever dated
Tommy rarely saw, but always feared.
 

“Am I
the kind of man who enjoy games, Kell?” he asked her.

“This
isn’t a game,” she said, but he slammed her harder against the door.

“Do I
play games, Kell?” he asked her again.

“No!”
she answered, as the pain ripped through her body.
 
“You don’t play games.”

“This
game you’re playing, has got to stop.
 
You understand me, Kell?
 
It has
got to stop.
 
Grace McKinsey is my woman.
 
She is going to be my wife.
 
If you ever, and I mean ever touch her again,
I will fucking kill you.”

Kelli
opened her mouth to object, but Tommy pulled his gun out and slung it into her
mouth.
 
Her eyes were wide with shock and
her body fought to get away from him.
 
She knew Tommy could have a terrible temper, but she never dreamed it
would come to this.

“I
will fucking kill you,” Tommy said again.
 
Words, he knew, were not going to work with Kelli.
 
He had to put her very existence on the
line.
 

“You
think you know me, Kell,” he went on, “but you don’t know a
got
damn thing about me if you think I’m
going to let you terrorize my lady.
 
You
have another fucking thought coming if you think I’m going to let that
happen.”
 

He
tightened his hold on her, and pushed his gun further into her mouth, causing
her to gag.

“You
will stay away from me and you for damn sure will stay away from Grace.
 
Do I finally make myself clear, Kell?
 
You will not be terrorizing her, not ever!
 
Because if you try that shit, you won’t be
any
Fatal Attraction
bitch.
 
You’ll just be a fatal bitch.”

Then
he removed his gun from her mouth.
 
She
exhaled with that
back from the brink
relief, but it was short-lived.
 
Because
Tommy might have put his gun away, but he still had his fist.
 
He knocked her so hard, that he knocked a
tooth out.
 
She fell to her knees in
agony, and looked up to Tommy for sympathy.
 
How could he do this to her, her eyes asked.
 
She loves him!

But
Tommy showed no mercy.
 
He kicked her
down and put his expensive shoe on her chest, keeping her down.
  

“Try
me one more time, Kell,” he said, “and a missing tooth will be the last thing
you’ll be worried about.
 
I guarantee
it.”

Tommy
stared at her again, as if his look alone wanted to force her to understand
just how serious he was.
 
He used to care
about this woman, that was a fact.
 
But
she had put her hands on Grace.
 
That
changed everything in his eyes.
 
Now she
was the enemy.
 
Grace was off limits, and
she had crossed that line.
 
He couldn’t
let her think for a second that their history would change his mind.
 
She had to understand that it wouldn’t.
 
If he had to come back this way, he’d have to
come back deadly.
 
And although he’d do
what he had to do, that was the last thing he wanted to do.

 
He removed his shoe, and then walked out of
her apartment.

“I
want a gun,” Grace said to Sal as they waited for Tommy’s return.
 
She was lying on the couch, on her back, and
Sal was seated in the chair.
 

He
looked at her.
 
Her words broke his
heart.
 
He and Tommy were thugs in the
long run, it was in their DNA, but not Grace.
 
“You don’t want a gun,” he said with an underlying plea in his
voice.
 
“You don’t wanna go down that
road.”

“I
don’t want to, but I have to, Sal.
 
These
females aren’t going to give up Tommy without a fight.
 
They aren’t going to go quietly into that
good night like losing Tommy’s sex is no big deal to them.
 
Most of them have moved on, but some of them
will never give him up without a fight.
 
Well I’m not giving him up without a fight either.
 
But I’ve got to be equipped.
 
You should have seen the rage in that woman’s
eyes.
 
I never seen her before in my life
that I know of, but she hated my guts.
 
I
have to be equipped, Sal, and I have to turn to you because Tommy won’t let me
go anywhere near a gun and you know it.”

“I
know.
 
He babies you, I tell him that all
the time.
 
But that’s because he knows
you’re better than us, Grace.
 
You have
no blood on your hands.
 
And he’s
determined to keep it that way.”

But
Grace was determined too.
 
“If you don’t
do it for me,” she said, “I’ll do it myself.
 
I’ll find a way, Sal, I promise you I will.”

Sal
understood what she meant.
 
And he agreed
with her.
 
But Tommy would never forgive
him if he took her down that road.
 
That
could be the end of his airtight relationship with his brother.
 
Although he loved Grace, and thought the
world of her, nobody alive was going to cause him to lose Tommy.
 

Nobody.

“I’ll
see what I can do,” he said to her, although even she knew it was just a
stalling tactic, an unabashed delay, until he could alert Tommy.

Grace
was asleep in bed by the time Tommy made it back.
 
He didn’t come straight back.
  
He, instead, drove around town to take the
edge off.
 
He hated to go to that dark
place, and often when he did he had to have some time alone to return back to
normal.
 
It was nearly four in the
morning by the time he returned to Grace’s apartment.

He
sent Sal home, took a shower, and then got in bed with Grace.
 
He just laid there, since his weight on the
bed didn’t wake her, and stared at her.
 
Her eye was still a little puffy, and up close that cut on her lip was
still visible, but she looked far better than Kelli had looked.
 
Which surprised him when he first saw
Kell.
 
Grace had actually held her own
and then some.
 
She had actually stood up
to that bully of a female and gave her a taste of her own medicine.
 

Tommy
wanted to smile at the thought of his baby beating the crap out of some woman,
but it was backed by too much pain for him to find the humor.
 
She could have been in serious jeopardy
tonight, had Kell been even more irrational than coming to Grace’s apartment in
the first place had led her to be.
 
Sal
had told him, before he left, about Grace’s request for a gun.
 
And although it was a terrible thought for
Tommy, he knew she was right.
 
She did
need her own protection.
 
She did need to
be able to defend herself adequately.
 
Paid security only got you just so far, he knew, and it didn’t help a
damn thing with Kell.
 
So he knew he had
to make at least a couple changes.
 
Putting security on Kell and a few of his other ladies who might be
predisposed to try some stupid shit was one of the things.
 
Taking Grace to the gun range, he thought
sadly, was the other.