TOMMY GABRINI 2: A PLACE IN HIS HEART (8 page)

“You
own thirty-seven percent of Trammel,” Grace was saying to a still-skeptical
Jillian.
 
“Cam owns five percent.
 
Which gives you and him together forty-two
percent, that’s true.
 
And it’s also true
that Tommy once owned forty percent.
 
With my ten percent, we would have still owned fifty percent of this
company.
 
But Tommy somehow managed to
purchase the remaining eight percent of Trammel shares from various other
stakeholders who had been declaring all along that they weren’t interested in
selling.
 
But they sold.
 
Don’t ask me how or why, but they did.
 
And Tommy bought.
 
And he gave all of those shares, along with
his shares, to me.
 
I now own fifty-eight
percent of Trammel.
 
In every scenario, I
now own Trammel.”

Jillian
felt as if she had been sucker punched.
 
The insult staggered her.
 
It felt
as if the slave was suddenly the plantation owner and was gloating about it!
 
Was Tommy out of his natural mind?
 
You don’t give the likes of her this kind of
authority!
 
She looked at that Grace
McKinsey with pure hatred in her eyes.
 

“If
you’re the majority owner now,” Jillian asked, contempt dripping from her fake,
ballooned lips, “then what does that make me?”

“The minority
owner,” Grace didn’t hesitate to say.

Jillian
again couldn’t believe it.
 
Why the
arrogance of her!
 

“It
also makes Grace,” Tommy pointed out, causing eyes to look over at him,
“Trammel’s new Chief Executive Officer.”

Jillian
looked at Tommy, her hate now directed toward him.
 
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” she
asked, her pretense at dignity now completely gone.
 
“I’m the Chief Executive Officer!”

“Not
anymore,” Grace said, with the eyes, as if watching a tennis match, now
watching her. “The majority determines the leadership.
 
Since I own the majority of the shares, I’m
not splitting my vote.
 
I have asked
Tommy to remain as our chairman for now, and I have appointed myself as CEO.”

Jillian
couldn’t believe it.
 
She just couldn’t
believe it.
 
“Oh, really now?” she
asked.
 
“And what position, Madam CEO,
are you going to give me?
 
Tommy’s got
the chairmanship.
 
You’re supposedly the
CEO.
 
The only major position left is
Chief Financial Officer, and I don’t want that position.”

“Good,
because you’re not getting it,” Grace said so matter-of-factly that it made
Jillian’s skin crawl.
 
“The Executive
Vice President position, as currently held by Cameron, is yours if you care to
have it.”
 
Tommy looked at Grace.
 
He hadn’t expected her to offer Jillian any
position.
 
“If you don’t want that
either, then I’ll find somebody else.”

“But
Cameron’s the vice president,” Jillian said with a frown.
 
“My son is the VP.”

“Not
anymore he’s not,” Grace said pointedly.
 
“He will not be collecting a paycheck and doing nothing for Trammel ever
again.”
 
Grace looked Jillian dead
on.
 
“That’s over,” she made clear.
 
“Trammel is no longer his piggy bank.”

Although
every member of the board agreed wholeheartedly with Grace, they weren’t ready
to pick sides just yet.
 
They knew
Jillian.
 
They couldn’t imagine her going
down without a fight.

Grace,
however, wasn’t going to continue arguing with her either.
 
She stood up.
 
“As you know, Tommy’s people were kind enough to conduct an extensive
audit of Trammel a few months back. I will be reviewing that audit in detail,
and as soon as I can see for myself the financial health of this company, I
will reconvene the board to discuss my recommendations.
 
Recommendations, by the way, that will be
implemented.”
 
Then Grace inwardly exhaled.
 
“Are there any questions?” she asked.

Jillian
was floored.
 
She stood there as if she
was suspended in her own disbelief.
 
And
the other board members too, who knew now that they would keep their jobs only
at the pleasure of the new majority owner, looked to be in shock too.
 
They expected some sort of announcement at
this meeting, but they hadn’t expected this.
 
They were too stunned, and too afraid, to say a word to their new
leader.

“I’ll
be in my office if you have any questions,” Grace said as she began grabbing
her briefcase and purse.
 
She was so
nervous that her hands were trying to shake furiously, but she managed to keep
them steady as she went.
 
“Have a nice
day,” she said to one and all, and then left the board room.
 
She purposely did not look over at
Tommy.
 
Nobody was going to respect a
puppet, and she had to prove to them that she wasn’t Tommy’s.

Tommy
also had the same thought in mind.
 
That
was why he didn’t follow her out.
 
He
wanted to make clear that she was now leading the charge here at Trammel and
they’d better get used to it.
 
Yet as
soon as the door was closed behind her, they pounced, with the main question
being one of class.
 
How could Jillian’s
chief of staff, they kept asking, suddenly become her boss?

“Miss
McKinsey explained how,” Tommy replied as he made a slow walk back to the head
of the table.

“But
she’s your girlfriend, Tommy, is that not true?
 
How can you mix business with pleasure by letting your girlfriend run
our company?”

“She’s
my fiancée,” he corrected the member.
 
“And it’s her company now.”

But
Jillian only heard the first part.
 
She
wasn’t trying to hear the second part.
 
“Your fiancée?” she asked.
 
“You
plan to marry
that
?”

Tommy
looked at her.
 
“I plan to marry Grace
McKinsey.
 
I asked her to marry me, and
to my shock and privilege, she said yes.
 
We are to be married.”

“But.
. .” Jillian was shaking her head.
 
It
seemed as if the entire world had changed in a day.
 
“When?” she asked.

“That’s
none of your concern,” Tommy made clear.
 
“I only brought it up,” he said, “because I wanted to make sure you
understood who you were now dealing with.”
 
Tommy said this in no uncertain terms, directed completely at
Jillian.
 

Jillian’s
face reddened.
 
The nerve he had, she
thought.
 
But he continued to have that
nerve as he answered a few minor concerns, informed them that Grace would
convene a meeting in the future possibly on short notice so they needed to be
mindful, and then he left them to their shock and disbelief.
 

He
thought about going to Grace’s office to see how she was holding up, but he
decided against it.
 
She had this well in
hand and he had to allow her to keep it well in hand.
 
He, instead, stepped onto the elevator, and
left Trammel altogether.

But
he wasn’t ten minutes in his limo, heading to his own office, when he received
a phone call from Kelli Montiscue, an old acquaintance of his who once upon a
time was his number one lady.

“Is
it true?” she asked him as if they’d been discussing it already.
 
He was seated in the backseat of his
limousine reading over some paperwork, when the call came in.

“Is
what true?” he asked, although he had a good idea.
 
But he never hedged bets against
himself.
 
He wanted to make certain what
exactly the question entailed.

“You’re
engaged
?
 
You’re getting
married
?”
 
She said
engaged
and
married
as if they were bad words.

Tommy,
however, didn’t hesitate.
 
“Yes,” he
said.

There
was now a hesitation on her part.
 
Then
he heard sniffling.
 
He stopped reading
his reports and paid attention to his phone call.
 
“Kell?” he asked.

“Why
would you . . . How could you?” she finally asked.
 
“How could you do this to me?”

Tommy
frowned.
 
“To you?” he asked.
 
“What am I doing to you?
 
We haven’t been together in months.”

“But
how could you marry somebody else?
 
After
Shanks I thought . . . I thought. . .”

Tommy
had heard it before from more than a few of his previous girlfriends.
 
After he dumped Shanks they assumed they had
the inside track should he want to go serious with somebody again.
 
They were wrong.
 
All of them.
 
“You thought what?”

“I
thought I would be. . . I thought I was the one, Tommy.
 
We’ve been together for so long.
 
I gave you the best years of my life.
  
Now I’m some old hag nobody wants.”

“Oh,
don’t be ridiculous,” he said, although it ached him to know that she felt that
way.
 
Kelli was a gorgeous girl, smart
and sharp.
 
But she was a model.
 
And when you start pushing forty, modeling
was no longer a plausible option.
 
It was
like an athlete.
 
Thirty-nine wasn’t old
per se, but it was old in the game.
 
Kelli was old in the game.
 
She knew it, and Tommy did too. “You’re a
beautiful woman, and always will be,” he said to reassure her.
 
“You’ll make any man very happy.”

“I
don’t want to make any man happy!
 
I want
to make you happy, Tommy!
 
I’m supposed
to be next, not her!”

Tommy
frowned.
 
“Stop talking nonsense, now,
Kell, I mean it.
 
We had sex, that was
the sum and substance of our relationship and you know it.
 
And you agreed to it beforehand.”

“But
I wasn’t thirty-nine beforehand!
 
I
wasn’t some old maid beforehand!
 
I
waited patiently on you.
 
You once told
me I was your favorite, Tommy.
 
You once
told me that.”

Tommy
closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead.
 
She probably wasn’t the only one he had told that to.
 
And although he didn’t remember telling her
any such thing, he was willing to bet what they were doing when he told
her.
 
They were fucking.
 
Undoubtedly.

And
it only made him all the more certain of just how right Grace was.
 
Open relationships were a fool’s game.

Then
Kelli said, “I can’t live without you, Tommy,” and his heart squeezed.

“You’ll
live just fine, trust me,” he said.
 
“You’re a beautiful lady with a beautiful future ahead of you.
 
Even after modeling.”

“I
can’t live without you, Tommy,” she said again, as if he was talking nonsense
while she was making a statement of fact.

Tommy’s
heart pounded.
 
“Now stop that kind of
talk, Kell, I mean it.
 
You know how I
get on your case when you get like that.
 
So cut it out.
 
You hear me?”
 
He waited, but she made no response.
 
“Kelli?
 
Kelli?
 
Kell
?”

But
the line went dead.
 
Tommy, now
irritated, angry, but also super-worried, slammed the phone down too.
 
He started not to do anything.
 
He didn’t need this aggravation.
 
But he couldn’t just leave her distressed
that way.
 
He had to make sure she was
okay.
 
He knew Kelli.
 
He knew how dramatic she could get.
 
He pressed the intercom button.
 
“Albert,” he said to his driver, “take me to
Kelli’s house.

“Miss
Montiscue, sir?”

“Yes,”
Tommy said.
 
And then added, “as quickly
as possible,” before pressing off.