TOMMY GABRINI 2: A PLACE IN HIS HEART Page 14

  “Yeah, I’ll report back to you all right,” Carol said and he laughed. “You must take me for a fool. I’m not about to lose my job over you and nobody else. I have bills to pay.”

  “I’m just kidding! But I know what I’m talking about. She’s only getting what she deserves.”

  Carol looked at him. How in the world would he know what somebody else deserved? “You think those allegations are true?” she asked him.

  “Hell yeah they’re true! Why else would the guy make them if they wasn’t true? She’s guilty as sin! You know it and I know it too.”

  “I don’t know shit,” Carol said. “Don’t lump me in there with you. I’ll just wait and see how it unfolds, that’s all I’ve got to say. I’m withholding judgment.”

  “Withhold it all you want. But I’m telling you it’s true. Grace McKinsey is terrible now. Just vile. She fired Nayla you know.”

  The receptionist nodded her head. “I heard. I’m no fan of Nayla’s, because we all know she hasn’t done a damn thing in all the time she’s been here, but they were friends. Longtime friends. She was wrong to do her friend like that.”

  “That power’s gone to her head, I’m telling you,” Jared said. “That’s why she demoted me. Just because she could.”

  Carol looked at him doubtfully. “That’s what she told you?”

  “That’s what she said,” Jared lied convincingly. “But you think I care? I don’t give a damn. I don’t plan to be around here forever anyway. This place here is not my final stop by any means.”

  The elevator doors binged open. Whenever that happened it was Carol’s job to look and make sure that whomever was entering the top floor had a right to be there. When she saw that it was Tommy and Sal Gabrini who had entered, she motioned to Jared. “Check it out,” she said to him.

  Jared looked too. Tommy Gabrini, one of those fat cats who always walked as if he owned everything, was heading their way in his rich silk suit and sparkling dress shoes. Women fawned over Tommy Gabrini, and Jared, who fancied himself a ladies man as well, couldn’t stand the sight of him for that very reason. Whereas Jared had to beg the females repeatedly to give him so much as a date, all Tommy Gabrini had to do was ask. Sometimes he didn’t even have to do that. The females asked him! The younger man with Tommy, who was equally well-appointed in his own expensive outlay, was a stranger to Jared.

  “Her protector has arrived,” Carol said under her breath. “Good afternoon, Mr. Gabrini,” she said aloud, and with a grand smile.

  “Hello, Carol,” Tommy said as he and Sal approached the reception desk. “Miss McKinsey in?”

  “Yes, sir. Should I let her know you wish to see her?”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Sal said firmly, as if that receptionist had some nerve even suggesting announcing his brother. Tommy and Sal kept walking.

  Jared leaned closer to Carol. “I told you those allegations were true. Why else would Tommy Gabrini come all this way? This is big. Grace McKinsey is in trouble.”

  Grace, however, was still in her office working. She was seated at the small conference table reviewing all of the departmental dossiers. She had pulled the file on Logistics, so she therefore decided to take a look at all of the departments. When knocks were heard on her door, she didn’t bother to look up.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  The door opened and Tommy and Sal walked in. When Grace looked up and saw them, she knew immediately that something was up. It was rare enough to have Tommy visiting Trammel in the middle of a workday, but to have Sal with him?

  “What’s wrong?” she found herself asking.

  Sal looked at Tommy. Tommy walked over to her and kissed her on the lips. “You haven’t heard?” he asked her.

  “Heard what?” she asked him.

  Tommy sat down beside Grace at the table. Sal walked over and sat down behind her desk.

  “What it is, Tommy?” she asked him.

  “The story just broke. Apparently some guy’s claiming that, while you were in college, you were the driver in a car accident that claimed a woman’s life.”

  Grace’s heart pounded against her chest. Both Tommy and Sal were staring at her, to see her reaction to the news.

  Tommy, especially, couldn’t blink an eye. “Is it true?” he asked her.

  “Who said this?”

  For some reason this irritated Tommy. “What difference does it make who said it? Is it true, Grace?”

  “No,” she said quickly, and then just as quickly backtracked. “I mean yes.”

  Sal frowned. “No, you mean yes? What kind of answer is that?”

  “Sal,” Tommy said, looking over at his brother. “Stay out of this.” Tommy looked at Grace again.

  “But what did he say?” she asked Tommy.

  “He said you were the driver, driving drunk, and that you hit a Van. He said when he came to in the hospital, your father and another man, a white man, paid him to say a third man had been behind the wheel but he fled the scene before the cops could arrive. He claim he was told to make up a name of this friend, a nickname, and the DA was unable to find him. No-one, therefore, was ever prosecuted.”

  Grace shook her head. “I told you about that accident, Tommy. I told you about it a long time ago.” This was news to Sal. He looked at his brother.

  “Yes, Grace, you told me about the accident,” Tommy admitted. “But you also told me that you weren’t the driver.”

  “I wasn’t the driver!”

  “But that guy on the news today said you were the driver.”

  “No,” Grace said, shaking her head. “I mean, yes, I was there, but not like that.”

  Sal stared at her. She was acting guilty as hell, he thought.

  Tommy placed his hand over the back of her chair. He hated to see her so distressed, but he had to hear the truth. “Tell me what happened,” he said.

  Grace sat her pen on the table and leaned back. She folded her arms. Tommy was seated so close to her that she could smell his sweet cologne, but she didn’t feel that usual warmth his body generated. There was a chill there. He looked almost as distressed as she suddenly felt. “It was my freshman year,” she said. “I was eighteen. It was my first time away from my father’s authority and I guess I cut loose a little. Foolishly.”

  There was a long pause. “Go on,” Tommy said.

  “Me and this guy, Rait Rawlings, were friends. We became fast friends. He liked to party and I enjoyed his company, he always made me laugh, so I started partying too. We apparently got drunk one night at some house party or something and so we got this guy to drive us home. And then there was this terrible accident.”

  “What was the name of the driver?” Tommy asked her.

  Grace shook her head. “I don’t know. He was a friend of Rait’s. I don’t even remember another guy, I don’t remember anything about that night. Except what I’ve been told.”

  “Your friend, this Rait Rawlings, is now saying that you were the driver of that car. That you caused that accident, Grace.”

  “But that’s not true! I wasn’t driving! That’s why they never charged me. Somebody else was driving.”

  “But it was your car?” Sal asked.

  Grace looked over at Sal. “Yes, it was my car. It was my father’s high school graduation gift. But,” she looked at Tommy. “But I wasn’t the driver.”

  “And you don’t remember who was?” Sal asked.

  Grace shook her head. “No. After I woke up, it was something like five days after the accident, I tried so hard to remember things. But I couldn’t. It was all gone. The latest I could remember was even before we even made it to the party. I remember I was driving and Rait was on the passenger side and I remember how happy we were to be getting away from campus. I even remember him telling some stupid joke about Michael Jackson doing the moonwalk on the moon, or something silly like that. I even remember him slapping his knee and laughing so hard. But I don’t remember where we went, or the other guy, or anything like that.”
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br />   Tommy exhaled.

  “I’m sorry, Tommy, but I don’t remember it. I even asked Dad, at the time, to take me to a hypnotist or somebody like that, but he wouldn’t hear of it. That part of my life was over, he told me, and he told me to move on.” Then she looked at Tommy. “I didn’t kill that woman, Tommy. I was in the car, but I didn’t kill that woman. I wouldn’t have. Even Rait said I wasn’t driving that car.”

  “That’s not what he said today,” Sal said.

  Grace looked at Sal, then she looked at Tommy. “There’s no way I could have done something like that. I wouldn’t have done something like that.”

  Tommy pulled her into his arms. “I know that,” he said. But he also knew that this kind of story, of the head of Trammel driving drunk and killing an innocent woman, and never even being charged, could get out of hand fast. He glanced over at Sal as he held Grace. He knew Grace was innocent of the charges. But what he couldn’t figure out was why this Rawlings character would suddenly start claiming otherwise.

  When he stopped hugging her, he looked at the files on the table. “What are those?”

  “Departmental dossiers. I was just reviewing them.”

  “Put them up,” Tommy said, rising to his feet. “Let’s call it a day.” He knew a thing or two about damage control, and he knew Grace and Trammel was going to need a lot of both.

  Grace would normally have a problem with leaving work before late night, but not today. This news blindsided her. She didn’t see this coming. She hadn’t thought about that accident in years, and it was purposeful neglect. She therefore had to regroup. She got up, took the dossiers and locked them away in the file cabinet, and then she walked just ahead of Tommy, as Sal led them out.

  The looks on the faces of her employees as she made her way to the elevators was one thing. She knew some were probably judging her erroneously and others were probably enjoying her distress. But she could handle the folks at Trammel. Trammel was one thing. But when she, Tommy, and Sal made it downstairs and walked through the exit, and she saw the contingent of press people with clicking cameras waiting to get a comment from her, she realized that this was another thing altogether.

  Although Tommy used his body to shield her as they hurried across the sidewalk toward his limo, which was waiting out front, Sal moved in front of them as if he were their bodyguard. He even motioned to Albert, the limo driver who was holding the door open, to get back behind the steering wheel so that they could leave in a hurry. None of them had expected this. Tommy, however, was already whispering to Grace to say nothing to the aggressive reporters.

  And they shouted questions freely and loudly.

  “Miss McKinsey, are the allegations true, Miss McKinsey?”

  “Will you step down as CEO of Trammel, Miss McKinsey?”

  “Have you reached out to the woman’s family, Miss McKinsey?”

  “What about you, Tommy? Did you know your fiancée was a murderer?”

  Sal purposely shoved that particular reporter with his muscular body. “Ah, fuck you!” he said to clicking cameras. “Asking a question like that. What about your old lady? Did you know your old lady is a whore?”

  The reporter grinned. They loved it when Sal got feisty. But this was no kidding matter for Sal. He slung open the limo, Tommy and Grace and then Sal jumped in, and the limo driver sped off, leaving the paparazzi in their wake.

  Grace looked at Tommy. Tommy leaned his head back, and closed his eyes

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Did you see it?” Lootie asked as he entered the parlor of Jillian Birch’s expansive home.

  Jillian, who was seated on her English leather Chesterfield sofa rubbing her poodle, smiled at her brother. “Oh, yes,” she said with great satisfaction. “I saw the entire interview. Repeatedly. It was brilliant. Just brilliant, Lootie.”

  Lootie sat across from her on the Tufted ottoman. Alvin, her French poodle, growled.

  “I thought it was genius too,” he said. “I want to see her ass squirm out of this one.”

  “The shame alone should run her away from Trammel,” Jillian said. “Can you imagine how the board is going to react to this? Or how Tommy’s going to react?”

  Lootie looked at his sister. She always had a soft spot for Tommy, even though Lootie could never stand him. “You think it can change Tommy’s mind about her?” he asked.

  “Of course it can! Even Tommy has better sense that to marry a murderer. Even he knows better than that.” She said this and laughed. After Cam’s death she never dreamed she could find joy again. But she was finding it. Through Grace’s undeniable pain, she was finding it.

  Lootie laughed too, but not nearly as maniacally as his sister.

  Grace handed Sal a glass of wine and kept a glass for herself, as she walked over to Tommy. He was lying down on her sofa and talking on his cell phone. Sal was seated in the flanking chair in her living room where they’d been parked since arriving from Trammel. Both Sal and Grace were anxious to hear what Tommy’s people had to say. He’d been in communication with them all evening long, as they were doing all they could to find out what exactly was going on.

  Grace sat, Indian-style, on top of Tommy as he continued to talk on the phone. Tommy’s eyes were closed but she could see him grimace when she sat on top of him. But when she moved to get off, he placed his hand on the side of her thigh and prevented her from getting down. She then realized he had probably grimaced because she had kneed him, not because of her weight. She therefore relaxed again, sipped wine, and waited.

  Tommy eventually ended his call and opened his eyes. The concern in his greenish-blue eyes concerned Grace. She and Sal both were staring at him.

  “What did they say?” Sal eventually asked.

  Tommy moved to get up, as he held Grace on his lap.

  “No news yet,” he said as he sat up. “But everybody’s on it.” He took Grace’s glass of wine, and took a sip. “I spoke personally to each one of them. I wanted them to understand that I want answers immediately. This was priority number one. I told each one of them to report back to Milt, and Milt will report to me.”

  “What do you think the fallout will be?” Sal asked him.

  “If we can get this Rawlings character to correct the record, then it could be minimal. But if it stands, who knows? Some companies may not want to do business with Trammel unless Grace steps down, but that’ll be their problem. Because Grace will not be stepping down.”

  “Damn straight,” Grace said, and Sal laughed. She was even beginning to sound like them. But Tommy was too invested in making this right for Grace to even smile.

  And he was right to keep it somber because, within minutes of his hanging up the phone, the phone was ringing again. Grace answered it. It was Jamie.

  “Turn on the news,” he said anxiously.

  “Why?” she asked. “What’s going on?”

  “Just turn it on!” Jamie yelled, told her what channel, and Grace immediately grabbed the remote and turned on the TV.

  “What is it?” Sal asked.

  “I don’t know,” Grace said.

  But it didn’t take long for them to see what it was. It was Jared Graham, with Nayla and a team of attorneys standing beside him, as he addressed the press in what appeared to be an attorney’s office.

  Tommy shook his head. What the fuck now, he wondered.

  “For how long has this been happening to you?” a reporter asked.

  “It was happening before she became CEO,” Jared said, “but after she got that job it really took off. It really escalated.”

  “What escalated?” Sal asked angrily to the screen, but Grace and Tommy were too pained to answer him.

  “She said she like blond men especially, and that I was her type, and it became impossible for me to do my job. Jus impossible. She would feel on me in her office, ask me on dates anytime her boyfriend Tommy Gabrini was out of town, and even in front of coworkers she would be telling jokes about my body and how magnificent she was certai
n I was in bed. When I told her I was uncomfortable and her behavior was making me physically ill, she got upset and demoted me. When I confided in her best friend, she even went to Grace and told her she needed to cut it out. Grace then had the nerve to demote her best friend Nayla Santiago too. But what really angered me was when Grace continued to seek sexual favors for me and Nay went to her again. That’s when Grace fired Nayla. She fired her best friend! I knew then I had to speak out.”

  Tommy wanted to throw up. The bastard! But Grace was too stunned. She looked at Tommy.

  “What in the world is going on here?” she asked him.

  “In the world of revenge,” he said like the pro he was in that world, “it’s called a one-two punch.”

  And that was what it felt like to Grace. A punch in the gut. Especially when Nayla started telling her lies about witnessing her behavior and going to her about how inappropriate it was. Then the attorneys took over. They both were suing, the attorneys said, not for the money but for the principal of the thing. One was suing for harassment, and the other one for wrongful termination. But it wasn’t about the money, the attorneys kept insisting.

  “Oh, they plan to get paid,” Sal said, watching the freak show too. “I don’t care what those lawyers say. That’s all this is about.”

  “They’ll get paid all right,” Tommy agreed. “But it’ll only be over my dead body.”

  After a long, sleepless night, where all Grace could think about was how angry it was making her, she woke up determined to not let anybody run her under some rock. She was dressed for work, and ready for battle too, when Milton Alderman, Tommy’s longtime personal attorney, entered her apartment.

  “Have a seat,” she said as he entered. “Make yourself at home, Milt. I’ll get Tommy.”

  Tommy, she knew, was still sound asleep in her bed after a long night of even more phone calls when the second story broke, but he would be more upset with her if Milt showed up and she didn’t wake him up right away. So she walked to her master bedroom, looked at her man covered by a sheet but otherwise naked in her bed, and she woke him up.