Tommy Gabrini 3: Grace Under Fire (The Gabrini Men Series) Read online

  “Tam, I’m back!” She headed for her bedroom, calling her half-sister’s name twice, but Tam, apparently, wasn’t at home. Which was fine by Grace. She didn’t want to hear any I told you so from her, or be asked to give her any explanations. She was going home. To her husband. Period.

  And as she packed up what she planned to take home for now, she started thinking about Tommy, and how much she had missed him during their weeks apart. She knew living without him permanently was no longer a possibility. She wondered if it ever was. Then she smiled. Instead of having second thoughts, as she thought she would have, she developed even more resolve, and packed even faster.

  She showered next, and changed into a sleek, form-fitting white dress. Tommy was going to take her dancing and she was determined to look her best and enjoy the evening. And just as she sat her first packed suitcase in the living room, her cell phone rang. When she saw that it was him, she smiled. “Miss me already?” she asked with a grin.

  “Always,” Tommy said into the phone. “Just checking on you. Making sure Tamara wasn’t trying to change your mind.”

  “You must be joking. She’ll have the apartment to herself again. She’ll be shouting for joy when she finds out.”

  “She’s not there?”

  “Nope. Thankfully. She’ll be glad I’m leaving, but she’ll declare I’m making the mistake of my life.”

  There was a pause on the other end. “Most people probably would agree with her.”

  “Well thank goodness I’m not most people.”

  “As simple as that?”

  “As simple as that.”

  “That’s why you’re my girl, Grace.”

  Grace smiled. “Why? Because I bend to your will?” She headed back into her bedroom.

  “Exactly why,” Tommy proclaimed, and they both laughed.

  “Where are you? Still at the office?”

  “Just finishing up.”

  “They haven’t burned it down yet, I take it.”

  “Not yet. But if I would have stayed away another day, who knows?”

  Grace laughed.

  “But once I grab these papers I’m out of here. I’ll see you at the house.”

  “Okay, babe,” Grace said, they said their goodbyes, and she ended the call.

  But almost immediately, her cell phone rang again. Certain it was Tommy calling her right back, she answered just as immediately. “What did you forget to tell me?” she asked.

  But it wasn’t Tommy. The voice was decidedly female’s. “I did not forget a damn thing,” the voice, a familiar voice, said into the phone. A voice with a strong European accent.

  And Grace couldn’t believe it. She wasn’t back in Tommy’s bed yet, and already it was starting up again. “Goodbye,” she said, and was about to disconnect the call, but the voice spoke up.

  “It will never end,” the woman said.

  “You’re right,” Grace said. “Tommy and I will always be together. We’ll never end. You’re right about that.”

  “It will never end,” the woman said again. “I lost, now you will lose too.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “I hope you slip in her blood,” the woman said. “I hope you choke in your own vomit when you see all that blood. I took her away from you, but I will not stop. It will never end until you are sleeping in your grave. And still I will torment you. You cannot win. You will never win. You will never have Tommy, you will never have anybody! I will see to that.” And then the woman disconnected the call.

  Grace was thrown. It would never end? She hoped Grace slipped in her blood? In whose blood? Her own blood? Then Grace got a chill, and thought about her sister. Tam, she said nervously, and quickly called her sister’s cell phone.

  But the phone started ringing inside the apartment. Which floored Grace. Tam would never have left without her cell phone. Not ever. Maybe she was asleep. Maybe she was in one of those deep sleeps of hers and didn’t hear Grace call her name when she first arrived. And maybe she was too deep into sleep to hear her cell phone ringing. Or maybe, Grace didn’t want to even imagine, Tam was the one that woman was talking about!

  Grace’s heart began to pound as she followed the ringing phone. It led into Tam’s bedroom. Grace hurried to the room, all kinds of possibilities rushing through her head. And as soon as she pushed the door open, she was met with blood. On the floor. On the walls. And there was a message on the far wall. IT WILL NEVER END, it read. And it was written in blood.

  Grace’s heart was now hammering, but she knew she had to go further in. If this woman had harmed Tam, she could still be alive and needed Grace’s help. But there was so much blood! Too much blood. Grace knew better. She knew nobody could have survived this massacre.

  But she had to see for herself. She had to be certain.

  She walked further in, sidestepping the puddles and streaks of blood. And that was when she saw her. Lying across the bed. Her throat was slit so wide it looked like three cuts in one. Her eyes were still wide open, staring lifelessly at Grace.

  Grace backed back up until she had rammed against the door. She could barely breathe. She wanted to cry, for Tamara, to scream out the pain and horror she had to have felt when the massacre happened. But no sound would come. Because it was more than pain Grace felt. It went deeper than pain. It was more than fear. It went deeper than fear. Grace was angry now. Because it had to stop. Tamara had nothing to do with any of those women. They probably didn’t even know her name! But because she was connected to Grace, and because Tommy had chosen Grace, they decided to end her life as if they were tossing away trash.

  Grace looked at the writing again. Wrote in Tam’s own blood. And for Grace it was clear. Literally, the writing was on the wall. Because she realized the truth of those words as surely as she stood there looking at them. IT WILL NEVER END, those words read. And it was true. It would never end if she allowed them to win. It would never end if she allowed this horrific act to cower her. They had her leaving her husband, hiding out in her own apartment, just so they would leave her alone. They had her husband asking for a divorce so he could protect her from them. And they still found a way to torment her. They still found a way to take the life of a sweet girl like Tam, just because they could. Just because they didn’t have what they wanted and were willing to kill to get it.

  Now, right now, looking at her sister’s body, looking at the blood and that writing on the wall, she was ready to do it too.

  She headed back to the living room, grabbed her keys, and took off.

  She jumped into her new car and drove so fast she nearly hit two other cars. She knew she should call Tommy, or at least call the police, but that wouldn’t do any good. Not with these women. She had to handle this herself. She had to send this message herself. These females were never going to leave her alone until they understood that two could play their game. They were angry? She was going to be angrier. They were crazy? She was going to be crazier. They wanted Tommy? She wanted him more.

  She turned onto his street, a street that housed his mansion alone, and saw a car parked in front of the house. As she was about to turn into her driveway, she saw the woman in the car. It was Deena Driscoll. And as soon as she saw that face, she realized it was Deena’s voice that had been the voice on that phone call. She was the one responsible for Tam’s death. She was the one who wrote those words. And when she looked closer, Deena held up a cardboard sign. IT WILL NEVER END, were the words written on the board, and written in blood too. Tam’s blood? And when Deena smiled at her, and took her finger and ran it across her neck, as if she was cutting her throat, Grace knew the time had come. Talk was over. It was time for action.

  She drove into the driveway, ran into the house, and didn’t stop until she had that gun in her hand and was running back out again. By the time she made it down the driveway and across the street, and was firing shot after shot after shot, trying not to scare Deena Driscoll, but to kill her ass as surely as she killed Tam, Tommy’s Ferrari turn
ed onto the street. The gunshots had Henry running out of the house too. But it was too late for talk. Talk was over. Grace was a wounded animal cornered now. And was coming out for blood.

  She saw Tommy coming just as he was upon her. He had been running. His eyes looked wild, and as tormented as her heart felt. But he had to understand. Enough was a fucking nuff. Nobody was running her away anymore. Nobody was coddling her anymore. She was riding with Tommy now, and these bitches, she felt, had better get used to it.

  She looked at Tommy, as he put one hand around her and took the smoking gun from her with his other hand. He didn’t say a word to her. But he took over. He handed the gun to Henry, and he walked Grace to his car. Henry would handle the cleanup, but he would come back to oversee it. Grace was involved. There could be no evidence linking any of this to her.

  But his job now was protection. Grace’s protection. Making sure he got her away from the scene and that none of the blowback that was surely to come, blew back on her.

  And then the real work, of restoring his wife, of restoring his marriage, would have to begin.

  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 Gra
ce?” 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.”