TOMMY GABRINI 2: A PLACE IN HIS HEART Page 8

  “Anyway,” he said. “Enough about NayNay. Let’s talk happy talk. Let’s talk wedding talk.”

  And that was exactly what they spent the balance of their lunch together doing. No date was even set, but they were already making all kinds of plans.

  Tommy’s plans were interrupted roundly when he hung up the phone from yet another conference call and stood up to head across town to yet another meeting. He was in his office, in shirt sleeves and gold-encrusted suspenders, as his suit coat was flapped over his high back chair, and he was just about to grab for his coat when the buzz sounded.

  He pressed the intercom button on his desk. “I’m heading out, Louise,” he made clear.

  “Yes, sir, but Rachel is here to see you, sir.”

  Tommy paused. Rachel. Her mother was a close friend who modeled mostly in Europe. Her daughter was in college in the states and Tommy had promised, two years ago, to keep an eye on her. He kept his promise despite the fact that he and her mother had not seen nor spoken to each other in a very long time.

  “Send her in,” he said into the intercom and began tossing files into his briefcase.

  The doors to his office opened and Rachel Chestney walked in. She was tall and thin like her mother, her complexion a kind of milk-chocolate to her mother’s darker hue. And she was just as gorgeous.

  She smiled and hurried toward him. “I know you’re a busy man,” she said as she came.

  “You’d better believe it,” Tommy said, smiling too. When she approached they hugged, and kissed cheek to cheek.

  “Where are you headed?” she asked him.

  “A meeting right now. New York this evening.”

  “Ah, how wonderful! Take me with you.”

  “Not a chance. How’s school?”

  She exhaled and began playing with a replica of a Faberge egg on his desk. “It’s school,” she said.

  Tommy took the expensive ornament from her hand. “That’s not a good enough answer.”

  “I’m doing well, if that’s what you mean. I’m just ready to graduate and I can’t for two more years. Two long years, Tommy.”

  Tommy looked at her. She was, in truth, the spitting image of her mother. “So what’s up?” he asked her.

  She looked at his suspenders and smiled. “You’re the only man I’ve ever seen who rocks suspenders. You actually look sexy in them. You rock, Tommy.”

  But Tommy never entertained her mild flirtations. “Rach, time is short,” he said. “What is it?”

  She exhaled. “I’m short on my share of the rent this month.”

  “Aren’t you working?”

  “Yeah, but they cut my hours. And one of our roommates quit school, so my share went up.”

  Tommy stared at her. And then pulled out his checkbook. “How much?” he asked.

  She was surprised. “You mean you aren’t going to lecture me on financial responsibility the way you usually does?”

  “I can’t today. No time. Everything I said previously still applies.”

  She smiled.

  “How much?”

  “Eight hundred. And I promise I’ll pay you back as soon as my hours pick back up.”

  Tommy wrote the check, tore it out of his checkbook, and handed it to Rachel.

  “Thanks Tommy,” she said and hugged him again. She looked up at him with what he considered to be such innocent eyes. “I love you.”

  “Bet you love my money more,” Tommy replied and even she had to laugh. “Now get lost,” he said lightheartedly and began clasping his briefcase.

  Rachel, still smiling, began hurrying out. “Don’t tell mommy,” she said aloud as she went.

  It was always her refrain. Don’t tell her mother. And Tommy, because she was a full grown woman after all, never did.

  But after she left, it wasn’t her mother that came on Tommy’s mind. It was Grace. Before leaving his office, he picked up his desk phone and was about to phone her to see how her first day was going. But just as he was about to press the button, he knew he had to leave it alone.

  “Stop babying her,” he said aloud, and hung back up the phone.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Grace still felt upbeat when she arrived back at Trammel. In the garage, she saw that Jillian’s Bentley was parked in the spot reserved for the CEO, but the space reserved for the Chairman, Tommy’s space, was empty. She took Tommy’s spot. Not because she was now puffed up with power and needed to exert it, but because she knew, as a young woman now in charge, she had to change perceptions. If she allowed it, she would always be viewed as nothing more than Jillian’s chief of staff and she’d be respected as nothing more than that. But that couldn’t stand. If Trammel was to be as successful as she was determined for it to be, she had to be perceived as somebody who could make it happen.

  She got out of her car, made her way inside the lobby to the public elevators for a change, and was surprised to be greeted with Hello, Miss McKinsey, Good afternoon, Miss McKinsey, as if word had spread and the perceptions had changed already.

  Her stamp on the business, however, wouldn’t be seen immediately. She didn’t want to go in half-cocked, making sweeping changes, until she had a chance to fully review the company’s inner workings. She planned to take a few weeks to totally immerse herself into that private part of Trammel that had been off limits to her, that part where only Jillian and Tommy were familiar with. And then she could go full force.

  But when she stepped off of the elevator on the top floor, and made her way toward the reception area that stood in the round, with the offices of senior management, including Grace’s office as chief of staff, were housed, Jillian was already in destroy mode.

  She stood at the reception desk, giving some order to Carol, the receptionist, when Grace headed her way. Instead of Jillian accepting her fate, Grace could immediately see that she was raging against it. And she wasn’t trying to hide that rage, either.

  “So here she is,” Jillian said. “Not Miss America. But Miss Asshole.” Even Carol smiled at that, and the eyes of the few senior managers in the round, moving from office to office or holding conversations with each other, quickly looked at Jillian.

  Grace didn’t care for confrontations, and she would have preferred not to make a scene in front of staff. But Jillian, she knew, had other plans. “Are you speaking to me?” she asked her former boss.

  “Yes, Miss Asshole, I’m speaking to you,” Jillian said without hesitation. “I’m speaking to you and you alone. You’re the only asshole in here so it most certainly is you of whom I speak.”

  Jared, Nayla’s partner in crime, hurried out of his office near the backside of the round as soon as he heard Jillian’s profanity. When he saw that her laced tongue was directed at Grace, his heart soared. He had been hoping for fireworks between the two ladies, mainly to keep the spotlight off of his own lack of productivity, but he was thrilled beyond words that he, for a change, would get to witness the sparks for himself.

  “Let’s go into my office,” Grace told Jillian.

  “Oh really now?” Jillian responded, to Jared’s delight. “What if I don’t want to take it up in your office? What if I see you for what you are, and don’t want my sterling reputation to be tarnished by hanging out with the likes of you?”

  “I’m not going to stand out here and argue with you, Jillian.”

  “Who cares about what you’re not going to do? You’re nothing but my servant, who do you think you are? You’re the gotdamn help! Just because you let Tommy Gabrini fuck you blind, doesn’t mean I’m blind. He hasn’t been fucking me! And just because he enjoyed laying you out so much that he foolishly turned over his shares to you doesn’t make you suddenly some captain of industry, honey. It still makes you a whore.”

  Many of the managers, including Jared, couldn’t repress their grins. They covered their mouths, or turned their bodies slightly away, but it was obvious they were enjoying this smack-down immensely.

  But Grace was far from amused. She, in fact, was d
etermined. “Jillian Birch,” she said, without any hesitation of her own, “you’re fired.”

  Although Grace had only spoken four words, it shook the room. The receptionist was stunned. Every manager in the round was stunned. Every grin left every face, and the satisfaction in Jillian’s eyes suddenly pooled into disbelief.

  Grace looked at Carol. “Call Security,” she said to the receptionist. “Put them on notice. If Miss Birch hasn’t left my building in the next thirty minutes, tell them to come up here and escort her out. And if any member of Security refuses to obey my order,” she said, “then make it clear to them that they’ll be fired too. There is a zero tolerance policy in this company effective immediately. I will have zero tolerance with their, or anybody else’s,” she added as she looked around at her managers, “bullshit.”

  And those words alone, coupled with that look alone, caused the managers, led by Jared, to scatter like roaches and hurry back into the cubbyholes of their offices.

  Although Jillian still stood there in disbelief, Grace didn’t so much as look at her again. She, instead, went into her own office, and closed her own door. Only she fell against it in drained horror when the door shut. She didn’t want to go there. She didn’t want to be the bitch this soon. She never liked Jillian, but she always respected her as a woman who kept the doors of Trammel open after her husband died. She sold most of the shares to Tommy to keep those doors open, but at least she did what she had to do. Now her company belonged to Grace, and Grace could only imagine how awful that had to make her feel.

  But for her to call Grace a whore who slept her way to the top, and to do so in front of staff, was a bridge she just burned. Grace hated being placed in this position, she absolutely hated it, but Jillian, she felt, left her no choice.

  She exhaled, went to her desk and sat down, and fought back the urge to cry. Jillian wasn’t crying when she called her a whore, why should she cry for Jillian? She therefore pulled out the paperwork she had been reviewing before she left for lunch, and got back to work.

  Later that evening, Tommy’s limo roared through the streets of Seattle while he completed a conference call regarding the acquisition of two failing businesses he planned to flip. The Gabrini Corporation was known as a venture capitalistic liquidator, as the mega-company that brought up smaller, dying businesses for a steal, sometimes in hostile takeovers, and then either resurrected those companies or sold them at a great profit. But his corporation was also a leader in the private security field. And he was also a restaurateur. Flipping companies were the easiest aspect of his business, although it consumed a lot of his time, and he primarily allowed Sal to handle their restaurant businesses. But the security part of the Gabrini Corporation was all Tommy. He ran that department exclusively. And it was turning out to be the biggest moneymaker, and the biggest headache, of them all.

  He hung up the phone, after agreeing to think about the takeover terms, and tossed a stack of paperwork he had been reviewing back into his briefcase. He was on his way to the airstrip, to take his private plane to New York to discuss yet another security contract, and he was exhausted already. He knew he was going to sleep like a baby on that plane, so he picked up the phone again and called Grace.

  He hadn’t heard from her since he left Trammel this morning, although Sal mentioned that she’d had lunch at Diamante’s with her friend Jamie. She was in great spirits, according to Sal, and was showing off that rock of an engagement ring Tommy had given to her.

  But as soon as Tommy heard her voice, he knew something was wrong.

  “Hey,” she said in a voice that sounded strained to him, and almost hoarse.

  “Thought I’d give you a buzz before I took off,” he said.

  “You haven’t left yet?” she asked. “It’s almost seven o clock. I thought you was supposed to be there by now.”

  “I know. I was detained, as usual, on some additional matters I had to take care of. I’m on my way to the airfield now. What about you? How are you doing?”

  There was the slightest of hesitations. “I’m good,” she ultimately said.

  She didn’t sound good to him. “How did it go today?”

  “It went . . . pretty well. I’m still reading everything I can get my hands on about Trammel, just so I can get the full picture, including the information you gave to me.”

  “Think you’re going to enjoy running an entire company?”

  “I know so once I learn all about the ins and outs I wasn’t privy to as Jillian’s chief of staff.”

  “Speaking of Jillian,” he said, sensing that she had something to do with Grace’s down mood. “Did she give you any more trouble after the board meeting?”

  Another hesitation. “Not after I fired her, no.”

  Tommy looked up. He hadn’t expected it to come to that this soon. “You fired her?”

  “Yeah, well, let me back up. I did fire her, yes, but then she came by my office a few minutes later and said she quit and I could take that firing of mine and shove it up my ass. And since I hadn’t officially completed the paperwork to fire her and submitted it to HR for processing, according to the HR Director she technically quit. And on her own terms.”

  Tommy frowned. “Was it horrible, sweetie?”

  He could feel Grace’s anguish. “Worse than you could imagine. When she came to my office and announced that she was quitting, she said she could never work for a company, not even her own company, that would have me at the helm. And that was her mildest comment. Earlier, when I came back to work after lunch, she really lanced into me then. She was standing in the reception area, for all the world to see, and called me her servant and the help, and Tommy Gabrini’s whore.

  “That bitch!” Tommy yelled.

  “Oh, yeah. She said I was the whore you loved to fuck so much that you gave me a company to run. I slept my way to the top was how she put it, and she said it in front of senior management staff too.”

  “Gotdamn that woman!” Tommy blared. “Of course now it’ll be all over the company. And that was her aim, you know. Not to criticize you. To minimize you. We ought to sue her ass for defamation,” Tommy suggested.

  “Oh, I don’t have time for Jillian Birch,” Grace said. “She can say whatever she wants. But she won’t be saying it inside Trammel, that’s for damn sure.”

  Tommy laughed. “Probably best that you got rid of her early.”

  “Oh, I know it was. They’re just trying me, that’s all. I’m young and, they think, I’m innocent and some kind of push-over, so I expected it.”

  “You said they,” Tommy said. “Not just Jillian?”

  “Well, nobody else rose to Jillian’s level of disrespect, but some, like Nayla, are coming close.”

  “Nayla? What’s her issue?”

  “She wants a promotion.”

  “A promotion?” Tommy asked. The nerve of these people! “She’s barely handling logistics, and now she wants a promotion?”

  “She concluded that she has the friendship card so she might as well play it, that’s all. But I disabused her of her conclusions.”

  Tommy exhaled with a distressed release. “I’m beginning to wonder if I was doing you a favor when I turned that company over to you. I wonder if it was the right move.”

  “It was absolutely the right move, Tommy, what are you saying? It’s a dream come true for me! I always wanted to run my own company. Did I think it was going to be a company this size? No. But it’s a wonderful thing you did for me. And things will get better. I’ve just got to work harder and earn their respect, that’s all. And I plan to do it. I plan to work my butt off to turn Trammel around. So don’t worry about me, please. I’m fine. You just go to New York and take care of your business and return to me in one piece.”

  Tommy smiled. “I think I love you, kid,” he said.

  “You think?” Grace asked, and Tommy laughed.

  “I knew that would get a rise out of you,” he said.

  But when they said their final goodbyes and
he hung up the phone, he still felt uneasy. In many ways giving Grace a company once owned outright by Jillian put Grace in an untenable position. Although she was telling him she was fine, he now knew better. She had to be stressed to the max and overwhelmed by the massive responsibility she was now undertaking. And he was just going to toss it in her lap and leave her to it? They said he babied her too much and had to let her sink or swim on her own. But to hell with what they said. He pressed the intercom button.

  “Albert,” he said.

  His driver responded. “Yes, sir, Mr. Gabrini?”

  “Turn this thing around, and take me to Grace.”

  Albert smiled. He loved Grace too. “Yes, sir,” he said, and turned that “thing” around.

  Grace had showered, put on her pajamas, and was in her home office reading over stacks of Trammel’s paperwork when knocks were heard on her front door. No-one had buzzed requesting entry, so the knocking surprised her. What surprised her more, however, after sitting her reading glasses on her desk and walking toward the front door, was when the door was unlocked before she made it to it, and somebody was opening it.

  She was about to run to the kitchen and grab a butcher’s knife when Tommy quickly revealed himself.

  “Tommy?” she asked. Then she placed her hand over her heart. “But I thought you were on your way to the airport.”

  “I was,” he said as he closed the door. “But I had to make sure you were okay. I had to see for myself.”

  And what he saw, the strain and anguish, said all that needed to be said. He opened his arms. And Grace ran into them, sobbing as soon as she felt the warmth of his arms encircling her.