Sal Gabrini: Just The Way You Are

by Mallory Monroe

  Sal looked around, disgusted by the sheer trashing of the place, and then made his way upstairs. His men followed him.

  If they thought the worse had been downstairs, they were mistaken. Upstairs was tornado-like too. Every office door was unhinged, and every file cabinet overturned. In Gemma’s office, the largest one, those words reappeared. The Law Office of Bitch Jones-Gabrini was written on the wall just above her overturned desk. Sal continued to look around, to study the scene. He knew rage when he saw it. A scene like this was meant to convey rage. But it felt forced and fake. Like it was staged rage. Like it was something entirely different.

  After several more minutes of looking around, Sal ordered his men to gather any evidence they could, and then hire a cleanup crew. He made his way back downstairs.

  Mark Price, an African-American attorney working at Gemma’s firm, had just gotten out of his car. Sal was just passing by the office window indoors when he saw Mark make his way up to Gemma and her assistants. “What are you guys doing out here?” he asked as he approached them, his briefcase in hand. Sal stopped at the window and watched him.

  “Some fool vandalized the office,” Curtis said. “You should see it, Mark. They went crazy up in there.”

  Mark placed his hand on the small of Gemma’s back. When Sal saw him touch her, he hurried out of the office. “You look a little rattled,” Mark said to Gemma, showing concern in his eyes. “Please tell me you weren’t injured.”

  Before Gemma could respond, Sal came out and headed their way.

  Mark removed his hand from the small of Gemma’s back as soon as he saw Sal, which only heightened Sal’s discomfort with the man. A guilty man would remove his hand. An innocent man would have remained as he were.

  Gemma, unaware of Sal’s concern about Mark, turned to Sal too. “Did they make it upstairs?” she asked.

  “It’s a wreck up there,” Sal said.

  “What about our offices?” Mark asked.

  Sal wasn’t going to repeat himself. Especially not for Mark Price.

  Mark exhaled. “We have client files in our offices. Very confidential stuff. Have the police arrived? Where are the cops?”

  “My men are inside making certain no one’s hiding out in there and the locks are shored-up. Then they’re going to call in a clean-up crew to get the office back up and running before the day is over.”

  But Mark frowned. “No police? Not even a police report?”

  “We don’t need that kind of negative publicity, Mark,” Gemma said.

  “Amen to that,” Barbara agreed. “We don’t want to scare any clients away with negative publicity.”

  “Let’s get the office back in working condition,” Gemma said, “to see if any files or any crucial info is missing. Then we’ll see if the police need to get involved.”

  Mark exhaled. “Okay, boss. You’re the boss. I guess I’d better get in there and see the damage for myself.” Then he thought about something that he found odd to begin with. “Wait a minute,” he said. “I thought you were supposed to be giving your closing this morning?”

  “I was. Judge Rileo had an emergency hearing. We were pushed back until tomorrow.”

  “The life of a lawyer,” Mark said.

  “Right,” Gemma agreed.

  After Mark, Barbara, and Curtis grabbed their gear and headed inside for their own damage assessments, Sal and Gemma looked at each other. “I guess I’d better check things out too,” Gemma said.

  “Like hell,” Sal responded. “You’re going home.”

  “Sal!”

  “Don’t Sal me! I want you to go home and lay down and get some rest. This kind of stress isn’t good for you or our baby.”

  Gemma knew that was true. But she also knew she could handle it. “But Sal, I’m okay.”

  “But Sal my foot. You’re going home. This kind of stress isn’t good for you or our baby.”

  “But I need to check my files too.”

  “Check’em tomorrow. You’re going home with me today.”

  Gemma looked at Sal. “You’re going home too?”

  Sal had a zillion things to do. But Gemma came first. “I’m going home too,” he said.

  “But you were in some crisis at your own office when I phoned you,” Gemma said. “Weren’t you?”

  “We lost a couple of acquisitions over some bullshit I’m straightening out,” Sal admitted. “But they can handle it without me. Just as your staff can handle it without you. I’m willing to sacrifice for you and the baby. I need you to be willing to sacrifice for yourself. This pregnancy business is new to you and me both. We’ve got to play it safe, Gem.”

  Gemma knew he spoked the truth. And as soon as she realized it, a rush of emotion came over her. Tears didn’t come, but Sal could tell they were threatening. He pulled her into his arms.

  CHAPTER TWO

  After Gemma drove through the tall security gate in her car and Sal followed in his, and as soon as they walked through the double doors of their well-fortified Vegas home, Sal headed straight for his office.

  Gemma sat her briefcase, keys, and purse on the table in the foyer, and was surprised when he headed in that direction. “Where are you going?” she asked him.

  “To check the video,” he responded.

  “What video?”

  “From your law office.”

  Gemma frowned, and began following him. “But they took my cameras, Sal. And the hard drive. They took my cameras.”

  “But they didn’t take mine,” Sal responded as he entered his office, walked behind his desk, and sat down. By the time Gemma arrived at his side, he had already pulled up live action shots, of her entire office, on his computer screen.

  Gemma was amazed. She crotched down beside Sal’s chair and looked at the video. “When did you set all of this up?” she asked him.

  But he didn’t respond. When Sal was about business, especially business involving his wife, he was singular in his focus. And right now his singular aim was to re-rack video until he saw exactly what happened in Gemma’s office overnight.

  Gemma remained crotched down beside him watching the tape, and watching him. Sal was handsome in the way strong men were handsome: more in his aura than strictly in his look. He had a jawline so sculptured that some women would view him as runway model beautiful, as Gemma did when she first saw him. But his forceful chin with its constant five o’clock shadow, and his shockingly blue eyes with their absurdly hard intensity, kept his look too edgy to be beautiful. And his physique was so muscular that he came across more as a bodybuilder than some runway model. Which was fine by her. Because Gemma knew, given how supersized Sal’s penis was, and how ripped his abs were, and how deliciously thick his chest and biceps were, that any woman would love to see him rock a bedroom rather than a runway any day of the week.

  But first they had to overcome his rough and gruff exterior, which Gemma also knew wasn’t easy. He, in fact, was demonstrating that very point as she crotched beside his chair. He was ignoring her in his quest to help her. He was singularly focused on the computer screen. So Gemma, knowing Sal was not going to let up to explain a thing, looked at the screen and became singularly focused too.

  And then, after several minutes into their search, they saw it. “There he is!” Gemma said excitedly after coming upon a scene that showed a man outside of her law firm.

  Sal pressed a freeze on the frame, boxed the man’s face, and zoomed in. “You know him?”

  Gemma looked closer. He was a young white male in his early twenties, with a goatee, with an ass so flat his jeans just sagged in the back. She remembered him. “Yes,” she said. “That’s Jesse Crowler.”

  Sal continued the tape as Jesse began unlocking the office door. “I knew it was an inside job,” Sal said. “I’ll bet that law partner of yours set this whole shit up.”

  Gemma was surprised. She looked at Sal. “Mark? Why would you suspect him?”

  Sal had a gut feeling about the guy, but Gemma would never understan
d that.

  “And Jesse’s no vandal,” Gemma said. “I got him a job working for the janitorial company that cleans our offices at night.”

  Sal looked at the time on screen. “He’s coming to clean at three in the morning? I don’t think so. Where’s the rest of the crew? And since when did he start carrying his cleaning supplies in a garbage bag?”

  Gemma knew Sal’s observations were right, so she remained silent. And when Jesse entered the office, and began, not cleaning it, but trashing it, she realized just how right Sal was. He disabled the cameras first, at least the ones Gemma had installed, and her heart sank when Jesse shook the spray paint can and then smilingly wrote that offensive phrase on her office wall.

  Sal’s heart didn’t sink, but roared with rage. “You got a job for this fucker, and this is how he repays you?”

  “This doesn’t make sense,” Gemma said, staring at Jesse’s antics.

  “He’s an ungrateful prick. What doesn’t make sense?”

  “He came to me when he was facing ten years in prison on a drug charge. I got him off. I won that case. Then I got him a job. Why would he do this? I got him off.”

  “Bet his ass won’t get off again,” Sal said firmly.

  Gemma looked anxiously at her husband. “What are you going to do, Sal?”

  Sal looked at her. “What do you think I’m going to do? Look at that motherfucker. He’s vandalizing your office. He’s writing bitch on your walls. Calling you a bitch. Calling my wife a bitch. What do you think I’m going to do, Gemma?”

  Sal stared intensely at her until she responded. Gemma looked at him too. Then she looked at the tape of Jesse as he eagerly destroyed her office. She nodded. “What you have to do,” she said.

  Jesse Crowler came out of McDonald’s carrying a large soda cup. He worked there in addition to his office cleaning job, but once that payment hit his bank he was going to leave Vegas for good and live his life. He was continuing his routine so no suspicion would fall on him. He was going through the motions so nobody would suspect a thing. And then, after pay day, he was out.

  He received more than he bargained for when he began walking toward his car, a badly beat-up Toyota Tercel. As he walked past an older model white van parked behind his car, and as he arrived behind his own car, the back doors of the van swung open, two men got out, and Jesse’s razor thin body was lifted up and tossed into the floor of the van all in one motion. His drink went sailing one way, his body went flying the other way, and by the time he realized what had just happened to him he was in the van, the two men got back in with him, the doors were closed, and the van took off.

  He also didn’t realize anybody else was in the back of that van until he sat up, and looked at the man in the double-breasted suit sitting on one of the benches.

  “What’s this about?” he asked.

  Sal stared at Jesse. It took all he had not to tear him apart limb by limb. “You paid a visit to my wife’s office,” he said.

  Jesse frowned. “Your wife? What are you talking about? Who’s your wife?”

  Sal didn’t respond to that lame question. “Why did you do it?”

  “Do what?” Jesse asked.

  One of Sal’s men, an African-American they called Big Joe, spoke up. “Really fool?” he asked. “You think we’re going through all of this trouble to round up your ass by accident?” He slapped Jesse upside his head. “Now answer the man. Ain’t nobody playing with you! Why did you fuck up his wife’s office?”

  Jesse swallowed hard. He destroyed the cameras. Every one of them. And took the hard drive! How could they know?

  Big Joe slapped Jesse upside his head again. “Answer him!”

  “I don’t know who hired me! I got a phone call. They said they placed fifteen hundred dollars in my bank account. After I trash Miss Gemma’s office, and do it exactly like they tell me to do it, then they’d put fifty thousand dollars in my bank account. That’s more money than I’ve ever seen in my life. I couldn’t turn that down. They told me not to try and trace the call. They were using a throwaway phone. Since they put the fifteen hundred in my bank, I trusted them for the rest. And did what they said.”

  “Have they paid you the rest?” Sal asked.

  “Not yet. They said they had to make sure I did the job right first. Then they’d pay.”

  “How would they know?”

  Jesse thought about it. “I don’t know.”

  Sal exhaled. He really didn’t want to hear that. “Do you know Mark Price?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I know him. He works for Miss Gemma. Sometimes when we come in the evenings to clean, he’s still at the office.”

  “Is he the guy you spoke with?”

  “Him? No. Course not. He and Miss G are real close from what I could see. Why would he want to vandalize his own office?”

  Sal had his own ideas. Then he hit the roof of the van. The van slowed as if it was pulling over, and then stopped. Sal then looked at Big Joe and his other strongman. They got out of the van and closed the doors behind them.

  Sal slowly rose to his feet. Jesse, seeing him stand, stood up too. “Did they tell you to write Bitch Gabrini on those walls?” he asked him.

  “Yeah. That’s what they told me to do.”

  “So you think she’s a bitch? The woman who got your ass off when you were facing a decade in prison, the woman who got you that cleaning job, is a bitch?”

  “I was doing it for the money! It wasn’t personal. I was just doing what I was told for the money.”

  “What I’m about to do to you is personal,” Sal said. “And I don’t give a fuck about the money.”

  Sal pulled out a revolver.

  “Oh, no, please no,” Jesse said, backing up with his hands out in front, as if they could stop a bullet. “Please, Mister, don’t kill me. I just trashed an office. What I did isn’t worth anybody dying over!

  Sal wasn’t going to shoot him, because he agreed it wasn’t worth a death sentence. But it was worth a beat down. And Sal took the butt of that revolver and gave Jesse an old fashioned one. He beat Jesse down. With every lick he spewed out his anger. “This is from Bitch Gabrini, bitch!” He slammed the butt of that gun repeatedly into Jesse’s face. “This is from my wife, you cocksucker!” Blood spewed out as he beat him and wouldn’t stop beating him. “This is for disturbing my wife’s peace and security, you cockroach motherfucker!”

  Sal beat him in his head, in his face, until his eyes were swollen shut. By the time he finished beating him down, Jesse dropped to his knees and leaned against Sal’s legs for support.

  “You mention this get together to anybody,” Sal warned, “and I’ll finish the job, and that’ll finish you. You got that, asshole?”

  Jesse nodded his head. He was too far gone to talk.

  “And get your ass away from me!” Sal kicked Jesse away from him. He was angry as hell that some blood had gotten on his pants legs. Sal was usually a very meticulous fighter and knew how to avoid it.

  But as soon as Sal kicked him away, Jesse fell over, and fell unconscious, all at the same time.

  CHAPTER THREE

  By the time he made it home, later that day, Gemma was lying across the bed asleep. She had taken off her business attire, and was lying in one of Sal’s big shirts. Sal knew she was naked beneath his shirt without peeping. She was always naked beneath. And he loved the sight of her. He loved the fact that she was carrying his baby. He loved the fact that she was carrying his name. He needed to be at his office. He lost not one, but two acquisitions this morning and everybody were in panic mode, but he was staying right here with her. He had to find out what he could about Jesse Crowler. He had to get his revenge. But now all he wanted to do was curl up next to Gemma and hold her.

  He tossed his soiled clothes in the dry cleaner chute, jumped in the shower, and bathe and dried off quickly.

  Without putting on a stitch of clothing, he laid spoon-style beside Gemma. It was only then did she began waking up.

  “You�
�re back?” she asked as Sal’s hand rested on her barely showing stomach. She turned toward him.

  “I’m back,” Sal said. Her eyes looked so warm and soft that it pained him to see the concern there too. She should be carefree during her very first pregnancy, not worrying about some joker like Jesse fucking Crowler.

  “Did you find him?”

  “Easily, yeah. He was stunned we found him. He thought he had destroyed the evidence, with his stupid ass.”

  “What did he say?” Gemma asked. “Why did he do it?”

  “Money, why else? Somebody promised him fifty grand.”

  “Fifty thousand dollars?” Gemma was floored. “Who would give him fifty thousand dollars to trash my law firm?”

  “He doesn’t know. It was a blind contract. He does the work, they put the cash in his bank account. They already teased him with fifteen hundred.”

  Gemma placed her hand on Sal’s bare chest. She began rubbing it, not for sensual delight, but as a way to think. Her face was still a mask of concern. “Who would do it?” she asked, and then looked at Sal. “And why him? I know he worked for that janitorial service, and they had a key.”

  “And whoever paid him probably knew he would have access to that key and the alarm codes,” Sal said. “And apparently he did.”

  “So he couldn’t tell you anything?”

  “He couldn’t tell me what I needed to know, no,” Sal said. “But I’ll find out. Don’t you worry about that.”

  Then Gemma paused. She already knew the answer, but still needed to know. “Did you hurt him?” she asked.

  Sal looked at her. “What do you think?”

  Sal was pleased when she smiled. Gemma was a proud woman who never allowed anybody to do anything for her. Until he came along. And now she trusted him to look out for her, and he loved her growth. Despite the ugliness that cloaked a big chunk of his world, and that kept him on edge and more than ready to return the ugliness, it was Gemma who calmed him right back down.

  “Recoverable injuries I hope,” she said to him.