Romancing Sal Gabrini 2: A Woman's Touch Read online

  ROMANCING SAL GABRINI 2

  A WOMAN’S TOUCH

  By

  MALLORY MONROE

  Copyright©2014 Mallory Monroe

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  This novel is a work of fiction. All characters are fictitious. Any similarities to anyone living or dead are completely accidental. The specific mention of known places or venues are not meant to be exact replicas of those places, but are purposely embellished or imagined for the story’s sake.

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  MORE INTERRACIAL ROMANCE

  FROM BESTSELLING AUTHOR

  MALLORY MONROE:

  THE PRESIDENT’S GIRLFRIEND

  SERIES IN ORDER:

  THE PRESIDENT’S GIRLFRIEND

  THE PRESIDENT’S GIRLFRIEND 2:

  HIS WOMEN AND HIS WIFE

  DUTCH AND GINA:

  A SCANDAL IS BORN

  DUTCH AND GINA:

  AFTER THE FALL

  DUTCH AND GINA:

  THE POWER OF LOVE

  DUTCH AND GINA:

  THE SINS OF THE FATHERS

  DUTCH AND GINA:

  WHAT HE DID FOR LOVE

  FOR THE LOVE OF GINA

  BOOK EIGHT

  THE MOB BOSS SERIES

  IN ORDER:

  ROMANCING THE MOB BOSS

  MOB BOSS 2:

  THE HEART OF THE MATTER

  MOB BOSS 3:

  LOVE AND RETRIBUTION

  MOB BOSS 4:

  ROMANCING TRINA GABRINI

  A MOB BOSS CHRISTMAS:

  THE PREGNANCY

  (Mob Boss 5)

  MOB BOSS 6:

  THE HEART OF RENO GABRINI

  RENO’S GIFT

  BOOK 7

  RENO GABRINI:

  A MAN IN FULL

  BOOK 8

  RENO AND TRINA:

  GETTING BACK TO LOVE

  BOOK 9

  THE GABRINI MEN SERIES

  IN ORDER:

  ROMANCING TOMMY GABRINI

  ROMANCING SAL GABRINI

  TOMMY GABRINI 2:

  A PLACE IN HIS HEART

  ADDITIONAL BESTSELLING

  INTERRACIAL ROMANCE

  FROM MALLORY MONROE:

  DANIEL’G GIRL:

  ROMANCING AN OLDER MAN

  ROMANCING MO RYAN

  ROMANCING HER PROTECTOR

  ROMANCING THE BULLDOG

  IF YOU WANTED THE MOON

  INTERRACIAL ROMANCE

  FROM

  BESTSELLING AUTHOR

  KATHERINE CACHITORIE:

  LOVERS AND TAKERS

  LOVING HER SOUL MATE

  LOVING THE HEAD MAN

  SOME CAME DESPERATE:

  A LOVE SAGA

  ADDITIONAL BESTSELLING

  INTERRACIAL ROMANCE:

  A SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP

  YVONNE THOMAS

  AND

  BACK TO HONOR:

  A REGGIE REYNOLDS

  ROMANTIC MYSTERY

  JT WATSON

  ROMANTIC FICTION

  FROM

  AWARD-WINNING

  AND

  BESTSELLING AUTHOR

  TERESA MCCLAIN-WATSON:

  DINO AND NIKKI:

  AFTER REDEMPTION

  AND

  AFTER WHAT YOU DID

  COMING SOON

  FROM

  MALLORY MONROE:

  A BRAND NEW, STANDALONE

  INTERRACIAL ROMANCE NOVEL

  ROMANCING TOMMY GABRINI

  BOOK THREE

  RENO AND TRINA:

  MOB BOSS SERIES

  BOOK TEN

  ROMANCING JIMMY GABRINI

  BOOK ONE

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  ONE

  Salvatore Luciano Gabrini sat the briefcase on the dusty tabletop and looked at the men standing across from him. These were his men: strong, loyal, and willing to drop everything on a moment’s notice if he asked them to. It was rare nowadays to find men he could trust, and Sal was grateful he still had most of his crews intact.

  “You guys did a good job,” he said as he stood in the dilapidated abandoned building, far on the outskirts of Jersey, looking as out of place in his Valentino suit as the men looked at home in their jeans and filthy sweat shirts. “You got in, you got out, you got it done.” Then he slung the briefcase across the table. “Good work.”

  Chazz Charski, the leader, stopped the sliding briefcase from sliding off the table, turned it around, and then opened it. Ninety thousand dollars, in stacks and rows of fifties and hundreds, were staring him in the face.

  “We like working for you, Sal,” Chazz said with delight in his heart. “You treat your men right.”

  The men, all Italians, smiled too and nodded their heads, their eyes transfixed on the sizeable payday they were about to receive.

  But Chazz closed the suitcase. It would be an insult to Sal Luca for them to count it or divide it up in front of him. “Anything else on the map, boss?” he asked.

  “Nothing right now,” Sal responded. “Lay low. Take a vacation even. Relax. We don’t want any heat. And I mean none.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “If anything else goes down, I’ll give you a call.”

  “First?”

  When Sal turned toward him with that look in his blazing blue eyes, Chazz realized quickly that he had overstepped his bounds. “What are you talking first?” Sal asked him, suddenly peeved. “Don’t you worry about who I call first. You keep doing good work, you’ll keep getting work from me. You fuck up, that’s it. It’s over. That’s all you need to worry about.”

  “Sure thing, Sal.” It wasn’t the guarantee the men had wanted, but it wasn’t a total rebuke either. “We appreciate how you treat us, that’s all I was talking about. In our line of work, you can meet---”

  Suddenly the room went black.

  And gunfire erupted.

  And the almost slow-motion action, turned desperately fast.

  Sal and Chazz and all of the men hit the floor fast and hard, pulling out their guns as they did.

  “Flip the table! Flip the table!” Sal was yelling as they dropped, and they flipped the table sideways, with the top facing the direction of the gunfire, for cover. They all knew the briefcase would fly off, which was undoubtedly the reason for the gunfire, and it did sail to the floor, an easy pickup target for the gunmen. But it was the price they had to pay for their lives.

  And it became a life or death gun battle as they kept firing at an unseen target. They shot back just as fast and furiously as the incoming bullets sailed around them. It was surreal, even to these men, who had seen it all.

  But then the incoming stopped. No more shots fired from that unseen enemy. It was all over in a matter of seconds.

  When Sal realized the gunfire was no longer being returned, he yelled for his men to hold their fire. They did. And there was silence. But Sal had been in enough situations like this to be extremely ca
utious. He knew the silence itself could be the trap.

  “Cover me,” he said to Chazz, and they all began firing again as Sal leaped from the table and landed, butt on the ground and his back against the wall, on the other side of the room. He wasn’t a kid anymore, and he felt a burst of pain when his back hit the wall, but he was as agile still as any younger man. He had his gun pointed and was firing too, but was finally confident that the perps had gone. He quickly pulled out the small flashlight on his key ring, clicked it on, and anxiously surveyed the room. The coast, he felt, was clear.

  He and his men stood up, pleased just to be alive. But they didn’t relish that pleasure long. Just as quickly as the men realized the briefcase was gone, and Sal came to the realization that some jokers had the nerve to ambush him as if he was their punk, they all took off running, with Sal leading the pack.

  They jumped down the three flights of stairs as if they were jumping down three stairs alone, and slung their bodies through the metal door that led outside. Sal had wondered why his men downstairs, his lookouts, didn’t alert him of the danger. But as soon as they made it outside, he realized why. Both of them were dead. Shot through the forehead execution-style. They were in Jersey, in a deserted industrial park in the wee hours of the morning, outside a half-completed building that was long since abandoned when the recession hit. It didn’t take a genius to ambush somebody in a place like this. But genius or fool, Sal was getting their asses.

  Especially when he saw that his two men were dead. It was personal now. Stealing money from him was one thing. Icing his men was something completely different. Then he saw the getaway car, swerving wildly and then straightening as it rounded the driveway and began heading for the only way out: the rusty, open gate.

  Sal didn’t hesitate. He took off running, barking orders as he did. “Three men that way!’ he yelled as he ran, waving his gun at the longer route on the back side of the fence. Chazz and three of his men headed that way. If the car cleared the gate, and Sal hadn’t managed to stop it, Chazz and his crew could orchestrate a retaliatory ambush. But only if they could get there fast enough. They would be the backup plan. Sal and the two men running with him, was the main.

  Sal and his men ran across the sidewalk, jumped the fence, and then ran fast as they could across the open field. Sal’s expensive suit coat was flapping in the early morning wind, making him look more like a businessman than a gunman, but he was outrunning the younger men easily. He was determined to cut the car off at the path, but the car was going so fast that he knew it would be a matter of inches.

  By the time they made it up to the front side fence, the car was just approaching with recklessly fast speeds, almost swerving out of control with every passing second. And it was just about to pass Sal and his men altogether. But Sal couldn’t allow that to happen. He jumped that fence like a pole-vaulter and then jumped on top of the hood of the car. The three passengers, stunned by his sudden presence, started firing their weapons, but the momentum of Sal’s body was moving in so many directions that they were missing badly. Sal was holding on for dear life, swerving and swerving and unable to gain traction. Then the car gave Sal an assist when the driver cleared the gate, propelling the nearly out-of-control car into the dark street. And Sal was able to still hold on.

  But the driver wouldn’t let up. He kept swerving in his attempts to sling Sal off the hood as it turned onto the street, swerving, at one point, nearly on two tires. But Sal’s muscular arms and brute determination to stop this asshole kept him hanging on. His body slung one way as the car slung the other way, and then it slung the other way as the car slung back again, but his hands held onto the windshield molding and he avoided falling off. He was also using the swerving itself as a weapon, as the erratic motions of the car helped him to avoid their volley of bullets. Then Sal was able to position his body enough to take his expensive, imported shoe and bash in the windshield, causing the driver to drive blindly, and swerve even more recklessly.

  Then Chazz and his men took over. They jumped the fence further down the road as Sal had ordered. They almost missed their chance when they jumped onto the road just as the car was passing by. They started firing inside of the car, hitting the driver first and then the two gunmen. Sal jumped from the vehicle just as it careened, flipped over several times, and then skid all the way across the road and ended upside down in the ditch.

  Chazz ran up to Sal, while his men ran up to the car.

  “You okay?” Chazz asked him.

  “If anybody’s still alive,” Sal ordered, barely able to regulate his breathing, “find out who sent him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then ice him too,” Sal added. “Not one of those fuckers gets out of here alive.”

  Chazz took off, to secure the briefcase first and foremost, and Sal, too drained to wait, headed back toward his two downed men. He never left a man on the field. He would have their bodies moved to a more respectable setting. He would also anonymously send money to their widows and children and make certain no bad news surrounds their deaths. As far as the families would understand, when Sal’s men finished staging it, those two downed men were the harmless victims of some random act of violence. Not lookouts outside an abandoned building. Choirboys even, if Sal Luca had his way.

  And Sal Luca usually did.

  Gemma Jones entered the side door of the Clark County courtroom where her client, Kenny Winston, was waiting to conference with her. They had just completed the morning session of his trial and he was agitated. He wanted to talk, and Gemma knew he did, but she forced him to wait until they were in the privacy of the lawyers’ room, and away from the prying ears of the prosecutors, before he did.

  Once in the room, and the door closed, she immediately held up a hand. “Don’t panic,” she urged him. “It’s only the first day.”

  “Why didn’t you fight harder?” Kenny’s voice was distressed. “That prosecutor made me look like some kind of animal! They made it sound like I was the worse criminal in the history of the world!”

  “He was only doing his job, Ken. Don’t worry about that.”

  “What the fuck you mean don’t worry? My life is on the line! They’re trying to send me away for twenty years, Miss Jones! I can’t do that kind of time!”

  Gemma saw the fear in his eyes. “Sit down,” she said to him.

  He didn’t want to, that was obvious, but he eventually did as she asked.

  “I suggest again, Kenny, that you at least consider the plea deal the prosecution has offered.”

  But Kenny was already shaking his head. “No,” he said. “No way. Five years? No way.”

  “Five is better than twenty. And if you lose, that’s the least you’ll get. It could be Life.”

  “What you mean if I lose? I’m not losing! You’ve got to get in there and tell them people what kind of person I am. I didn’t shoot nobody. Yeah, we were fighting, but he was alive when I left him!”

  “I can tell them that all day long,” Gemma said. “But the evidence is telling them differently.”

  “Fuck the evidence!” Kenny yelled as hysterically as she was calm. “I’m telling you what you’ve got to tell that jury! Why haven’t you called my mama and my brother’nem to the stand? They can alibi me. They can tell you I was home when the prosecution said that man died.”

  “If I call your family members, and they claim you were at home when the victim was shot, I’ll be setting them up for perjury charges.”

  “How? I was home!”

  “You were not home, Kenny, why are you deluding yourself? You already told the police you heard the gunshot while you were getting into your car to leave the victim’s apartment.”

  Kenny had forgotten about that. “Bump what I told the cops!” he yelled. “You can put me on the stand and I can say the cops beat me up and was harassing me and shit. I can say they forced me to confess.”

  “They have you on tape saying it, Kenny. You didn’t look beaten up and harassed on that ta
pe.”

  “That’s because they beat me below the neck. All my bruises were hidden.”

  “First, and this is on tape too, you told the cops that you were home with your mom when the killing happened.”

  “So?”

  “Then they showed you the videotape they had from outside the apartment complex where the murder took place. And there you were, on a video camera that also happens to have the time and date embedded in it, leaving the complex at the exact same time the Coroner is going to testify that the young man was murdered. You see that video, then you change your story. Then suddenly you heard the gunshot just as you were leaving.” Gemma shook her head. “The evidence is overwhelming.”

  “I don’t care what you say,” Kenny said. “There’s no video showing me killing that man. If they don’t have that, they don’t have a case. Tell that jury the cops forced me to say what they claim I said.”

  Gemma sat there and wondered how in the world had things gotten so bad that she had to resort to trying criminal cases again. She was court-appointed, which guaranteed she would get paid, but she hated the work. Defending criminals with all kinds of wild tales that they expected her to put before a jury was something she dreaded doing.

  “I can’t do that,” she said bluntly.

  “Why the hell not?” Kenny wanted to know. “You ain’t got to say it. I’ll be the one saying it. All you got to do is put me on the stand!”