Gemma's Daughter Read online

  “I said it was an error,” said Pauley. “Bump did wrong. I’m not defending what Bump did. But it was a mistake, Robby. A terrible mistake.”

  “Men died,” said Robby. “Mistake my ass.”

  “The question is,” said Scrubs, “should Bumper die too?”

  When Scrubs asked that question, they all looked to Sal for the answer.

  Sal finally stopped walking when he stood at the window, his back to all of his men. He hated with a passion when his men fucked up. And it was a royal fuck up. Two of his men dead. A war diverted because Sal had to call in a favor. He didn’t like handling his business that way. “Bring their asses in here,” he ordered.

  Robby nodded at PeeWee, a big, burly man who got his nickname because of his high-pitched voice, and he got up and made his way to the door. When he opened it, he stood aside and Bumper Collins and two other men walked in. They were all Sal’s made men. They were all well-experienced men who should have known better.

  “I don’t see where this is an issue,” Bumper was saying as soon as he walked in. “Why are we being put on the grill like this? Those guys came at me, and hell yeah I fought back. What’s the big damn deal?”

  Sal turned around. When Bumper saw that cold, chilling look in Sal’s eyes, he knew he should have shut it. But he couldn’t. He was pissed. “I’m no fucking novice. I knew what I was doing. Is it my fault that two of our guys got caught in the crossfire? I didn’t kill’em.”

  “Shut up,” Sal said to Bumper with as much self-control as he could muster, although he was raging inside.

  But Bumper, being Bumper, kept talking. “What I’m trying to say, Boss,” he said.

  But Pauley, who was a close friend of Bumper’s, intervened. “Shut the fuck up, Bump!” he yelled. “Just shut the fuck up!”

  “Why I got to shut up?” Bumper asked. “What did I do wrong? I defended myself, that’s what I did. Is it my fault that it didn’t work out?”

  “Button it, Bump,” said Robby, looking at Sal. He knew better than any of them when Sal was enraged.

  But that damn Bumper wouldn’t let up. “Everybody wants to silence me when all I did was defend myself. Wouldn’t you defend yourself, Robby? Why I can’t defend myself? Those cocksuckers started badmouthing me and I was supposed to just take it? Shit went sideways. It happens in our line of work.”

  “Shut the fuck up!” Sal angrily yelled. “Didn’t I tell you to shut the fuck up?!”

  Nobody realized Sal had a gun in his hand until he started angrily waving it around. “I don’t wanna hear your punk-ass voice again, you hear me?!”

  “Yes, sir,” Bumper said quickly. It was as if he suddenly realized Sal was in the room too.

  “When shit goes sideways it doesn’t blow back on you,” Sal yelled. “That’s why your ass can afford to be all cavalier about this shit. That’s why your ass talking all that stupid shit. Because it doesn’t blow back on you. It blows back on me and my family! Me and mine!”

  Sal had to calm back down. “And for you two to go along with his stupid ass,” Sal said, waving his gun toward Bumper’s two sidekicks, “makes me wanna get rid of all of you. Now two of my men are dead,” he said, looking at Bumper again, “and you don’t see where it’s a big damn deal? Well I’m about to show you just how big a damn deal it really is,” he said and began firing at Bumper. One shot. Two shots. Three shots. He walked and fired. Fired and walked. Four, five, six shots. Bumper was backing up, and his body was shaking with every bullet hole that shot through him. Sal’s men had stood up, too, and were backing up too. Until Bump dropped dead.

  The other two men, now even more terrified than they had already been, started begging for their lives.

  “We didn’t mean to do any harm, Boss. We thought he had permission to call us in. We thought he had permission!”

  But Sal wasn’t even looking at them. Bumper was the man who had to pay. His attitude didn’t cause his fate. Sal would never kill a man for mouthing off. But he knew he had to eventually get rid of a loose cannon like Bump, anyway, before he started a fight with the wrong mob. It was a long time coming. His mouth, and arrogance, just happened to speed up his fate.

  “Wipe it clean,” Sal ordered his men.

  “Yes, sir, Boss,” said Scrubs as he pulled out his cell phone to call in the cleanup crew.

  “What about these two?” asked Robby as he motioned toward Bumper’s sidekicks.

  “Spare their miserable lives,” Sal said, “but teach them a lesson.”

  Robby knew that meant give them a beating they wouldn’t soon forget. But one of the two men was so relieved that he wasn’t going to die that day that he began relieving himself.

  Robby shook his head. “You better be glad we have a fair boss. Any other boss would have killed your asses too. Now let’s go!” he ordered, and pushed them toward the exit. They looked back at Bumper’s body, a man who dragged them into a fight they should have never allowed him to drag them into, and they were as angry with him as Sal was.

  Sal continued to stare at Bumper’s body. There was a time when Bump showed a lot of promise.

  But he should have taken him out a long time ago, and everybody knew it. Sal was becoming distracted: by his wife. By his kid. By his own legitimate businesses.

  He’d better get a grip, he knew, before the grip got him.

  CHAPTER THREE

  It was long after midnight when Sal made it back to Vegas. He entered his quiet home, peeped in at his young son Lucky, who was fast asleep in bed, and made his way upstairs. Gemma was who he wanted. All those days on the road, handling one crisis after another one, and he needed to see her cheerful face again.

  And when he made it into their bedroom and saw that she was sitting up in bed, he became elated. She had waited up for him! But then he realized she had fallen asleep reviewing notes on her iPad. But that made him smile too. That was his Gemma. Always working. He went over to her, sat on the edge of the bed, and closed her iPad.

  When he closed her tablet, she opened her eyes. When she saw that it was Sal, and that he had returned home, she smiled that angelic smile he loved. “Sal!” she cried happily, and wrapped her arms around his neck.

  He moved further onto the bed and pulled her closer against him. Then he pulled her onto his lap, cradling her. She smiled up at him. He smiled down at her. “Miss me?” he asked her.

  “Yes. Terribly.”

  “I miss you,” Sal said. Then his look turned serious. “More than you’ll ever know,” he said. And then he moved down, to her gorgeous lips, and kissed her.

  For the longest time all that could be heard in that entire bedroom was the sound of their smacking lips. They couldn’t seem to get enough of each other. Sal was moaning as he kissed her. Gemma was clutching him tightly as he kissed her. And then Sal’s hands began moving beneath the big shirt Gemma wore, and he was feeling all over her body as he kissed her. He was getting too hot to handle. Kissing was not going to be enough to satisfy his outsized need.

  That was why he unbuttoned that big shirt, and began sucking her breasts.

  Gemma’s slender body leaned into Sal as he sucked her. He was making love to her breasts and she was moving up and down as if he was inside of her already. And he couldn’t stop sucking her. For the longest time he sucked and sucked, and his hand continued to massage her below.

  Gemma rubbed her hands through his silky hair and enjoyed every second of his skills. She loved that Sal was a breast man. She loved the feelings he gave her every time he touched her breasts.

  And he touched them for several long minutes. So long that she thought he’d go on forever. But Sal wanted more.

  He laid her down on the bed, and moved down between her legs. She began arching as he ate her.

  And when that was too much, and she was about to cum, he managed to pull his mouth away and insert his penis where his mouth had been. And he fucked her. He rode her as if he was riding a magnificent tide. And then he got on top of her, and wrapped her
in his arms, and she wrapped him into her arms, as they fucked.

  When they came, they came together. Because it had been days without seeing or touching or being with each other. They came hard.

  When it was all over, and they both had no more energy to do anything more, Sal remained deep inside of her as he laid onto his back and carried her with him. Now she was on top of him, and they were both holding onto each other.

  The awful decisions Sal had to make, where somebody lived and somebody died, quickly became a fading memory, as he slept the sleep of the exhausted.

  But Gemma was worried. No matter how tired he was, or how difficult the trip had been, he usually got it up again, and again, as if he couldn’t get enough of her. But he was out like a light already. Gemma was worried.

  Until she dozed off herself and woke up, a few hours later, to discover that Sal’s thick penis was deep inside of her, grinding on her all over again.

  She smiled, relaxed, and sighed with pure wonderment as he did her in that fantastic way that only Sal could do her. All was right with the world for Gemma.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The next day and Sal was in his favorite diner eating heartily when she walked up. But he didn’t even look up from his wonderful meal. It was his bodyguard, who sat at the table across from him eating heartily too, that stood up when he saw her approaching, and blocked the woman’s path.

  “Not so fast, Doll,” the bodyguard said as his thick arm held her back.

  “Sal, it’s me,” the woman said, as she leaned her head around the guard’s massive frame. There were a handful of customers in that diner at that time, and they all knew Sal. They all knew to keep their distance. But she was determined. “Sal Luca, it’s me,” she said again.

  Sal still wasn’t interested in being bothered. But the voice sounded familiar. He glanced over at her and took a quick glance. Skeleton eyes. Pasty skin. Thin as a rail. Bad teeth. Obviously a meth head who just so happened to know his name. He just wanted to eat his meal and then get over to the courthouse to watch his wife’s closing arguments in a high-profile case she was defending. He waved the woman away.

  “Let’s go, Doll,” his bodyguard said to her. “He doesn’t want to see you.”

  “But Sal, it’s me.” She was desperate even as the bodyguard was pushing her back. “Sal. It’s Kamill.”

  When Sal heard that name, he looked again. And suddenly he recognized her. “Wait,” he said to his bodyguard, and frowned.

  The bodyguard, surprised, looked at his boss even as he stopped shoving her back. A meth head, really? He was going to give the time of day to a meth head? Are you kidding me, his expression seemed to say.

  “You’ve got to help me, Sal,” the woman said, her voice dripping with desperation.

  Sal didn’t need anything more on his plate, that was for damn sure. But he knew her. “Let her through,” he said to his guard. And the guard, who understood clearly who buttered his bread, although still stunned that his boss would bother with a chick like that, let her through.

  “You’ve got to,” she started to say again but Sal cut her off.

  “Sit,” he said to her.

  She sat across from him.

  “Want me to order you something to eat? You need to eat.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “You’re not okay. You need to eat.”

  “I couldn’t even if I wanted to. I need your help bad, Sal.”

  He could smell her body odor even from where he sat. But he was too busy staring at her to notice. She used to be so beautiful. He used to fuck her every single week. He made her one of his favorite fucks. What happened?

  But she wasn’t interested in any trips down memory lane. By the look on her face, her problem was immediate and it was urgent. “You have to help me, Sal,” she said again. “Me and my kids. You have to help me.”

  “First of all,” Sal said, “I don’t have to do shit.” But everybody knew Sal was loyal to the people he knew. He took another bite of what had been a lovely meal. “What’s the problem?” he finally asked her.

  “They’re trying to kill me!” Kamill said.

  Sal stared at her. “Who’s trying to kill you?”

  “I don’t know!”

  Sal frowned. “If your ass don’t know, what you expect from me?”

  “I didn’t know where else to turn. He won’t leave me alone.”

  “Who?”

  “This man.”

  “A john?” Sal asked her.

  “It started like that. He said to come to his car. He wanted me to do him a favor.”

  “What kind of favor?” Sal’s bodyguard asked her.

  But Sal already knew. The kind she used to do for Sal.

  “But it got weird,” Kamill said, ignoring the bodyguard. “He didn’t want sex. He wanted to talk.”

  “About what?” Sal asked.

  “You,” Kamill said, and Sal and the bodyguard both stared at her.

  “Me?” Sal asked.

  “Yeah, you. That’s all he wanted to talk about. You.”

  Sal sat his fork down and leaned back. “What about me?”

  “He wanted to know how big you were. And if you were as good in bed as they claim. What kind of cologne you wore. Shit like that.”

  Sal frowned. “What the fuck he wanted to know all of that for?”

  “I don’t know! But that’s what he kept asking me about. You and nobody else. You and nothing else. I figured it was a game, so I made up shit and told him. But he kept coming back. He wanted more and more. And I kept making it up. He paid me good money. I was telling him whatever I thought he wanted to hear. It was no big deal.”

  Then her look changed. “But he wouldn’t leave me alone. He just knew we were still fucking. He kept coming back. Over and over and over and it got to a point that I started contradicting myself. And he knew it. And he called me out on it. Then he started kicking my ass when I got something wrong.”

  Sal stared at her.

  “And that’s when it started changing,” Kamill said. “That’s when he stopped asking questions, and just started stalking me. When he caught up with me, he’d beat me. I started hiding from him. I started doing drugs. It got crazy. But he always found me. Somebody on the street would tell him. When he started threatening my kids, I knew I had to get help.”

  “Why didn’t you go to the cops?” Sal asked.

  Kamill gave Sal a hard look. “The cops, Sal Luca? Why you think I didn’t go to the cops? They wouldn’t give a girl like me the time of day. But I knew you would, Sal. We had some good times together, you and me. I knew you wouldn’t let me down.”

  The bodyguard saw it first. Speeding through the parking lot. But when he expected the big Ram pickup truck to stop at the curb, it jumped the curb and began speeding straight for the diner. Straight for where Sal and Kamill were sitting in the diner!

  “Boss!” the bodyguard yelled and jumped over and grabbed Sal.

  Sal, not knowing what was about to happen but trusting his guard, grabbed Kamill all the way across the table and out of the way just as that truck crashed through the window of that diner with a ferocious glass shattering, and knocked over the table and everything else in its path.

  Sal and his bodyguard, along with Kamill, all fell backwards, and it was Sal who got up first just as the driver of that truck, now parked in the diner, jumped out and began running away.

  “Stay with her!” Sal ordered his guard, remembering that the attempt was most likely directed at Kamill, and he ran after the driver.

  The driver flew out of the back door of the diner as if he knew exactly where he was going, and Sal chased him as fast as he could run.

  Dogs were barking out back as the man jumped fence after fence and kept on running. Sal wasn’t as agile as the younger man, but nobody had more dogged determination than Sal. Somebody nearly wiped him off the face of the earth, where he wouldn’t see his wife or child ever again, wasn’t about to get away from him. He jumped fence af
ter fence too.

  He saw where the man was heading. There was a car parked across the street in an alley. Sal knew, if the man got in that car, he might get away forever. Or Sal would have to shoot to kill him first. He didn’t want either outcome. He needed answers. He needed that man alive. Sal started humping he was running so fast.

  But it wasn’t fast enough. The man ran across the street just as a semi was speeding down that same street, and Sal was certain he cleared it and was jumping into the getaway car. But the driver didn’t clear that truck. That truck cleared him. It knocked him clean across the street and into a pile of sidewalk trash.

  Sal, stunned, ran across the street too. But there was no doubt. The man had been smashed. The man was dead.

  Sal leaned down, his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. And he was pissed that he would get no answers.

  The truck driver, who had hit on brakes and jumped out of his truck, ran to the man he assumed was a victim. And he was already pleading is case. “It wasn’t my fault,” he was saying as if Sal was going to be the arbiter of his guilt or innocence. “He ran in front of me!”

  But Sal wasn’t even listening. He stood upright. And then his bodyguard and Kamill ran over too.

  “You okay, Boss?” his bodyguard asked.

  Sal could only manage a nod.

  “You know him?” the bodyguard asked.

  Sal didn’t know him, but he wondered if Kamill did. “Do you?” he asked Kamill.

  But Kamill was shaking her head. “No. Never seen him before.”

  “That’s not the guy?” Sal asked.

  She continued to shake her head. “No. That ain’t him.”

  Sal exhaled. Great. They could hear the sirens in the distance as a small crowd began to gather.

  “Safe house her,” Sal said to his bodyguard.

  The bodyguard was shocked. “Her?”

  “And my family?” Kamill asked. “I have two kids, Sal.”

  Sal looked at Kamill. In her line of work and she would have kids? What was she thinking? But then again, he realized, he was in his line of work and had a son himself. What the fuck was he thinking? “And her kids, too,” he ordered his guard. “Now get her out of here!”