Gemma's Daughter Read online

  The guard was shocked. But he knew Sal too well. “Yes, sir,” he said and grab at Kamill.

  But Kamill was hugging Sal. “Thank you,” she said in tears. “Thank you!”

  When she stopped embracing him, Sal could see the humanity in her eyes. She wasn’t just some meth head who didn’t give a shit. She was a meth head who knew her life had spiraled out of control. And she was ashamed.

  Sal, who always had a heart for people on the downside of life, gave her a hug of his own, and then ordered her to go with his man.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  She was winning. They never liked when she was winning. His wife had been an attorney a long time. She wasn’t new to the game and they knew that too. They always came up with some kind of bullshit whenever she was winning.

  Sal sat all the way in the back of the courtroom, watching her deliver one of the best closing arguments he’d ever seen her deliver, and he was nodding his head with pride as she walked back toward the defense table. That was his woman: Gemma Jones-Gabrini. He couldn’t take his eyes off of her as she stepped proudly in her tailored skirt suit with her above-the-knee-skirt highlighting her dark, shapely legs and slender, shapely body. Her hair was in a stylish pixie cut that gave her an elegant, sophisticated look. But it was her high cheekbones and huge eyes, and that slamming body he couldn’t stop staring at that made her appear, not only serious, but seriously sexy to Sal. So sexy that a part of him wished they weren’t in a courtroom, but back home in bed.

  They’d come a long way, he thought as he watched her. When they first met, he couldn’t decide if she was the prettiest woman he’d ever seen, or the ugliest. He kept going back and forth and couldn’t seem to make up his mind. But now, years later, it seemed crazy to him that he would have ever thought such nonsense. Because that same woman he once had mixed feelings about, and whose racist ideology at that time wanted to dismiss her as too black to be beautiful, was now his world.

  But Sal braced himself because he knew how those racist prosecutors treated Gemma down at that courthouse. They always tried to taint her victories. They always tried to make it seem as if she was somehow gaming the system whenever she was kicking their asses at trial. The bullshit, he knew, was coming.

  “Your Honor, may we approach?”

  That was the first sign. The prosecution wanted a sidebar with the judge. Gemma smiled. Like he said: she wasn’t new to the game. She had expected some nonsense too. When she glanced back at Sal, he shook his head. They both knew the bull was on its way.

  When Gemma and Dillon Randolph, the lead prosecutor, made their way up to the judge’s tall bench, Dillon leaned toward the judge. “Your Honor,” he said, “the State requests to be heard outside the presence of the jury.”

  That was sign number two. Gemma saw that coming too. That was why, when the judge granted the prosecution request and dismissed the jury for the day, Gemma gave Sal another knowing look as she made her way back to the defense table. She and Sal had that kind of simpatico relationship. He was the only human being on earth who got her. He always seemed to know exactly what she was thinking.

  But Sal, not known as a calm individual anyway, was already getting angry.

  “I’ll hear the State,” the judge said after the jury was out of the courtroom, “and then the Defense will have an opportunity to respond.”

  But Gemma’s client, Vegas performer Michael Moret, a man accused of a botched murder-for-hire scheme against his ex-wife, was worried. “Why is he sending the jurors home already?” he asked Gemma. “What’s that prosecutor up to?”

  “We’re about to find out,” Gemma responded. Her guess, at that point, would be as good as his.

  And then Dillon Randolph stood up behind the Prosecution table and announced what all the fuss was about. “Your Honor,” he said, “the State urges the Court to sanction and/or severely punish the Defense counsel for what she has done.”

  Gemma couldn’t believe it. Sanction? Punish? What on earth for? But she maintained her cool. She didn’t even look at the prosecution. She sat stoically, her legs crossed, her eyes on the judge and the judge alone, as she listened intensely.

  Sal, on the other hand, was frowning and turning around in his seat already. Never known as an even-tempered man to begin with, he even murmured motherfucker beneath his breath as he stared unblinkingly at the Prosecution. It had already been a hectic day. Now this crap too?

  The judge wasn’t angry, but he was almost as baffled as Sal. “Sanctions and punishment for what offense, Mr. Randolph?” the judge asked the Prosecution.

  “We have reason to believe that the Defense has been intimidating our witnesses, Your Honor,” Dillon said.

  Although an enormously serious allegation, Gemma still remained calm.

  Sal stopped moving around, too, when he heard the accusation. He understood the seriousness too.

  The judge stared skeptically at the prosecution, as if he knew what the man was up to as well. “Witness intimidation in what form, Mr. Randolph?” the judge asked.

  “As I’m sure you know, Your Honor, Mrs. Gabrini’s husband, Salvatore Luciano Gabrini, also known as Sal Luca, has been reputed to have very serious mob connections, if not be an outright mob boss himself.”

  Gemma closed her eyes when Dillon made that statement. Her calm was cracking. Every time, in the end, it was all about Sal, when Sal had nothing to do with it. And she was getting tired of participating in their old playbook.

  Sal exhaled. Bullshit, just as he thought.

  “We believe,” Dillon continued, “that Mr. Gabrini’s flunkies, if not Mr. Gabrini himself, have been showing up at our witnesses homes and places of employment to harass and scare them into changing their testimonies. Gabrini wants them to claim they never saw the defendant with the alleged hit man, as they’ve already testified.”

  “And why would he want them to change their testimonies, Mr. Randolph?” the judge asked.

  “He wants to help his wife win this very high-profile case,” Dillon responded.

  The judge looked at Gemma. “Mrs. Gabrini,” he said. “Would you care to respond?”

  Gemma slowly stood up. She didn’t want to give such a frivolous allegation any more of her energy than it required. “Frankly, Your Honor,” she said, “it’s really not worth a response. I can’t believe how low Mr. Randolph and his team has decided to go. They have no evidence of any witness tampering or intimidation and they know it. Nobody asked any witness to change anything. Nobody coerced them to do anything. They cannot produce a shred of evidence to show that there were conversations of any kind to get any witness to change anything. They don’t even have proof, I guarantee you, of my husband or anybody associated with my husband going anywhere near any of the State’s witnesses. My husband is a respected businessman here in Vegas, not some mob boss as Mr. Randolph would have you believe, and he is too busy to be chasing witnesses.”

  Gemma hated lying. But she’d go to her grave before she admitted her husband’s involvement with any Mafia organization, especially since his involvement was usually to clean up messes that were not of his making. Besides, it was the prosecution that started it with their pack of lies about witness intimidation. Sal’s background was just their way to muddy the waters. She wasn’t admitting to anything. She wasn’t getting in that mud with them.

  But what Sal loved most, as he watched Gemma, was how full-throated she stood up for him. He was proud of her.

  “Your Honor,” said Dillon, “the witnesses themselves have called and reported this to us. We aren’t making this stuff up. The witnesses told us. Why would they lie?”

  “Why didn’t you have the police check it out if it’s so serious?” Gemma asked Dillon. “Why did you wait until after my powerful closing, when you saw what a good attorney could do to your flimsy case, to suddenly come up with these pack of lies?”

  “The only pack of lies in this courtroom is your belief that you’re a good attorney,” Dillon shot back.

  Sal a
ngrily jumped out of his seat. “Why that motherfucker!” he said out loud. But the bailiffs on the door hurried over to him even as the judge was banging the gavel. That’s enough!” the judge yelled. “Watch yourself, Mr. Randolph,” he warned the prosecutor. “And Mr. Gabrini, sit down!”

  Gemma looked back at Sal when the judge said his name. She didn’t realize he had stood up and said anything. And she angrily gave him that look of disapproval that made Sal wrestle with the bailiffs a moment longer, but then he snatched away from them and sat back down.

  The judge then looked at the prosecutor. “Mr. Randolph,” he said, “you have two days to present evidence. And I mean substantial evidence of your claim. Court is adjourned.”

  Then the gavel banged again.

  By the time Gemma reassured her client before he was led away to the jailhouse, and had gathered up her papers into her briefcase and made her way out into the corridor, Sal was already leaned against the wall. When Gemma saw him she walked over to him. And she was not pleased.

  “I’m sorry, alright?” he said as soon as she made her way up to him. He took her briefcase from her. “I wasn’t going to let that asshole call my wife a liar.”

  “But you know better than that, Sal,” Gemma said. “That’s what they want. They want you to give them a show.”

  “I said I was sorry, alright?” Then his temper flared. “Don’t push it.”

  Gemma gave her husband a hard look. Sal could be brash like that. Sometimes he had perfect manners, sometimes none at all. She was used to it.

  “You okay?” he asked her.

  He also was a loveable rogue. She could never stay mad at Sal for too long. She smiled, and then placed her arm in his arm. “Witness intimidation,” she said dismissively as they began walking away. “Bunch of bullshit.”

  “They always try something like that when you kick their asses,” Sal said.

  Gemma laughed. “It’s predictable, isn’t it? They always want to make it seem like my great white husband has to come to my rescue and that’s the only reason my black ass is able to win any case whatsoever. Although,” Gemma was quick to point out, “I haven’t won this one yet.”

  “With that Closing? Oh, you bagged that shit,” Sal said, and Gemma laughed. “That jury will be insane to convict.”

  “That doesn’t mean he’s innocent though,” said Gemma.

  Sal looked at her. “You don’t think he is?”

  Gemma hunched her shoulder. “Don’t know. My job is to defend him, and that’s what I’m doing. If the prosecution evidence isn’t strong enough, then he has to walk free. That’s our judicial system.”

  Sal was smiling.

  Gemma looked at him. “What’s so funny?”

  “You looked real sexy when you defended me,” Sal said.

  Gemma smiled, too, but she noticed something more beneath Sal’s smile. “What’s wrong?” she asked him.

  “Wrong? Why would anything be wrong?”

  “You look kind of . . . harassed.”

  Sal could always rely on Gemma to pick up on his moods where nobody else could. But Kamill and her fucked up life was his problem to handle. He wasn’t bringing that home to Gemma. “I’m probably just tired,” he said. “Let’s go home.”

  “Gotta get Lucky first,” said Gemma.

  “Already arranged,” said Sal. “He’s at Reno and Trina’s.”

  Gemma smiled. “You think of everything, Sal.”

  “Guess what I’m thinking of now,” Sal said to her.

  Gemma laughed. “That’s an easy guess,” she said, which prompted Sal to laugh too.

  And then, as if their once deliberate pace needed to change, they got in a hurry. Those prosecutors and their courtroom hijinks and Kamill and her crazy-ass stalker were far removed from their minds just that fast. They just wanted to be with each other, and the world be damned. They didn’t run. They were too sophisticated for that. But they put far more pep in their step.

  CHAPTER SIX

  After finishing her Danish, her coffee, and her e-copy of the New York Times on her iPad, Circuit Judge Cassandra “Cassie” Jones pressed her desk button. Her clerk, with clipboard in hand outlining the day’s docket, hurried into the judge’s chambers.

  “Good morning,” the clerk said happily. “Looking forward to another session?”

  “Depends on how crowded it is,” the judge said as she wiped some Danish crumbs from her desk.

  “Oh, it’s crowded,” her clerk made clear as she stood in front of the judge’s desk. “It’s always crowded.”

  “That bad?”

  “Not bad. But the usual unusual.”

  “Any high-profiles I need to know about?”

  “There’s this actor that used to be in those old Destin Motors car commercials. You know that tall, goofy guy who always ended the commercial with you betcha?”

  Judge Jones tried to picture who she meant, but failed. “What did he do?”

  “Beat up his old lady.”

  “His wife?”

  “His mother. Broke the old lady’s jaw.”

  The judge shook her head. “What is the world coming to?”

  “It’s already came,” said her clerk.

  “That’s it?”

  “High profile? Pretty much. There’s a couple extradition requests, though.”

  “From where?”

  “Amarillo, Texas for one. Involving a young guy named Joseph Parks. He was arrested last week on a driving without a license charge. Cops want a court order to bring him back on a warrant.”

  “What’s his underlying crime?” the judge asked.

  “He allegedly pushed a cop when they were harassing him for trespassing in front of a shoe store.”

  “That’s his crime?”

  “That’s it.”

  “That request will be denied,” the judge said. “What else?”

  “The cops aren’t gonna like it, Judge.”

  “That’s their problem. I’m not wasting taxpayer dollars to give a couple cops a vacation in Texas. Because that’s all these extraditions are usually about. What else?”

  “There’s the case of Sylvia Pendle.”

  Judge Jones stared at her clerk. It couldn’t be. “Sylvia Pendle?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. You know her?”

  “What’s the accusation?”

  “She allegedly the mastermind behind a baby-stealing ring.”

  Judge Jones couldn’t believe it.

  “Ma’am, are you okay?”

  The judge sat down. “A baby-stealing ring?”

  Although her clerk was worried that she didn’t look right, she continued to do her job. “Yes, ma’am,” she said. “And she may not be the only one involved. But one mother hired private eyes to find her. They found her.”

  “Where?”

  “In Vegas,” the clerk said and it was all the judge could bear to hear.

  “Are you okay, ma’am?” the clerk asked her again.

  “Get my daughter on the phone,” Judge Jones said.

  “I’ll get you some water.”

  The judge slammed the palm of her hand down on her desktop. “Get my daughter on the phone. Didn’t you hear me? Get my daughter on the phone now!” She was yelling angrily and the clerk didn’t hesitate any further.

  “Yes, ma’am,” she said. She hurried to do as she was ordered.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  They were in bed, spoon-style, and he was deep inside of her, grinding on her ass. His hands were fondling her breasts, squeezing them tightly, as he fucked her. And Sal wasn’t playing around. His eyes were closed. His entire body was caught up in that rush of excitement he always felt whenever he was inside of the woman he loved.

  Gemma’s eyes were closed, too, as Sal did her. There was always something special about the way he made her feel. And she was feeling it that day.

  But as they made long, slow love, Gemma’s cell phone began ringing. A tribute to how wonderful they felt, neither Gem nor Sal gave that
phone a second thought. They were too immersed in the feelings.

  But then, ten minutes later, they were cumming. First Gemma, and then Sal right behind her. He let it loose and it saturated her.

  And then that phone was ringing again.

  “Damn!” Sal said. “Can’t they give us a fucking break?”

  Gemma knew it could be some new bullshit from the prosecution. She needed to make sure. She grabbed her phone off of the nightstand and took a peep. Sal didn’t give a shit. He was still grinding on her. He was still feeling those wonderful feelings she made him feel, when Gemma saw that it was her mother phoning. She decided to answer.

  Sal frowned. “What are you doing?”

  “It’s Ma,” she said. “I need to make sure everything’s okay.” She answered the call. “Hey,” she said.

  “I need to see you,” Judge Jones said.

  “See me? When?”

  “Today. Now.”

  “I can’t just drop everything and fly all the way to Indiana. I have to be in court tomorrow morning.”

  “Then tomorrow after court. Can you come then?”

  “Ma, what’s wrong?”

  “Can you come then, Gemma?”

  Gemma nodded. “I think so, yeah.”

  “Then I’ll expect to see you then.” And she ended the call.

  Sal was still inside of Gemma, but he had exhausted his ability to grind on her any longer. “What was that about?” he asked her.

  “I don’t know. Ma wants me to fly to Indiana after court tomorrow morning.”

  “And she wouldn’t say what it’s about?”

  “No.”

  “She just expect you to fly all that way without knowing why?”

  “That’s what she expects, yes.” Then she looked at Sal. She knew her mother was no drama queen. If she wanted Gemma in Indiana, it had to be serious. “Can you go with me?” she asked Sal.