Sal Gabrini: His House of Cards (12 page)

Gemma
dropped the dresses she held in her hand onto the table.
 
“Okay, that’s it.
 
Goodbye.
 
Get out,” she ordered.

“I’m telling
you the truth!
 
You can’t stand the
truth?”

“You heard
the lady,” Trina said.
 
“Get out.”

“Don’t you want
to know about your stepson?” Blanche asked Gemma.
 
“The stepson you didn’t even know existed?”

“Get out,”
Gemma said, refusing to entertain her.
 
“Or I’ll throw you out!”

Blanche
smiled.
 
“Alright, I’m going,” she said,
holding her hands up.
 
“I know Loverboy
has you well trained.
 
I’ll leave.
 
But that doesn’t mean I’m lying.
 
Because I’m not.”

Blanche
looked at Gemma again, she even laughed at Gemma, and then she walked out.
 

Trina looked
at Gemma too.
 
But Gemma was too stunned
to look back.
 
It was a conversation that
only she and Sal needed to have, not she and Trina.
 
So she simply picked back up her dresses, and
continued to hang.

She was
waiting for him when he made it home.
 
She stood at the floor-to-ceiling window on the far end of their formal
living room, her arms folded, still in her same business suit.

Sal walked
in slowly, wondering why the house wasn’t lit up like a Christmas tree the way
Gemma usually had it.
 
When he saw her
over by the window, he relaxed.
 
But it
still felt strange.
 
“Hey,” he said as he
walked further into the room, his hands in his pants pockets.

Gemma
continued to stare out of the window, with her back to him.

“What are
you standing in the dark for?” He walked up to her.

“It’s not dark,”
Gemma finally said.
 
And it wasn’t.
 
She had on a lamp.
 
But it was very dim, and Sal could feel the
dimness of her spirit.
 
Something was
upsetting her.
 
Was she still worried
about that shooting?
 
He had his men
keeping tabs on her 24/7, but was she still uneasy?
 
Or was she worried about that video, and that
everybody in Vegas knew what kind of brute he used to be?
  
Was that the reason?

He stood
beside her.
 
She was looking across the
courtyard, where the waterfall and the koi pond centered the space.
 
It was always a place of peace for both of
them.
 
But Sal sensed the turmoil.

He leaned
against the window frame and looked at her.
 
“What’s wrong?” he asked.

Gemma didn’t
know how she was going to address it.
 
But she knew it had to be addressed.
 
She looked at him.

When she
did, and he saw the pain in her soft, brown eyes, his heart squeezed.
 
Why was he always hurting her?
 
“What’s the matter, honey?” he asked.

Gemma
thought it was going to be cut and dry.
 
She thought she wasn’t going to have any anger whatsoever.
 
She would give him the benefit of the doubt
the way she always gave him the benefit of the doubt.
 
But maybe it was the cumulative effect of
that lawsuit, and that video, and the shooting, and what her family and friends
had been warning her about him for all those years. But something changed when
she looked into his eyes.
 
She felt a
disappointment she couldn’t explain.
 
And
she didn’t even know if what that woman told her was true.
 
“Tell me it’s not true,” she found herself
saying to him.

But Sal
genuinely didn’t know what she was talking about.
 
“Tell you what’s not true?”

Gemma waited
a moment.
 
She could still feel that
anger rising, and she couldn’t explain why.

“Tell you
what’s not true, Gem?” Sal asked.
 
“What
are you talking about?”

“I’m talking
about Blanche Delilah,” Gemma finally said.
 
“I’m talking about the woman you was so interested in when she came out
of my office earlier today.”

Sal’s heart
was pounding.
 
He thought his people
would find out what Blanche was up to before she had any further contact with
Gemma.
 
But apparently she came
back.
 
“What about her?” he asked.

“Who is
she?”

“Nobody.”

“Don’t tell
me that, Sal.”

“What are
you talking?
 
You asked me who she was
and I told you who.
 
She’s nobody.”

“You used to
date her?”

“No!
 
She fooled around with this guy who worked
for me.
 
She was his old lady.”

“And you
never fooled around with her too?” Gemma asked.

Sal
hesitated.
 
Gemma was stunned by his lack
of response.
 
“Well?” she asked him.

“Yeah, we
fooled around,” Sal finally admitted.

Gemma was
incredulous. “Then why didn’t you tell me that, Sal?
 
Why did you claim she was some other man’s
woman when she was yours too?”

“Because it
was a long time ago.
 
Something like
twenty years ago.
 
We were both kids
then.
 
It was no big deal!
 
What difference does it make now?”

Gemma knew
better.
 
She had run the property records
herself after Blanche left Champagne’s.
 
“You haven’t seen her in twenty years?” she asked.
 
“Is that what you’re telling me?”

He hesitated
again.
 
And his lack of response said it
all to Gemma.
 
She felt as if she had
thrown him a lifeline, a chance to come clean, and he had fumbled it and
allowed it to fall into the water.

And suddenly
she couldn’t deal with the implication.
 
Sal was being too cagey.
 
That
woman said a child was involved and Sal knew about that child.
 
What if that was true too?
 
She couldn’t handle that right now.
 
She couldn’t handle that kind of truth!
 
She began to hurry away from him.

Sal was
shocked when she pushed past him and began walking away.
 
“Gemma,” he pleaded, grabbing for her arm,
but her movement was too swift.
 
“Gemma,
wait!”

But she
wasn’t waiting.
 
She was hurrying across
the room and then running up the stairs.
 
Sal became so afraid he began running up behind her.
 
“She’s nobody, Gem.
 
Gem.
 
Gemma!”

Gemma ran
across the second floor landing, and ran into their bedroom.
 
Her plan was to slam the door.
 
She just needed to delay any confessions he
might have to tell her.
 
It felt as if
her worse nightmare was about to come true, and she wasn’t ready to deal with
that.
 
But Sal was too strong.
 
He pushed his way in before she could close
the door.

“Aren’t you
going to let me explain?” Sal pleaded.
 
“What are you doing?”

She was about
to make a beeline for the door again, to get out of the room he now occupied
with her, but he grabbed her by the arm and stopped her progression.
 
He wasn’t about to let go.

And it
worked.
 
His grasp forced her to remain
where she stood.
 
“Can you stop for two
minutes and let me tell you what’s going on?” he asked her.

Gemma didn’t
want to hear the details.
 
She knew they
would be sordid, or even worse than she imagined.
 
But she also knew she couldn’t just leave
based on what some woman told her, or what she feared might be true.
 
She had to hear him out.

“What did
she tell you about me?” he asked.

But Gemma
shook her head.
 
“We aren’t going to do
this, Sal,” she said firmly.
 
“You will
not ask me a question when you haven’t fully answered mine.
 
Who is Blanche Delilah and when was the last
time you were fooling around with her?”

Sal saw the
determination in Gemma’s eyes.
 
He
exhaled.
 
“Sit down,” he told her.
 
When she didn’t move, he gave in.
 
“Please.”

Gemma didn’t
want to sit at all, but she knew she needed to calm back down or she was going
to leave without him explaining himself.
 
And she knew she would be wrong for that.
 
She sat on the bed.

Sal’s heart
stopped pounding uncontrollably when she gave him her attention.
 
But it was still pounding.
 
He placed his hands in his pockets.
 
He had to tread carefully.

Gemma’s
heart was pounding too, because he looked so handsome, and so vulnerable, and
she felt so stupid.
 
She loved this man,
but there was always something shady about Sal.
 
Always something undercover and crooked.
 
She had to stop denying that truth.
 
She had married a very complicated man.

“We dated
something like nineteen, twenty years ago,” he said to her.
 
“I was a kid and she was a kid.
 
She was messing around with this older man, I
was seeing tons of other females, it was nothing.
 
She was just somebody to fuck back then.
 
I don’t mean to be crude, but that’s all she
was.
 
A good fuck.
 
It didn’t last a year.
 
I moved on, she moved on.
 
It was nothing.”

Gemma wished
that was the truth.
 
She wished it was as
innocent as Sal was making it out to be.
 
But she was beginning to realize that nothing was as innocent as Sal
made it out to be.
 
“So that’s it?” she
asked.
 
“You slept around with her twenty
years ago and that was it?
 
No more contact?”

“I saw her
every now and then,” Sal admitted.
 
“And
then years after that, something like fifteen years later, she started fooling
around with this guy in my crew, so I would see her around with him.”

But Gemma
felt that faint feeling again.
 
What wasn’t
he telling her?
 
She could sense he was
leaving too much out.
 
“What do you mean
a guy in your crew?” she asked.
 
“What
crew?”

“My
crew.
 
My men.
 
I was no longer a cop, but there were still
people out there who would have loved to see me wasted.
 
You saw what kind of asshole I was.
 
So I had to make sure I had people in place
that had my back.
 
People I did favors
for in the past.
 
People who I could have
arrested easily, but didn’t.”

“You mean
you were a crooked cop,” Gemma asked, “giving breaks to other crooks?”

Sal looked
at Gemma.
 
She knew he had cleaned up his
act.
 
She knew he wasn’t that guy
anymore.
 
But she’d also saw that tape
and met Blanche.
 
No telling what Blanche
had told her.
 
“I’m no angel,” he
said.
 
“You knew that when you married me.”

Gemma knew
it, but she was too upset to apologize.
 
He’d already given her two diametrically opposed answers for every
question she asked him.
 
But she knew she
had to do the right thing.
 
“I should not
have said that,” she said.
 
“But go on.”

Now Sal felt
worse.
 
She was more than willing to give
him the benefit of every doubt every time.
 
A benefit he didn’t deserve.
 
“She
started messing around with this guy in my crew,” he continued.
 
“They even got married.
 
But then one night, while we were taking care
of some business, her old man dies.
 
He
gets killed.”

Gemma stared
at Sal.
 
He said it so cavalierly, as if
he was saying the guy stomped his toe, or hurt his pinkie.

“Because he
was working for me when he was killed,” Sal continued, “I made sure his widow
was taken care of.
 
I do that for all my
guys.
 
If they fall while working an
assignment for me, their widows and loved ones will be well taken care of.
 
Blanche was no exception.”

“You took
care of her?” Gemma asked.
 
“How?
 
Financially?”

Sal nodded.
  
“I looked out for her.
 
Until she could get back on her feet.”

Gemma’s
heart was pounding.
 
“Did you take care
of her sexually?” she asked.

Sal hated to
admit it.
 
Gemma could see the regret in
his big, blue eyes.
 
But he admitted
it.
 
“Yeah,” he said.
 
“That too.”

“I’m sure
your deceased quote, unquote, ‘crew member,’ would have really appreciated
that.
 
You banging his wife and all.
 
You’re such a champ, Sal.
 
Such a great guy.”

Sal didn’t
like to see this sarcastic side of Gemma.
 
But he knew he brought it on himself.
 
He deserved it.
 
So he took
it.
 
“But I never touched that woman
after I married you, Gem.
 
You have to
believe that.”