TOMMY GABRINI 2: A PLACE IN HIS HEART (11 page)

He
pressed the intercom button on his desk.
 
“I’m heading out, Louise,” he made clear.

“Yes,
sir, but Rachel is here to see you, sir.”

Tommy
paused.
 
Rachel.
 
Her mother was a close friend who modeled
mostly in Europe.
 
Her daughter was in
college in the states and Tommy had promised, two years ago, to keep an eye on
her.
 
He kept his promise despite the
fact that he and her mother had not seen nor spoken to each other in a very
long time.

“Send
her in,” he said into the intercom and began tossing files into his briefcase.

The
doors to his office opened and Rachel Chestney walked in.
 
She was tall and thin like her mother, her
complexion a kind of milk-chocolate to her mother’s darker hue.
 
And she was just as gorgeous.

She
smiled and hurried toward him.
 
“I know
you’re a busy man,” she said as she came.

“You’d
better believe it,” Tommy said, smiling too.
 
When she approached they hugged, and kissed cheek to cheek.
 

“Where
are you headed?” she asked him.

“A
meeting right now.
 
New York this
evening.”

“Ah,
how wonderful!
 
Take me with you.”

“Not a
chance.
 
How’s school?”

She
exhaled and began playing with a replica of a Faberge egg on his desk.
 
“It’s school,” she said.

Tommy
took the expensive ornament from her hand.
 
“That’s not a good enough answer.”

“I’m
doing well, if that’s what you mean.
 
I’m
just ready to graduate and I can’t for two more years.
 
Two long years, Tommy.”

Tommy
looked at her.
 
She was, in truth, the
spitting image of her mother.
 
“So what’s
up?” he asked her.

She
looked at his suspenders and smiled.
 
“You’re the only man I’ve ever seen who rocks suspenders.
 
You actually look sexy in them.
 
You rock, Tommy.”

But
Tommy never entertained her mild flirtations.
 
“Rach, time is short,” he said.
 
“What is it?”

She
exhaled.
 
“I’m short on my share of the
rent this month.”

“Aren’t
you working?”

“Yeah,
but they cut my hours.
 
And one of our
roommates quit school, so my share went up.”

Tommy
stared at her.
  
And then pulled out his
checkbook.
 
“How much?” he asked.

She
was surprised.
 
“You mean you aren’t
going to lecture me on financial responsibility the way you usually does?”

“I
can’t today.
 
No time.
 
Everything I said previously still applies.”

 
She smiled.

“How
much?”

“Eight
hundred.
 
And I promise I’ll pay you back
as soon as my hours pick back up.”

Tommy
wrote the check, tore it out of his checkbook, and handed it to Rachel.
 

“Thanks
Tommy,” she said and hugged him again.
 
She looked up at him with what he considered to be such innocent
eyes.
 
“I love you.”

“Bet
you love my money more,” Tommy replied and even she had to laugh.
 
“Now get lost,” he said lightheartedly and
began clasping his briefcase.

Rachel,
still smiling, began hurrying out.
 
“Don’t tell mommy,” she said aloud as she went.

It
was always her refrain.
 
Don’t tell her
mother.
 
And Tommy, because she was a
full grown woman after all, never did.

But
after she left, it wasn’t her mother that came on Tommy’s mind.
 
It was Grace.
 
Before leaving his office, he picked up his desk phone and was about to
phone her to see how her first day was going.
 
But just as he was about to press the button, he knew he had to leave it
alone.

“Stop
babying her,” he said aloud, and hung back up the phone.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Grace
still felt upbeat when she arrived back at Trammel.
 
In the garage, she saw that Jillian’s Bentley
was parked in the spot reserved for the CEO, but the space reserved for the
Chairman, Tommy’s space, was empty.
 
She
took Tommy’s spot.
 
Not because she was
now puffed up with power and needed to exert it, but because she knew, as a
young woman now in charge, she had to change perceptions.
 
If she allowed it, she would always be viewed
as nothing more than Jillian’s chief of staff and she’d be respected as nothing
more than that.
 
But that couldn’t
stand.
 
If Trammel was to be as
successful as she was determined for it to be, she had to be perceived as
somebody who could make it happen.
 

She
got out of her car, made her way inside the lobby to the public elevators for a
change, and was surprised to be greeted with
Hello, Miss McKinsey,
Good
afternoon, Miss McKinsey
, as if word had spread and the perceptions had
changed already.

Her
stamp on the business, however, wouldn’t be seen immediately.
 
She didn’t want to go in half-cocked, making
sweeping changes, until she had a chance to fully review the company’s inner
workings.
 
She planned to take a few
weeks to totally immerse herself into that private part of Trammel that had
been off limits to her, that part where only Jillian and Tommy were familiar
with.
 
And then she could go full
force.
 

But
when she stepped off of the elevator on the top floor, and made her way toward
the reception area that stood in the round, with the offices of senior
management, including Grace’s office as chief of staff, were housed, Jillian
was already in destroy mode.
 

She
stood at the reception desk, giving some order to Carol, the receptionist, when
Grace headed her way.
 
Instead of Jillian
accepting her fate, Grace could immediately see that she was raging against it.
 
And she wasn’t trying to hide that rage,
either.

“So
here she is,” Jillian said.
 
“Not Miss
America.
 
But Miss Asshole.”
 
Even Carol smiled at that, and the eyes of
the few senior managers in the round, moving from office to office or holding
conversations with each other, quickly looked at Jillian.
 

Grace
didn’t care for confrontations, and she would have preferred not to make a
scene in front of staff.
 
But Jillian,
she knew, had other plans.
 
“Are you
speaking to me?” she asked her former boss.

“Yes,
Miss Asshole, I’m speaking to you,” Jillian said without hesitation.
 
“I’m speaking to you and you alone.
 
You’re the only asshole in here so it most
certainly is you of whom I speak.”

Jared,
Nayla’s partner in crime, hurried out of his office near the backside of the
round as soon as he heard Jillian’s profanity.
 
When he saw that her laced tongue was directed at Grace, his heart
soared.
 
He had been hoping for fireworks
between the two ladies, mainly to keep the spotlight off of his own lack of
productivity, but he was thrilled beyond words that he, for a change, would get
to witness the sparks for himself.

 
“Let’s go into my office,” Grace told Jillian.

“Oh
really now?” Jillian responded, to Jared’s delight.
 
“What if I don’t want to take it up in your
office?
 
What if I see you for what you
are, and don’t want my sterling reputation to be tarnished by hanging out with
the likes of you?”

“I’m
not going to stand out here and argue with you, Jillian.”

“Who
cares about what you’re not going to do?
 
You’re nothing but my servant, who do you think you are?
 
You’re the
got
damn help!
 
Just because
you let Tommy Gabrini fuck you blind, doesn’t mean I’m blind.
 
He hasn’t been fucking me!
 
And just because he enjoyed laying you out so
much that he foolishly turned over his shares to you doesn’t make you suddenly
some captain of industry, honey.
 
It
still makes you a whore.”
 

Many
of the managers, including Jared, couldn’t repress their grins.
 
They covered their mouths, or turned their
bodies slightly away, but it was obvious they were enjoying this smack-down
immensely.

But
Grace was far from amused.
 
She, in fact,
was determined.
 
“Jillian Birch,” she
said, without any hesitation of her own, “you’re fired.”
 

Although
Grace had only spoken four words, it shook the room.
 
The receptionist was stunned. Every manager
in the round was stunned.
 
Every grin
left every face, and the satisfaction in Jillian’s eyes suddenly pooled into
disbelief.

Grace
looked at Carol.
 
“Call Security,” she
said to the receptionist.
 
“Put them on
notice.
 
If Miss Birch hasn’t left my
building in the next thirty minutes, tell them to come up here and escort her
out.
 
And if any member of Security
refuses to obey my order,” she said, “then make it clear to them that they’ll
be fired too.
 
There is a zero tolerance
policy in this company effective immediately. I will have zero tolerance with
their, or anybody else’s,” she added as she looked around at her managers,
“bullshit.”
 

And
those words alone, coupled with that look alone, caused the managers, led by
Jared, to scatter like roaches and hurry back into the cubbyholes of their
offices.

Although
Jillian still stood there in disbelief, Grace didn’t so much as look at her
again.
 
She, instead, went into her own
office, and closed her own door.
 
Only
she fell against it in drained horror when the door shut.
 
She didn’t want to go there.
 
She didn’t want to be the bitch this
soon.
 
She never liked Jillian, but she
always respected her as a woman who kept the doors of Trammel open after her
husband died.
 
She sold most of the
shares to Tommy to keep those doors open, but at least she did what she had to
do.
 
Now
her
company belonged to Grace, and Grace could only imagine how
awful that had to make her feel.
 

But
for her to call Grace a whore who slept her way to the top, and to do so in
front of staff, was a bridge she just burned.
 
Grace hated being placed in this position, she absolutely hated it, but
Jillian, she felt, left her no choice.
 

She
exhaled, went to her desk and sat down, and fought back the urge to cry.
 
Jillian wasn’t crying when she called her a
whore, why should she cry for Jillian?
 
She therefore pulled out the paperwork she had been reviewing before she
left for lunch, and got back to work.

Later
that evening, Tommy’s limo roared through the streets of Seattle while he
completed a conference call regarding the acquisition of two failing businesses
he planned to flip.
 
The Gabrini
Corporation was known as a venture capitalistic liquidator, as the mega-company
that brought up smaller, dying businesses for a steal, sometimes in hostile
takeovers, and then either resurrected those companies or sold them at a great
profit.
 
But his corporation was also a
leader in the private security field.
 
And he was also a restaurateur.
 
Flipping companies were the easiest aspect of his business, although it
consumed a lot of his time, and he primarily allowed Sal to handle their
restaurant businesses.
 
But the security
part of the Gabrini Corporation was all Tommy.
 
He ran that department exclusively.
 
And it was turning out to be the biggest moneymaker, and the biggest
headache, of them all.
 

He
hung up the phone, after agreeing to think about the takeover terms, and tossed
a stack of paperwork he had been reviewing back into his briefcase.
 
He was on his way to the airstrip, to take
his private plane to New York to discuss yet another security contract, and he
was exhausted already.
 
He knew he was
going to sleep like a baby on that plane, so he picked up the phone again and
called Grace.
 

He
hadn’t heard from her since he left Trammel this morning, although Sal
mentioned that she’d had lunch at Diamante’s with her friend Jamie.
 
She was in great spirits, according to Sal,
and was showing off that rock of an engagement ring Tommy had given to her.

But
as soon as Tommy heard her voice, he knew something was wrong.

“Hey,”
she said in a voice that sounded strained to him, and almost hoarse.

“Thought
I’d give you a buzz before I took off,” he said.

“You
haven’t left yet?” she asked.
 
“It’s
almost seven o clock.
 
I thought you was
supposed to be there by now.”

“I
know.
 
I was detained, as usual, on some
additional matters I had to take care of.
 
I’m on my way to the airfield now.
 
What about you?
 
How are you
doing?”

There
was the slightest of hesitations.
 
“I’m
good,” she ultimately said.

She
didn’t sound good to him.
 
“How did it go
today?”

“It
went . . . pretty well.
 
I’m still
reading everything I can get my hands on about Trammel, just so I can get the
full picture, including the information you gave to me.”

“Think
you’re going to enjoy running an entire company?”

“I
know so once I learn all about the ins and outs I wasn’t privy to as Jillian’s
chief of staff.”

“Speaking
of Jillian,” he said, sensing that she had something to do with Grace’s down
mood.
 
“Did she give you any more trouble
after the board meeting?”

Another
hesitation.
 
“Not after I fired her, no.”

Tommy
looked up.
 
He hadn’t expected it to come
to that this soon.
 
“You fired her?”

“Yeah,
well, let me back up.
 
I did fire her,
yes, but then she came by my office a few minutes later and said she quit and I
could take that firing of mine and shove it up my ass.
 
And since I hadn’t officially completed the
paperwork to fire her and submitted it to HR for processing, according to the
HR Director she technically quit.
 
And on
her own terms.”

Tommy
frowned.
 
“Was it horrible, sweetie?”

He
could feel Grace’s anguish.
 
“Worse than
you could imagine.
 
When she came to my
office and announced that she was quitting, she said she could never work for a
company, not even her own company, that would have me at the helm.
 
And that was her mildest comment.
 
Earlier, when I came back to work after
lunch, she really lanced into me then.
 
She was standing in the reception area, for all the world to see, and
called me her servant and the help, and Tommy Gabrini’s whore.

“That
bitch!” Tommy yelled.

“Oh,
yeah.
 
She said I was the whore you loved
to fuck so much that you gave me a company to run.
 
I slept my way to the top was how she put it,
and she said it in front of senior management staff too.”

“
Got
damn that woman!” Tommy blared. “Of
course now it’ll be all over the company.
 
And that was her aim, you know.
 
Not to criticize you.
 
To minimize
you.
 
We ought to sue her ass for
defamation,” Tommy suggested.

“Oh,
I don’t have time for Jillian Birch,” Grace said.
 
“She can say whatever she wants.
 
But she won’t be saying it inside Trammel,
that’s for damn sure.”

Tommy
laughed.
 
“Probably best that you got rid
of her early.”

“Oh,
I know it was.
 
They’re just trying me,
that’s all.
 
I’m young and, they think,
I’m innocent and some kind of push-over, so I expected it.”

“You
said they,” Tommy said.
 
“Not just
Jillian?”

“Well,
nobody else rose to Jillian’s level of disrespect, but some, like Nayla, are
coming close.”