Until You Come Back To Me, Book 5
Read Until You Come Back To Me, Book 5 Online
Authors: Mallory Monroe
SAL GABRINI FIVE
UNTIL YOU COME
BACK TO ME
(
The Gabrini Men series)
By
MALLORY MONROE
Copyright©2015
Mallory Monroe
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This novel is a work of fiction. All characters are
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INTERRACIAL ROMANCE
SERIES
BY BESTSELLING AUTHOR
MALLORY MONROE:
THE SINATRAS OF JERICHO COUNTY
SERIES IN ORDER:
BIG DADDY SINATRA
THERE WAS A RUTHLESS MAN
BOOK ONE
BIG DADDY SINATRA 2
IF I CAN’T HAVE YOU
BOOK TWO
BIG DADDY SINATRA 3
THE BEST OF MY LOVE
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
RENO AND
SON:
DON’T MESS
WITH JIM
BOOK 10
MOB BOSS
ELEVEN
THE WRONG
ONE
BOOK 11
THE GABRINI
MEN SERIES
IN ORDER:
ROMANCING
TOMMY GABRINI
ROMANCING SAL GABRINI
TOMMY
GABRINI 2:
A PLACE IN HIS
HEART
SAL GABRINI
2:
A WOMAN’S TOUCH
TOMMY GABRINI 3:
GRACE UNDER FIRE
SAL GABRINI 3:
HARD LOVE
SAL GABRINI
4:
I’LL TAKE YOU
THERE
TOMMY
GABRINI 4:
DAPPER TOM
BEGIN AGAIN
ADDITIONAL
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ROMANCING
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ROMANCING THE BULLDOG
INTERRACIAL ROMANCE
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ADDITIONAL
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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:
BRENT SINATRA
BOOK ONE
MOB BOSS TWELVE
TOMMY AND LIZ:
YOU GIVE GOOD LOVE
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Gemma
Gabrini was floored.
She stood in Judge
Michaels’ chambers unable to conceal her displeasure.
“My husband?” she asked.
“Yes,
your husband,” Judge Michaels said, undaunted by her displeasure.
“I made myself clear.”
“You
were clear, but it still doesn’t make any sense.
What does my husband have to do with this?”
“The
witness came to me,” the judge explained.
“She refuses to take the stand out of fear of what your husband would do
to her if she testified against your client.”
“My
client is a poverty-stricken drug addict accused of smoking crack in a crack
house.
My husband is busy running an
international corporation.
Why in the
world would he care about a woman testifying at some crack head’s trial?”
“You
know why,” the prosecutor said as he sat confidently in front of the judge’s
desk.
His name was Brad Kolinsky.
Tough, smart, but too smooth by half for
Gemma’s liking.
She wasn’t all that sure
if he didn’t push the witness up to this nonsense in the first place.
“You know it’s not about your client,”
Kolinsky continued, “it’s about you.
Your husband doesn’t want you to lose this case.”
“You
have got to be kidding me.” Gemma couldn’t believe it.
These people were getting more absurd by the
second.
“So what you’re telling me is
that of all the cases I lost before this case, and believe me I lost plenty, he
didn’t care about those?
But a crack
head?
But a case I’m working for free
because my client can’t afford to pay for my services?
Oh, yeah, he wants to give me a winning
streak, not with my major cases, but with the crack head case.
That makes all the sense in the world, Brad.”
“All
I’m talking about is the here and now,” Kolinsky said.
“Your husband has mob connections that some
people in this town refuses to sweep under a rug and pretend isn’t true.
Because it is true!
The witness fears for her life.
She’s not making this stuff up.”
“But
maybe you are,” Gemma shot back.
Before
the prosecutor could respond, the judge spoke up again.
“I understand your anger, Gemma,” he said to
her.
“Truly I do.
But understand mine: I am the judge on this
case.
I have to take her concerns
seriously, and I will take her concerns seriously.
Now you can step down as lead attorney and
allow the defendant to bring in a new attorney, or we can conduct a hearing, a
public
hearing, to determine if you
should or should not recuse yourself.
Since I have to make that final determination after that public hearing,
the odds will not be in your favor.
My
advice?
It’s a simple case just as you
so eloquently said.
Nobody’s going to
miss some crack head if she ends up back in jail where she has been countless
times before.
Remove yourself now Gemma,
and save the county money and time so we can go on with this trial.”
Gemma
gathered up her briefcase and purse and stood up.
She wore an above-the-knee skirt suit that so
highlighted her long, dark legs that the eyes of both men were immediately drawn
to those gorgeous legs.
But Gemma was
all business.
“I will not remove myself
from this case,” she said as she stood, “so a public hearing we will have.”
Then she looked at the judge, who was
actually an old friend of hers, with disappointment in her big, brown
eyes.
“This is bullshit, Craig, and you
know it.”
The
judge looked away from her.
He knew
it.
And Gemma left his chambers.
Her
plan had been to grab a sandwich from the courthouse cafeteria before heading
back to her office, but she was no longer in the mood to eat.
She
stepped out of the Las Vegas courthouse and into a cool November wind that had
her snuggling against herself.
Her BMW
was parked on the far end of the parking lot and she headed in that direction.
But she was still fuming.
They wanted her off the case because she was
actually winning what the prosecutor thought was going to be another slam dunk
victory for him; a victory that would keep his perfect record perfect and his
political ambitions promising.
The judge
went along with the nonsense because Gemma knew that was how it was done in
Vegas:
you scratch my back, one day I may
be in a position to scratch yours
.
Bullshit, just like she said.
Her
cell phone began ringing.
She pulled it
out of her suit coat pocket and looked at the Caller ID.
When she saw it was Sal, her husband, she
smiled.
And quickly answered.
“Where are you?” she asked him.
Sal
Gabrini was naked in bed in a house he owned in Chicago.
He was there on business, and it had not gone
well.
Now, instead of being hyped by the
possibility of finishing this shit, he was drained and exhausted with more shit
to do.
He was also still reeling from
what had just transpired inside his home, something he would eventually have to
reveal to his wife when he returned back to Vegas: which didn’t help his
drain.
But right now, he just needed to
hear her lovely voice.
“I’m still in
Chi-town,” he said.
“I wanted to wrap
things up today, but no such luck.”
“Sorry
to hear that.”
Although she didn’t know
exactly what business Sal was handling in Chicago, since he never went into
details with her about his business dealings, she knew it was something he had
hoped to complete before today.
“Where
are you?” Sal asked her.
“In
the parking lot.
Just leaving the
courthouse.
A witness refuses to testify
unless I recuse myself from the case.”
“Which
case?
That crack head case?”
“One
in the same.”
“Why
would they want you off the case?”
“Because
Brad Kolinsky wants to keep his perfect conviction record is my guess, and it
wasn’t looking good for him.
I may be
wrong, but that’s what it smells like.”
“Then
that’s what it is,” Sal said confidently.
“Why else would they care so much about some crack head getting a fair
trial that they would kick the lawyer off the case?”
“Exactly,”
Gemma agreed.
Then she exhaled.
“I only wish you were here.”
“I wish I was there too,” Sal responded.
“I’d give anything to see your pretty face,
not to mention your pretty body, right about now.”
“When
do you think you can wrap it up?”
Gemma
pressed her key fob, unlocking her car, and then she opened the back passenger
door.
“I was hoping you would be back in
Vegas today.”
She tossed her purse and
briefcase onto the backseat and closed the door again.
“I
was hoping the same thing.
I miss you
terribly.”
“Ah
how sweet,” Gemma said with a grand smile as she opened her driver side
door.
But she stopped cold when she saw
a man crotched down on the floor of her front seat with a gun trained squarely
at her forehead.
The gun had a
noise-suppressing silencer on its barrel, so she knew he meant business.
“Make
one false move,” he warned her, “and you’re a motherfucking dead lady.”
Gemma’s
heart rammed against her chest, and she nearly dropped her phone.
But
Sal, oblivious to her plight, was still talking into the phone, telling her not
to call him
sweet
.
“Sweet my ass,” he was saying.
“I have a reputation to uphold, what are you
talking?”
“Get
in the car,” the gunman ordered Gemma.
“Can
you imagine what my men would think if they heard I was
sweet
?
I’d be a fucking
joke!”
“Get
in the car,” the man ordered again.
“I’m
not playing with you, bitch!”
Sal
frowned.
He thought he heard a male’s
voice, and heard him call his wife a bitch.
“Who the fuck is that?” Sal asked her.
But
Gemma didn’t even hear Sal.
Her entire
being was focused on the man pointing that gun at her.
Because she understood the danger.
All that gunman had to do was pull that
trigger, and she was dead.
She knew
it.
But she also knew if she got into
that car and allowed him to take her to another location, her chances of
survival were just as grim.
And her
logical brain was spinning.
Standing
there and refusing to obey his order was sure death.
Getting in and obeying his order was sure
death.
Getting away was probable death,
but the odds were slightly better.
Those
were the odds she had to take.
Instead
of getting into the car, she slammed the door shut, causing the man to shoot
but to only hit the closing door.
The
silencer muffled the sound of the gunfire, but not the impact.
The doorframe was littered with bullet
holes.
And
Gemma ran.
Her cell phone flew from her
hand because she was pumping her arms so hard to propel herself forward.
She ran track in college.
She could run.
All she could think about was getting away.
“Help!”
she was screaming as she ran.
“
Help
!”
Sal
heard her screams from the cell phone that was now on the asphalt.
He jumped out of his bed calling her
name.
“What the fuck, Gem, answer me!”
But
she couldn’t answer.
Because as soon as
she thought she had made some headway, a Van drove up, cutting off her
path.
She tried to backtrack and fill,
running down another row of cars, determined to get away.
But the Van doors slid open, a man with a
silencer rifle fired one shot, hitting her squarely in the back, and she
buckled and fell.
Gemma
Gabrini fell.
And
it was the break they needed.
Their game
plan went into overdrive now.
As people
near the courthouse were just beginning to come out and move around, two men
jumped out of the Van, lifted and carried Gemma to the Van, tossed her inside,
slid the door shut, and took off.
They
stopped only long enough to pick up the gunman who had been crotched down in
Gemma’s BMW, and then the Van sped out of the parking lot and out of sight as
if it had never been there in the first place.
The
two adductors in the back of the Van, with Gemma’s lifeless body in front of
them, removed their black hoods and attempted to regulate their adrenalin-rush
breathing.
They both looked at the
beautiful black woman on the floor beneath their feet, amazed that they had
pulled it off without a hitch.
“If
all goes according to plan,” said one, “we’re going to be fucking
millionaires!”
Then his excited look
turned anguished.
“Or fucking
dead.”
He looked at his partner, an
older man he trusted with his life.
“Which do you think it’ll be, Screw?
Rich or dead?”
But
Screw was already in a state of panic at the gravity of what they’d just
done.
Somehow he didn’t think it would
work.
It couldn’t possibly be this easy!
But it was.
“When
all is said and done,” his partner asked him again, “you think we’re going to
be rich, or do you think we’ll end up dead?
Which do you think it’ll be, Screw?”
“We
just kidnapped Sal Gabrini’s wife,” Screw responded with irritation in his
voice.
“Sal Gabrini’s wife!
And you have the nerve to ask me if I think
we’re going to be rich or be dead after kidnapping his wife?”
He looked at his partner.
“When Sal Gabrini finds out what we just did,
and link it to us, which do you think we’ll be?
Now shut the fuck up!”