Read Online TOMMY GABRINI 2: A PLACE IN HIS HEART by Mallory Monroe - Free Book Online

  If Jillian was ever going to respect her as boss, she had to start
now.  
    Grace
looked Jillian dead in the eyes.   “Thanks
to my father, who once served as executive vice president of Trammel before his
death, I inherited ten percent stake in this company.”
    “That’s
old news,” Jillian said dismissively.   “Why are you rehashing old, nothing news?”
    Grace,
however, refused to get knocked off her game.   “Tommy has given me his forty-eight percent shares,” she went on.   “Couple his forty-eight with my ten, then you
do the math.   That makes me majority
shareholder.”
    “Forty-eight
percent?” Jillian asked with a disgusted look on her face. “What forty-eight
percent?   Tommy doesn’t have forty-eight
percent to give!   He only owns forty
percent himself, what are you talking about?”
    Again
Tommy was about to explain, but again Grace touched him on his arm.   Tommy inwardly smiled and moved aside, over
by the window sill.   He, like everybody
else in the room, watched Grace.   She was
nervous as hell.   He could tell by the
way her small hands gripped the arms of her arch-top chair.   And although she was thirty years old, she
always looked so young to him.   Especially now, as her beautiful eyes appeared so large that they
glistened like glass.   It was as if she
was amazed by the view; as if she was amazed to be at the head of the table
when she wasn’t even allowed in the room just a day ago.   She looked closer in age to a woman of
twenty, rather than a seasoned, thirty year old.  
    It
was for that reason, because she always seemed so young and sweet and innocent
to Tommy, that he had hesitated turning the reins of Trammel over to her.   He had planned to do it before last week, but
couldn’t pull the trigger.   Not because
he didn’t think she could ultimately handle it, but because he didn’t think he
could handle anybody mistreating Grace in any way, or Grace having to deal with
that mistreatment.   He didn’t want her to
become like them.   He didn’t want her
jaded and sullied and bloodied with life’s smut.   He didn’t want her to lose her sweetness.
    Grace
was his heart.   She was becoming precious
to him in a way that no other human being had ever become.   And he felt so protective of her.   Overly protective.   Almost possessive.   She was his woman now.   His responsibility.   She was the one.   And he wanted her safe from any harm.
    But
he knew he also had to let go.   He knew
his best friend Reno, and Reno’s wife Trina, and even his brother Sal Luca were
right.   He had to stop babying Grace.   If he respected her the way he wanted others
to respect her, he had to stop babying her.
    So he
stood back, folded his arms, and allowed her to handle her business.   Just so long as they all knew he had her
back.   Just as long as they all knew that
harming her would be the exact same thing as harming him.  
    And
if that happened, Tommy thought as he watched Grace, they’d better be prepared
for the consequences.  
    But
as he watched her, he knew she was going to be just fine.   Because she was far more determined than she
was nervous.   That showed clearer on her
serious, brown face than anything else.   Because this had to work.   This
was a dream come true for Grace, a chance for her to own her own company, and
Tommy knew she was going to do everything in her power to prove those board
members wrong.   She was going to make
this work.
    “You
own thirty-seven percent of Trammel,” Grace was saying to a still-skeptical
Jillian.   “Cam owns five percent.   Which gives you and him together forty-two
percent, that’s true.   And it’s also true
that Tommy once owned forty percent.   With my ten percent, we would have still owned fifty percent of this
company.   But Tommy somehow managed to
purchase the remaining eight percent of Trammel shares from various other
stakeholders who had been declaring all along that they weren’t