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“Not so fast, Lucky, what’s wrong with you? You don’t have to eat like it’s your last supper.”

“I’m hungry, Ma. I didn’t have lunch today.”

“Don’t believe him, Mommy. He might not have had lunch, but he ate as soon as he got home from school because I fed him.”

Lucky looked at Marie Gabrini, his older half-sister, and rolled his eyes. “Didn’t your mama tell you it’s wrong to be a snitch?”

“Didn’t your mama tell you it’s wrong to lie?” Marie shot back.

“Since I’m the mama,” said Gemma Jones-Gabrini, “both of you shut up. I don’t want to hear any more arguments. I’ve been arguing in court all day. I don’t want to hear it.”

Gemma sat a small plate of food on her baby girl’s highchair tray. Teresa was flapping her arms with her spoon in hand, smiled when she saw the plate in front of her. And began tackling it similar to the way Lucky had been tackling his dinner.

“How did it go in court, Ma?” Marie asked her.

“Not great at all. The prosecution has no tangible evidence, just one eyewitness, but she’s a good eyewitness,” Gemma said as she sat down, with her own plate of food, at the dining room table too.

Although her heels and her suit coat was off, she still wore her skirt and had untucked her blouse.

“I get to cross-examine her tomorrow, and then we’ll have closing arguments. But it’s an uphill climb.”

“You won attorney of the year for the first time ever. You’re win the case. You always do. You only lost a few cases all last year, and haven’t lost any this year.”

“Yeah, but the year is young,” Gemma said and Lucky laughed. “And you didn’t see that witness. She’s powerful.”

“So you still think the prosecution should have never filed charges now that the trial has started?” Marie asked her.

“Absolutely they shouldn’t have filed this case,” said Gemma. “It’s not enough evidence. One witness? That’s insane to me.”

“You better hope the jury agrees with you,” said Marie.

Gemma nodded her head. “That’s the point,” she said and was about to put a forkful of food into her mouth, when she heard the door open and Sal’s loud voice. She put the fork back down.

“Where’s everybody?” Sal said again as Lucky yelled out in the dining room, Daddy , and Sal made his way to them.

When he walked in wearing his double-breasted suit, his baby started grinning and flapping her chubby arms again.

“Hey Daddy,” Lucky said happily too. “We missed you.”

Sal rubbed his son’s hair and kissed him on the forehead.

“Welcome home, Daddy,” Marie said as Sal kissed her too. Marie was Gemma’s biological daughter that Sal adopted as his own.

Then Sal went over to his grinning baby and picked her up out of her highchair. “There’s my precious baby,” he said as he kissed her as well. “There’s my Tee-Tee.”

But then he looked over at Gemma, the one he really wanted to kiss, and he could tell she was pissed with him. “Hey.”

He could tell it was taking all she had to just speak to him. “Hey.”

“Okay, Gemma, let me have it. What did I do this time? What’s your problem?”

Gemma looked at him. “What’s my problem? No you are not going to make this about me, Sal Luca, no you are not. Why would you even say something like that?”

“Because of the way your ass looking at me,” Sal fired back. Lucky and Marie glanced at each other. They both knew the signs when their parents were about to go for each other’s throats. “Now what is it?” Sal asked with irritation in his voice.

Gemma didn’t respond. She hated arguing in front of her children. She hated arguing period!

“What is it, Gemmi? Just tell me what’s wrong.”

“Before you left this house four days ago, you told me you’d be back in a day or two. Didn’t you tell me that, Sal?”

“Yes I told you that. But things change.”

“And you couldn’t call and tell me that things changed? Why couldn’t you take two seconds to call and tell me that?”

The baby began to cry. Lucky quickly got up and took his baby sister from out of his father’s arms.

“It’s okay,” he said as he shook her. “It’s okay. They’re okay.”

Marie got up and got the baby’s plate and began heading for the kitchen. “Let’s go in the kitchen,” she said and Lucky, with the baby, followed her into the kitchen.

Sal sat down at the table next to Gemma. “I was in a situation, Gem, okay? I couldn’t call.”

He leaned toward her. Her eyes were so large and beautiful and velvety soft. Her gorgeous black skin. Her lips. Her body. He wanted her so badly he could taste it. “You don’t have to get all bent out of shape about it. I was handling business. That’s all I was doing.”

“But you promised me you were going to call even when you’re handling business. I was so worried about you I had to call Reno. And even he had a hard time getting in touch with you and Robby Yale too. When he finally did reach you, he told you to call me and you still didn’t call me.”

“Reno don’t tell me what the fuck to do.”

“But why didn’t you just call me?”

“When I’m handling business, I can’t focus on anything or anybody but the business at hand. This be life and death shit, Gemma, and you know that. I’m not out on a golf trip. My shit serious.”

“And your family isn’t serious? I’m not telling you not to handle your business, but I am telling you to at least let me know you’re still alive!” Then she exhaled. “This has got to stop, Sal. I’m tired of lying to our children.”

“What lie? All you have to tell them is that daddy is out of town on business. That’s all they need to know.”

“But I don’t know what you’re doing out of town all these different times you’re going out of town.”

“Oh, Gemma, please.” He sat back. “Give me a fucking break! I’m so tired I can barely sit up and you’re questioning my motives? You think I was out rolling in the hay with some female? That’s what you truly think?”

“You could have called me, Sal. Stop making excuses for not calling me.”

“Who’s making excuses? You’re the one accusing me of who-knows-what. That shit on you. But forget this!” Sal said irritably, got up, and headed for the staircase.

Gemma leaned her head back. What was she doing?

This was Sal! Yeah, he pissed her off when he didn’t phone her not once during the entire four days he was gone.

And yeah that was a scary feeling for her.

But this was Sal! He loved her. At least she felt he did most of the time.

What was her problem? If she couldn’t trust Sal, who could she trust?

And that was why she got up from the table, made her way to the staircase too, and went up to their bedroom.

Sal had taken off his clothes and dropped them, the way he usually did, in the middle of the bedroom floor. He was already in the shower.

Gemma could only shake her head. “ That man ,” she said as she closed and locked the door, picked up his clothing and placed them on her dressing table chair, and then removed her work clothes too. Then she made her way to the ensuite bathroom.

She knew, by giving in so easily, that she was enabling him to keep doing what he was doing.

But she missed him. As soon as he walked into their dining room and she could smell his cologne scent, she realized just how terribly she missed him.

And that was why she forgot about his neglectfulness and the fact that he should have easily been able to take two minutes of a four-day trip to call her or Marie or Lucky without Reno having to track him down, and she opened that shower door.

Sal was so tired that his hands were splayed on the shower wall with his head down and his neck beneath the rainfall of the showerhead.

But when he saw that shower door open and then saw Gemma standing there, his drained heart soared.

He could always count on her. The only woman he’d ever known, including his own mother, that truly loved him.

He quickly stood upright, opened his arms, and Gemma gladly walked into them, closing the shower door behind her.

As soon as Sal felt her naked body in his arms, he began kissing her hungrily as if they’d been apart four years rather than four days.

He squeezed her butt, he pushed her closer against him, they held onto each other and kissed each other with a passion that was growing with every increasing beat of their hearts.

And when he slammed her back against that wall, lifted her legs and entered her, an urgency took over them. It was as if time itself was on the line and they would die where they stood if they didn’t possess every ounce of each other. It was a slapping and a pounding. It was hard and rough.

But before they both came, Sal carried Gemma to their bed, laid their wet bodies on top of the bed, got on top of her and entered her again, but this time slowly.

He slowed it all down. Which was the best time for both of them.

They got their easy-does-it groove back, found the strength to keep on going, and went for far longer than any quick release in the shower could have provided them.

For nearly half an hour they were kissing and moving all over that bed and unable to stop that wonderful feeling.

For nearly half an hour they were at it.

As they made that long, slow love they could never get enough of, Gemma was amazed at Sal’s stamina.

He could barely stand up in that shower when she first opened that door, but he found a second wind after they got out of the shower.

He was still going strong. He needed her.

But after four days without him herself, and with yet another difficult case she had to deal with, she needed him too.

That was why it felt so good. That was why she was thrilled when he slowed it all down.

That was why she was having orgasm after orgasm as he moved deep inside of her.

They were usually on the same page because an attorney being married to a mob boss gave them a certain bond most couples could never experience.

Many people tried to break them up. Her own family used to question why she, a law-and-order attorney to the depths of her soul, would want to have anything to do with a mobster.

It was easy to Gemma. From the moment she and Sal first met, he was the only man that truly pursued her as if he wanted her rather than just her body, and who treated her as if she was worth every second of his time.

All those other men only wanted to know what she could do for them.

Sal was the only man that wanted to know what he could do for her.

And although he had phases of neglectfulness throughout their marriage, and sometimes he nearly crossed the line where fidelity and cheating met, he never actually crossed it in any way she would believe.

There were close calls, and rumors that there were more than just close calls, but she stood by Sal.

That was why she was rubbing his hair, squeezing him too, and laying there and experiencing the full skills of Sal Gabrini. He was moaning, he was groaning, he was giving his all to her. And she gave it right back to him. And they couldn’t seem to stop. It felt that good.

Until Sal hit Gemma in just that perfect spot that was so right that she cried out in unbridled ecstasy. And then she had a final triumphant orgasm that was so strong that it caused Sal to cum too. They came together in a rolling orgasm that took nearly five more minutes to complete.

But before it completely ebbed away, knocks were heard on their bedroom door.

“ What ?” Sal yelled out angrily. He wasn’t ready to come out of Gemma yet.

But it was Lucky. “Uncle Robby is here to see you, Daddy,” he said.

Sal looked at Gemma with that look of regret in his big, glassy-green eyes, and then he pulled out and rolled off of her.

She leaned up on her elbows and looked at him. And it seemed to her that it would never end. They couldn’t even steal one full hour for each other after four days apart. It seemed to her that Sal would always be in perpetual work mode.

But it wasn’t as if she didn’t know what she was getting herself into when she agreed to marry his workaholic butt all those years ago.

As he was moving over her to get out of bed, he stopped, stared into her beautiful, disappointed eyes, and then kissed her and held her again for several more seconds.

He was reluctant to leave her. But knowing Robby never came to his home unless it was super-serious, he regrettably, reluctantly, removed her from his grasp and finally got out of bed.

Gemma exhaled, wondered how much longer could she take this lifestyle, and got out too.