MOB BOSS 6: THE HEART OF RENO GABRINI (Mob Boss Series) Page 2

  “Sorry I’m late,” Trina Gabrini said as she slid herself and her big Louboutin bag onto the booth seat at the downtown café. Seated across from her, and waiting patiently, were her two good friends, Liz Mertan and Gemma Jones.

  “Was it the lunchtime traffic?” Gemma asked as she looked up from her text messages.

  Trina removed her shades, revealing stunningly attractive hazel eyes against a skin tone dark brown in its tint. “Actually, no,” she said. “I had a staff meeting that threatened to go on forever. That staff of mine complained about everything under the sun. It blindsided me, I’m not gonna even front. But they were legitimate complaints so I had to listen, and also had to agree to make some changes. My plan was to give you girls a call as soon as I left the meeting and got into my car, but then I realized once I drove off that I left my cell phone on the conference table right there in my office, and couldn’t call anyone.”

  Liz laughed and raked her long, blonde hair out of her long, narrow face. She was a former barmaid who married a local dentist. Now she behaved as if she was born into money. “You are so unorganized, you know that, Trina, dear?” She spoke now with an almost British-sounding accent. “My husband would be livid if I was as uncoordinated as you are. Simply livid! How does your husband put up with it?”

  “Girl please,” Gemma said. “I’ll bet my law degree that Reno Gabrini did not marry Miss Tree because of her organizational skills.” Trina laughed and gave Gemma a high-five. “She had to have skills,” Gemma went on, “but I assure you they weren’t organizational in scope.”

  Trina laughed again. “You are so wrong for that,” she said with affection. She liked Gemma’s down-to-earth personality and wonderful sense of humor. Like Trina, Gemma was born and raised in small town America. But unlike Trina, Gemma’s parents were well-to-do business people who sent her to the best schools in the country. Now she was a local attorney who was good enough that even Trina’s husband Reno occasionally hired her in some of his legal affairs. Which was saying a lot in Vegas, given who Reno was.

  That, in fact, was how Trina met Gem. She was sitting there all prim and proper in Reno’s massive office at the PaLargio. She was so pretty with her slender body, her jet-black skin, and her beautiful smile that Trina immediately wondered if she would try, as so many other pretty girls had tried, to become her competition. But once she got to know her, Trina quickly realized how wrong she was. Gemma Jones didn’t play that. She felt she had too much going for her to even think about stealing somebody else’s man. Later, Gemma introduced Trina to Liz, and they all became fast friends.

  The waiter took Trina’s drink order, as Liz and Gemma already had theirs, and once her glass of Scotch arrived, they all got down to business.

  “I found three locations,” Gemma said as she handed her iPhone to Trina. “The first one I’m not crazy about because of the lack of heavy traffic in that area. The second one is more promising, but it, too, lacks that high-end traffic we will need. The third one, I feel, is perfection.”

  “Of which I disagree,” Liz said. “It has high-end traffic, yes, but not nearly enough of it.”

  Trina looked at the photos of all three locations on Gemma’s phone. She was impressed with all three. But she knew the third location well, and she agreed with Liz. “I don’t know, Gem,” she said as she handed her back her phone. “Liz makes a good point. I’ve been in that area a hundred times and I never see the kind of foot traffic we’ll need to make our boutique a success.”

  “No, it’s not as busy, I’ll grant both of you that,” Gemma said. “But our clothes are going to be so high-end that we won’t need a sale every hour on the hour like most stores. One good sales day could carry us for the entire month.”

  “Now wait a minute,” Trina said. “One day? I don’t know about that.”

  “Look at that gorgeous bright blue skirt suit you’re wearing,” Gemma said and Liz, too, looked at Trina’s outfit.

  “How much did it cost?” Gemma asked.

  Trina had no idea. Reno bought her that outfit, and she had no idea where he got it from or how much he paid for it.

  “Thousands, right?” Gemma asked. “Would that be a safe assumption?”

  “Given Reno, probably, yes,” Trina said.

  “Well, ladies, if we sell clothing as high-end as the outfits Trina wears, for example, then my theory is correct. One day of sales a month could sustain us. At least it’ll pay the rent and any employees we might have. And then eventually, down the line, we’ll start turning a profit. We have got to take this as a piecemeal approach.”

  Trina and Liz looked at each other and smiled.

  “It makes sense,” Liz agreed.

  “So the third location is it, ladies?” Gemma asked.

  But again, Trina was cautious. “I want to see all three,” she said. “Then I can let you know.”

  “Can we at least see the first one this evening then? Say around six or so?” Gemma asked. “We don’t want somebody else to come along and rent the space.”

  “This evening could work,” Liz said. “Just as long as I’m out of there before eight. Posh and I are entertaining some dentists from out of town and I have to have sufficient time to get myself together.”

  “It shouldn’t take long,” Gemma said. “I’ll have the realtor give us a quick tour and we’ll decide, as a group, then. Okay, ladies?”

  “Okay,” Liz said. “I’m in.”

  Trina didn’t have her phone with her, but she knew she could make time. “I’ll be there,” she said.

  Reno, however, was getting angrier by the minute that she wasn’t here, at the PaLargio, to greet him on his return. He’d been out of town on business for nearly a week. He hadn’t seen his wife or his kids the entire time, and he missed all three of them tremendously. But they apparently didn’t miss him, he thought warily as he removed his suit coat and tie, tossing them across the sofa, and moved around his empty penthouse wondering where the hell was his family.

  He knew his baby, Dominic Gabrini, Junior, was with his sister Fran. He was Fran’s sole source of support, including providing her with an apartment inside the PaLargio just as he provided his son Jimmy Mack with his own place. Because Fran was, as Reno called her, a grown-ass woman, she would sometimes feel guilty and offer to assist them. Today, apparently, she had offered to babysit for Trina. When Reno called her, she said the baby was asleep. But she promised to wake him up from his afternoon nap, put him on his clothes, and bring him to his father right away.

  As for his son Jimmy, he decided himself not to phone him yet. It was summertime in Vegas. He was undoubtedly living it up with his friends. So he didn’t bother to phone Jimmy.

  But he was blowing up Trina’s cell. He was calling her repeatedly, at least, until he discovered that Trina had left her phone in her office. Which really unnerved him. She was always crying for more freedom. She was always bitching that sometimes he treated her as if she was in prison. But it was always her ass who couldn’t handle the freedom. It was always her ass leaving her cell phone or taking off without telling him a damn thing, and then worrying him sick because he had no clue where she was. He trusted Trina with his life. But he didn’t trust any of those assholes out there who might be gunning for him but decided, since they couldn’t get to him, to settle for his wife instead.

  He stood at the window and leaned against the frame. He knew he had to calm himself down or he was going to go ballistic on her when she did show up. He understood how she felt. He was overprotective of her. He’d be the first to admit it. But what choice did he have, he thought to himself as his face displayed his distress. It would kill him if anything happened to Trina. Sometimes he wondered, based on her behavior, if she really understood that.

  He looked out of the window at a panoramic view of Vegas in the early afternoon. He was in his blue dress shirt and dress pants, with his shirt now hanging out of his pants and giving him that gorgeously rumpled look he was known for. His thick, dark brown hair was
all over his head, messy because of his tendency to constantly rake his fingers through his hair whenever he was upset. And today, on his return home, he was especially upset.

  He had the word out around the PaLargio that he was looking for his wife, which was embarrassing in and of itself. But his hope, when he heard knocks on his front door, was that news of her whereabouts were imminent. He hurried to the door and slung it open. His sister Fran, with his baby boy in her arms, were standing there.

  “Dommi!” Reno said with a grin as he hoisted his baby from Fran’s arms and pulled him into his own arms. He wanted Trina, but he was just as thrilled to have his son again.

  “Daddy!” Dommi said, thrilled too, and began slapping his father playfully about the face.

  “That’s right,” Reno said smiling down at his son’s beautiful light-brown mug. “Beat up on Daddy, too. Mommy’s teaching you good, boy.”

  Fran laughed. “Welcome home, Ree,” she said.

  Reno reached over and kissed his baby sister on the cheek. “How you doing, Fran?”

  “Better than you,” she said as she closed the door. “Can’t find Trina, hun?”

  “When did she leave Dominic with you?”

  “This morning. And I had to beg her to let me babysit even then, which I don’t think is right. I’m his aunt. I’m your baby sister. I should have more access to my nephew, and I told her so.”

  Yeah, Reno thought as he listened to his sister and bounced his baby boy, she was always telling somebody else something. But what he found odd was that she never thought once to tell herself to maybe get a job and support her own opinionated behind.

  “I also told her how that baby gets tired of going to work with her every single day like he was her appendage or something,” she continued telling. “And I don’t care if her office is right here in the PaLargio. You can afford a hundred thousand nannies, but she won’t employ even one. That’s just outrageous, Reno. The only reason she agreed to let me babysit at all was because she had some lunch date today.”

  Reno looked at her. “Lunch date? Did she say where?”

  “You know Trina doesn’t confide in me like that. She wouldn’t tell me which man she had the date with, and I sure asked her. I thought it was Lee again, since they always end up together somewhere around this place, but she wouldn’t even tell me that.”

  Reno stared at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “What’s what supposed to mean? I’m just calling it the way I see it. Every time you go out of town on business she seems to have all of these lunch dates with these different men all of a sudden.”

  Reno looked at his sister with a hard gaze. “Cut that shit out,” he said.

  “Cut what shit out?”

  “Your insinuating that my old lady is doing some dip with some dude will get you no-where with me. Do you understand where I’m going with this, Francine? Cut that shit out before I cut you out and order Trina to not have anything more to do with you. Understand where I’m going with this?”

  Fran understood perfectly. She’d been in Reno’s dog house too many times before. “I was just saying,” she said.

  “Stop saying,” Reno said. “Before I stop you.”

  Fran’s heart squeezed. Ever since Reno met Trina he always chose her over his own family. Over his own flesh and blood. But he’d learn his lesson soon enough, was how Fran saw it. Trina didn’t give a damn about him, but he kept putting her on such a pedestal. But the truth will come to light. Fran was banking on it.

  She smiled. “I leave for Europe next week,” she said to her brother. “It’ll be my first European vacation ever. I’ll be gone for an entire month.”

  “So you’re taking a vacation from your vacation?”

  “Don’t hate. It’s well deserved and you know it.”

  “Who’s going with you?”

  “Me, myself, and I. Unless you and your family care to join me?”

  “I’d rather eat a car.”

  Fran laughed. “In that case, may I make myself a drink?” she asked her brother.

  “Make me one while you’re at it,” Reno replied as he walked, with his son in his arms, toward the sofa.

  Fran rolled her eyes as she headed for the large bar in the back of the room. One day she was going to tell him a thing or two about bossing her around. But she knew it wasn’t going to be today.

  “Happy to see Daddy?” Reno asked his son as he sat down with him in his lap. “Happy to see your old man?”

  “I love Daddy,” Dommi said.

  Reno, delighted, pulled him closer into his arms. “Oh, baby, Daddy loves you too!”

  The baby mumbled some words, then he said, “I want Mommy.”

  Reno smiled a weary smile. Mommy had been with Dominic day in and day out while Daddy had been out of town all week. But he still wanted Mommy. But Reno fully understood. “I want her too,” he said as he leaned his son’s face against his own.

  Fran brought a glass of wine to Reno and handed it to him. She then sat down, with her own glass, in the chair flanking the sofa.

  “How was Florida?” she asked him.

  “It was Florida. I’m not sold yet on branching out there. I mean the PaLargio without a casino? I don’t know about that. And Florida is already tripping over itself with hotels. I don’t know. I haven’t decided anything yet.”

  “If you decide to go with it, maybe you’ll let me run it. Hun, Reno?”

  “Not gonna happen, Fran,” Reno said plainly.

  But Fran frowned. “Why not? I can handle it.”

  “I don’t mix family with my business, and you know that.”

  “That’s a lie! You made Trina president of the PaLargio. She’s family. You have her making decisions about this hotel.”

  “That’s nonsense.”

  “What’s nonsense?”

  “Comparing yourself to my wife. That’s nonsense, so forget about it. You aren’t running any hotel of mine, and that’s final.”

  Fran looked at her brother. He could be so cold sometimes. Just because she wasn’t the brightest bulb around didn’t mean she couldn’t learn how to operate a hotel. Trina was no Einstein either and she was operating this one. Sometimes Fran wondered if Reno even trusted her at all.

  “Speaking of family,” Reno said as he played with his son’s little feet, “heard from Dirty?”

  Fran knew he would go there. Ever since Ritchie Marcasi, her estranged husband everybody called Dirty, beat her to within an inch of her life, Reno had severed all ties with him. But he still seemed convinced that she would forgive Dirty and try to take him back. “Of course I haven’t heard from him,” she said. “Especially after what you and Tommy did to him.”

  Reno and Tommy Gabrini, his cousin and best friend, beat Dirty’s ass pretty good. It was payback for what Dirty had done to Fran, but he knew Fran. “I don’t want you doing something stupid, like taking his ass back. That’s all I’m saying. I didn’t beat him down for you to lift him back up.”

  “What you talking, Reno? You think I’m so desperate for a man I’ll take Dirty back? You think I’m that girl?”

  The front door suddenly opened and the girl Reno had been dying to see walked in. Reno’s heart pounded when he saw her. She wore the kind of bright blue that made her brown skin look radiant. He was so happy to see her, and so angry with her, that he sat there unable to react either way.

  Trina had no such problem. As soon as she saw her husband, her face lit up with joy. “Reno!” she said jubilantly.

  But Reno wasn’t so easily changed. “Where the fuck you been?” he asked her with anger in his voice.

  Fran immediately placed her drink on the coffee table, stood up, and reached for Dommi. “We’ll be in my apartment,” she said as Reno released his son to her.

  Trina said her goodbyes to her son, promising to come and get him shortly, and Fran and the baby left.

  Then Trina looked at her husband, with her expressive eyes showing her own degree of displeasure
.

  “Where the fuck you think?” she asked him.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Reno stood from the sofa and began walking to her. The anger in his fiery blue eyes was palpable.

  “Didn’t I tell you to meet my plane? Didn’t I tell you the first thing I want to see when I hit Vegas soil again was your face? I told you to have your ass at that airstrip, Trina!”

  She missed the way he walked, the way he talked, his swag, but she wasn’t about to back down. “I had every intention of meeting your plane,” she replied, equally perturbed. “But am I a mind reader all of a sudden? I didn’t know you were coming back this early. You didn’t call and tell me anything about coming early. If you would have called me then I would have been there.”

  “I did call you!” Reno roared. “I called you fifty fucking times! But nobody knew where your ass was. Nobody knew!”

  They were now face to face, and Reno wasn’t backing down either. “And when I get here,” he continued, “I find you left an hour ago and didn’t tell anybody anything. And your phone,” he added, pulling her cell phone out of his pocket, “is sitting in your office as if you couldn’t get away from here fast enough!” He threw the phone onto a nearby chair. “How many times do I have to tell you this shit ain’t funny, Tree? You have me worried sick when you pull this shit!”

  “First of all, what am I pulling?” Trina asked. Her face was as serious as his was angry. “I went out to lunch, okay? That’s all I did. I don’t see where I have to tell my business to every Joe Blow in this hotel every time I step out of the front door! I’m not living that way, Reno, I told you I wasn’t.”

  “And I told you to let me know when you left these premises. Me! Not some stranger or some Joe Blow or whatever. Me! You could have phoned and told me where you were going. You could have phoned and told me something. Then I wouldn’t be so fucking angry with your ass!”

  He caught himself. He knew he had to settle himself back down.

  “You should have called me, Tree,” he said less combatively as he looked into her eyes. He was just beginning to become aware of her presence. He was just beginning to smell her wonderfully familiar sweet scent, and see that glint he loved in her big, expressive eyes. Suddenly he realized how relieved he was to see her face again. Suddenly he realized how relieved he was to be with her again. But he couldn’t show his relief. He had to make her understand the danger she posed to herself by her lack of interest in her safety. He had to make her understand that.