MOB BOSS 4: ROMANCING TRINA GABRINI Read online

  Reno knew, as he pounded into Nell, that it was only going to get worse from here. He could hear his father and Vito unzipping their pants. He just knew without looking that they were pulling out those big-ass cocks of theirs and pleasuring themselves as they waited their turn at this fresh pussy. He also knew that he had to act. And act fast.

  “Pound her harder, Reno!” Paulo kept saying. “Pound that pussy harder than that. What’s wrong with you? You ain’t got no balls?”

  Paulo and Vito laughed. And Reno pounded harder. He knew he had to. He held Nell’s body tightly against his and pounded her. His father and Vito were laughing again, talking about what they were going to do to her when Reno finished, and how Reno was only getting that well primed for them. And while they laughed and talked, Reno pounded and leaned closer to Nell.

  “When I slide over to that door and unlock it,” he whispered in her ear as his father and Vito laughed and talked, “I want you to run for your life. You can’t tell anybody what happened here, or they’ll track you down like they said. Just run.” And then he looked into her eyes and mouthed the words, “I’m sorry,” with eyes that would have been touching to Nell. But right now she couldn’t stand the sight of him.

  But when she nodded her head, as if she accepted his apology and fully understood why he had to do what he was doing to her, his body betrayed him. To his horror he came. Right inside of her. His body shuttered as he poured into her. And he knew it was now or never. They would be ready to take their turn. They would be ready to rape her until she was unconscious, and possibly worse.

  He moved fast. He began to shout as if he could hardly contain his joy, all the while sliding her body toward the exit door. He then, very slyly, unlocked the door as he shouted and continued to pound her as if he was still in the throes of his cum. His father and Vito, as he had hoped, were enjoying it, laughing as he pounded her. But as soon as they thought he was in the apex of his enjoyment, Reno slid his penis out of Nell, kicked open the door, and then pushed her outside.

  Nell didn’t hesitate. As soon as she realized she was no longer confined to the tiny storeroom and was actually outside of the restaurant, she took off running. She stumbled as she ran, but she didn’t fall.

  “What the fuck!” Paulo yelled and rushed to the door. He ran out into the alley, his dick dangling, to see if there was a chance he could catch that black bitch. But Nell was already gone.

  Paulo went back inside and slammed the door. Vito had already grabbed a crowbar that was against the wall and had Reno cornered, because he was just as angry as Paulo. Paulo, however, was worse than Vito. He was a man many in Jersey considered the personification of ruthlessness. And the idea that it was his son who had two-timed him? His own flesh and blood? Ruthlessness didn’t fully capture how Paulo really felt.

  “You think you’re a bigger man than me, Reno?” Paulo asked, coming toward his son, his eyes wild with anger. “You think you’re gonna defy me and there be no retribution? You’re that gotdamn crazy now, Reno? You’re that gotdamn crazy now?”

  And Paulo cold cocked his son so hard that Reno’s body buckled and he dropped to his knees. Then Paulo Gabrini, like the cruel gangster he was known for, began kicking and stomping his own son, yelling at him for defying him and ruining his good time.

  Vito tried to stop him. “You’re taking it too far, Paulo!” Vito was yelling. But Paulo snatched away from his best friend and continued to beat down his own son.

  Then Paulo grabbed the crowbar from Vito’s hands, fell down on top of Reno, and was just about to slam that piece of iron across his son’s handsome face. Paulo was in that zone. There was no reasoning with him now.

  And Reno knew it. He had to fight back. Father or no father, he couldn’t lay there and let the man kill him. He had to fight back.

  As soon as Paulo raised the crowbar over his head and began to bring it down toward Reno’s face, Reno’s brute strength stopped Paulo’s arm movement. They struggled father and son, but by force of will alone, Reno was able to flip his father off of him and reverse position. Now Reno was on top of his father, and the crowbar was in Reno’s hand.

  And he was ready to kick ass. Reno was so angry all he could see was red. He was ready to kick his own father’s ass. He lifted the crowbar over his head and was about to slam it into his father’s face.

  But he stopped, with that crowbar in midair. His powerful, muscular arms were shaking for control as his veins were exposed. He couldn’t do it. Tears were in his eyes as he stared down at his father. He wanted to kill him. He wanted to take him away from this life once and for all. But this was his father. This was the man he loved above any human being alive. And he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t lay a hand on his own father.

  Reno stood up, his legs straddling his startled father. He wiped the blood that was trickling from the side of his mouth, and then tossed the crowbar across the room. It clanged against a shelf hard, and then hit the floor hard. And Reno backed up, and then walked out.

  “Yeah, you better get your ass back to Jersey!” his father yelled, as Vito helped him stand. “You’d better get your ass. . . back. . . Reno!” Paulo called. He couldn’t lose Reno! He was his eldest, his best boy, the only human being he ever trusted.

  “Reno!” he yelled again.

  But Reno didn’t look back.

  Nell left Crane that same night. She packed up her small apartment and went to live with her grandmother three towns away. She would stay away from her hometown for nearly two years after that night, until she found out that Paulo Gabrini had left Crane within a month of her departure, and Mr. Clauson was back in charge.

  Reno left Crane that same night, too. As he walked out of that supply room he heard his father ordering him back to Jersey. He heard his father agonizingly calling his name. But Reno kept on walking. He didn’t heed that call.

  Instead of catching a plane back home to Jersey as his father had ordered, Reno took a bus to Vegas. He didn’t have the stomach for the kind of violence his father was leading him toward. He couldn’t dream of harming somebody just for the sport of it, especially when they hadn’t done a thing to him. He wasn’t that person and wasn’t going to become that person. He wasn’t cut out for the mob life. He saw it even then.

  That was why he headed to Vegas. It was about time, he decided at the ripe young age of nineteen, to leave behind the shadow of a father he now hated almost as profoundly as he loved, and make his own way.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Seventeen Years Later

  Reno couldn’t get there fast enough. He couldn’t wait on the elevators in the PaLargio Ballroom so he took the stairs two at a time, all the way up to the third floor. He slung open the stairwell door, ran down the marbled corridor, and entered the suite that had been occupied by, literally minutes before, ShoShawna Shanks.

  “What you mean she’s gone?” he immediately asked his cousin Sal Luca, who was in the suite. Reno’s wife, Katrina “Trina” Gabrini, along with the bridesmaids, was in there, too.

  “I meant just what I said,” Sal replied. “She’s gone. Split. She took off. Got the hell out of Dodge. She’s gone, Reno.”

  “But the wedding’s in ten minutes! What the fuck you mean she’s gone? How could she just walk her crazy ass out of here and nobody tell me a gotdamn thing?”

  “I called and told you as soon as I found out,” Sal pointed out. “As soon as I walked up here and Trina told me, I called you. Trina didn’t call you, I called you. She was too busy trying to call Shanks.”

  Reno looked at Trina, who was slated to be the maid of honor, and that sparkle of excitement that had been in her eyes all week was gone. And he could just kick Shanks ass for putting his wife through this. And when Tommy found out. Geez.

  He ran his hand through his thick crop of brown hair and ruffled his expensive hairdo by that one act alone. He then unbuttoned his white tuxedo and placed his hands on his hips. “Is it true?” he asked Trina. “Shanks really pulling this bullshit at this late
hour?”

  Trina ran her hand across her smooth forehead and batted her eyes. She was so upset she couldn’t speak right now. She just nodded her head.

  “I don’t believe it,” Reno said, shaking his own head. “Even with crazy-ass Shanks pulling this stunt, I don’t believe it. And how could it happen with all you ladies here? You just stood here and let her walk out and not do a gotdamn thing?”

  “And what were we supposed to do?” Winifred, one of the bridesmaids, unwisely asked.

  Reno looked at her. She was a pretty, dark-skinned young lady with an up-do. “Who the fuck are you?” he asked her.

  But Winifred didn’t back down. “I’m Shawna’s best friend. Who the fuck are you?”

  Another bridesmaid, who knew Reno’s reputation, immediately touched Winifred on the arm.

  “You think you’re big and bad?” Reno asked her. “Think you’re Shanks because you’re her friend? Think you can go toe to toe with me?”

  “I didn’t say I could go toe to toe with you,” Winifred replied. “But I can give as good as I get. How about that?”

  This girl offended Reno on every level. “How about you get the fuck out of my hotel and get the fuck out now? How about that? That goes for all of you. Get out. Now!”

  The bridesmaids, many of whom knew Reno’s bombastic rep well, immediately began hurrying for the exit. They couldn’t wait to leave.

  When they were gone, Trina’s rising frustration took spilled. “You didn’t have to talk to that girl like that.”

  “Oh, but she can talk to me any kind of way? Fuck that girl! I wanna know what’s happened here. Where’s Shanks now?”

  “I don’t know. She answered her cell phone once, but she said for me not to call anymore. She said she couldn’t do it. And she left.”

  Reno began moving around in the luxurious suite. He was shaking his head. “You should have done something, Tree.”

  But this angered Trina more. “Like what was I supposed to do? She’s a grown-ass woman.”

  “You should have stopped her.”

  “Stopped her? Oh, really now?” Trina folded her arms. “And how do you figure I could have done that?”

  “By calling me or calling Tommy!” Reno yelled. “That’s how!”

  “And what were you and Tommy going to do? Tie her up and drag her down to that altar? You sound like a fool, Reno!”

  “Don’t you talk to me that way.”

  “I’ll talk to you any way I damn well please!”

  “Hey-hey,” Sal said, astounded by this display. “Not you two love birds, too! You’re supposed to be the example for the rest of us to follow, and now you’re at each other’s throats? Give me a break. What the hell’s going on here?”

  Reno exhaled, stopped pacing, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I just wanted Tommy to be happy,” he admitted, as his big blue eyes became bright with emotion. “For once in his life, I wanted it to work out for him.”

  Tommy’s brother Sal and Trina both understood what Reno meant. Because they wanted it, too. Tommy and ShoShawna had had such a tumultuous relationship for so long, and Tommy had wanted her to be his wife so badly, that the idea of her doing this to him, at the last freaking moment, was too much for all of them. Especially Reno, who was Tommy’s best friend.

  He looked at Sal. “You’d better get Tommy. And don’t tell him shit, just get him up here.”

  “Right,” Sal said and turned to do as he was told. But as soon as he turned, he realized there was no need.

  “Tommy,” he said, causing Reno and Trina to turn toward the suite’s open door, too. And there he was, Tommy Gabrini, leaned against the jamb. He was in white tux, too, with every strand of his brownish-blond hair in place as always, but the sparkle in his bright blue eyes was gone. He knew. They didn’t have to tell him a thing. His eyes made clear that he already knew.

  He pushed away from the jamb and walked further into the room. Although Sal was his baby brother, he moved more toward Reno, who was always his rock in times like these. The two men stood an inch apart.

  Trina went to Tommy and hugged him. Reno could see the pain even with Tommy’s eyes closed.

  “I’ll go and notify the guests,” she said.

  “I should do it,” Tommy said, although everything within him would dread doing so.

  “No,” Trina said, patting him on his coat lapel. “I’ll do it. You’ve been humiliated enough.” She said this heartfelt. And as she turned to leave, Reno grabbed her, and pulled her into his muscular arms. He, too, closed his eyes in a tight squeeze. He wanted to say that he was sorry about his outburst, but he didn’t have to say a word. She knew. He kissed her on the cheek, and then she and Sal Luca left, closing the door behind them.

  Reno then turned his attention back to his cousin. “She called you?” Reno asked him.

  Tommy nodded.

  “What did she say?”

  “She said she can’t do it.”

  “She can’t do it? That’s it?”

  “That’s it. That’s Shawnie.”

  “What’s her problem, man? Why she always pulling stupid shit like this? Why would she do this to you?”

  “Wrong question, Reno,” Tommy said.

  Reno would have flown off the handle if it had been any other man making such a comment. But not with Tommy. When they were kids trying to be bad boys in Jersey, it was always said that Reno was the brawn of the family, the undisputed leader of the next generation of Gabrinis, but Tommy was the brains. Reno accepted that.

  “Wrong question?” he responded. “So what’s the right question?”

  “The question isn’t why did she do this to me, but why did I do it to her?”

  “You?” Reno asked, astounded. “What you did to her?”

  Tommy was about to answer the question analytically, but he couldn’t. Trying to be analytical about something this heartbreaking wasn’t going to cut it. He frowned. “I should have known she couldn’t do it. I mean, I already knew, a part of me knew it all along, but I guess I wanted it so badly.”

  “But why couldn’t she do it? What’s Shanks problem? She loves you, I know that much. Why can’t she forget playing cowboy and be with you?”

  “You’re one to talk,” Tommy said somewhat harshly. “She’s just like you, Reno, don’t you realize that? You live for the thrill, too.”

  “That’s a gotdamn lie,” Reno objected.

  “That’s the gotdamn truth,” Tommy insisted. “That’s what you’re about, and always has been. That’s what Shawnie’s about, too. She can’t no more give up being a part of the action than you can. She’s a hired gun, that’s what she does for a living, and she loves it. And she loves it more than she loves me.” This pronouncement may have sounded simple enough, but it hurt Tommy to his core. Reno placed his hand on his cousin’s shoulder.

  Tommy continued. “The idea of her becoming domesticated, as she liked to call it, scared her off. Again,” he added.

  “Well she picked a fine time to be scared.”

  Tommy shook his head and started walking around the spacious room. He walked over to the window and looked out at Vegas in the heat of the day. Then he turned to Reno, his eyes wide as a Kennedy Fifty Cent coin. “Get Trina away from here, Reno.”

  Reno was surprised by his sudden shift. “I am. You know that. It’s all arranged.”

  “Don’t change anything.”

  “I won’t, Tommy, you know I won’t. I told you after that craziness with Marbeth that I was getting her away from here. And we’re going.”

  “It’s still Georgia?”

  “Crane, Georgia, that’s right. It’s all arranged.”

  “But I thought Trina was going to Detroit. She was saying something about going to Detroit.”

  “My plane’s flying her to her uncle’s funeral in Detroit tomorrow, that’s right, and she’ll stay there for about a week while I finalize my step-down as CEO here. But then we’re leaving.”

  Tommy still seemed unconvinced.
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  “What, you think I changed my mind? She’s going to Detroit for a funeral. That’s all that’s about. Her father’s brother died and they’re going to Detroit to take care of that. But she’ll be back and then we’re out of here. That’s why what you said about me being like Shanks is completely wrong. I’m nothing like her. I don’t live for this shit. I live for my wife, and the normal, real life I want to give her. That’s why I’m getting her out of here.”

  Tommy nodded. “Good. That’s good, Reno. Then maybe you still stand a chance.”

  Reno hesitated. “But Shanks don’t?”

  Tommy didn’t immediately respond. Then he exhaled. “She can’t be domesticated. She’s got to run free. And I’ve got to accept it.”

  “Or,” Reno said, deciding to be blunt, “you can leave her and her precious freedom the hell alone and find you a woman like Tree. A woman who loves you above all else. Because you deserve that, Tommy.”

  But Tommy wasn’t listening anymore. His decision to have ShoShawna all to himself may have caused him to lose her forever. And he couldn’t deal with that reality right now. Let alone accept it.

  Reno didn’t realize he was crying until he saw the shake of his shoulders. And he hurried to offer comfort. Although Reno knew, because he knew Tommy and Shanks too well, that they’d be back together again. And then they’d break up again. And then they’d talk about marriage again. And on and on and on. A vicious cycle, Reno thought as he pulled Tommy into his arms, if ever there was one.

  But right now he just comforted his best friend.

  Downstairs inside the PaLargio, however, the prospects of happiness for Richie Marcasi, better known as Dirty, was almost as diminished as Tommy’s prospects. Especially when he looked across the casino floor and saw Vinnie Delgado coming his way. He tried to get lost, it was a massive casino, after all, but it was damn-near impossible. Dirty was a pit boss, the point person for many of the gambling tables, so everywhere he turned somebody was calling his name. He couldn’t hide. So he smiled, turned toward his unwelcomed guest, and determined to lay the charm on thick.