A MOB BOSS CHRISTMAS: THE PREGNANCY (MOB BOSS SERIES) Page 3

Reno slung out of his office door mad as hell at his kid sister. But he let it pass for now. He had to make sure his wife was okay.

  He and Jimmy Mack hurried for the private elevator, with Reno glancing at his son and shaking his head. “See what I have to deal with on a daily basis?”

  “Yes, sir,” Jimmy said, moving swiftly to keep pace with his older, but superiorly built father.

  “Daily I have to put up with this shit,” Reno went on. “And here I am, for all these years, thinking Fran was the brains of her household. That between her and Dirty, she was definitely the brains. But I was wrong. Dirty’s the brains.”

  “Wow,” Jimmy said. “That’s scary.”

  Reno glanced at his son. Sometimes his sense of humor took him by surprise. And he would have at least smiled at the joke, but he couldn’t. Trina was on his mind.

  It didn’t take long for Reno and his son to find her. They didn’t even have to split up. Reno had just left her an angry third message, warning her rhetorically that if she didn’t turn on that cell phone he was going to kick her ass. But within moments of that phone call, they found her.

  There she was, Katrina “Tree” Gabrini, the wife of the owner of the famed PaLargio Hotel and Casino, seated on a bench inside the mall, chatting it up with some tall, dark, gorgeous black man. Reno stopped in his tracks.

  “Who is that?” Jimmy Mack asked his father, his big green eyes staring at the strange man.

  “I don’t know,” Reno said. He was just as taken aback as Jimmy, but he knew his wife. He was certain it was nothing. Until Trina smiled, placed her hand on the side of the man’s face, and the man hugged her.

  Jimmy, stunned, looked at his father. Reno’s heart began to pound.

  The man then stopped hugging Trina, whispered something to her, and she nodded her head. Then the guy stood up, helped Trina up, and they both began walking toward the mall’s side exit. The man, the gorgeous hunk of a man, had his hand firmly planted on the small of Trina’s back.

  “What the fuck,” Reno said beneath his breath and then began following them. Jimmy stayed beside him.

  “What, you don’t know the guy, Pop?” Jimmy asked again.

  “Where are they going?” Reno asked in that still stunned voice. He knew Jimmy had no clue, either, but the oddity of seeing his wife leaving with a man, and the man wasn’t him, had Reno flummoxed.

  “Where does that exit lead?” he asked, his face frowned with concern.

  “I’ve only come here a few times, Pop. You’ve never been to this mall before?”

  “What the fuck I got time to go to a mall for? Where does that exit lead?”

  “I think it leads to the side parking lot.”

  “Parking lot?” Reno said, beginning to panic. He was parked in the front parking lot. “Geez,” he said and, as soon as Trina and the mystery man walked through that side exit, Reno, with his son following, began to run.

  But a problem happened on their way to the exit. They both suddenly found themselves right in the middle of a massive flash mob. A flash mob at a time like this! Reno, who thought flash mobs had been a flash in the pan and were a thing of the past, was astounded as a large group of people suddenly stood up or stopped walking and started “expressing themselves.” Some were dancing, others were turning around in circles, still others were doing some form of what Reno could only describe as weird acrobatics, while a few were handing out leaflets for their cause.

  “Save the planet, sir,” one of the flowerchild looking females said as she pointed her leaflet in Reno’s face. But Reno and his son were trying to break through the crowd and make their way for the exit.

  “Save the planet, sir,” another woman said to him.

  “I don’t wanna save the planet,” Reno replied.

  The woman was baffled. “What kind of human being doesn’t want to save the planet?”

  “The kind that’ll bash your face in if you don’t get out of mine!”

  “Kiss my ass,” the mild-mannered woman said and Reno and Jimmy both looked at her. But Reno had no time to counter.

  “Come on, Jim,” he said as he grabbed his son by the arm and had to move sideways toward the exit. But the crowd was too thick. Reno found himself tossing people aside just to get through. But when he tossed the people into other people, the other people retaliated for being tossed into and began tossing the people back. The people being tossed back didn’t like being treated like human ping pong balls and retaliated against the retaliators and soon the flash mob turned into a fighting mob that Reno and Jimmy barely escaped.

  By the time they maneuvered their way past the massive mob, and exited the mall, Trina and her male friend were nowhere to be seen. Reno looked left, right, straight ahead, behind him, around him. He began to panic.

  “There they are!” Jimmy’s young eyes spotted them. Reno looked, too. And there they were, well across the huge parking lot, and they seemed to be hugging again. Then the man sat Trina down in the passenger seat of a car, and the man started walking toward the driver’s side.

  “Go!” Reno yelled to Jimmy, whom he knew used to run track, and Jimmy took off running.

  Reno ran behind him, praying that his wife wasn’t about to leave this mall with some man she’d just been hugging on, and he ran as if his life depended on it. Some women even stopped and looked, as they wondered what had the young black guy done that had such an esteemed looking older white guy chasing him through the parking lot?

  But Reno wasn’t thinking about those busybodies. All he could think about was Tree. And that good looking man. And the fact that she was now leaving the parking lot with that good looking man.

  And they did drive off well before Jimmy Mack could get anywhere near them. Jimmy, in fact, stopped running as the car turned the last corner inside the parking lot and headed out onto the highway. By the time Reno ran up beside his son, the car was clean out of sight.

  Jimmy looked at Reno. He could see that he was visibly shaken.

  “What are we gonna do, Pop?” he asked him.

  But Reno was too confounded to say a word. He didn’t know what to say, let alone what he was going to do. His face looked filled with fret and dread. Maybe he was overreacting, he thought. This was Trina Gabrini they were talking about, after all. This was his wife, after all. And he had to trust her. He had to believe that the guy was just an old friend, or even some relative of hers that she just happened to be affectionate toward. But he was certain she wasn’t about to let that character get anywhere near first base with her. Not Trina Gabrini. She wasn’t like that. And nobody was going to ever convince him that she was that kind of woman.

  But that didn’t stop the worry and anguish. The not knowing was the bear. And it was an odd position for Reno to be in. During his entire marriage to her he’d never been placed in a position like this. But he knew Tree. He knew her. He had to trust his wife.

  Nevertheless, he got on his cell phone and called his security chief, and every man he knew in that line of work, to drop whatever they were doing and hunt her down. He and Jimmy would do the same.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Many hours later Reno was still pacing inside their penthouse apartment on the top floor of the PaLargio. He couldn’t stop pacing the floor. He had a glass of gin that he would occasionally drink, but mostly he had it to his forehead to ease his intensifying headache.

  His suit coat had long been discarded, and now he moved around in his dress pants, expensive imported dress shoes, and a bright blue dress shirt whose shirt tail hung down over his butt. His chestnut brown hair was its usual messiness,, but only on steroids this time. He looked worn. He looked puzzled. He only trusted two people in this entire world one hundred percent. Just two people. One was his cousin and best friend Tommy Gabrini. The other one was his wife. He trusted Trina with his life. But to see her hugging that man. To see her smiling at that man. To see her driving off with that man was just too much. What in the world, Reno wondered, was going on.

  He ha
d men out searching for Trina. He and Jimmy had covered the town searching for her. But they turned up nothing. Now it was nightfall and Reno was not only angry with her, but he was worried sick about her.

  He heard the door knob turn. He quickly turned toward the front door. It opened. To his everlasting relief, it was Trina.

  “Reno?” she said, surprised to see him. “Why aren’t you working? You don’t usually get home until after midnight.”

  It sounded like an indictment to Reno. Was that why she fell into another man’s arms? Because he worked too much?

  “Where you been?” he asked her. “Fran got back here hours ago.”

  “I know. I was just. . .” She began walking toward the bedroom.

  Reno began following her. “You was just what?” he asked as they walked.

  “I was at the mall,” she said and Reno stopped in his tracks. Trina never lied. Why didn’t she mention the man she had left the mall with? What was going on here?

  When she realized he had stopped walking, she turned around. The look on his face, as if he somehow knew what she had been up to, made her flushed with shame. She walked up to him, kissed him on the lips, and threw her arms around him.

  Reno closed his eyes tightly as he held her. He had to stay calm. She’d explain everything in time. And they’d laugh about it later. Trina wouldn’t cheat on him. That was for damn sure, he thought. But that didn’t stop his heart from hammering.

  When they stopped embracing, Reno kept his arms around her waist and looked into her bright hazel eyes. Trina wouldn’t hurt him, he kept telling himself. Trina wouldn’t do that! But as the thought of another man touching her overtook him, he suddenly felt emotional and pulled away from her.

  “Wash up,” he ordered her. “Dinner’s getting cold.”

  Trina was surprised. “Dinner? You cooked dinner?”

  “Yes, I cooked dinner,” Reno said as if it wasn’t his first time cooking her anything, even though it was.

  Trina was thrown. Did he know? Was that why he looked so pitiful and had actually picked up a pot in a kitchen and cooked something? But he couldn’t know. Fran wouldn’t have told him. She wouldn’t have. Or would she, Trina thought and then dismissed such a thought. She couldn’t even think about that right now. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll wash up.”

  Trina had to stifle a giggle when she saw Reno with his little apron on. She sat at the dining room table as he held the pan and placed a heap of sautéed shrimp and pasta in some kind of Alfredo sauce onto her plate. A simple and enticing looking meal, it seemed, although food was the last thing on Trina’s mind.

  Reno placed double the portion on his plate, took the pot back to the stove, and came and sat at the head of the table. He poured them both some wine and then held her hand and led the Grace, thanking God Almighty for the food they were about to receive. Afterwards, he kept her hand in his.

  “Where’s Jimmy Mack?” Trina asked as she stirred her food.

  “He’s shadowing Lee Jones.”

  Trina looked at Reno. “Lee? Why Lee?”

  “I want him to learn the nuts and bolts of this place. One day, when you and me can’t or don’t want to continue to run things around here, the PaLargio will belong to him. Lee can show him everything he needs to know. Lee worked his way up in my organization. That’s what I want Jimmy to do.”

  “I don’t think we’ll have any problems with him. He’s a good kid.” Then Trina thought about her own predicament and that sense of dread overtook her again.

  The security intercom buzzed. Reno reached beneath the table and pressed the button.

  “Yes, Pete, what is it?”

  “Excuse me, sir, but Miss Dallas wishes to see you.”

  “Not now.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Trina was pleased that he never went running when Cheri called. Not because Cheri, as Reno’s general manager, was a bad employee, because she wasn’t. She was tough and smart, and both qualities were essential in their line of work. But Trina was responding on a personal level. She’d heard all of those heartless rumors about Reno having an affair with the beautiful Cheri Dallas, and she’d heard them even before Cheri came to work at the PaLargio. The only reason Reno hired her, the rumors went, was because he wanted to be able to take her into one of his hotel rooms and fuck her whenever the need struck. It was foolishness to Trina, especially since she knew Reno never “fucked around” on the job, and she largely ignored the rumors. But that didn’t mean she didn’t pay attention.

  Cheri always tried to present herself as somebody who abhorred even the appearance of indiscretion, but Trina wasn’t buying it. She saw how Cheri looked at Reno when she didn’t think anybody was watching her. She saw how she gave him that extra smile. Cheri had a thing for Reno, and Trina wouldn’t be surprised if Cheri herself didn’t have a hand in spreading all of those vicious lies about some affair. But it was Reno who owed his allegiance to Trina. It was Reno she took her cues from. And from what Trina was seeing, Reno wasn’t having it.

  But as quickly as he returned his attention to Trina, the intercom buzzed again.

  “What the,” he started. “Yes?” he said curtly after pressing the buzzer.

  “Excuse me, again, sir, but Miss Dallas says it’s urgent.”

  Reno fumed. “I don’t give a good gotdamn what Miss Dallas says,” Reno barked. “I’m having dinner with my wife. Tell her either she handles it or get Lee Jones. But she’d better not disturb me again.”

  “Yes, sir,” Pete said, and Reno clicked off.

  Trina shook her head. “Cheri needs to quit,” she said. “She keeps running to you when she knows she should let me or Lee handle it. I’m the senior president of PaLargio, Inc. and now that you’re back you bumped Lee over to Chief Operating Officer. Why’s she going over our heads to you? It makes no sense. And she’s not the only one, either, Reno. They all keep running straight to you. That’s why you never get home before midnight as it is.”

  Reno looked at Trina as he took a bite of food. There it was again. That never getting home until midnight line. “What about you?” he asked her. “What have you been up to today?”

  Trina moved food around on her plate as she thought about her still real and present situation. That queasy feeling that had gripped her for days returned. “I was in the office this morning trying to review all of our one-week-only acts with my staff, and then this afternoon Fran and I went to the mall.”

  Reno stared at his wife. “Fran left you there, though, right?”

  Trina hesitated again. “Yeah, she did actually. But it was no biggie. I’ll just know not to go anywhere with her again.”

  “So how did you get home?”

  Again, Trina hesitated. “Friend.”

  Reno continued to eat, but didn’t take his eyes off of her. “A friend?”

  Trina took a tiny bite of food and nodded her head. “That’s right.”

  Reno sat his fork down. He couldn’t play games. “Who?”

  “A friend.”

  “A guy?”

  Trina hesitated. “Yes.”

  “So what’s his name?”

  “What difference does it make? Just a friend.”

  “Don’t you talk to me with that tone. What’s his name?”

  Trina hesitated again. “Bob.”

  “Bob?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So who’s this Bob character? You never mentioned some friend named Bob before.”

  “There was nothing to mention. He’s nobody.”

  “He’s nobody?”

  “He’s nobody.”

  “Nobody that you let feel on you in the mall. Nobody that you let hug on you in the mall. Nobody that you left with from the mall.”

  Trina looked at him. “What?”

  “You’re having an affair with this character or what?”

  Trina’s heart began to pound. What in the world? “Why would you ask me something like that?”

  “Just answer the quest
ion.”

  “Answer what? What are you talking about?”

  This angered Reno. “What the fuck you think I’m talking about? You know what I’m talking about. I’m talking about an affair, Tree! I’m talking about are you fucking somebody other than me?”

  “No!” Trina said with equal anger. “And you know it!”

  “I know it?”

  “Yeah, you know it!”

  “And how am I supposed to just know this?”

  “Because you know me. And you know I wouldn’t do anything like that to you.”

  Reno stared at her. This was Trina, what was he doing? She wouldn’t lie to him. She just wouldn’t.

  “He brought me home,” Trina continued. “Yeah, he brought me home. But he wasn’t feeling on me or anything like that, Reno. We’re just friends.”

  Reno nodded his head and squeezed her small hand. “Okay,” he said. “So I don’t need to worry about this character?”

  “No, Reno, you don’t have to worry about Bob.” Then she thought about it. Her heart pounded. “You had somebody following me, Reno?”

  “No. Of course not. I know how you hate that.”

  “Then how did you know about Bob?”

  It was Reno’s time to hesitate. “I was in the mall and saw him.”

  “You were in the mall?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Reno, you don’t go to malls.”

  “I do go to malls. What you think I was born with a silver foot in my mouth and don’t know anything?”

  “No, but. . .” She decided to leave it alone. Fran probably came back, and instead of staying out of Reno’s sight, went straight to him. And Reno, being Reno, probably came to pick her up himself.

  “Next time you’re stranded at the mall,” he said, pointing his fork at her, “you call for a car. You hear me, Tree?”

  Trina nodded.

  “You don’t take rides from Bob or Rob or nobody else. You call for a car or you call for me.”

  “I will, Reno.”

  “And why the fuck was your cell phone off again? I never heard of anything like that in my life. I tell you constantly to keep that thing on, but you keep turning it off.”