MOB BOSS 6: THE HEART OF RENO GABRINI (Mob Boss Series) Page 7

  Now she was just annoying. “Who do you think you’re talking to?” Reno asked as he began to move toward her. Before Ashley found herself ten feet under, Jimmy grabbed his father’s arm to hold him back.

  “She’s just stressed out, Dad,” he said in her defense. “We’re all stressed out.”

  Reno started to tell that silly-ass girl what she could do with her stress, but he knew he had bigger battles to wage than any fight with her.

  “Tell me what happened,” he said to her. “And leave nothing out.”

  Ashley folded her small arms in a way that lifted her large breasts. This was supposed to be one of her seduction tricks. Reno knew that game too well. As if he could be that easily led! His son could, and many young men like him, but Reno certainly couldn’t. But it was so engrained in her to try, he knew, that she had to try anyway.

  She was certainly pretty, he thought, which meant, undoubtedly, that she had his son wrapped right around her finger. Why these young guys always went for looks first was a mystery to Reno. He always went for sass first, even when he was Jimmy’s age. The sassier the woman the better, in his opinion. That was how he ended up with a woman like Trina. That was how Jimmy ended up with a woman like this girl here who could bat those eyes and tease with a little cunt and make him feel as if it was his obligation to protect her and to get her out of whatever mess she found herself in. Because there was no doubt in Reno’s mind that whatever led to there being a body to put in a trunk, had everything to do with her.

  But Ashley still was resistant to talk. Jimmy moved next to her. “It’s okay,” he said. “My dad will look out for you, don’t worry. Just tell him what happened.”

  “Lamar came over to my house to hang out,” Cooper told instead.

  Reno looked at him. “You knew this Lamar?”

  “Yes, sir. I knew him when we both used to work at Crawdaddy’s, but I hadn’t seen him since those days. But he called and wanted to come over and kick it, and so I said why not. But I didn’t know he had gear with him, he didn’t say nothing about bringing no smack. I didn’t know he had anything like that until I came back from the kitchen. He was already getting high.”

  Ashley folded her arms tighter, and lifted her breasts higher. Reno looked at those breasts and then back at Cooper.

  “Then he started having convulsions,” Cooper continued, “like he was having some kind of fit or something. And that’s when I called my sister. She called Jimmy Mack.”

  “To keep her out of trouble,” Jimmy said, “we decided to move the body.”

  Reno shook his head. “As simple as that. You decide to move a body. It’s a felony to move a body, but who the fuck cares, right?” Then Reno calmed back down. “Go on,” he said with a frown on his face.

  “We were driving around,” Jimmy said. “We were driving to this place Ash knew about. This place where we could leave it. But that’s when I realized somebody was following us.”

  The bodyguards immediately began to come over when they heard that Jimmy had been followed.

  “Who was following you?” Reno asked his son with heightened interest too.

  “We don’t know,” Cooper said. “But it was clear they were following us.”

  “But I lost them,” Jimmy said proudly. “I’m certain of that.”

  Reno looked at his guards. They both seemed to have that doubtful look on their faces too.

  Reno looked at Jimmy. “Give me your keys.”

  “Sir?”

  “Give me your car keys.”

  Jimmy quickly complied.

  “Now go get in my car and wait for me,” Reno ordered.

  “But Dad,” Jimmy said. “What about Coop and Ashley?”

  Reno looked at his son. “Get in my car and wait for me.”

  Jimmy’s heart began to pound. He knew there was no arguing with his father when he had that look in his eyes. He got into the Porsche.

  Reno looked at Lou, the larger of the two large guards. And Lou knew exactly what to do. “Let’s go,” he said to the brother and sister.

  But Ashley snatched away from him. She looked at Reno. “I want to go home,” she said with a whine in her voice. “I don’t want to go anywhere with him, I want to go home!”

  “Young lady,” Reno said as calmly as he knew how, “I don’t give a flying fuck what you want to do. Get your ass in that SUV and do exactly what Lou tells you to do. You and Cooper both. Now get!” Reno pushed her away from him when he said that. Ashley stumbled, but his tone alone was enough to make her stop resisting. She and Cooper followed Lou to the SUV.

  Reno and his second guard, Artie, began walking around to the front side of the bar, where Jimmy’s vehicle was parked.

  When Jimmy saw that Reno had gone around front, he got out of the Porsche and went over to Lou’s SUV. Ashley and Cooper were sitting on the backseat. Lou rolled down their window.

  “What’s happening, Jimmy?” Ashley immediately asked him.

  “It’s okay,” Jimmy said. “He’ll take care of it, you have to believe that.”

  “But where’s he gone?”

  “To take care of things, don’t worry. He knows how to handle situations like this.”

  But Ashley still looked doubtful. Jimmy reached in and touched her hand. He hated to see her in such distress.

  “It’s going to be all right, Ash. Trust me, okay?”

  Ashley looked at Jimmy. “Where is he taking us?”

  “I don’t know, but don’t worry about it. I told you my dad will look out for you. You’ve got to believe me.”

  “He’s not calling the cops on us?”

  “Of course not,” Jimmy said as if such a question was ludicrous. “He’ll never do anything like that. He hates cops as much as you do.” Then he squeezed her hand. “Just settle down. It’ll be okay.”

  But she still wasn’t convinced. Jimmy was beginning to get irritated by her lack of faith in him.

  “Why won’t he let you ride with us?” she asked him. “There’s room.”

  “You need to calm down, Ash, I told you it’s okay.”

  “But why? Why can’t you ride with us?”

  “Because he probably wants me to ride with him.”

  “But why?”

  “Because I’m his son, I don’t know. How should I know why? You need to calm down.”

  “That’s easy for you to say!” Ashley decried. “I’m the one facing prison!”

  Jimmy was getting upset for real now. “Are you joking? I’m the one with the dead body in my car, and you’re complaining?”

  “But your daddy’s gonna take care of it for you. That’s probably where they’re gone now. But what about me and Riley?”

  Jimmy shook his head and threw up his hands. He’d had it. “Whatever, Ash, all right?” He said this and began heading back to his father’s car.

  Cooper looked at his sister. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked her. “He’s only trying to help us.”

  But Ashley’s distress still would not be abated. She began to rub her small hands together and rock. She was in a bad, bad place, and they both knew it.

  Jimmy was back in the Porsche by the time Reno finally returned. Artie was not with him.

  He got into his car, cranked up his pure power of an engine, and pulled off. The SUV pulled off behind him.

  When they drove around front, Jimmy noticed that his car was already gone. He was not surprised, then, when his father turned left onto Clydesdale, and headed, with the SUV still following, for the PaLargio.

  “Where did Artie take my car?” he asked his father.

  Reno gripped his steering wheel so tightly that Jimmy wondered if the Porsche’s emblem would pop off. But he wanted answers.

  “Dad?” he asked again. “Where did Artie take my car?”

  “So you care now?”

  Jimmy frowned. “Of course I care! What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means exactly what I said. You didn’t give a damn about that vehicle when you w
ere putting a dead body in the trunk! You didn’t give a damn about that vehicle when you were committing felony after felony for that stank-ass girl!”

  “What are you talking about?” Jimmy asked angrily. “I was helping my friends. That’s all this is about.”

  “Like hell it is! What, her hello kitty that sweet, Jimmy? She worth going to prison over, Jimmy?”

  Jimmy shook his head and looked out the window. The car stopped at a red light.

  “You answer me boy,” Reno said, looking at his son with a baffled expression. “You’re willing to throw away your freedom for her?”

  “No!” Jimmy said forcefully and looked at his father. “I told you it has nothing to do with that.”

  “The judgment you used tonight! I oughta kick your ass for the lack of judgment you used alone! How could you let that girl talk you into doing something that stupid? I didn’t raise you to be this dumb!”

  “You didn’t raise me at all, so there you have it.” Jimmy said this with bitterness in his voice. Then he looked back out of his side window.

  Reno still felt the sting of those words as his son looked away. Reno didn’t know Jimmy even existed until a few years ago. For the longest time Jimmy thought his stepfather was his real father until the truth came out. By then, his stepfather and mother were long divorced and his mother died shortly after the truth came out. Jimmy came to live with Reno. Eventually changed his last name to Gabrini. But Reno knew he spoke the truth. He didn’t raise his son at all.

  He looked back ahead. The light turned green, and he proceeded through the intersection. The SUV was still right behind him.

  “If I would have known you existed,” Reno said, “I would have raised you.” Then he looked at his son. “Bet that.”

  Jimmy felt bad for going there with his father. Reno was the one human being he loved most in this world. But he really needed him to back off. Because he was coming too close to hitting a nerve with him. Jimmy knew the deal. He knew Ashley didn’t love him the way he loved her. He knew she had any of a number of guys interested in her, and sometimes it felt as if he was just one of them. But his father made him sound like he was a chump for her, and that wasn’t true.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “But it’s not like you think it is.”

  “Oh, yeah? Then enlighten me, son. Tell me why it is that you would risk prison for this girl?”

  “She was a friend in trouble, Dad. She and my best friend, her brother, were in trouble. What did you expect me to do?”

  “I expected you to call me and let me handle this shit! You keep your hands clean and let mine get dirty like I’ve been drilling into your brain since you’ve been with me! You don’t break any laws, you don’t twist any facts. You call me. That’s what I expected you to do. I expected you to call me.”

  “I wanted to call you, but---”

  “But what?”

  “But they didn’t want me to,” Jimmy admitted.

  “Who didn’t want you to?”

  “Ash. And Cooper too. They didn’t think you would understand.”

  Reno looked ahead, his mind going a mile a minute and in all kinds of directions. “You offered to call me, but they didn’t want that?”

  “The only reason they thought it was a good idea to phone Ma was because they figured she would understand. So I called her.”

  “And that wasn’t strange to you?”

  Jimmy thought about it. “Not really, no. I mean, they knew Tree used to work in a strip club. They figured she would understand people like them.”

  “And I wouldn’t?”

  “You own the PaLargio, Dad. They can’t relate to that.”

  But Reno didn’t buy that ah, shucks routine Cooper and Ash were slinging. Not an ounce of it. He continued to think of all of the possibilities. This shit was beginning to stank worse than he at first thought it did.

  He turned a corner, and picked up speed.

  “Did you know that body in your trunk had been stabbed?” he asked Jimmy.

  Jimmy looked at him. “Stabbed?”

  “Yes. He was stabbed. In the back. I’m no doctor, but even I know stab wounds aren’t usually side effects from a drug overdose. But what do I know, right? Up-your-ass Ashley got all the answers.”

  Jimmy frowned. “She didn’t know he was stabbed either! What are you talking? She thought he died from an overdose like I did. We didn’t lift his shirt and look on his back. Besides, there wasn’t that much blood there.”

  Reno shook his head. “That’s probably because the body was moved from the scene of crime to Ashley’s house. Just in time for you to come and implicate yourself in that crime.”

  “What are you talking?” Jimmy asked his father again, as if the mere thought of facing the truth about his girlfriend was too unsettling. “Ashley wouldn’t do something like that. What are you talking?”

  “I’ll tell you what I’m talking,” Reno said. “I’m talking blindness, son. I’m talking seeing stars when you should be seeing clouds. I’m talking that girl and how twisted up she’s got you.”

  Then he exhaled. “I’m also talking the next time you do something this fucked up, you’d better not think about involving my wife.” He looked at Jimmy. “Understand what I’m talking now?”

  Jimmy’s jaw tightened. He knew his father loved him, but he also knew that nobody came before Trina. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  Reno picked up even more speed. Because he was bothered now. This was the exact kind of shit he didn’t want his son to have to ever face in this life. The fact that it would happen like this, out of the blue like this, disturbed Reno mightily. It seemed awfully convenient that a man would die in his son’s girlfriend’s house, and then that same gold digging girlfriend would beg him, not to call his father, but to put the dead body in his own trunk and take it to some special location. If Jimmy would not have sniffed out the fact that they were being tailed, Reno could only imagine what would have happened next.

  It seemed very convenient to Reno.

  Incredibly coincidental.

  When no such thing, in Reno’s world, existed.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Reno was in his home office making phone calls while they all sat on edge in the living room waiting for him. Trina was seated in the chair flanking the sofa, while Jimmy, Ashley, and Cooper were seated on the sofa. Lou and Artie were also in the room, at the bar, awaiting their own instructions. It felt as if something monumental was changing in their lives already, but Trina couldn’t figure out what.

  Reno finally returned to the living room after what seemed like hours of phone calls. He looked so tired, with his hair even messier than it normally was, with his suit coat off and his shirttail hanging out, that Trina wanted to tell everybody to leave right now and give her husband a break.

  But they couldn’t leave. Jimmy was in trouble. Reno hadn’t told her what exactly was going on yet, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that whatever it was, it involved Jimmy.

  “You two come with me,” Reno ordered, pointing to Cooper and Ashley. But Jimmy stood up even faster than they did.

  “Come with you where?” he asked his father.

  “Downstairs,” Reno replied.

  Trina stood this time. “Downstairs?” she asked. In the basement, was what she knew he meant. That basement where many of Reno’s “problems” were dealt with.

  Reno gave her that knowing look that told her to back off. This was not the time for her to get into it with him about his methods or procedures. And she heeded his warning.

  He headed for the front door. Lou and Artie made their way to the sofa and motioned for Cooper and Ashley to follow suit.

  Reno opened the door and allowed Lou and Artie to escort Cooper and Ashley out of the penthouse. But Jimmy came up behind them.

  “I’m going too,” he said strongly as he proceeded to head out of the door.

  But Reno pulled him back. “Not tonight, pal,” he said to his son.

  Ashley look
ed back at them. “Why can’t he go?” she asked, but Lou pulled her by the arm, holding it so tightly that she knew to shut up. The guards put Ashley and Cooper onto the waiting elevator, and left.

  Reno then closed the penthouse door, with he and Jimmy inside.

  “You wait here with your mother,” he said.

  “She’s not my mother,” Jimmy said boldly. He hated the man he was tonight, but he felt he couldn’t continue to let his father treat him as if his feelings didn’t matter.

  Reno didn’t like the man his son was tonight either, but he didn’t have time to tell him so. “Okay, fine,” Reno said. “Don’t wait here with your mother. Wait here with my wife.” Then he opened the door to leave. But Jimmy moved up to him, as if he was Reno’s equal.

  “Jimmy,” Trina said in a nervous, warning voice. Don’t do it, Jimmy, she wanted to say.

  But Jimmy wouldn’t back down. “Where are you taking them?” he asked his father.

  Reno looked at his son and then shut the door again. “That’s none of your business.”

  “Those are my friends! It is my business!”

  Reno frowned. “Who do you think you’re yelling at? You think I’m going to allow those two assholes to set up my son and I just sit back and let them?”

  “Set me up? What are you saying? They didn’t set me up!”

  “You don’t know what they did! Your mouth is so far up that girl’s cunt you wouldn’t begin to know what they did.”

  Jimmy moved into Reno’s face as if he wanted to fight his father. Reno looked down his son’s growing muscular frame and then back up again. “What you gonna do?” he asked him.

  Trina began moving toward them. “Reno,” she said warningly, with a voice of concern. She knew Reno’s temper. She knew what he was capable of. “He’s upset right now, Reno. He doesn’t mean it.”

  “No, Tree, I want to know what the fuck he’s gonna do. He’s so big and bad. He’s so tough. You got in my face, what you gonna do? Hun, punk?” Reno said this as he got even closer to Jimmy. “No fucker gets in my face unless he plans to back up every inch of every step he took to get here. Now what you gonna do?”

  Jimmy could hear his heart pounding, but he wasn’t backing down. “If you lay a hand on Ashley, then I’ll . . . I’ll. . .”