ROMANCING THE MOB BOSS Read online

  He was standing at the curtained window, but looking directly at them as they entered, his suit coat gapped opened, revealing a flat, ribbed stomach, his hands in both pockets. Also in the room was an older woman, two younger women who favored her, and another man, this one tall and rail-thin. Trina felt the tension in the room as soon as she stepped into it.

  Reno had his hand on the small of Trina’s back, which she was grateful for, but that did little to ease her anxiety. Coming to someone’s home at three in the morning during a family crisis just didn’t seem right to her. But Reno had insisted. He even said on the ride coming over that if she planned to be with him, which he added he prayed was the case, she needed to meet his family. But this seemed more like a trial by fire to Trina, than a meeting.

  Reno handled the introductions and Trina put on her best smile, although not one of the ladies, not one of them, smiled back.

  He first introduced the two younger ladies, his “baby” sisters he said. There was Marbeth, who was married to Carmine, and Francine, who was married to Richie, better known as Dirty, who was seated on the arm of the couch beside her. Both of the young ladies were pretty twenty-somethings, with long, jet-black hair and small, anxious-looking faces. Although they spoke to Trina and were civil to her, they almost seemed disinterested in her. One of the sisters, MarBeth, even said, “what happened to the other one,” after Reno had introduced Trina.

  Reno frowned. “What other one?” he asked.

  “You know.,” MarBeth said. “Whatshername.”

  “Stop making trouble, MarBeth,” Carmine said.

  “What trouble?” Marbeth wanted to know.

  “Don’t mind her,” Carmine said. “She loves to stir up the pot, loves to make trouble.”

  Reno then turned to the woman he said was his mother. She was seated on the center cushion of the sofa, sandwiched between her two daughters. Her name was Belle Gabrini and “to know her is to love her,” according to Reno, as he kissed his mother on the cheek.

  When she spoke, she spoke with a rough, heavy edge to her voice, a voice that seemed ravaged by too many cigarettes and too much screaming, hollering, and possibly crying. Although Reno’s father looked like an Adonis of a man, this woman, who was on the verge of plumpness, looked almost plain. “Katrina,” she said. “Good, strong, solid name. You part Italian?”

  Trina smiled. “No ma’am.”

  “Part what then?”

  “No, I’m not part anything. I’m all black. I’m African-American.”

  “Then what’s with the hazel eyes?”

  “My father has hazel eyes.”

  “Then his father, or mother, is Italian?”

  This was getting to be uncomfortable, Trina thought. “No, ma’am. They were both black, too.”

  “You sure? Not Italian? But what’s with the hazel eyes?”

  “Hazel eyes,” the father yelled out, his impatience with his wife gone, “what hazel eyes got to do with Italian? She’s black, damn you woman! Black!”

  And that one outcry shut up the mother.

  Trina had jumped at the sound of the father’s thundering voice, and Reno even seemed to wince, his hand pinching into the small of her back. “And that,” he said, “is my father. Paulo Gabrini. Pop, this is Katrina Hathaway. My lady.”

  Trina almost expected the father to say something like, “she don’t look like a lady to me,” he seemed just that mean, but he didn’t go there. He, instead, walked toward them and extended his hand.

  “Hello, Katrina,” he said as they shook. No smile, but no frown, either. “You want something to drink? Some hot chocolate or something?”

  Some in the room giggled. When Mr. Gabrini and Reno looked at them, they immediately turned stoned-faced. “What’s funny?” Gabrini asked them. “Did I say something funny here?”

  Not a sound. He looked at Trina again. “Have a seat, you and Dominic, sit down.”

  They sat on the big sofa that was across from the sofa occupied by the females in the room and Gabrini took a seat in the flanking chair. Carmine sat in the second chair, and Joey sat beside Reno.

  “I don’t know why they called you here,” Gabrini said to Reno. “There’s nothing nobody can do. I told these knuckleheads that.”

  “What’s the trouble?”

  Gabrini hesitated. “Joey, why don’t you take Katrina and show her around the place.”

  “No,” Reno said, although Trina could have used a break from this intense crowd. “She stays with me. She hears what I hear. I told you she’s my lady.”

  “Your lady,” Joey said snidely. “You just met this woman. She could be an FBI plant for all you know.”

  Trina looked at Joey. “An FBI plant?” she asked, astounded that he would even think such a thing.

  “Who’s making trouble, Pop?” Reno asked his father, ignoring Joey’s snide remark.

  “Frank,” Gabrini said.

  “Frank?” Reno asked. “As in Frank Partanna? Please don’t tell me you’re talking Frank Partanna.”

  “I’m talking Frank Partanna.”

  “Geez, Pop,” Reno said angrily, “how you get mixed up with that character?”

  “What you mean mixed up with him?” his father roared. “I didn’t get mixed up with him. He got mixed up with me. He has his territory and I have mine. Now he wants mine, too.”

  “But you’re east coast and he’s west. He rules the west. Why he bothering you?”

  “He wants to rule the east now, too.”

  “But you only own a slice of the east. Why he bothering you? Why he ain’t bothering all those other wise guys?”

  Gabrini looked at his oldest child with what Trina detected was pure bitterness in his eyes. “They start with the weakest link,” he said, “why you think? I’m the only boss this side of living with no back-up. It’s just me. My son, who’s more than capable, wants to play hotel magnet, riverboat gambler, while his father is sinking over here! They get rid of me, my empire crumbles, it’s as simple as that. And they know it!”

  Reno let out an exhale that Trina could just tell was laced with his own bitterness. She was terrified for him. It was a fact now. This family was a mob family. But what was Reno’s role?

  “That’s nonsense, Pop,” Reno said, his voice a little deflated. “You got back-up. You got Carmine here, and Dirty. And Joey if you’re kick his ass a little and straighten him up.”

  “Hey,” Joey said, offended, “I’m sittin’ over here!”

  “Dominic, do you hear yourself?” Gabrini asked him. “Carmine and Dirty to run my empire? Carmine and Dirty? With Joey thrown in for the hell of it? No offense, boys, but all three of them together won’t make half of you! I need you, Dominic. You get in this game, they leave me alone. I know this as a fact. You stay out, I’m dead.”

  “Don’t say that, Pop.”

  “I’m dead. It’s the truth! We’re talking Frank Partanna here! He don’t fuck around. He’s been linked to that massacre in South Central, tangling with the crips and bloods, the Mexican mafia, all of it, geez. This man is dangerous.” Then he exhaled, tried to calm himself back down.

  Trina looked at Reno. If he gets in the game? What game? The mob? Her heart was in her shoe.

  Reno saw Trina’s stare through his periphery, and he could just feel her fear. But he dared not look at her. Not yet. This was the truth of the matter. His father was a mob boss. This was his messy little world.

  “Does he have an offer on the table?” Reno asked him.

  “A load of shit offer,” Carmine said.

  “What’s the offer?”

  Gabrini hesitated. “He wants sixty percent of my east coast action.”

  Reno’s temper flared. “The fuck he wants!”

  “That’s what I said,” Dirty chimed in.

  “He doesn’t want the little Vegas territory I have,” Gabrini said, “there’s too many pieces of the Vegas pie already, he says. Too many cooks in that stew. But he wants majority rule in my east coast operations. On t
his he is not bendable.”

  “Now you see what I mean by trouble?” Joey leans forward and said. “We’re talking Frank Partanna here.”

  “What about your friends, pop?” Reno asked his father, ignoring Joey. “What they got to say? Don’t they know if he’s coming after you, he’ll also come after them?”

  “They ain’t got nothing to say,” Gabrini said. “I can’t exact a single promise of support from one of the other families. Nobody wants to tangle with Frank. He’s flaky, he’s crazy-like. He does unadvisable things. They don’t want the headache. They don’t want the war.”

  “So,” Reno said, “we’re on our own?”

  Gabrini looked at his oldest and favored son. “We?” he asked.

  Reno dropped his head, putting his fingers to his temper, the pressure like a bubbling pot ready to boil over and spill all over the place. He looked at Trina. The terror and hurt and pain in her eyes shamed him. He looked at his baby brother.

  “Joey, take her to my bedroom. Let her get some rest.”

  “Yeah,” Carmine said, “take all the females to bed. It’s late. They’re tired.”

  “I’m not tired,” MarBeth said.

  “Me neither,” Francine added.

  “I don’t care what they are,” Reno said to Joey, “take Trina to my room.”

  Trina wanted to go, and she dreaded going, but she dreaded staying too. She stood up, along with Joey. Reno moved to kiss her, but she turned away and followed Joey out of the room. Reno looked at his sisters, who were staring at him.

  “What you staring at?” he yelled. “Get out of here! Both of yous. Go!”

  Both sisters rose at the sound of Reno’s voice, and left the room, too.

  +++

  Trina, surprisingly, slept like a baby, in the bed Joey said had been Reno’s since childhood. When she finally woke up, later that Sunday morning, she was startled to see Reno still up, looking exhausted as he sat in a chair beside the bed, staring at her.

  “You look awful,” she said, without lifting her head from the pillow.

  “You look wonderful,” he said, studying her.

  She decided to cut to the chase, no more game playing. “Was I dreaming or is your father a mob boss?” she asked him pointblank.

  Reno hesitated. Ever since he met her, he had been fearful of this very moment. “You wasn’t dreaming,” he said.

  Trina turned from her side onto her back. “Are you a mob boss?” she asked, and then looked at him.

  Reno leaned forward, clasped his hands together. There were no easy answers here. “I’m a legitimate businessman.”

  “But a front too, right?”

  He frowned. “A what?”

  “A front? The PaLargio is a front for the mob to do their dirty work, right?”

  “No ma’am, it is not,” Reno said, angry that she would even think such a thing. “The PaLargio and every business I’m involved in are legit. I don’t front for nobody!”

  “Have you ever killed somebody?”

  Reno stared at her, surprised. “How you gonna ask me something like that?”

  “Have you?”

  “No!”

  “Will you?”

  Reno didn’t answer that. He leaned back in his chair.

  “Why did you say ‘we’ downstairs?” Trina asked him, refusing to take back what she had asked already.

  “My father’s in trouble. What you think I’m gonna sit back and let the likes of Frank Partanna screw over my own father?”

  “What east coast operations was he talking about?”

  “This sounds like an interrogation here.”

  “What east coast operations, Reno?”

  Reno ran his hand through his thick crop of hair. “That’s his business. That ain’t your business.”

  “Oh, I see,” she said, sitting on the edge of the bed, still fully clothed. “You’re always talking about how I’m your woman and how you want us to have a future together. But you don’t think I have a right to know what may be involved in that future?”

  “I told you my business affairs are legit. And they are. What my father is involved with, what my family is involved with, is separate and distinct from that. That won’t touch you, I promise you.”

  “Yeah, right,” Trina said, “until you’re in prison and expect me to stop my life until you’re out. No thank-you,” she said this as she stood to leave.

  Reno’s heart was hammering as he hurried to her. He pulled her into his arms. “Oh, Trina, please don’t leave me,” he begged.

  His reaction stunned Trina. But she held firm. “You should have told me about this, Reno,” she said, tears threatening to appear in her eyes. “You should have told me.”

  “I know. Baby, I know I should have. And I was going to.”

  “But why didn’t you tell me before it got to this? Before I had to find out like this? Why didn’t you just tell me?”

  He looked at her. “Why didn’t I? Because I was afraid you would do what you’re threatening to do right now. That you’d leave me. I knew I had to tell you, but I wanted to make sure you had some skin in this game first.”

  Trina tried to understand him, but she couldn’t. She frowned. “What?” she asked.

  “I needed to make sure leaving me wouldn’t be as easy as getting up and going. I needed you to be invested in me first. I know it was selfish, and I’m sorry for it, honey. But I don’t wanna lose you.” He rubbed her upper arms. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened in my life, Tree, and I can’t lose that. I don’t wanna just let that go.”

  As her tears increased, he pulled her back into his arms. “I’m sorry to drag you into my world, you don’t know how much I hate it. I wish there was another way. I wish to heavens I was a big enough man to say, for your sake, I’ll live without you. I’ll give you up. But I’m not that man, Trina. I’m not. I’m no saint. Because I would have done what I did and more to keep you.”

  Trina was sobbing by now, and Reno was holding onto her with all he had. And Trina found herself holding on, too.

  But it was a slippery grip.

  And they both knew it.

  TEN

  She worked directly under Amos Logan, the PaLargio’s general manager. Nobody else, according to Amos, was to order her around. They could voice their complaints to him, but that was the extent of their authority over her. And those orders, Amos said, came straight from Reno.

  Trina found she enjoyed her new job. Amos could be a bastard, but he was a fair bastard. And by the end of her first week, he had taken her on a tour of the entirety of the massive hotel and the massive casino. He had also introduced her to every manager of every single club. That alone was exhausting.

  Her official hours were four to midnight, but, as Amos made clear, there was hardly ever a night when she would have it that easy. Especially when the day came when she would go from apprentice to manager herself.

  And he was right. During her first weeks on the job, midnight would come and go, and she would still be on her feet, still following Amos, who never tired.

  And she stayed focused. Night in and night out. For weeks she worked this way. After about a month of nothing but hard work, she asked Amos how she was doing. It was just before midnight and they were walking over to the Blue Room, where a fight had broken out, not between patrons, but between a patron and one of the waiters. To avoid a law suit, Amos knew they had to act quickly.

  “You’re doing okay,” Amos answered her question as they took the stairs.

  “Not great, but okay?”

  “You’re getting there,” he said. “You aren’t there yet, but you’re getting there.”

  Trina smiled. For Amos to so much as hint at a compliment to somebody was something special.

  They were still in the Blue Room, seated in the office talking with the manager, when Reno walked in.

  This was Trina’s first sight of Reno all day, and she wanted to rush into his arms. But he was a different creature at work. He was
all business. He barely even looked at her.

  “What you got for me, Loggie?” he asked Amos.

  Amos went on to explain the fight, how they fired the employee on the spot, how they offered to zero-out the patrons hotel bill, club bills, and offer him a complimentary return visit for two.

  “Did he buy it?” Reno asked.