ROMANCING THE MOB BOSS Page 9

  “He bought it,” Amos said. “Hook, line, and sinker.”

  Reno smiled. “Most important point: did he sign the release of liability paperwork?”

  “Thanks to Trina, he did not,” Amos said.

  Reno looked at Trina dead-on for the first time. “You’re kidding me? What did you say to the guy?”

  Trina’s heart began to pound. “He asked me if he should sign it. I told him I wouldn’t sign it if I was him.”

  “It ain’t you,” Reno said.

  “I didn’t say it was me, Reno. I said if I was him, I wouldn’t sign it.”

  “But you ain’t him.”

  Trina stopped talking. There was no reasoning with Reno when he was in this kind of mood.

  Reno looked at Amos. “What did he say?”

  “He smiled,” Amos said, “said he appreciated Katrina’s advice, and he didn’t sign the paperwork.”

  “If he sues me,” Reno said to Trina as serious as he knew how, “the proceeds will be coming out of your paycheck. Understand me?”

  Trina was stunned. “Yes, I understand.”

  “That’ll teach you to shut your mouth about that if it was me crap. It ain’t you. It ain’t never gonna be you, so don’t ever again tell one of our patrons what you’d do. Got me?”

  Trina was amazed by his harshness. It was like their relationship didn’t exist, and he was strictly her boss in this instance. Which, she knew was smart, she would probably behave the same way. But it hurt like hell.

  “I got you, Mr. Gabrini,” she said.

  That caused Reno to smile. “Mr. Gabrini,” he said, shaking his head, looking at Amos. “Can you believe this girl?” Then he got serious again. “You done for the night, right?”

  Trina looked at Amos. Reno looked at Amos. “She’s done for the night, right?”

  “She’s done,” Amos said.

  “And remember what I said: out of her paycheck if that guy gets cute, decides he wants it all.”

  “Yes sir,” Amos said, although he knew, knowing Reno, that he wasn’t serious at all. “With pleasure, sir.”

  That stung too. Trina was amazed at how cut throat this environment was. And here she was thinking she and Amos were working together pretty well.

  When Reno escorted her to a back, private elevator, she looked at him. “Where are we going?” Then she smiled. “To your place?”

  “Nope.”

  “To my place?” Trina rarely ever stayed at her apartment since working at the PaLargio. Usually, at night, Reno would send word, always by his brother Joey, for her to go to the penthouse, where he lived, or she’d just go there on her own.

  “We aren’t going to your place,” he said. “I’m too tired to take an elevator ride, and you’re talking about driving all the way over to your place?”

  “Then where?”

  “You’re see.”

  Trina leaned her body against his. He put his arm around her waist. “You didn’t mean that about my paycheck, Reno. Did you?”

  “Watch me,” he said. And he wasn’t smiling, either.

  The elevator door binged opened, not to the top floor, but to the twentieth floor. Reno escorted her around a corner and unlocked a door.

  “You’re taking me to a hotel room, Reno?” she asked, concerned. “Why can’t we just go to your place?”

  “Because I wanted to show you your place first.”

  “My place?” Trina asked as the door was opened and she and Reno walked into what was a very modern, very beautifully-appointed apartment.

  “This is a private hall. All apartments. This one is yours.”

  “But I have an apartment,” Trina said, although even she knew how lame that sounded.

  “You ain’t living in that war zone another night. Please don’t fight me on this, Tree. You see the hours you’re working as an apprentice, imagine how it’s gonna be when you’re the head honcho? You’re gonna be too exhausted to go anywhere, you gonna barely make it to this place. Don’t fight me on this.”

  Trina looked at the apartment again, with the floor to ceiling windows that overlooked the magnificent Vegas skyline, at the furniture that looked brand new, and she looked at Reno. She really loved this guy. “I keep my old apartment, though,” she insisted.

  “You can keep it.”

  “And what about my Civic?”

  Reno laughed. “We’ll go over there tomorrow, or should I say later today, and pick it up, along with all of your valuables. But right now,” he said, moving up to her, pulling her into his arms, kissing her, “we do we right now.”

  They began kissing where they stood, in the sanguine splendor of her new home, and Trina felt giddy. She still knew they had issues, those family ties of Reno’s chief among them, but since returning from Spring Valley, they hadn’t even discussed it. It was as if they had called a truce. Don’t tell me your blues, and I won’t tell you mine. For now.

  +++

  Reno was flat on his back in Trina’s new bed, still breathing heavy from pounding her relentlessly, so much so that she could still feel the electricity deep within her as she lay on her back beside him, when the call came. It was Joey, and he was hysterical.

  “Where are you?” he screamed into the phone. “Where are you, Reno?”

  “What’s the matter?” Reno asked, sitting up. “I’m in 2410.”

  “I’m coming up,” Joey said and the line went dead. Reno closed his cell phone.

  “What is it?” Trina asked as Reno began getting out of bed, his naked body still sweaty from their last round of lovemaking.

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “But put on your clothes. Joey’s coming up.”

  They both dressed hastily and were just making it into the living room when Joey started banging on the door. When Reno opened it, Joey fell into his brother’s arms, crying.

  Trina closed the door.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Reno asked him, pulling back from him.

  “It’s Pop,” Joey said, almost out of breathe. “They went for Pop, Reno.”

  “Who went for Pop?” Reno asked, his heart hammering.

  “Partanna.”

  “Geez.”

  “It was like a gunfight on the Strip. You should have seen it, Reno. Pop was coming out of his restaurant, everything was fine, and then he was ambushed. They were laying in wait for him, man.”

  “Was he hurt?”

  “He wasn’t hit, God be praised, but Louwegie got it between the eyes.”

  Reno’s heart grew faint. All of this senseless violence. But he didn’t hesitate long. “Let’s go,” he said, and immediately began hurrying to leave. Then he turned back around, remembering Trina, and went to her. The fear in her eyes drained him.

  “You wait here,” he told her, placing his hands on the sides of her face. “Not back at your place, but here. I don’t want you leaving the PaLargio until you hear from me, you got that? I got enough to worry about. Not you, too.”

  Trina hated this, and was terrified that he was about to get in the middle of some kind of mob war, but this was the man’s father they were talking about. She nodded her head. “I’ll be here, Reno,” she said.

  Reno kissed her on her lips, lingering there, and when they parted she could see the anguish in his eyes.

  But he didn’t delay. He hurried out of the door, with Joey right on his heels.

  +++

  The doors to the Gabrini compound flung open and Reno and Joey came hurrying through.

  Carmine came into the foyer as they entered.

  “Where is he?” Reno asked.

  “He’s okay,” Carmine said. “He wasn’t hit.”

  “Where is he?”

  “In his study.” They hurried in that direction. “It was that fucker Partanna, you know that?” Carmine added.

  “Why more men ain’t on the gate?” Reno asked as he walked. “Two people. What the hell kind of security is that, Carmine?”

  “Firepower’s on the way. This shit just happened
, Reno.”

  “Partanna’s dead!” Joey screamed. “That motherfucker’s dead!”

  But Reno wasn’t thinking about Joey nor Carmine, he just wanted to see his father. When they entered the study, and they saw Gabrini seated behind his desk, puffing on a cigar and looking terrified it seemed to Reno, Dirty at his side, the tension, the pent up anguish, began to release from Reno’s body.

  “I’m all right,” Gabrini said.

  “You all right, Pop?” Joey said, hurrying to him, hugging him.

  “I’m all right.”

  “Why you didn’t call me, Pop?” Reno wanted to know as he stood in front of the desk, his arms folded.

  “Call you for what?” Gabrini asked, his bitterness showing. “So you can give me some sage advice, some pointers on dealing with thugs, some negotiation techniques maybe, and then go back to your hotel and casino while I go straight to hell? I’ve got Dirty and Carmine, remember? Remember saying that to me? You my boy!” He yelled this. “Not Dirty and Carmine! You the only one I can depend on!” Then he calmed back down. Shook his head in disgust.

  “You got me, Pop,” Joey said. “I’ll take care of those rat-bastards.”

  “Yeah, sure, Joey, sure,” Gabrini said.

  Reno exhaled. Thought about his lovely Trina, and that fear he saw in her beautiful, worried eyes, and pain ripped through him. It wasn’t fair. Why they had to start this shit now, just when he was learning to live a little, to understand what love was all about? Just when he was completely happy for the first time in his life.

  He opened his suit coat, placed his hands on his hips. “You sure it was Partanna’s men?”

  “Of course it was them.”

  “Are you sure, Pop?”

  “I’m positive, all right?” Gabrini flicked the ash off of his cigar.

  “Partanna doesn’t shoot to miss,” Reno said.

  “He does when he wants to send a message.”

  “And what’s the message?”

  “I either share,” Gabrini said, “or he’s taking it all.”

  Reno thought about that. “Taking it all? He doesn’t have the infrastructure in place to take it all.”

  “I know that, you know that, but he don’t know that. On one level he does, that’s why I’m still alive, God be praised. But Frank Partanna is a maniac. Unpredictable. Crazy-like. He don’t know what he don’t know. Today he know he ain’t got the manpower in place to take over the east if I expire, so he don’t expire me. But tomorrow he don’t know he know that, and the game changes again.”

  Reno stared at his father and his father stared at him. What they both most feared was upon them.

  “So it’s on then?” Reno said.

  Gabrini leaned back in his chair, put his fat cigar between his lips. Reno could see a tremble in those lips. “We’re talking Frank ‘Schizo’ Partanna here,” his father said. “What you think?”

  ELEVEN

  All day the next day and late into the night, Trina didn’t hear a word from Reno. She kept phoning his cell phone, but it kept going straight to voice mail. By the time she knocked off work, and there was still no word from Reno, she got into her Civic and drove west of the Strip, to Spring Valley.

  Using the GPS Reno had installed in the Civic, Trina was able to find the street where the Gabrini home was located, which, given that the compound was the only home on that particular street, she was also able to find the home. Another dead giveaway was the fact that Joey and seemingly ten other men were standing outside of the gate, guarding the estate.

  Trina stopped her car at the curb, got out, and walked up to the well-lit gate. Joey was barking at her as she came.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked her as she arrived. “Reno told you to stay put.”

  “Will you tell Reno I need to see him?”

  “He told you to stay put.”

  “I know what he told me, Joey. Could you just tell him I need to see him?”

  “He ain’t got time to see you. My brother is a very busy man. I don’t think you understand that.”

  Trina looked beyond Joey, inside the gate. She could see Carmine further inside, looking to see what the commotion was about, and then she saw him talking on his cell phone.

  “For all we know you could be 5-0 in disguise,” Joey went on, “and you got my brother so twisted up that he don’t know what a pig smells like anymore. But I know that smell. And you got it. But you got Reno right where you want him, don’t you?”

  “Man, you’re crazy.”

  “I heard about you black chicks,” Joey kept talking. “I know about y’all and all of that black magic. Well, your potion don’t work on me, sister.” Some of the guards laughed.

  Trina wanted to roll her eyes. “Are you going to tell Reno I want to see him or not?”

  “Didn’t I tell you he was a busy man? How many times I got to tell you that? What I suggest you do,” Joey continued, moving closer to Trina, “is get your pretty little black ass back into your bucket of a car and sail it right back where it came from.”

  “And I would suggest,” Trina said, “you get your funky big mouth out of my face and take your funky big ass and sail it right back where it came from.”

  The men on the gate laughed. Joey looked at Trina with pure contempt. But before he could zing her back, she could see Reno coming toward the gate.

  “Reno!” she yelled, and all of the men looked in his direction. When he arrived, the gate was opened. Reno moved to her and pulled her into his arms.

  “Hey, baby,” he said, holding her.

  “You okay?” she asked him.

  “I’m. . .” He couldn’t really say what he was, but he was glad to see her. “Come on,” he said, taking her by the hand. Then he looked at his brother. “Next time my woman comes anywhere near this gate, you had better open it up and escort her straight to me. No questions asked, none of your bullshit. You got that, Joey?”

  Joey hated being scolded in front of the other men. “Yeah, I got it,” he said reluctantly, but as they were heading back inside the gate, he followed them.

  Inside the house, the family was gathered in the living room. Reno’s mother, sisters, Dirty and Carmine were all present, along with Reno’s father, who sat in the chair flanking the sofa. After once again introducing Trina, and after Trina once again receiving polite but joyless hellos, Reno sat her down on the sofa beside him. Joey, as usual, sat beside Reno.

  “I still say my approach is the right approach, Reno,” Dirty said as if he was continuing an earlier conversation. “I still say we send Partanna a message, just a warning shot like he sent us.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Reno said. Trina could feel his impatience. “And what message is that, Dirty?”

  “That he better not fuck with us,” Dirty said.

  “That’s what I’m talking about,” Joey said.

  Reno looked at his father. “Pop, will you tell these idiots who we’re dealing with?”

  “Don’t call my husband no idiot,” Francine said.

  “We’re dealing with Frank Partanna,” Reno said, looking at Dirty. “You go out there half-cocked with that man and he’ll bury you alive. You either hit hard or you don’t hit at all. You either clean their clock or they’ll clean yours. There’s no middle ground dealing with savages like Partanna and his people, and the sooner you and Joey realize that, Dirty, the sooner Pop can get on with it. But this half-stepping y’all talking about is suicide.”

  “What you say, Pop?” Dirty asked Gabrini. “Not what Reno says, but what do you say?”

  “I say,” Gabrini said, “that it’s been a long, crazy day, and we all need to sleep on it. But I will say this,” he added as he stood, causing everybody in the room to stand, “I don’t appreciate getting shot at. Message or no message,” he added.

  +++

  Reno and Trina slept in Reno’s old bedroom. They lay there, on their backs, talking quietly in the quiet room.

  “There’s so many men guarding the plac
e,” Trina said. “It’s kind of scary.”

  “I know. It’s just precautionary.”

  “You don’t think they’ll try again?”

  “Not now, no. They first want to see what kind of posturing Pop does. They first need to know if their warning shots made him more willing to deal.”

  Trina looked at Reno. “He’s not dealing, is he?”