Mob Boss Eleven- The Wrong One (The Mob Boss Series Book 11) (10 page)

CHAPTER TEN

Jimmy
and Trina arrived together, in Jimmy’s loud, forceful, apple red Camaro.
 
Reno could hear that car and its loud-ass
engine a block away.
 
He was leaned back
on the sofa, finishing a business call on his cell phone, when Jimmy and Trina
walked in.

“Where’s
Val?” Jimmy asked as soon as he entered.

“I’ll
get back with you, Shell,” Reno said, and then ended the call.
 
He looked at his son.
 
“And hello to you too,” he said.

Trina
walked up to him and sat beside him.
 
They kissed as she rested her hand on his thigh.

“Hello,
Dad, how are you?”
 
Jimmy asked.
 
“Where’s Val?”

Reno
shook his head.
 
“You’re hopelessly in
love, you know that?”

“And
you’re not?” Jimmy asked.

Reno
had to give him that one.
 
“She’s in the
kitchen,” he said, and Jimmy headed in that direction.

Reno
crossed his legs and placed his arm around Trina.
 
He looked at her and began rubbing her
back.
 
“So how was your day?”

Trina
had to think about it.
 
“Exhausting,” she
said.
 
“Liz had another run-in with a
customer at Champagne’s.”

“Another
run-in?”

“Another
one.
 
It’s getting to the place where
Gemma and I are going to have to make a move.”

“What
kind of move?
 
Buy her out?”

“We’ve
been thinking about it, yeah. Or at least I’ve been thinking about it.
 
Gemma believes Liz has a savvy business
sense, and we can use her expertise.
 
But
she’s a strikeout with people.
 
She’s
awful.”

“Then
keep her behind the scenes.”

“She
doesn’t want to stay behind the scenes.”

“Then
get rid of her.
 
She’s not that
savvy.
 
Get her ass out of there.
 
I’ll bankroll the buyout if you want me to.”

Trina
smiled.
 
“Thanks.
 
And we’ll see.
 
Gem has to agree too.”
 
Then she looked at Reno.
 
“How did it go?”

“With
which one?
 
Buddy or Val?”

“Both.”

“Buddy
seems to think she’ll come around soon enough.
 
He’s not overly worried.”

“Well
that’s good,” Trina said.
 
“He’s her
father. He knows her better than we ever will.”

“True.”

“What
about Val?
 
When you called and told me
you were coming over early and I was to catch a ride with Jimmy, I assumed you
wanted to have a heart-to-heart with her.”

“And
I did,” Reno said. “After she answered the door half naked.”

Trina
stared at him.
 
“She
what
?”

“She
answered the door with nothing wrapped on her but a towel.”

“And
what did you do?”

“I
got a boner, what do you think?” Reno admitted.
 
“And I talked to her, after she started crying and apologizing.
 
I told her she was better than that.
 
I told her about our miscarriage, and about
what happened to Nicky, and how we overcame adversity.”

Trina
was still reeling by the news that Val had tried to seduce her husband.
 
She got enough of that from all of these
other women around town.
 
She didn’t need
that aggravation from a member of her inner circle too.
 
But she moved on.
 
At least for now.
 
“Did she believe you?” she asked.

Reno
nodded.
 
“I think so.
  
I think she understands that it’s a process
and she’s going through that process right now.
 
She also knows she’s got to be honest about it.”

“That’s
the one thing she hasn’t been.”

“That
seems to be her issue, yup.
 
She can’t
seem to move past the pain.”

Trina
nodded her head.
 
“And poor Jimmy is so
torn up about it.
 
He really loves Val.”

They
heard Jimmy and Val’s voices and stopped talking.
 
Reno placed the hand that had been rubbing
Trina’s back onto her waist, and squeezed it.
 
He remained leaned back, with his legs crossed, and Trina remained
snuggled against him as she crossed her legs too.

“Hello,
Mrs. Gabrini!” Val said gaily as she hurried to Trina.
 

Trina
remained seated as they hugged.
 
When
they stopped, she continued to hold Val’s hand.
 
She looked at Val’s short, mauve-colored flare skirt and a smart smock
blouse.
  
She looked youthful and
gorgeous.
 
“Don’t you look pretty
tonight,” Trina said.

“Thank-you,”
Val said.
 
“So do you!”

Trina
wore a white pantsuit and black and white heels.

“But
then you always have such style,” Val added.

“Thank-you,”
Trina said.
 
“Sit down, both of you,”
Trina ordered.

Jimmy
smiled as he and Val sat down on the loveseat across from the sofa.
 
“Leave it to you, Ma, to order us around in
our own home.”

“The
privilege,” Trina responded, “of no longer being in my twenties.”

Jimmy
smiled.
 
“So when I’m thirty, I’ll get to
boss you around?”

“Yeah,”
Reno said, “if you want to walk around with an eternal ax up your ass.”

They
all laughed.

“No
thanks, Pop,” Jimmy said.

After
more joking around, the gaiety died down and the conversation took a more
serious turn.
 
Toward the reason for the
dinner to begin with: Val.

“I
want to ask the two of you a question,” Trina started it off.

“Uh-oh,”
Jimmy said playfully.

“How
have things been going?” Trina asked.

Jimmy’s
smile was gone.
 
He knew exactly how
things had been going, but he needed Val to admit that she knew too.
 
He looked at her.

“Things
have been going . . . okay,” she started.
 
Reno looked at her.
 
Jimmy and
Trina continued to look at her.
 
They
weren’t going along this time.
 
She was
going to have to tell the truth.
 

She
exhaled.
 
“Not so okay,” she
admitted.
 
Then she frowned.
 
“Terrible, in fact.”
 
Jimmy moved to place his arm around his wife,
but she moved ever so slightly.
 
But he
got the message and kept his hands to himself.
 
Reno and Trina saw it too, and it hurt them to their hearts.
 
But they couldn’t fight this battle for
him.
 
He and Val had to come together and
fight it themselves.

“What
has been the terrible part?” Trina asked her.

Val
had to think about this.
 
“The feeling of
. . . The sense that I failed,” she admitted.

Trina
hadn’t expected that response.
 
“That you
failed who?”

“Jimmy.
 
And you and Mr. Gabrini.
 
And . . .”

“And
yourself,” Reno said for her.

Val
nodded.
 
“And myself, yes.”

“But
what was the failure, Val?” Jimmy wanted to know.
 
“You had a miscarriage.
 
How could you have controlled that?”

“It’s
not about control,” Val responded.
 
“It’s
about fate.
 
It’s about why did Tommy’s
wife have a perfectly fine baby girl, but mine died?
 
Why did your mother have two wonderful
children, and I didn’t?”

“She
had a miscarriage before.”

“But
she was already . . .” Val didn’t continue.

“She
was already what?” Jimmy asked her.
 
He
wanted this cancer out in the open once and for all.
 
With his parents as his backup, he felt it
could happen and happen tonight.
 
“She
was already what, Val?”

“She
was already a Gabrini!” Val responded.
 
“A true Gabrini.”

“What’s
a true Gabrini?” Jimmy asked with a frown on his face. “You either are or you
are not.”

But
Reno and Trina knew exactly what Val meant.
 
“Tree had crossed over, Jimmy,” Reno explained.
 
“That’s what she means.
 
Think about when I first found out you were
my son.
 
Remember how you would sometimes
feel as if you weren’t fully entrenched into the family the way me and Sal and
Tommy were?”

Jimmy
nodded.
 
“I remember it.”

“That’s
what Val means.”

Jimmy
looked at her.
  
“You don’t feel like a
Gabrini?” he asked his young wife.

“I
feel like I was just getting started, and then this happened.
 
Our first child . . . expired.”

“Died,”
Reno said.

“Died,”
Val said, and then swallowed hard.

“But
what I’m saying is that Ma had a miscarriage too, and she managed to get on
with it.”

“But
it wasn’t her first child!
 
She had Dommi
and then she had that miscarriage.
 
And
Mrs. Gabrini was . . . And she was---”

“Old
as hell when I had my miscarriage,” Trina finished for Val.
 
“Not a kid like you two.
 
I get that, Val.
 
We all get that.
 
You’re young and healthy and this was your
first pregnancy.
 
All of it makes for a
terrible thing to have happened to you and Jimmy.
 
Because he’s young and healthy too.”

“Yes,
I know,” Val quickly interjected.

“And
it was his baby too.”

“Yes,”
Val agreed.
 
“Yes, it was.”

“So
we get that it’s been hell,” Trina continued.
 
“Of course it has.
 
But you can’t
stay in hell.
 
You’ve got to get the hell
out of there.
 
So the question has to be
where do we go from here, Val?
 
What’s
Act Two?”

Reno
noticed how Val was now rubbing her small fingers together.
 
And it wasn’t that she was resisting Trina’s
call to move on.
 
She hadn’t even
considered where she could move to.
 
She,
Reno was now convinced, had no answers at all.

“I’d
better check on my roast,” Val said.
 
And
then she stood and hurried into the kitchen.

Jimmy
stood too, and was about to follow her, but he decided against it.
 
His parents could see the sense of defeat on
his face.
 
“I’m going to go upstairs and
get out of this suit,” he said to them.
 
“I’ll be back.”
 
And just as Val
retreated to the kitchen, Jimmy retreated upstairs.
 
Like the kids they still were.
 
Trina looked at Reno.

“They’re
so young,” she said.
 
“But they’re caught
up in grown-up games.”

Reno
agreed.
 
“Sometimes I wish I would have
never gone along with this marriage.
 
But
I thought it would help James.”

Trina
stared at her husband.
 
“Help him?
 
Help him how?”

“He
had so many bad starts in his young life.
 
First it was the tragic death of his biological mother, and that girl in
Georgia and the craziness that happened involving her.
 
And then there were all of those other girls
he would be interested in, only to find out they didn’t want him, they wanted
what they could get from me, his father.
 
Then Valerie came along.
 
A young
lady of background and breeding, and with no dollar signs anywhere in those
beautiful eyes of hers.
 
I thought she
was perfect for our child.
 
And I still
believe that.
 
I thought she would do for
him what you did for me.”