Reno and Son: Don't Mess with Jim (The Mob Boss Series) (22 page)

“Hell no,” Reno said.
 
“Your ass isn’t going anywhere.
 
We’ll get her out of there, but you aren’t
going in.”

“Then how are we gonna get her out,
Pop?
 
How?”

“I don’t know,” Reno admitted.
 
“But not through you, I know that much.”

“But I have to go, Pop.
 
There’s no other way.”

“If a Gabrini doesn’t show up,” Buddy
pleaded, “they’ll kill my daughter.
 
That
woman said so.
 
She’s not playing.”

“We go in with all guns blazing,” Sal
suggested.
 
“It’s only three of’em from
what he said.
 
We go in with an army of
men.”

“But that won’t work either,” Tommy
said.
 
“The bomb, remember?”

“I have to go in, Dad,” Jimmy pleaded.
 
“There’s no other way.”

But Reno was still saying no.
 
Tommy and Sal were less certain than Reno,
because if it was their women in such a predicament they would have to go in
too, and Jimmy saw their hesitation.

“Tell him, Uncle Tommy,” Jimmy begged.
 
“He’ll listen to you.
 
I can’t let my woman die. I can’t let them
kill her because he doesn’t want me in harm’s way.
 
I can’t do that.
 
I won’t be a man if I do that!
 
You know I won’t!”

Trina stood there, still undetected by
Reno, her heart breaking.
 
Because she
knew it too.

Tommy shook his head.
 
“Reno,” he started, but Reno cut him off.

“No,” he said.

“But my daughter,” Buddy said.

“I understand you want your daughter back,
Mr. Wellstone.
 
I want her back too.
 
And we’ll get her back.
 
But nobody’s sacrificing my son.
 
Not ever again!”

Buddy frowned.
 
Reno was talking as if Jimmy had been
sacrificed before, and he didn’t get it.
 
But everybody else in that room did.
 
Reno’s family was threatened one time, and Reno was forced to sacrifice
the life of either Trina, Dommi, or Jimmy. If Reno didn’t choose, his enemy would
choose for him.
 
Reno begged to let him
be the one to die, but his offer was refused.
 
He had to choose between his wife or one of his children.
 
It was a Hopson’s choice, there were no good
outcome that could come of any choice he made.
 
But he had to choose.
 
So he
sacrificed Jimmy.
 
He sacrificed Jimmy to
save Trina and Dommi.
 
Jimmy survived the
ordeal, and forgave his father, but Reno swore he’d never sacrifice his son
that way ever again.

Trina and Tommy looked at each other.
 
Somehow they knew Reno was never going to
give in, not with the past as his guide, and they also knew what they had to
do.
 
He nodded to her, and she went back
into the kitchen, made her way around the back corridor that led all the way back
around to the guest bedrooms.
 
She made
her way into one of those rooms.

Up front, Jimmy was still pleading his
case, still begging his father to reconsider, when they heard a loud crash.

Reno was the first to take off, toward the
sound, and Sal followed him.
 
Jimmy, too,
was about to follow but Tommy held him back.
 

He looked at his uncle.

“You listen to me,” Tommy said, grabbing
him by his shoulders, “and you listen good.
 
You will do this exactly as I tell you to do it.”

In the back guest bedroom, Reno and Sal
found Trina on the floor, a table overturned.

Reno hurried to her.
 
“Babe,” he said nervously.
 
“Are you all right?”
 
He and Sal helped her to the bed.
 
She sat down.

“What happened?”
 
Sal said.

Trina looked distressed, but not because of
the fall.
 

Reno sat on the bed beside her.
 
“Honey, what’s wrong?
 
Did you faint?
 
Do I need to call a doctor?”

Tears were in Trina’s eyes and her bottom
lip began to tremble.
 
Reno put his arms
around her.
 
He was terrified.
 
“Trina, what is it?”

Trina looked at her husband.
 
And she shook her head.

“What, babe?
 
Tell me.”

“There are no good choices, Reno,” she
said.
 
“I’m sorry, but there aren’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“There are no good choices.
 
Just like before.
 
It’s upon us again.”

Reno stared at her.
 
“What are you saying?”

“That’s his woman.
 
That’s the woman he loves, that’s the woman he
wants to be his wife.
 
You have got to
let him handle this.”

“No,” he said.
 
“Nobody’s putting Jimmy on the grill ever
again.
 
I did it to him once, and that’s
it.
 
That’s all.
 
I don’t care who’s in danger.
 
Not my son.
 
I will not sacrifice him ever again.”

But the more he spoke, the more he realized
how distressed Trina really was.
 
And he
suddenly realized that she wasn’t speaking as if she was asking him to
sacrifice Jimmy again, but she was telling him that Jimmy will be sacrificed
again.
 
And Reno’s heart nearly
stopped.
 
This was a ruse.
 
This was a trick to get him away from Jimmy
long enough for Jimmy to make his escape.

Reno took off running back up front.
 
He ran as if his life depended on it.
 
Not his son, he kept thinking.
 
Not another child of his!

When he made it back up front, nobody was
there except Cecil Hathaway.
 
Sal and
Trina made it back up there too.
 
But
Jimmy, Tommy, and Buddy were already gone.

“Where’s my son?” Reno nervously asked his
father-in-law.

Cecil hated to be the bearer of bad
news.
 
“He left with his uncle,” he said.

Reno’s heart dropped.
 
And he began to hurry for the exit.
 
Trina pushed Sal and told him to go too.
 
But that was already Sal’s plan.
 

And Trina stood there, her heart barely
beating, as they were about to leave.
 
But just as he was about to clear the door, Reno suddenly thought about
Trina and stopped.
 
He turned around and
looked at her.
 
She was leaned against
the wall, her arms folded more to brace herself than for comfort, as tears
streamed down her pretty brown face.
 
She
purposely distracted him so that Jimmy could go and save his woman.
 
Reno would not have allowed it otherwise, and
she knew it, and she tricked him.

He walked up to her.
 
Sal began to follow him.
 
He was afraid Reno was going to beat Trina’s
ass for deceiving him that way, and for forcing him in this position.
 
But he didn’t lay a hand on her.

“I don’t care what happens,” he said to
her, his face a mask of agony.
 
“I don’t
care how this turns out.
 
If Jimmy don’t
get out of this alive, if I don’t get out of this alive, if Tommy don’t, it’s
not your fault.
 
You hear me?”

Trina wiped the tears from her face.
 

“You raise our children,” Reno went on,
“and you take care of yourself.
 
But you
had better not blame yourself for any of this.
 
Our children are going to need you to be strong.
 
And I’m going to need you to be strong.
 
It’ll kill me if you blame yourself,
Tree.”
 
Then he lied.
 
“I was gonna say yes anyway,” he said to
her.
 
“I knew this was Jimmy’s woman, and
Jimmy had to handle it.
 
So you did
nothing wrong.
 
Okay?
 
You got it?”

Trina was so sorry that it had come to
this.
 
But she nodded her head.
 
Reno needed her strength right now, not her
regret.
 
“Yes,” she said.
 
“I got it.”

Reno kissed her on her forehead, and then
he and Sal took off.

Cecil looked at his daughter.
 
“It’ll be all right, Baby Girl,” he
said.
 
“Reno will see to that.”

Trina wanted to believe it too.
 
But it wasn’t in Reno’s hands.
 
Not this time.
 
It had to be in Jimmy’s.

“Stop here,” Tommy said and Jimmy pulled
over to the side of the street.
 
They
were in Val’s neighborhood, two blocks away.
 
A second car pulled up behind them and stopped at the curb too.

“We don’t have time to rig up anything, and
we can’t force her hand in any way.”

“Right,” Jimmy said.

“Hand me your phone.”

Jimmy grabbed his phone out of his pocket
and handed it to his Uncle.
 
Tommy dialed
his own cell phone number, placed the phone on Speaker and handed it back to
Jimmy.
 
Tommy then answered his own
phone.

“Okay,” Tommy said.
 
“This is the only communication we’re going
to have.
 
Keep the phone on and I can at
least hear the conversation.
 
Once you
find out where that bomb is hidden, you call out the location.
 
If we can get it and remove it to a different
location, we’ll do that.
 
But you have to
be alert to everything.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And if you see an opportunity to take one
of them out, you take it.”

“But why won’t you give me a gun?”

“Because they’ll take it as soon as you
walk through that door and that’ll only give them more firepower.
 
You’ve got to keep it simple.
 
Don’t overthink it, and don’t be stupid.
 
Pick your moment, and strike.
 
And if you can alert me of anything, you do
so.
 
We can’t come in until we know Val
isn’t wired with explosives.
 
You
understand?”
 

Then he frowned.
 
He knew he had to tell it to the kid
straight.
 
“This is all on you, Jim.
 
Me and your Dad and your Uncle Sal can’t help
you.
 
It’s all on you.”

Jimmy nodded.
 
“Yes, sir.”

Tommy stared at his nephew.
 
He dreaded that it had to come to this, but
it had come to this.
 
He leaned over,
kissed Jimmy, and then pulled him into his arms.
 
“I love you,” he said.

Jimmy had never felt closer to Tommy, a man
who still intimidated him, than he did right now.
 
“I love you too, Uncle Tommy,” he said.

Then Tommy released him.
 
Jimmy could see where his eyes were bright
with unshed tears.
 

“Go get’em, Tiger,” Tommy said.
 
“And keep that phone turned on.”

“Yes, sir,” Jimmy said and Tommy got out of
his car.
 
Jimmy kept driving, heading to
Val’s house.
 
The car behind drove up to
Tommy, and Tommy got inside.
 

Jimmy arrived at the house alone.
 
He glanced around, to see if he saw his
father’s men, Emmett and Mike.
 
He saw
their car across the street, but he didn’t see them.
 
Now he was walking into the lion’s den, but
he also knew there was no other way.

The door was opened as soon as he walked up
on the porch, and entered the home.
 
As
soon as he walked in, the barrel of a gun was pressed against his head and then
the door was kicked shut.
 
And the first
thing he saw, stacked in the foyer, were Emmett and Mike, Reno’s security
staff.
 
And both of them were dead.

“Who are those two dead men?” Jimmy asked,
to alert Tommy, through his cell phone, what they had already suspected: Reno’s
men were goners.