Reno and Son: Don't Mess with Jim (The Mob Boss Series) (6 page)

Reno couldn’t help but smile too.
 
And nod.
 
“Oh, yeah.
 
You’d win that bet,”
he agreed.

Then he stopped smiling, as he realized
just how much he loved this woman, and pulled her, yet again, into his
arms.
 

The bar was jumping, with wall-to-wall
young people, and Jimmy and Val were having drinks with two of their
friends.
 
Jimmy was bobbing to the beat,
to Pharrell Williams singing
Happy
,
but he didn’t want to dance.
 
Val didn’t
want to either, she was just happy to be off work, so they both were good.

Their two friends had been dancing and
returned to the table winded but excited.
 
“Love this place,” Ezra Stein said as he sat beside Val.
 
He was one of her closest friends who quickly
took to Jimmy like a duck to water.
 
An
average height Jewish boy whose father was Val’s father’s best friend, she and
Ezzie had known each other since grade school.

“I do too,” Val said.
 
“Jimmy discovered it.”

“Good discovery, James,” Ezra said.

Jimmy tipped his imaginary hat and
continued to bob to the beat.
 

“What about you, Bran?” Val asked.
 
Brandy Burgess was another one of her close
friends.
 
“What do you think?”

“Oh, I love it too.
 
Absolutely.”

“Better than Carlton’s Place any day of the
week,” Val suggested.

“Amen to that,” Bran agreed.

Ezra looked at Val.
 
“So how did it go?”

“How did what go?”

“The showing with Jimmy’s Dad.
 
How did that go?”

“Fine,” Jimmy said.

“Terrible,” Val said.
 
She was so accustomed to telling Ezra
everything that she had forgotten Jimmy wasn’t at all so inclined.

Ezra smiled.
 
“Fine?
 
Terrible?
 
It can’t possibly be
both.
 
So which is it, Val?
 
Was it terrible because you didn’t make a
sell?”

“The process is just beginning,” Val said
above the noise.
 
“It was the first property
Mr. Gabrini looked at.
 
He’s agreed to
look at other locations.”

“Then what was so terrible about it?” Ezra
wanted to know.

“Yeah,” chimed in Brandy.
 
Unlike Ezra and Val, Brandy was more reserved
like Jimmy.
 
She was a tall, full-figured
black woman who taught fifth grade.

Val looked at Jimmy.
 
She could tell he didn’t want to go there,
and she would respect his choice.
 
But
then he spoke up.
 
“Me and my old man got
into it a little, that’s all,” he said.

“You got into it?” Ezra asked.
 
“What did you get into it about?
 
But first, we need another round of
drinks.
 
Your turn, Val.”

Val frowned.
 
“Why is it always my turn?”

“It’s not always your turn.
 
But this time is your turn.”
 
They laughed.

“Very funny,” Val said as she stood and
headed for the bar.

“So go on, Jimmy,” Ezra said.
 
“What was the fight about?”

“It wasn’t a fight, it wasn’t that
deep.
 
I asked if I could run the new
restaurant he’s thinking about opening, and he said no.”

“Well duh,” Brandy said.
 
“What did you expect him to say?
 
What would you know about running a
restaurant?”

Jimmy smiled.
 
“That’s what he said.
 
But it can’t be that hard.”

Ezra laughed.
 
“Easy going Jimmy G.,” he said.
 
“You’re all right, man.”

Jimmy was laughing too.
 
“What can I say?”

At the bar, Val ordered three beers (none
for Brandy since she was to be the designated driver), and waited to receive
them.
 
A guy at the bar, a guy on the
verge of full blown drunkenness, had been bugging her every time she went anywhere
near the bar.
 
He was a burly man in his
thirties, with thinning brown hair and a face the color of hay.
 
And he was still bugging her.
 

“Prettiest dame in here,” he was saying,
and he was close enough to her that his bad breath was spewing into her
face.
 
“You know that?
 
You’re the prettiest one.”
 
Then he extended his hand.
 
“Costco at your service.
 
But everybody calls me Costco.
 
What’s your name?”

Val ignored him and his hand.

“Come on pretty lady.
 
I’m Costco, who are you?
 
You’re the prettiest dame in here.
 
You know it too, don’t you?
 
Don’t you black girl?
 
You know it.
 
Don’t you?”

“Whatever you say.”

“What you say we go to my place then, if
it’s whatever I say?” He touched her arm.
 
“What you say?”

Val snatched her arm away from him.
 
“Get lost, creep,” she said as firmly as she
knew how.

But her anger only heightened his.
 
“Creep?
 
Who are you calling a creep?” Then he stood up as if he had been royally
offended, and slapped her across the face so hard that it drove her against a
bar stool.
 
And he kept coming at
her.
 
“Who do you think you are, talking
to me like that?
 
You bitch!”

Val regained her balance quickly, and was
about to knock him out, but out of nowhere Jimmy appeared.
 
He knocked over two bar stools getting to her
as he grabbed the guy by the catch of his shirt and began slamming the side of
his face onto the bar counter.
 

“You’re big enough to slap her,” Jimmy was
yelling as he banged, “so slap me motherfucker!
 
Slap me!
 
How’s this for a slap?”

Ezra left Brandy at the table and hurried
and grabbed Val, moving her back and away from the action.
 
But there was no stopping Jimmy.
 
He continued to bang the guy’s face into the
counter.
 
When the man managed to break
away from Jimmy’s grasp, Jimmy grabbed a liquor bottle and broke it across the
man’s head, causing blood to spew and the patrons at the bar to scatter.
 
Then he grabbed the man by his shirt again
and began beating him down with his fists, battering his face as if it were a
punching bag, until the guy broke free again.
 
But his rubbery legs failed him and he couldn’t get away fast
enough.
 
He slid down like a rag doll
onto the bar’s floor.

Val thought it was over.
 
She was pleased that he came to her rescue,
but she was glad it was over.
 

But it wasn’t over.
 
Not for Jimmy.
 
He hurried to the man again, and began
stomping the man as if he were a dog.
 
This man had slapped his woman and all Jimmy saw was red.

But too much red.
 
Val was worried now.
 
“Jimmy stop!
 
Jimmy that’s enough!
 
Jimmy please
!”
 
Val was yelling hysterically to her man now,
pleading for him to stop, but he wasn’t listening.
 
It was as if he was on an island where his
very survival depended on the destruction of this one man.

Val turned to Ezra.
 
“Do something Ezzie!
 
Do something!”

Ezra left Val’s side and pushed through the
crowd toward Jimmy.
 
He’d never seen such
violence either.
 
“Okay, Jim, that’s
enough,” he was saying, and he reached for his friend.
 
But Jimmy snatched his arm away and continued
his assault.
 
Nobody was disrespecting
his woman and not understand the full magnitude of what they had done.
 
Jimmy kept stomping him as if he was stomping
the life out of him.

Then he grabbed the man up again and threw
him across the room, the man’s body slamming into a tabletop, causing those at
the table to scatter.
 
And Jimmy went in
for the kill.
 
He began fist-whipping the
man.
 
He bitch-slapped Val, now Jimmy was
man-slapping him.

Val’s heart was pounding.
 
As she looked into Jimmy’s twisted face, she
didn’t see revenge anymore.
 
She saw so
much pinned-up rage coming out that it almost seemed as if the man he was
beating was beside the point.
 
Jimmy
wasn’t fighting that man, he was fighting his own demons.
 
But what were they, she wondered?
 
How could such rage and brutality come out of
a sweet guy like Jimmy?
 
The man had
slapped her, and deserved a beating, but this wasn’t a beat-down anymore.
 
Jimmy wasn’t beating him, he was annihilating
him.
 
He was trying to exterminate
him.
 
To cripple him.
 
Or, even worse, Val thought, to out and out
kill the man.
 
She therefore tried to run
to him and reach for him, to save him from himself, but Ezra wouldn’t let her
go.

By the time the bouncers made it through
the crowd, Jimmy was still punching the man mercilessly.
 
It took three bouncers, all three twice
Jimmy’s size, to eventually drag him away from the half-dead drunk.

“The cops are on the way,” one of the
bouncers kept saying.
 
“The cops are on
the way!”

 
And
all Val could see, as Ezra held her in his clutches and would not let her go, was
the seemingly lifeless bloody body of the drunk man now sprawled out on the
floor, and Jimmy, still fighting to break free from the bouncers, finally
knocked down to his knees.

And as the bouncers started dragging him
out, refusing to let him walk on his own accord even though he could, he was
dragged right by Val and Ezra.
 

“Call my Dad,” he implored them.
 
“Call my Dad!”

THREE

When Trina woke up and realized her husband
had still not come to bed, she decided to get up.
 
She was naked because Reno wouldn’t allow her
to go to bed any other way, so she grabbed her bathrobe, and began tying it as
she headed for the exit. They lived in the penthouse of Reno’s PaLargio Hotel
and Casino, and she knew he could very well be back downstairs handling some
new crisis at the casino, but she doubted it.
 
Without bothering to turn on the monitors that now populated their
bedroom, to confirm her suspicions, she decided to go and see for herself.
 

When she made it around the various
corridors, and arrived at the Nursery, she smiled and leaned against the
doorjamb.
 
Her suspicion was right.
 
Reno was in the Nursery, still in his
well-worn suit.
 
He was leaned back in
the recliner and had their six-month-old baby girl asleep in his arms.
 
It was a precious sight to Trina, with the
baby asleep on Reno’s broad shoulder, her tiny, dark hand resting on his
ear.
 
Reno’s eyes were closed, but she
would be a fool to think that he was in any kind of a hard sleep.
 
The Nanny had dozed off in her chair, and
rightly so, Trina felt, given the late hour.
 
But Reno, though resting, was hardly sleep.
 

To prove her point, she pushed away from
the doorjamb, walked up to his chair, and quietly attempted to remove the baby
from his arms.
 
Reno resisted the pull,
and then opened his eyes.
 

Trina smiled.
 
“You never sleep,” she said.

“Unlike some people I know,” Reno
responded, nodding toward the nodding Nanny.

“Don’t start, Reno,” Trina warned.
 
“The baby’s fine.
 
Any normal person would be asleep too at this
time of night.”

“Then hire somebody for the night shift,”
Reno said.
 
“Somebody young who can keep
their ass awake.
 
Somebody who’ll put
Lexie first.”

Lexie
,
Trina thought fondly.
 
It was Reno’s
private nickname for their little girl.
 
Her given name, Sophia Alexandria Victoria Gabrini, was rarely ever
used, even though Reno was the one who insisted on putting all of those
so-called
high-class
names on
her.
 
But everybody just called her
Sophie.
 
Everybody except Reno.
 
She was, and would probably always be,
Lexie
to him.

“If Lexie wakes up in the middle of the
night,” he went on, “I don’t want her alone and afraid.”

“Alone and afraid?” Trina was astounded he
would think such a thing.
 
“Reno, we have
darn-near fifty monitors in our bedroom and in every room in this house.
 
You even have them in your office.
 
If that child so much as farts, this house
will light up like a Christmas tree and everybody in it will coming running to
this Nursery.”
 
Trina thought he was
overly-protective of Dominic, their four-year-old, but now, with Sophie, he was
taking it to an entirely different level.
 
The fact that she was a girl and Dommi was a boy had everything to do
with it too, Trina also knew.

“I just don’t want our child harmed in any
way, shape, or form,” Reno said, and Trina stared at him, considering him.
 
His father, before his violent death, had
been a notorious mob boss who ruled the East coast with an iron fist and his
family with equal brutality.
 
Reno never
got the chance to know what true affection was until Trina hooked up with him.
 
Now he was one of the most affectionate men
she knew.
 
Although the world didn’t see
it that way.
 
To the world he was hard
and brutal too, just like his old man.
 
But the world didn’t know him the way Trina did.

“We’ll keep Miss Tucker,” she said, referring
to the older, black woman sleeping in the chair by the baby bed, “because I
trust her with Sophie’s life, just as I do with Dommi’s.
 
But I’ll also see about getting an additional
person on board, to assist her.”

“Somebody younger,” Reno suggested.

“I’ll get the best person for the job,” was
all Trina was willing to say.
 
“But in
the meantime,” she added, “it’s getting late for real.
 
You need to put Sophie in her bed and come
and get in yours.”

But Reno felt too comfortable right where
he was.
 
He patted his lap.
 
He wasn’t ready to give up this comfort just
yet.

Trina, knowing her husband’s sensibilities
all too well, and how much he enjoyed that security of family companionship,
moved over to him and sat, sideways, on his lap.
 
With one hand he continued to hold Sophie,
with the other hand he pulled Trina against his chest.
 
Now, he felt, it was perfect.
 
His two girls in his arms.
 
He pulled Trina even closer.

“Now I’m wide awake,” she said, and Reno
smiled.

Trina turned her head upward and looked at
him.
 
“You okay?”

“I’m better than okay now.”

She laid her head back onto his
shoulder.
 
“Wonder if Jimmy made it home
yet.”
 
Jimmy had an apartment inside the
PaLargio too.

“He’s probably home,” Reno said, “like he
is every night.
 
Which doesn’t make a
lick of sense to me.
 
Here’s a young man
with a beautiful woman right there for the taking, a woman who adores him, and
he rarely ever spends the night with her.
 
What’s wrong with that boy?”

“Who says it’s his choice?
 
It might be her choice.”

“Her choice?”

Trina smiled.
 
It was inconceivable to him that any woman in
their right mind wouldn’t want to be with a Gabrini man twenty-four-seven,
especially if that Gabrini man was his own young, handsome son.
 
“Yes, her choice,” she said.
 
“She’s a smart girl.
 
Perhaps she made a conscious decision to not
allow any man to lay up on her like that.”

“What
lay
up
?
 
I spent almost every night I
could with you when we first hooked up, and I spent many of those nights at
your apartment too, so what are you talking?
 
You’re smarter than she’ll ever be, and you let me
lay up
with you.”

“Yeah,” Trina said, “but my background and
Val’s are like night and day.
 
I used to
wait tables in a strip joint.
 
She’s
never had it hard like that.”
 
Then she
remembered something.
 
She looked at
Reno.
 
“How did it go today?
 
With Val, I mean?
 
Was that restaurant she showed you a good
fit?”

“She showed it to me, but I haven’t decided
if it’s a good fit or not.
 
My
contractors will take a look at it, let me know if it’s even worth the renovations
cost.
 
We’ll see.”

“It was nice of you to throw that kind of
business her way.”

“I’m giving her a tryout.
 
But just like I told her, if she doesn’t
produce, she can forget a second try.
 
I’ll give anybody a shot, but when it comes to my business, they’ve got
to produce.”
 
Then Reno thought about
Jimmy.
 
“Which brings me to that son of
ours.”

Trina steeled herself.
 
Reno and Jimmy had a very complicated
relationship.
 
They loved each other more
than any father and son ever could, but they also had a lot of strain and
stress in their union.
 
Reno didn’t feel
Jimmy was living up to his full potential, and Jimmy felt Reno wasn’t giving
him a chance to be who he wanted to be, rather than who Reno wanted him to be.
 
He even said Reno didn’t want a son, he
wanted a clone.
 
“When he’s the last
person on earth I want to be like,” Jimmy had said in anger one time.
 
Trina had to remind Jimmy that Reno didn’t
want that either, but Jimmy didn’t believe her.

Although Jimmy was not Trina’s biological
son (his mother was deceased), she nonetheless treated him as if she had birth
him the way she birth Dommi and Sophia.
 
And the fact that his mother had been African-American too, like Trina,
only made it seem official in the eyes of the world.
 
To them, Reno’s biracial oldest son had to be
Trina’s biological child too.
 
There was
no other answer for it, at least not in their minds.
 
“What about that son of ours?”

“He had the nerve to ask me if he could run
the new restaurant.”

Trina stared at her husband.
 
She knew how that conversation probably
went.
 
“I
 
hope you wasn’t too hard on him, Reno.”

“Of course I was hard on him!
 
He’s my son, not my daughter!”

“But you can be harsh sometimes, and it
bothers him.”

“But I’m worried about him.
 
I don’t want him ending up a bum, relying on
his folks to get by.
 
That boy has so
much potential, more than I ever had, but he’s content to hang out with his
friends, smoke weed---”

“Weed?” Trina asked.

“Hell yeah that boy’s smoking pot!
 
I told him I’ll kick his ass if I ever see
him doing it, he knows how I hate that shit, but he denies doing it every time
I bring it up.”
 

 
Trina laid her head back against Reno’s chest.
 
“He’ll come around,” she said with
confidence.
 
“He’s a good kid.
 
He’ll make you proud.”

“He already makes me proud,” Reno
said.
 
“I want him to make himself
proud.”

Trina thought about that.
 
She couldn’t agree more.
 

But they didn’t discuss it any
further.
 
They, instead, sat in silence, thinking
about Jimmy, and Sophie, and Dommi, and the PaLargio, and anything and
everything until Trina was fast asleep, the baby and the Nanny were still
asleep, and Reno was slowly beginning to succumb to sleep himself.

But then his cell phone rang, waking up not
only Trina, but the Nanny as well.
 
Reno
frowned, wondering who was bothering him this time of night.
 
But when he looked at his Caller ID and saw
that it was Valerie Wellstone on the line, he frowned.
 
“It’s Val,” he said, prompting Trina to sit at
attention too.

As soon as Reno pressed the button, he was
speaking.
 
“Is Jimmy okay?”
 
He didn’t wait for her to say hello.

“It’s Val.”

“I know who it is.
 
Is Jimmy okay?”

“No, Mr. Gabrini,” Val hated to admit.
 
“No.”

Reno’s heart began to pound.
  
“Where is he?”

“He’s. . .”
 
She couldn’t bring herself to continue.

Now Reno was really worried.
 
“What?
 
What happened?”

“We were hanging out at this bar when this
guy slapped me.
 
And you know Jimmy
wasn’t going to go for that.
 
So he got
into a fight.
 
He beat the guy really
badly, sir.
 
I mean really bad.”

“Where is he now?”

“They rushed him to the hospital---”

“My son?”

“The guy your son beat.”

“Fuck that motherfucker!” Reno blared.
 
He was certain the guy deserved it or Jimmy
would not have beaten his ass.
 
“Who the
fuck cares about him?
 
Where’s my
son?
 
That’s what you need to tell
me.
 
Where’s Jimmy?”

Val exhaled over the phone.
 
It was a sure bet, Reno knew, that she wasn’t
accustomed to the likes of him.
 
But
tough.
 
If she wanted to ever be a Gabrini,
her ass had better get used to it.

“Where is he, Val?” Reno asked again.

“You don’t have to yell, Mr. Gabrini.”

Reno couldn’t believe the nerve of this
chick.
 
“Look, little girl,” he said to
Val, but Trina elbowed him before he could unleash.
 
It worked to calm him back down.
 
“Tell me where my son is,” he said
forcefully, but this time with a calmer voice.
 
“And you tell me now.”