Reno Gabrini: A Man in Full (2 page)

“But my Daddy can--”

“Your
Daddy
?” Connie asked, incredulously.  “You think those cops give a damn about your
Daddy
?  Are you
kidding
me?”

Connie knew he was fighting a losing battle.  There was no way a kid like Jimmy was going to leave the scene of this crime.  And Connie panicked.   He pointed his gun at his friend with a look on his face that made Jimmy certain he’d pointed that gun many times before.  “You don’t know me,” he said with clenched teeth, as if he had to convey just how serious he was.  He began backing up, still aiming that gun.  He wasn’t playing now.  “You hear me, Jimmy?  You don’t know me!”

And he looked at Jimmy a moment longer, with a look of regret, of confusion, of sadness in his big green eyes, and then he took off running in the opposite direction.

Jimmy fell against his car in his own state of agony.  He looked at the downed gunman, looked at the blood and his lifeless black body, and he ran both hands through his curly brown hair.  He had a sinking feeling that he should have run too, because Connie was probably right and the cops would try to pin this on him.  But he knew he couldn’t run.  His father would have killed him if he ran. 

Jimmy’s father, Reno Gabrini, was high on Trina Gabrini’s mind as she drove her Mercedes beneath the front entrance portico of the PaLargio Hotel and Casino.  She glanced at the clock on her dashboard once again.

Damn
, she thought as she turned off her ignition.  It was already after midnight.  Reno was going to have a hissy fit and she knew it.  Forget that he almost never made it up to the penthouse before midnight himself, and that coming home late was a routine for him, but she knew he wasn’t going to stand for her coming in this late.  Which wasn’t fair in any way, shape or form, she thought as she grabbed her oversized Dior handbag and stepped out of her car.  But you couldn’t tell Reno it wasn’t fair.

“Welcome home, Mrs. Gabrini,” the Valet said as soon as she stepped out. 

“Thanks, Wayne,” she replied as she walked around her car and headed for the entrance.  Because her husband owned the PaLargio, she was accustomed to the royal treatment every time she showed her face.  But what she wasn’t accustomed to was the general manager, Stanley Quebec, waiting for her as soon as she walked through the double doors and entered the magnificent lobby.

“Good evening, Mrs. Gabrini,” Stanley said as she entered.

“Good evening, Stanley.  I didn’t expect to see you standing here.”  Although she was curious why he would be there, she didn’t stop walking.  She was already coming home far too late.  She wasn’t about to stop to chat.

“I didn’t expect to be standing here either,” Stanley said, walking with her.  “How are you this fine evening, ma’am?”

“I’m doing well.  And you?”

“I’m very well also.”

“And your family?  Your boy still in Afghanistan?”

“That he is, yes ma’am.  But we’re prayerful this will be his last tour of duty.  Thanks for asking.”

“He phoned you, didn’t he?” she finally asked.

The GM, at first, thought she could have still been referring to his son.  Then he quickly realized there was only one person she would have been referring to.  “Yes ma’am, he did.”

“He told you to wait for me at the entrance, didn’t he?”

“He told me to do that very thing, yes ma’am.”

Reno worked his people to death, she thought.  “And?” she asked as they made it up to the private elevators.

Stanley swiped his keycard on her behalf.  “He wants you to come by his office on your way up,” he said.

She wanted to ask if he sounded upset, but she already knew the answer to that.  “Thanks, Stan,” she said as the doors opened, and she stepped on.

When the doors reopened on the thirtieth floor, and she stepped off and headed toward her husband’s office suite, she braced herself.  She didn’t feel like arguing with him again, especially over this same issue, but she would if she had to.

She entered the outer reception area of his office and found, as expected, a dozen or so of his army of staff assistants still hard at work.  There were rows and rows of desks in that area, and most of them were filled.  Reno kept crazy long hours and fully expected his young, eager-beaver staffers to keep the same.  Although he worked them to the bone, they seemed to relish being a part of the energy that always surrounded Reno and the PaLargio.  Which meant turnover on his personal staff was remarkably low.

“Is he in?” Trina asked one of his assistants, the pretty young female who was seated nearest to his office door as if she wanted to be the first one he called if he needed any of them.

“He’s in, yes ma’am,” the young blonde replied to her.   She picked up her desk phone.  “I’ll see if he’s available to see you now.”

Trina looked at her with a sidelong look. 
Was this chick for real
, she wondered. “That won’t be necessary,” she made clear, and then walked into her husband’s office.

Not that Trina was surprised by the young girl’s gall.   She was accustomed to these cute girls getting jobs on Reno’s staff through their hard work and tenacity, only to then feel as if their beauty was so irresistible that he’d dump his wife for them.  As if just being pretty was all it took.  It used to bug the hell out of Trina the way these fresh-out-of-college upstarts would disrespect her that way.  She used to set them straight as soon as she saw it happening.  Now Reno set them straight.

Trina walked into his office, however, with butterflies in her stomach.  She was a grown-ass woman, a businesswoman in her own right, but she still got that sinking feeling whenever she did something she knew Reno wouldn’t approve of.  It was crazy and irrational, but it was a fact.  Reno was an intimidating man, and he still, at times, intimidated her.

To Trina’s relief, however, the circus wasn’t in his office the way it usually was. Usually there was a crowd of people all over his massive space.  Some would be standing around his desk talking on their cell phones to talent agents or the talent themselves, and then would ask him questions as they came up over the phone.  Others would be at the conference table reviewing contracts on his behalf.  And still others, the most senior of the managers, would be in his face requesting his immediate feedback on some crisis-level issue they weren’t able to resolve themselves.  It was how Reno operated, because he could multitask better than any human being Trina had ever seen.  Reno said it was his management style, and often called it the orderly chaos.  Trina called it the circus.

But this time, at this late hour, the circus wasn’t in town.  Reno was alone in his office.  He wasn’t seated behind his desk, either, but was seated on the couch on the opposite side of the huge room.  He looked so serene, she thought, with his legs crossed as he read over a large stack of files, as if he was easygoing personified. But she knew better than that.  She knew there was nothing easy about Reno Gabrini.

“Hey,” she said, staring at him.  And then he looked up. 

TWO

Trina smiled when Reno looked up from the stack of papers he was reviewing.  She knew he was ready to pounce, but she was determined to make the situation as lighthearted as she possibly could.  Not that it would matter in the long run.  She knew it wouldn’t.  He didn’t like her out this late, that was all there was to it, especially since he’d warned her before about keeping these kinds of hours.  It was hypocritical on his part, since he kept these kinds of hours all the time, but getting him to see it that way was impossible.

He looked at her as she began heading his way.  She was dressed with her usual flair, he thought, in a button-down red silk blouse, gray slacks, and a pair of red and white stilettos.  He remembered she wore a matching gray pantsuit jacket with her outfit this morning, but had either ditched it earlier or left it somewhere.  But she looked drained to Reno, like a woman who wasn’t getting enough rest, and she had been looking that way a lot lately.  That was his bone of contention about the whole thing.  Ever since he allowed her to open that clothing store of hers, and to open it across town rather than inside the PaLargio where he would have preferred it to be, she’d been overworking herself to the extreme.  But now, after keeping a hands off approach for as long as he could, he was over it.  Something had to change.

She dropped her Dior bag on the coffee table and sat down beside him on his office couch.  His thick brown hair was its usual tousled mess, but his bright blue eyes were as vibrant at midnight as they had been this morning.  Reno was a nighthawk, she thought, through and through.

“Stanley said you wanted to see me,” she said.

Reno looked into her soft, hazel eyes.  He had every intention of getting on her case royally, and was still going to set her straight, but he hadn’t seen her since this morning.  He missed her.  So instead of getting into some confrontation with her, the way she was expecting him to handle it, he leaned closer to her.  He stared into eyes that even in their tiredness still looked shockingly sexy to him against her gorgeous dark skin.  And her face.  He looked at her face.  Such a beautiful, strong, sophisticated face.  She was the kind of woman who didn’t win beauty contests, he thought, not because she couldn’t, but because she wouldn’t be caught dead entering any.  She was the kind of woman who was soft where he was too hard, and hard where he was too tame.  She was
his
woman.  And everybody knew it.  Just seeing her sitting beside him sent ripples of joy throughout his body and made him want to take her into his arms and reclaim her as his own all over again.  And he always felt that way whenever she entered a room.  Even when, like now, he was highly pissed with her.

Trina also felt a surge of excitement when Reno moved closer to her.  She looked down, at the bundle she knew was between his legs, at his muscular biceps, and then up into his sternly handsome face.  And her heartbeat quickened.  Reno had a way of releasing such a powerful aura of masculinity that it made her entire body ache with desire at just the anticipation of him touching her.  He hadn’t touched an inch of her yet, but the mere thought already had her, and her vagina, tingling.

Especially when his bright blue eyes began looking down, from her face to her lips.  Her luscious lips.  And he began experiencing a tingle of his own.  Because his dick was throbbing.  Because he knew she would taste delicious.  Because he knew she would take him there.  And as his face moved closer toward hers, and as his own eyes became more hooded with every second of his stare, he finally took her out of her wonderful misery, and kissed her.

Trina closed her eyes as his lips touched hers.  She was so pleased that they, at least for the moment, was making love instead of war that she wrapped both hands around his neck and returned his kiss with even more vigor.

Reno tossed his stack of papers onto the table, uncrossed his legs, and pulled her onto his lap.  And he continued kissing her with the kind of passion she loved about him.  He wrapped her in his arms and kissed her with an impatience and an expertise that made her groan in his mouth.  He couldn’t stop kissing her.  They moved their heads from one side to the other side, with their tongues joining forces, as they filled themselves with the taste, the feel, the texture of each other.  But when he reached his hand inside her panties, and cupped her between her legs with a hard grab, the passion rose.

She already felt his penis expanding beneath her, but when she began to move from the feel of his hand on her vagina, his arousal heightened.  Her ass rubbed against the length of that hardness.  It felt like simulated sex the way he was rubbing her cunt and kissing her, and the way she was rubbing against him.  But when he slipped his fingers between her folds, and then dug in two and then three fingers at a time, her ass began rubbing against his penis with a renewed sense of urgency.

Then his kisses moved downward, to her neck, and she did what she knew he expected her to do whenever he moved in that direction.  She unbuttoned her blouse and lifted her bra, exposing her big brown breasts for him to enjoy.  And he devoured them as soon as she exposed them.  He devoured them with kisses and sucks that made her entire body shake.  He licked and sucked as if he’d never had them before, although he’d had them hundreds of times before.  Thousands.  But the sound of his manic licking and kissing and sucking filled the room, and she kept pushing them closer into his face, wanting, needing more. 

But his intercom buzzed and broke the spell.  He leaned his head back in frustration.  Just like that he remembered where he was, and remembered he had serious, unfinished business with Tree. 

He picked up the phone on the side table and pressed the button.  “
What
?” he asked with that frustration now in his voice.

The female voice on the intercom, like all of Reno’s staff, was accustomed to his ire and was therefore unfazed.  “Mr. Javitts wanted me to inform you about an altercation in the Barker Lounge, sir,” she said.  “He said it was very serious.”

“Any weapons involved?”

“No, sir.  He said no weapons are present, but property is being destroyed.”

Reno frowned.  “So why is he calling me?  Tell his ass to call Security!”

“Yes, sir,” the female on the other line said, but Reno had already slammed down the phone.

“They bother you about every little thing, Reno,” Trina said.  “I told them over and over to cut that shit out.  I told them over and over that you have too much on your plate as it is.  They leave you alone for a minute after I get on their case, but then they start right back up again.  You need to start firing people.  That’ll change things.”

Reno looked at her.  She was one to talk.  “Speaking of things that need to change,” he said, and Trina immediately realized she had stepped right into it.  She smiled and shook her head.  She wasn’t getting any breaks, she thought.