Reno's Gift (Mob Boss Series) (4 page)

“Damn.
 
She bleeding?”

Frank
nodded.
 
“Oh, yeah.”

Reno
exhaled angrily, slung open his suit coat, and placed his hands on his
hips.
 
The last thing he needed was some
lawsuit because of some hormone-crazed fools.
 
“Who are they?
 
Some fucking high
school kids?”

“Older.
 
That’s how we caught’em.
 
One of the guys was old enough to know
better.
 
He sneaked out of the room and
ran and told Mikey that yeah, they were having some fun with the girl, but that
Bruno was going too far.”

Reno
looked at his body man.
 
His heart began
to pound.
 
“Bruno?
 
Bruno Lucci?”

“One
in the same.”

“Get
the fuck outta here!”

“That
guy’s crazy, Reno.
 
He do this shit for
sport.
 
I mean, you should see that
girl.
 
She’s ugly as hell and one donut
away from weighing three hundred pounds, but she’s the one he messes with.”

Reno
frowned.
 
“What the fuck difference does
that make?
 
Because she’s fat means Bruno
has a right to abuse her?
 
Is that what
you’re saying to me?”

“No,
no,” Frank quickly corrected himself as the elevator jerked to a stop and the
doors began to open.
 
“That’s not what I
meant at all, boss.”

But
Reno didn’t wait to find out his true meaning.
 
He hurried off and forced Frank to hurry and show him to the room.
 

When
Reno walked through the door, he was astounded.
 
Not just from the amount of blood in the small hotel room, but from the
amount of upheaval.
 
Sheets and bedspread
and pillows spewed everywhere as if they had been caught up in a whirlwind.
 
Even the curtains were torn and
bloodstained.
 
Bruno was seated on the
floor naked, along with some younger guy Reno didn’t recognize, and Reno’s man
Mikey had both of them in hand restraints.

“Where’s
the girl?” Reno asked.
 
Mikey motioned
toward the bathroom.

Reno
went to the bathroom and slowly pushed the door open.
 
From the look of the room, he knew it wasn’t
going to be pretty in there.
 
And it
wasn’t.
 
The girl, sitting naked in the
tub, had towels between her legs and was pressing down hard.
 
She was crying, her red hair and
ruddy-complexioned freckled face was contorted with fear.
 
Reno’s heart dropped through his shoe.
 

“Leave
me alone,” she said in a voice she probably thought was screaming out, but was
actually nothing more than a whisper.
 
Reno knew what trauma looked like.
 
She was traumatized.

“It’s
all right,” he said to her as he moved slowly toward her.
 
“My name is Reno.
 
I own this hotel.
 
Nobody’s gonna hurt you again.”

She
began crying harder, as Reno could see the relief, but also the horror still in
her eyes.

He
bent down at the tub.
 
“What’s your name,
sweetheart?” he asked her.

But
she couldn’t respond.

“They
raped you?”

She
nodded her head.
 

“All
three?”

She
shook her head.

“Just
one?”

She
nodded again.

“The
one they call Bruno?”

As
soon as he said that name, the fear in her eyes became terror.
 
She nodded her head feverishly.

Reno
looked down, at the towels between her legs.
 
“Did he cut you down there?” he asked her, hoping that it was not so,
even though it was obvious.

When
she nodded yes to that too, Reno exhaled.
 
He wanted to reach out and touch her, and tell her everything was going
to be all right, but he knew she wasn’t ready for that.
 
“We’ll get you some help, don’t worry,” he
said, instead.
 
“That bastard won’t get
away with this.”

Then
he stood up and left the bathroom.
 
Frank
was waiting by the door.

“Call
Doc Rivers.”

“I
did already.
 
He’s on his way,” Frank
said.
 
“So what you gonna do, boss?
 
You’re gonna let the Dolph handle this again,
or turn him over to the cops?”

Reno
stared at Bruno.
 
He let the Dolph handle
it before.
 
Now another woman, probably a
good, decent woman, was traumatized and messed up for life.
 
Dolph wasn’t handling shit.
 
Not this time.
 
Reno was handling this.

He
walked until he was standing right in front of Bruno.
 
Bruno looked up at him, pleading his case.

“It
just got a little out of hand, Reno,” he said.
 
“She was all for it, and it got out of hand.”

Reno
looked at the younger man beside Brew.
 
“Shove off,” he said, and the younger man quickly rose to his feet.

“And
hey,” Reno added as the man’s hand restraint was cut by Mikey.
 
“If you mouth a word about what happened in
this hotel room tonight, your ass is mine.”

“I
won’t,” the younger man said.
 
“I won’t
say a word.”

“Just
get the fuck out of my face.”

The
young man took off.

Then
Reno looked at Bruno Lucci.
 
He looked at
the bloody switchblade that Mikey had in his hand.
 
Reno motioned for it.
 
Mikey gave it to him.

“This
what you cut her with, Brew?” he asked as he inspected the blade.

“It’s
not like you think.
 
She was all for it,
Reno.
 
She wanted it.
 
It just got out of hand.”

Reno
leaned down to Bruno.
 
“It got out of
hand?”

“That’s
right.”

“The
way Myra Rause got out of hand?”

Bruno
hesitated, less certain of his answer now.
 
“Yeah.
 
Like that.”

Reno
took the knife and without warning, immediately sliced Bruno’s penis completely
away from his balls.
 
Bruno screamed in
pain.

“Oops,”
Reno said as Bruno screamed and leaned sideways in agony.
 
Even Mikey and Frank backed up in shock, and
grabbed hold of their own privates.
 

“Guess
what happened?” Reno asked a still screaming Bruno.
 
“It got out of hand!
 
It got out of hand, Bruno.
 
But you was all for it, right?
 
You like this shit.
 
You wanted it, didn’t you, Brew?
 
You was all for this you sick piece of
shit!”
  

Then
Reno grabbed the detached penis and shoved it into Bruno’s mouth.
 
Bruno gagged as his head lobbed
backwards.
 
“Suck on that cock, you
cocksucker!” Reno roared.
 
“Eat it, you
asshole, eat it like it’s the best meal you ever had!
 
You want it, right?
 
You want this!”

And
Bruno Lucci, to the amazement of even hardened men like Frank Spillane and
Mikey Katana, ate cock that day.

The
cops were also called that day and everybody but Bruno agreed that the girl
must have castrated him.
 
The girl was
too traumatized to remember.
 
And the two
other men who had been in that room when the rape occurred, testified against
Bruno too, claiming to have run for help when Bruno began his
brutalization.
 

The
Dolph didn’t live to see the completion of his son’s trial, as he suffered a
massive heart attack and died two weeks before closing arguments.
 
It dismayed Reno greatly, but he didn’t have
an ounce of remorse.
 
Not for a bastard
like Bruno.

And
when the sentence came down and Bruno received ten-to twenty years, Reno still
didn’t celebrate.
 
He saw what that jerk
was capable of.
 
He wanted that jerk to
suffer.
 
And even though it wasn’t nearly
enough punishment to Reno, he knew Bruno would have a far different view.
 
Because he knew assholes like Bruno.
 
They talked a big game, but were nothing more
than weak punks in the end.
 
To a man
like Bruno Lucci ten-to-twenty years in prison was his nightmare come
true.
 
They might as well had given him
Life.

ONE

Ten Years Later

The seagulls
lifted their wings and flew across the Jersey shore like scavengers on the
hunt. In Atlantic City, Reno and his oldest son, Jimmy Mack Gabrini, walked
slowly along the boardwalk as the gulls squawked and squealed and competed for
attention.
 
It was an overcast early
morning, barely seven a.m., and the tourists that were already out and about
were few in number.
 
Both Reno and Jimmy
were out in force, however.
 
Both of them
wore Bermuda shorts that dropped along their thighs, and although Jimmy wore a
dark blue Lakers t-shirt tucked out, Reno wore a pullover V-neck shirt tucked
in.
 
They arrived in town yesterday
afternoon.
 
Jimmy, at his father’s
request, sat in on a number of business meetings that lasted well into the
night.
 
But before they headed back to
Vegas, Reno wanted to talk.

“Tell
me what you think,” he said to his son as they walked.

“I
don’t know, Dad,” Jimmy replied.
 
“It
looks kind of dead to me.
 
All I see is a
bunch of old buildings and a bunch of old people walking around.
 
Not that there’s anything wrong with old
people, of course there isn’t.
 
But the
PaLargio is young and hip.
 
Atlantic City
seems old and. . . well, old.”

Reno
smiled.
 
“You suffer from a disease my
son.
 
You know what that disease is?”

Jimmy
inwardly chuckled.
 
“No, sir,” he said,
“but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

“You
can only see in the moment,” Reno responded.
 
“That’s what you suffer from. Momentary sight.
 
Yes, at seven a.m. it’s an old crowd.
 
Why wouldn’t it be?
 
But Atlantic City after dark is as young and
hip as Vegas.
 
Maybe even more so because
the young people here have more purpose.
 
They aren’t wandering around making spectacles of themselves, they’re
spending their hard-earned coins in the casinos and the clubs and making
businessmen all across this region very happy indeed.
 
We were too tired to get out last night after
all of those meetings, but believe you me this place, at night, is on fire.”

“Even
so,” Jimmy said, holding true to what he believed, “I don’t see this as a
PaLargio kind of town.”

Reno
was pleased to hear it.
 
He didn’t want
his son to become an echo chamber where he said whatever he thought his old man
wanted to hear.
 
He was fast becoming his
own man, and Reno liked his progression.
 
“So your advice to me is that I shouldn’t build?”

“That’s
my advice, yes, sir.
 
And it’s not just
because of what I’m seeing now, either.
 
I’m talking the whole package.
 
I
just don’t think this area would be good for our brand.”

Reno
nodded and inwardly smiled.
 
“I like
that.
 
You’re going with your gut.
 
Good.
 
That’s how your old man does business, and that’s how I want you to
conduct business.
 
If you don’t feel it,
you don’t do it.
 
You know why?”

Jimmy
could recite chapter and verse why, thanks to the way Reno constantly drilled
it into his head.
 
“Because if you aren’t
emotionally invested,” he said, “then that lack of passion will show in your
business.”