RENO GABRINI
THE MAN IN THE MIRROR
by
MALLORY MONROE
Copyright©2017 Mallory Monroe
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
“Introduce me.”
“To who?”
“You know who! Introduce me, Tony.”
“Not happening.”
“But why?”
“Because it doesn’t work that way. You can’t just walk up on Reno Gabrini like that. I told you that.”
“But he visits with people all the time. I see him do it all the time.”
“What are you his stalker? What do you mean you see him do it all the time?”
“All the times I’m in here.” She hit Tony across his chest. “You know what I mean. Introduce me. You can forget getting any tonight if you don’t introduce me.”
“So you’re gonna finally give it up? Or you’re just blowing smoke up my ass again?”
“I’ll give you anything you want if you introduce me.”
Tony looked at her. She was a little older than he was used to fooling around with, but nobody could question her great looks. “You want to talk to him that bad?”
“No, I don’t want it bad. That’s why I’m begging you. Yes, I want it bad! I’ve heard a lot about him. I want to meet him for myself.”
Tony smiled. “Hate to tell you this, sweetheart, but you’re not his type.”
The busty blonde gave Tony a sidelong look. “No shit? I don’t wanna marry the man. I wanna meet the man.”
Tony shook his head. What was it about these dames and Reno? What did Reno have that he didn’t have? But she did promise to give it up. “Okay, Heather, I’ll do it. But just this one time.”
Heather smiled greatly.
“But if he tells you to take a hike and embarrass your ass, don’t look cockeyed at me.”
“Don’t worry. It’ll be all on me.”
Tony looked across the casino, where his boss, Reno Gabrini, was sitting beside his oldest son, Jimmy Mack. “Come on,” he said to Heather, and they made their way across the massive palace-like casino toward Reno.
Jimmy elbowed his father when he spotted them. “Look who’s coming,” he said.
Reno looked.
“Even a neon light wouldn’t be as obvious as that chick,” Jimmy added, with a smile. “She’s thirsty as hell.”
Reno Gabrini watched as Tony and the beautiful blonde headed their way. He was in the PaLargio Hotel and Casino on the Vegas Strip, a mammoth establishment he owned, and was sitting near the back of the casino on what Reno’s people called the observation deck. No one was allowed to approach the boss without his aides giving them clearance, and this morning was no exception.
Reno had already met a few dignitaries from Iowa and a businessman from Nebraska. All wanted to interest him in a partnership. He wasn’t interested. If anybody knew anything about Reno Gabrini, it was that he preferred to fly solo. He had a few partners on various ventures around the world, with Mick Sinatra being the most prominent one, but they were few and far between. But these people looking for a business deal in a casino in the middle of a weekday wasn’t Reno’s idea of serious.
Just like the blonde heading his way. Jimmy was right. Reno saw her intentions a mile away, too. But he was accustomed to those kinds of propositions as well. Not a day went by when some good-looking dame wasn’t trying to get into his pants. But this one, even he had to admit, was a cut above the rest. She was much older than most tricks he encountered, although she was closer to his age. But that only made her look classier than most.
Tony Mackle, a pit boss in the casino, was one of the few people who could approach the observation deck with a patron requesting an audience with Reno. The bodyguards allowed him, with Heather by his side, to walk right on up. “How you doing, Mr. G? Tony asked. “How you doing, Jimmy Mack?”
“What’s going on, Tony?” Jimmy asked.
“Just trying to make it in this rough and tumbled world.”
Jimmy smiled. “You ain’t trying too hard with that shitty-ass suit you’re wearing.”
Tony laughed. Jimmy was always good for a laugh.
Reno, however, wasn’t the joking kind. He looked at the woman.
“This is Heather Rhinestone, Boss,” Tony said. “She was dying to come over and say hello.”
Thirsty just like I said, Jimmy thought.
“Hello, Miss Rhinestone,” Reno said.
“Heather, please. And it’s so nice to finally meet you. To meet you both,” Heather added with a smile, and in what Reno viewed as an exaggerated southern twang.
Heather figured the cute guy beside Reno was his biracial son. Everybody knew Reno’s wife was black; but she also heard he had had a relationship with a different black woman when he was a teenager that produced his oldest child. She was therefore careful to acknowledge the son’s presence, but her entire focus was on the father. “You have a very lovely casino, Mr. Gabrini,” she said.
Jimmy knew his father hated flattery, so he jumped back in. “Where are you from, Heather?” he asked.
She laughed. “I’m from Texas, thank you very much. As if you can’t tell by my accent.”
“What accent?” Jimmy asked, and he, Heather and Tony laughed.
Reno was looking past Heather at a group of older ladies who just had a big hit at the slots. He had already moved on.
Heather sensed it, too, and didn’t hesitate. “Perhaps,” she said to Reno, “you could show me what the rooms look like in your lovely hotel.”
Jimmy’s jaw tightened when the woman so blatantly propositioned his father like that. Did these ladies have any shame? But he was equally concern
ed about how his father would respond to the proposition.
“I hear you have super-large, and enticing rooms,” Heather continued with sexiness in her twang.
Jimmy wanted to roll his eyes. Because the answer was no. That lady had no shame.
“I really would love to see what all the fuss is about,” Heather added, proving her lack of shame. “I really would love--”
“Beat it,” Reno finally said, to Jimmy’s inward delight, without looking at her. “I’m a married man.”
But Heather, though offended, was still unperturbed. “I’m sure you can find one particular room that stands above the rest. I’m sure you can find one particular room that would give me a glimpse into what the fuss is about. All I want is a glimpse. A really quick glimpse.”
Reno looked at her. “What I just said, that I’m a married man, don’t mean shit to you. Does it?”
“Excuse me?”
But Reno didn’t explain himself. He continued to stare at her. Jimmy was staring too.
“Okay,” Heather said, raising her finger and getting feisty too. “If you wanna go there we can go there.”
Oh, Lord, Tony thought. Did her ass have a death wish?
“From what I heard about you and all of your women in this town,” she fired back, “your so-called marriage don’t mean shit to you, either.”
Jimmy was astonished that she would come for his father that way and not get backslapped right on this casino floor. But Reno, instead, was looking toward the entrance.
Jimmy looked too. Another beautiful woman was standing there. She and his father exchanged definite eye contact, and then the woman headed back out of the casino. Reno stood up. “See you around, Jimmy,” he said, didn’t even bother to say goodbye to Heather nor Tony, and headed out of the casino, too.
Jimmy was livid. His father had an awful reputation as a womanizer, and he did nothing to quell the talk. And while Heather complained to Tony about Reno’s rudeness, and while Tony reminded her that he had warned her before they approached the deck, Jimmy rose, too. And followed his father out of the casino.
Jimmy now had a different job. He no longer worked for Reno. Thanks to his Uncle Sal Gabrini’s recommendation, who left the Gabrini Corporation to run his crime syndicate full-time, Jimmy now worked out of the Vegas office of his Uncle Tommy Gabrini’s corporation. But what that meant for Jimmy was that he rarely got to see his old man. What that meant for Jimmy was that, for his beloved stepmother’s sake, he could no longer keep an eye out on his old man.
He made it outside of his father’s behemoth and extremely busy Vegas hotel, where cars were lined up under the portico for either the valets to park, or for owners to retrieve. He saw Reno standing at the door of the woman’s sports car talking with her. The woman seemed upset, and Reno wasn’t exactly happy-go-lucky, either, so Jimmy decided to approach the twosome to hear for himself what was going on.
But as soon as he made the move toward them, and as the woman continued to tell Reno something that apparently was distressing her, his father looked up. When he saw Jimmy coming, he gave him a look so deadly that Jimmy stopped in his tracks. Because Jimmy knew what that look meant. Back off, was what it meant. And Jimmy backed off. He still had the scars to prove what happened whenever he didn’t.
“Ready for your car, Jimmy Mack?” one of the valets asked him.
Jimmy gave up. How was his father’s philandering his problem anyway? If it didn’t bother Trina, his stepmother and Reno’s wife, why should it be bothering him so much? “Yeah, sure,” he said, and handed his ticket to the valet. The valet, who knew Jimmy tipped well, happily took off to retrieve his vehicle.
But as Jimmy waited for his car, he kept taking peeps at his father. Reno was writing something on the back of what looked like a business card the woman had handed him, and then he handed the card back to the woman. Jimmy continued to watch as Reno opened the car door for the woman, and then rested his arms on the window frame. Reno, it seemed to Jimmy, seemed all concerned about the woman.
And he was. Reno was deeply concerned. He looked deep into her troubled eyes. “Call me, Bev, when you get there,” he said to her.
“I will, Reno,” Bev replied. “And thanks. You don’t know how much this means to me. I know how busy you are.”
Reno could see the distress in her eyes. “Just stay safe,” he said as his cell phone began to ring. He stood up erect and began pulling his cell phone out of his pocket. “Give me a call when you get settled in,” he added, she said goodbye, and she drove off.
Reno looked at his Caller ID. It was Trina, his wife. He answered quickly. “Good morning.”
“I need your help, Reno,” Trina said over the phone. “And I need it now.”
“I’m on my way,” Reno said, ended the call, and made his way toward the entrance. But he had to bypass Jimmy first. “Leaving so soon?” he asked his son.
“I have to get to the office,” Jimmy said. But getting to the office wasn’t what was on his mind. His father’s behavior was on his mind. “Who was that?” he asked him.
But he should have known Reno wasn’t going to go into his business with any child of his, no matter that Jimmy was a full-grown man and was now a chief executive. “Drive carefully,” was how Reno responded. “A couple cops told me you drive faster than I do around this town. They say they haven’t given you a ticket yet because you’re my son. But that’ll change if you don’t cut that shit out,” he added, as he kept on walking and entered his hotel.
Jimmy looked at his father with a combination of love and fury. Love, because he did love his father above any other man on earth. But fury because his father was such a hypocrite and never seemed to understand what effect his association with all of these women had to have on his wife.
But what was that his business? He had enough concerns of his own. That was why, when Jimmy’s car arrived, he tipped the valet, got in, and drove away. And he drove even faster than his usual fast speed.
Reno entered his luxurious penthouse apartment on the top floor of the PaLargio, and hurried inside. “Trina?” he yelled. “Trina?” No response. “Where the hell are you, Tree?”
Then he saw her, hurrying down the stairs in what looked like her highest heels. She was wearing a beautiful form-fitting dress that looked as if it had been stitched onto her smooth, brown skin, and was carrying their seven-week-old crying baby boy in her arms. “Nanny had to go to Sleepy last night,” she said as she hurried down.
“She what?” Reno asked. “She’s sleepy?”
“She had to go to Sleepy, Georgia, Reno. Her hometown.”
“She just got hired a few weeks ago, and she’s already taking a vacation?”
“It’s no vacation. Her mother’s sick. Which means she can’t keep Carmine today.”
“Which means?” Reno asked.
“I’m already late for my investors’ meeting.” She met Reno on the bottom stair and handed their son to him. “You’ve got to keep the baby.”
“Said nobody ever!” Reno responded in a stunned voice as he had no choice but to take the baby that she hoisted upon him. He couldn’t believe she was expecting him to babysit. “Trina!”
“I know, but it can’t be helped,” Trina said as she began hurrying toward the foyer.
“You want me to take care of this baby alone?” Reno followed her.
“Until I get back, yes, Reno. There’s nobody else.”
“You want me to babysit?”
“Yes, you. The daddy.” She hurried into the foyer and grabbed her briefcase and phone from the tabletop. “Remember?” she added, as she glanced over her shoulder at his progressing form. “There’s no way you can possibly forget that marathon session you put me through that produced that little boy.”
“But I’m working here!” Reno argued. “I have a casino and a hotel to run!” He looked at their baby. “And why is he always crying all the time? Dommi was no crybaby like this.”
“God had mercy on us and gave us a baby
that’s the direct opposite of Dominic Gabrini, Junior,” Trina proclaimed. “Be grateful.”
“But what you expect me to do?” Reno placed the baby on his shoulder and began bouncing him. “Trina!”
“My meeting shouldn’t take that long,” Trina assured him. “I’ll be back before Dommi and Sophie get out of school.” Then she kissed him on the lips, and kissed their crying child on the forehead. But Reno felt something when she kissed him. A sudden, unexplained foreboding came over him.
Even Trina, when she looked into Reno’s big blue eyes, saw it, too. “What’s wrong?” she asked him.
“You mean other than my keeping a baby when I’ve got a million jobs to do?”
And then, as quickly as Trina saw that strange look in his eyes, it was gone. “Just for a few hours, Reno,” she said. “It’ll be good practice for you.”
“I don’t need any practice,” he said. “I have you!”
Trina laughed, but she didn’t hesitate. This was the meeting that could give her the opportunity of a lifetime, and she had to make it on time. She hurried out of the front door of their penthouse.
Reno was floored. He looked at his beautiful brown son with those beautiful crying eyes. And his heart melted for the newest addition to their family. But he still couldn’t swallow it. “Me keeping a fucking baby,” he said out loud. “Like I’m some fucking Mister Mom.” Then he looked at the baby. “I am going to kick your mama’s ass when she brings it back here.” Then he spoke in that nonsensical tone grownups spoke to babies. “Yes, I am. Yes, I am.”
Somehow that worked. The baby finally stopped crying and stared at Reno. Reno smiled. “So that’s what it takes to shut you up?”
Then the baby started crying again, even louder than he had before.
Reno frowned. “What did I say?” he asked.
Then he held him tighter, and started looking around. “Let’s find your ass a bottle,” he said, like the Mister Mom he definitely was not.
CHAPTER TWO
Wayne Lowe and Roger Bridgemont sat at a table inside Kal’s, an upscale restaurant near the outskirts of Vegas, and watched as Trina drove her Mercedes up to the restaurant’s Valet station and stepped out.
Reno Gabrini- the Man in the Mirror Page 1
