All day he had been in his office, catching up on contracts that needed to be signed and performers that needed to be warned. Every singer, dancer, or circus act that worked at the PaLargio, especially those under long-term contracts, fully understood that if any section of that contract was breached in any way, Reno Gabrini would not hesitate to fire them. He fired one, a fire eater, earlier that very day. Now it was night, the hotel was filling up fast and the casino was already filled, and Reno was inside the casino holding conversations with chosen patrons, once again, on the observation deck. When he saw Jimmy Mack enter the casino and head his way, he smiled. And ended the conversation with a guest who just wanted to shake hands with the, as he called him, “titan of Vegas.”
Reno was so proud of Jimmy now he could hardly contain his admiration. Since he started working in Tommy’s Vegas office, Jimmy was stepping up. And he was dressing up, too, in Reno’s view. Jimmy was no longer wearing those slick-looking skinny suits that made him look like a car salesman. He now wore the kind of expensive suits his old man and uncles favored: Armani. Hugo Boss. Valentino.
“Hey Pop!” Jimmy said jovially as he approached his dad.
“Don’t you ever work?” Reno asked jokingly as he sat next to him.
“You talking to me?” Jimmy asked with a grin as he gave his father a hug and kissed him on the side of his face. “I just got off work I’ll have you know, Mr. Gabrini.”
“What time did you go to work? Four or five this afternoon?”
“Very funny, Pop. Everybody doesn’t have a twenty-four-seven job like you do. Uncle Tommy allows me to have a life.”
“Picked up Maddie yet?” Reno asked him.
“Val is off work this week, so she wanted to spend a couple extra days with our little girl.”
“Just don’t let that bitch get too comfortable with changing the custody rules,” Reno warned him. “You give her an inch, she’ll take a mile.”
“I’m not giving her anything. Everything I do is what’s best for Madison.”
Reno could believe it. Jimmy was an excellent father.
“Here comes Stef,” Jimmy said.
Stef Siranno was Reno’s senior security chief, which apparently placed him above all the other security chiefs Reno had on his payroll, Jimmy assumed. Since Stef was the only senior one.
“Hello, James,” Stef said as he approached.
“What’s up?” Jimmy asked.
Instead of responding, Stef leaned into Reno’s ear and whispered something to him. Jimmy didn’t hear everything, but he could hear that whatever Stef said had to do with a woman.
“I’ll be back,” Reno said to his son as he rose from his seat. And then he and Stef made their way out of the casino. Since Jimmy was headed upstairs to his apartment, anyway, he rose and followed them out.
When Reno and Stef made their way out of the casino and into the hotel’s lobby, Stef motioned toward the middle of the room. “She’s over there, sir,” he said, and Reno looked. When he saw the woman that had been at the PaLargio last week, the woman he called Bev, he headed in her direction. Stef headed back toward the casino, but not before running into Jimmy.
“Hey again,” Stef said with a smile.
But Jimmy was staring at Bev. “Who’s she to Pop, Stef?” he asked.
Stef hunched his shoulders. “A friend,” he said, “is all I know.” Then he smiled again. “Good looking, isn’t she?”
“She’s aw’ight,” Jimmy said. “She’s got nothing on my mother though.”
“Think so?” Stef asked, as if he disagreed.
But Jimmy wasn’t thinking about some narrow-minded Italian like Stef. He was staring at his father.
But Reno wasn’t thinking about who was watching him. He was concerned about Bev. He went over to her, and placed his hands on her arms. He could tell she had been crying. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“He’s back,” Bev said. “He found me. I didn’t know where else to go.”
“Where is he now?” Reno asked, looking beyond her.
“He’s not following me. At least I don’t think he is. I hate to keep running to you, Reno, but I don’t know where else to go.”
“That’s okay,” Reno said. “Let’s just get you in a room, and get you some rest. We’ll see where you go from here tomorrow.”
She smiled. “Thanks, Reno.”
Reno walked with her up to the check-in counter. The clerk immediately perked up. “Hello, sir.”
“I need a room. What do we have?”
“I’ll see if we have anything, sir.”
“We aren’t full or your screen would tell you so.”
“Yes, sir, that’s correct,” the clerk said as she clicked her mouse until she got to the appropriate screen. And then she scrolled down.
“I just hate bothering you like this,” Bev said to Reno, “but I truly didn’t know who else I could turn to.”
“You came to the right place. Don’t you worry about that.”
“You’ve always been so good to me. I don’t deserve it.”
“Nonsense! Don’t talk that bullshit around me.”
Bev laughed. “I forgot about that mouth of yours.”
“Yes, Mr. Gabrini,” the clerk said, “we have a room available on the fourth floor.”
“No, go higher,” Reno said.
“Yes, sir,” the clerk responded, and began clicking and scrolling again.
But then Jimmy, realizing that his father was actually going to get a room for that woman, he hurried over. And he was livid. “Dad? Really? You’re putting her up here? Right under Ma’s nose?”
Reno looked at his son as if he’d lost his mind. How dare he come up on Reno like that? Reno was about to reach for his collar and set him straight, but then a voice cried out.
“Reno Gabrini?” the voice cried so loudly that it soared over all the other voices in the super-crowded lobby.
Reno, Jimmy, and Bev turned to the sound of that voice. They saw the man Bev and Reno immediately knew as her ex-husband, standing in the middle of the crowded lobby.
“You ruined my life, Reno Gabrini!” he yelled.
And before Reno’s men could react, Bev’s ex-husband pulled out a gun. Reno grabbed Jimmy and knocked him to the ground, falling on top of him to cover him, just as the gun was fired. He tried to push Bev down too, but he failed to do so. The bullet hit her in the head, causing her to fall to the floor.
The crowd in the lobby started screaming and running as if all hell had just broken loose.
And before her ex could be shot by Reno or his men, all of whom were pulling out their own weapons to do just that, he looked at his ex-wife, saw that she was down, and cried out. Then he put the gun to his own head, and fired. And just like that, in the matter of less than a minute, he was dead, too.
“You okay, Pop?” Jimmy asked anxiously, nervously. “You okay, Pop?”
“I’m okay,” Reno said without returning the inquiry. His body was Jimmy’s protection. He knew Jimmy was alright.
But his eyes were on Bev. Because he knew she was not alright. And she was not going to be alright.
“Good Lord,” he said, as he saw his friend take what would turn out to be her very last breath.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Reno was in one of the conference rooms inside his luxurious hotel being questioned by various members of the Vegas police. Jimmy was sitting beside him, as he had not left his father’s side. He was allowed to stay because he had witnessed the shooting too. But Reno’s story was a simple one: She was a friend. She was in trouble. Her ex had been stalking her.
When the police finally left, Trina was allowed into the room. “Reno!” she said breathlessly as he and Jimmy stood to their feet.
Trina ran to Reno. He lifted her into his arms, and she wrapped her legs around his waist.
Jimmy was always amazed at how affectionate his father was toward his mother. He could possibly have other women, but he always acted as if Trina was the best thing
that ever happened to him. She was, in Jimmy’s estimation. But it still surprised him when a man like his father, a man whose actions didn’t always jive with his feelings, acknowledged it.
Trina, at first, just wanted to hold Reno. When she got the word from Stef that there had been a shooting, and that Reno and Jimmy were involved, she left all three children with a nanny and ran downstairs. Dommi, who always seemed to know instinctively when his father was in trouble, started crying when she would not let him go downstairs with her. But she raced downstairs as soon as she got the word.
Now Reno was sitting her back down on her two feet, and she was rubbing the side of his face and asking if he was alright.
“I’m okay,” Reno responded.
Trina quickly looked at Jimmy and hugged him, too. “You okay, too, baby?” she asked him.
“I’m good, Ma,” Jimmy said. “Before I knew what was going on, Pop had knocked me down and got on top of me. If anybody was going to take a bullet, it was going to be him. He smothered me with his big body. I could barely breathe!”
“He protects his family,” Trina said proudly. “That’s what Reno does.”
But a sadness came over Reno. “And when he’s not protecting his family,” he blurted out, “he makes sure they stay in mortal danger.”
“Reno!” Trina said, as she and Jimmy looked at him. “That is not true, and you know it.”
But that was how it felt to Reno.
Trina could see it, too. “Sit down,” she said, and aided him back to his seat. She sat next to him. Jimmy sat down, too.
“Did any guests get hit?” she asked.
Reno looked at Jimmy. He didn’t have a chance to find out in all of the melee.
“No,” Jimmy said. “Nobody was hit except for that woman and that man. But Ma, you should have seen it. It was madness in that lobby. People were jumping on people’s backs trying to get out of there. It’s amazing there weren’t more injuries.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Trina said. “We’ll get our share of lawsuits. There’s always opportunistic people in every crowd. But they don’t know the Gabrinis. We fight every frivolous lawsuit vigorously. They’ll be no settling out of court, I’ll tell you that.”
Then Trina looked at Reno, who was silent. He looked distraught. She placed her arm around him. “I know it’s tough, Ree,” she said. “Poor Bev!”
Jimmy was surprised Trina knew the woman’s name. “You knew about her?” he asked.
Trina found that an odd question. “I knew her, yes,” she said. “She’s a friend of your father’s. Why?”
“That man, whom I now know was her ex-husband,” Jimmy said, “yelled out before he fired that shot about how Pop ruined his life.”
“He blamed Reno for the breakup of their marriage, yes, he did,” Trina admitted.
“But why?” Jimmy wanted to know. “If it wasn’t true, why would he say that?”
“Because it was true,” Reno said.
His wife and son quickly looked at him. “Reno stop,” Trina said.
But Reno didn’t stop. “I was to blame for the breakup of his marriage.”
“You know that’s not true,” Trina said. “Stop saying that. That marriage had issues long before you met Bev. She told me so herself when you introduced us.”
“But they could have worked those issues out,” Reno said. “Then my horny ass came along. Then my got-to-have-it ass had to have her. They could have resolved their issues before I got involved.”
“Bev came to you with her marriage problems, Reno,” Trina made clear. “Bev came to your bed, not the other way around. You didn’t put any guns to her head and force her into doing shit. So stop acting as if she was just an innocent bystander and you turned her ass out. She turned her own ass out. She was the one with a jealous husband. She was the one who should have said no.”
But all Jimmy heard was that Reno slept with Bev. He was staring at his father. “So you slept with the man’s wife?” Jimmy asked. “So you cheated on Ma?”
Reno and Trina both looked at Jimmy. Trina even frowned. “Who said anything about cheating on me, Jimmy? It was before he met me, boy. The only reason I knew anything about it was because Bev started coming around again claiming that Glenn, her ex-husband, was stalking her. Reno told me about her then.”
“But listen to what you’re saying, Ma. What you’re saying is that he never mentioned her until you saw her coming around. You would have never known anything about his relationship with her or any other woman unless you catch him in the act.”
Trina frowned. “What?” she asked.
But Jimmy and Reno were staring at each other. He put Reno on a pedestal, everybody knew that. But whenever Reno disappointed him in the least way, Jimmy went off, as if he expected better from his father. “You do so much underhanded shit,” he said. “And then people like Ma have to deal with the aftermath of your shit. What kind of man are you?” he asked.
But before Reno could say a word, Trina reached over and slapped the fire out of Jimmy. Although Reno wasn’t surprised by Trina’s reaction, Jimmy was. He held onto the side of his now stinging face.
Trina pointed her finger at him. “You mean well,” she said with that sincere look in her expressive, hazel eyes. “I know you do. But you’re out of line. Way out. Stay in your lane, Jimmy. You need to stay in your lane. Bev was your father’s friend. And yes, before he met me, they slept together. He told me they slept together. But what do you expect me to do about it? Forbid him to ever see his friend again because of shit that happened before we were even married? You think I’m that fucking insecure? I know what I have in your father. But what your ass don’t seem to understand is that your father knows what he has in me.”
Reno snapped out of his grief over what happened to Bev when Trina uttered those words, and wrapped his arm around her. “That’s for damn sure,” he said, as he squeezed her shoulder.
“You don’t get it, Jimmy,” Trina said to him. “Reno and me?” Tears appeared in Trina’s eyes, prompting tears to appear in Jimmy’s eyes, too. Reno handed her his handkerchief, and pulled her closer against him. “Reno and me,” she started again, wiping the tears in the corner of her eyes so that her makeup didn’t smear, “have been through so much shit in our marriage. We’ve been through so much! We are so beyond worrying about pettiness and about who slept with whom before we hooked up that it’s not even funny. We have to deal with grown-folks shit. We have too many big-league issues to be worrying about what they’re doing in the minor league.”
And then it was Reno’s time to light into his bewildered son. “The idea that you think I’ll jeopardize the love this great lady has for me to roll in the hay with some woman from my past, with any woman, is insulting,” he said. “I’ve done a lot of terrible things I need to give penance for, but intentionally inflicting any kind of harm on Katrina Gabrini will never be one of those things.”
Then Reno leaned over, and pulled Jimmy into his arms, too. But it wasn’t some kumbaya moment. It wasn’t Reno feeling all misty because of what happened to poor Bev. It was mainly because of what that detective said. Was he sure, the cop had asked, that Bev’s ex-husband wasn’t aiming that pistol at her, but at him? He still felt too much pressure to feel misty about anything.
And later that night, after Jimmy had gone home, the children were safely asleep in bed, Reno had to release the pressure. Trina knew it, too. He had showered while she took a long bath, and when she got out of the tub, he was lying naked in bed stroking his dick. Which meant, to Trina, he was getting it ready for a quickie.
As it always did, her vagina began to throb when she saw his thick penis, and she, too, was fully onboard for a quickie herself. Reno, she knew, felt the ultimate stress: his son had been in the line of fire and his friend was dead. Dead because he had to protect his son above his friend. And, Trina knew, he would do it again and again. But that didn’t make it easier for a man like her husband to digest.
She dried off quickly and got
on top of him. He placed his arms around her and kissed her. But unlike how she knew their sex was going to be, he kissed her very gently. He kissed her as if he wanted to savor her taste. He kissed her for a wondrously long time.
And then it was her time to pleasure him. He didn’t object in the least when she moved from his mouth, slid down his muscle-tight body, and began giving him the kind of head he dreamed about.
It felt like a dream to Reno when Trina sucked him. Especially when her tongue licked the head of his penis in that circular way most women muffed. But Trina had it down to a science. His thick thighs squeezed when she licked his head.
And when she went all the way down on him, taking him completely into her mouth, and coming out with his pre-cum inside of her mouth, he thought it was going to be more like a premature ejaculation than just pre-cum. But he held on. Until he couldn’t anymore.
He placed his hands on Trina’s shoulders, and pulled her up from her magnificent oral. Because he had something magnificent to give to her, too. And as he sucked her nipples, he guided his magnificence into her vagina. He let out an audible sigh when he felt the connection. They were lovers, but they were in love, and Reno was about to show her just how much.
He fucked her slow at first, as she rode his dick like a pro, and then he took over and fucked her hard. She wasn’t expecting anything less, and he didn’t give her anything less. He thrashed his dick into her pussy with resounding thrashes. He pounded her. Some of her friends said they hated that kind of sex. They liked it slow all the time. But Trina wasn’t one of them. If they had a cock like Reno’s pushing so deep down inside of them, making them so full that they felt as if they were going to explode, they’d understand how sometimes, on nights like this, slow couldn’t cut it.
And Reno wasn’t holding back. He did her so hard, and so sincerely, that Trina came quickly. She couldn’t hold back.
But after she came, Reno took it further. He removed his dick out of her vagina and put it into her ass. Trina felt the pain, and then the pleasure when he squeezed her butt cheeks and pushed deeper and deeper into her. He looked at her, to make sure the pain she felt had subsided. He took it slow and easy as he eased inside of her. But when he was confident that the pain was gone, he was pounding her again. And loving how she made him feel. And loving the fact that he was able to wrap his arms even tighter around her, and enjoy that tight, wonderful feeling.
Reno Gabrini- the Man in the Mirror Page 8
