Reno Gabrini: A Man in Full

by Mallory Monroe

“Hit me, motherfucker!” he roared as he beat him. “Hit me! You wanna rearrange somebody’s face, rearrange mine! You fucked with my sister, why can’t you fuck with me!”

  Blood was beginning to gush out of Pac-Man’s nose and mouth, but Reno kept beating him. Fran had made it into the apartment and was needlessly egging her big brother on.

  “Beat his ass, Reno!” she was yelling. “Beat his ass, beat his ass!” Just like he beat mine, she wanted to add.

  Reno grabbed Pac off the table and slung him down into one of the kitchen chairs. His face was already beginning to swell as the blood continued to trickle out. And Reno stared at the loser. He was crying and trying to cover his face. He was ready to get on his knees and beg for mercy. Already. He didn’t put up a fight, he just caved. And this was the kind of piece of trash his sister liked. A punk like this. A fucking kid! And Reno couldn’t do it.

  His plan had been to tell him to stay away from his sister. His plan had been to tell him that he’d kill that sonafabitch if he so much as thought about touching his sister again. But Reno didn’t tell him a damn thing. Because he knew his sister. Because he knew she wasn’t about to leave this good looking, sorry-excuse-for-a-human-being stud alone. She was talking her big talk now, and yelling all kinds of obscenities at her boyfriend now. But give it a few days, Reno knew, and she’d be back wanting more.

  Reno looked at the punk they called Pac-Man, looked at his sister who was out for blood herself, and began heading out of the door.

  Fran, however, was astonished. “That’s all?” she asked her brother as she watched him leave. She was behaving like the loud Jersey girl she was. “After what he did to me that’s all you’re going to do to him?”

  “He got the message,” Reno said as he began walking down the stairs. The crowd moved back as he moved past them. Every one of them knew Reno Gabrini’s reputation, and only Fran seemed dissatisfied by his display.

  “Reno!” she yelled at her brother as he exited the boarding house and hurried down the stoop. He was nearing his Porsche in front of the building by the time Fran caught up to him.

  “Reno, you hear me!” she yelled, walking fast in her tight jeans and high heels. “He’ll say that was nothing! He’ll say he’s not scared of you, Reno, if you let him off this easy!” When he still kept walking, she rushed up to him, grabbed him by his muscular arm, and turned him around. “You hear me, Reno!” she yelled.

  But as soon as he turned around, Reno grabbed her and slung her against his car.

  “What the fuck is your problem?” he yelled at her.

  “My problem? Are you joking? He’s the one who kicked the shit out of me!”

  “What are you fooling with him for?” Reno wanted to know. “What are you fooling with a lowlife like that for? In this hellhole of a place? You sleep with a dog and then you’re mad because he acts like a fucking dog?”

  “But you see what he did to me!”

  “Then leave him the hell alone! Stay away from him! Haven’t you learned anything, Fran? Dirty put you through this same shit, time and time again, and you kept running back to him too! Now you go dredge up another sewer dweller and expect me to clean it up when they start stinking on your ass! I’m over it, Fran, and I mean it. Don’t you dare call me about some boyfriend beating your ass ever again. Because I’m not coming. And I mean that.” He looked at her, to make sure she understood his meaning. And then hurried to get in his car.

  “So that’s it?” Fran asked loudly, not understanding a damn thing. “You’re going to let him get off with a little slap around, Reno? That’s it?”

  Reno cranked up his car.

  “Reno!” she yelled and began to hit on the window of his Porsche, but he sped off.

  “Reno, wait!” she yelled. “Reno!”

  But he was long gone. He didn’t stop until a red light stopped him. Then he closed his eyes.

  “I miss my wife,” he found himself saying, and then he opened his eyes. And as the light turned green, it was an eye opener. He missed her, but he could easily remedy that situation. He could remedy it today.

  He picked up his car phone, and phoned his pilot.

  Although it was a cold, wintry day in Mississippi, it was a festive day too. The whole town seemed to have turned out for the Founder’s Day celebration at the Hope Tabernacle Baptist Church, honoring Trina’s father, Cecil Hathaway, and three other men who founded the church nearly forty years ago.

  Trina made her way through the crowd, reminiscing with many old friends, until she ended up with three of her oldest friends. And they talked and talked and laughed and talked. They talked about how Dale had changed so little. They talked about the famous residents who made good, and the infamous residents who didn’t make out so well. And then Betty, one of Trina’s oldest friends, decided to talk about Reno.

  “I wouldn’t risk it,” she said to Tree.

  Trina looked at her. Although they were old friends, they had never really been particularly close. More like rivals than friends, if you asked Trina. “You wouldn’t risk what?” she asked her.

  “Marrying a man like Dominic Gabrini,” Betty said. “You’ve got to know how much other women want him. I mean, I checked him out on the internet, Tree. For a white man, he’s kind of hot.”

  The other women laughed. Trina found that qualifier insulting, but she wasn’t about to get into it with some narrow-minded woman like Betty who could only see the world from where she sat. “I don’t find being married to my husband risky at all,” Trina said.

  “But the women,” another friend said. “I’m with Betty on that. How do you handle that aspect of it?”

  It was a sore spot with Trina. For all of her marriage she’d heard about Reno and his alleged infidelity. Nobody had any proof of a damn thing, but that didn’t stop the talk. Now these ladies, who didn’t know Reno from Adam, was creating their own gossip too. Just because he was wealthy and good looking. It was as if nobody believed he could possibly love Trina and Trina alone. As if, and this was the part that galled Trina the most, nobody believed she was enough for him.

  “There’s nothing to handle,” she said.

  “Oh, really now?” Betty asked. “So you’re saying you have the perfect marriage? Is that what you’re saying to us?”

  “I’m saying I have a marriage. We have ups, we have downs, we have good days, we have horrible days. A marriage.”

  “But you trust him?”

  “With my life. Excuse me, ladies,” Trina said. She always found it unseemly to be talking about her marriage to women she knew just wanted something to run and tell.

  The women, however, knew when they were being played. “She knows we’re telling the truth,” Betty said to the group.

  “She always was a very private person,” one of the other ladies said.

  But Betty disagreed. “Is that what you call it?”

  “That’s what I call it. What do you call it?”

  “I call it denial,” Betty said, and the other women laughed.

  “Tree!” a voice said behind Trina as she moved as far away from the gossipers as she could get. When she turned around, Amos Cates was approaching her with two glasses in hand.

  “Punch for the lady,” he said as he handed her a glass.

  She smiled. Even he was better than the gossipers. “Thanks.”

  “I saw you over there with your friends. They were trying to read you like a book, weren’t they?”

  Trina laughed. “They tried. But I’ve had better women than that reading me.”

  Amos laughed and raised his glass of punch. “You’re all right, Tree,” he said as they clanked their glasses and drank the Kool-Aid.

  He frowned and looked at the glass. “I know this is a church,” he said, “but damn. I mean darn.” Trina grinned. “At least they could have had some wine up in here.”

  “Now you know these ladies at Hope Tabernacle are not about to be that progressive. They haven’t changed a bit, and they’re proud of it.”


  “I know,” Amos said, smiling and staring at Trina. “But hope springs eternal.”

  Trina looked into his eyes as she took another sip. She also noticed how he wouldn’t stop staring at her. She removed the glass from her lips and smiled. “What?” she asked him.

  “I still can’t get over it,” Amos said. “Trina Hathaway married to the owner of the PaLargio. When your mother told me that, I couldn’t believe it. I stayed at the PaLargio before, at that beautiful place, and you own it now?” He shook his head. “The idea that a kid from Dale could fly that high is kind of amazing. You have to admit that, Tree.”

  “But you became a doctor,” Trina said. “That’s amazing. That’s the real accomplishment. All I did was fall in love.”

  Amos looked at Trina, and his heart sank. She fell in love. That was the point to him. That was what he craved and wanted now above anything else. To be in love.

  On the front side of the church, where most of the older people were congregating, Amos nor Trina realized that the man she had fallen in love with was on the premises. He had hugged his in-laws and were now laughing and talking with them. It was cold, and Reno wore his jeans, sweat shirt topped off by a leather bomber’s jacket. He had on gloves, but he still felt cold.

  “Oh, this is nothing for a northern boy like you,” Cecil said, laughing. “I thought you were born in New Jersey.”

  “I was! But my cold ass hasn’t lived there since I was a teenager! It’s freaking cold out here!”

  Both Cecil and Earnestine laughed. There was a time when they were not at all pleased to have their daughter marrying a man whose father had been a mob boss. There were even allegations that Reno was one himself. But over the years Reno Gabrini proved his mettle to them. He treated their daughter right. That was what mattered to them. Now they loved him like a son. And Reno loved them too, and treated them like the mother and father he no longer had.

  “How’s business these days, Reno?” Cecil asked. “The PaLargio reopened to a lot of fanfare, but this economy is slowing up a lot of good people.”

  “That’s the beauty of my business, Pop. My customers are never too broke to gamble.” Cecil laughed. “So business is good, thank-you very much. It’s been booming since the re-launch.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. Katrina’s little boutique business doesn’t seem to be faring as well. She keeps saying things will pick up, but I don’t know.”

  “I don’t either,” Reno said. “She gives me that song and dance too about how things are going to get better tomorrow, but I’m not buying it. It takes up too much of her time and her money and with no return on either. But she’s working the fire out of it, I’ll give her that. She’s devoting full time to the effort.”

  Cecil looked at his son-in-law. “What about her duties at the PaLargio?”

  “She’s neglecting her duties at the PaLargio,” Reno said bluntly.

  “She says you want her to move the boutique over there.”

  Reno was surprised that Trina had mentioned their disagreement, since she usually didn’t go there with people, but they were her folks. “We’re see what happens,” he decided to respond. “But speaking of that wife of mine, where can I find her?”

  “She’s going to be so happy you came,” Earnestine said, although Reno wasn’t so sure. “She’s out back with the other young people,” Earnestine added.

  And Reno headed around the back of the church, where there was an even larger crowd. And when he saw Trina standing there, running her mouth with some good looking black guy, he continued walking, but with a slower gait. Not that she seemed as if she was enjoying herself. Because she wasn’t. He could see it even from where he was. She was just as miserable about their separation as he was. Not that she didn’t love her folks, because she did. But she hated that he made her come here. He knew it as sure as he knew her body. And he knew her body.

  And she proved his knowledge when she glanced around and just so happened to see him coming toward her. Her heart soared when she saw him, and she handed her glass to Amos.

  “I’ve got to run,” she said, and began walking furiously fast toward her husband. So fast that she began to run. Betty and the others looked. His heart leaped with joy when they met up and she leaped into his arms. It was as if their disagreement never happened. It was as if nothing was going to ever cause them to lose sight of their love.

  “Oh, baby,” Reno said as he wrapped her tightly in his arms. He wanted to kiss her, but he knew he would get too carried away on these church grounds, so he just hugged her instead.

  Then they leaned back, with his arms still wrapped around her waist, and her arms still wrapped around his, and looked at each other. His full head of brown hair was a tousled mess as usual, and his big blue eyes looked tired and almost bloodshot. But to Trina nobody could have looked more inviting.

  Reno was pleased to see her too. Her thick, wind-blown hair was dancing around her beautiful brown face, and the corduroyed pantsuit she wore fit her snug as a rug. But Reno frowned. It had to be thirty degrees this Saturday afternoon, and that was all she wore?

  He swept her into his arms again, and although he knew he shouldn’t do it given where they were, he couldn’t help himself. Her lips were too alluring. He planted a kiss on her that demonstrated the fact that he had not held her, or kissed her, for a week.

  But he was still displeased.

  “Where’s your coat?” he asked when they stopped kissing.

  Trina flicked at her suit jacket. “I have on a coat,” she said.

  “You have on a jacket. Where’s your overcoat? It’s thirty degrees out here, Trina.”

  Trina used to fight against his heavy-handedness and possessiveness. She used to feel as if he didn’t give her credit for anything. She felt she could handle her business just fine. But she knew him now. He cared deeply about her, and worried about her. She understood it now.

  So instead of rolling her eyes the way she used to do back in the early days of their marriage, or instead of asking where was his overcoat, she explained. “I left it in the car,” she said. “I didn’t think it was going to get this cold out here.”

  That satisfied him, although he still didn’t like the idea that she hadn’t gone back and got it yet. He kissed her again. And placed his arm around her waist again. “I missed you,” he said.

  “I missed you more,” she said. “How’s our children?”

  “Jimmy has full custody of his baby brother until I bring you home.”

  She laughed. “Then Little Dommi’s in good hands,” she said with certainty.

  “Can’t argue with that,” Reno agreed. “Who’s the guy you were talking to?”

  “Oh. That’s Amos. We went to kindergarten together. Want to meet him?”

  “Some other time,” Reno said, staring into her eyes. Then he let out a heavy exhale. “Think you’re rested enough to come back home to me?” he asked her.

  She smiled. “Too rested,” she said.

  “I want you on that plane with me today.” She beamed. “But first,” he added, pulling her closer, “I want you spread out naked on a bed. And I’ll take it from there.” Trina’s heat began to rise. “Any bed,” he added, “will do.”

  Trina thought about her bedroom at her parents’ new home. “I know just the place,” she said, grabbed him by the hand, and took him there.

  Amos, and Betty, and all of Trina’s former friends, watched as they made their getaway.

  SIXTEEN

  Reno had her exactly where he wanted her. Naked in bed, her legs wide open, with him between those legs, eating her relentlessly.

  Trina closed her eyes with a knowing smile on her face as his tongue sliced deep between her folds and licked up her vaginal juices as if he was savoring the taste. He licked her with long, slow, loving licks. He ate her with bites that made the tip of her nose tingle. And she moaned and slid her ass from side to side, and let Reno do his expert work.

  Reno was moaning too, as he ate her. The smell
of her, the sheer fact that it was her, that he was doing the very person he wanted to fuck above all others, made him feel as if he was floating in sensations. His dick was so hard beneath him that he, too, had to move around to keep it from cumming. It had been six days. Six long days since he had the pleasure of pleasing his wife, and he was holding nothing back.

  He licked every inch of her cunt. He licked so long that her folds were red and swollen. He ate and licked on her so long that he had run out of room to eat and lick, and was now eating and licking the outer limits of her vagina, the sides, the front, her pubic hair. His oral became so wild that her overly sensual body had squirmed and squirmed until the top of her head was butting against the bed’s headboard. His oral became so wildly intense that her legs wrapped around his neck and her hips lifted up higher and higher as he ate her dry.

  And then he looked up at her. His thick chest was breathing in and out in near-hyperventilation already. But he was just beginning.

  He got on his knees, grabbed her by the thighs, and slid her until her cunt was now butting against his rock-hard penis. He took his thick, pink head and guided it into her ripe, brown pussy, and as soon as he felt her cunt and she felt his hardness, they both began to groan. He moved in further, straining himself to hold back and not cum right away. Because he wanted to savor the feeling. He wanted to fuck her for hours. He couldn’t hang that long, he already knew there was no way. But he was going to try.

  He tried. He stroked Trina in long, loving strokes that made her hold onto his elbows as his powerful gyrations unsteadied her. This was no easy fuck. It was grunt work. Reno wasn’t just stroking her. He was massaging her. He was taking his dick and making it slide along her vaginal walls like a scrapper. Only he was scrapping to the surface every sensual sensation she had within her. He was roughing her up as he fucked her. And she loved being handled this way.

  He lifted her up as he fucked her, and leaned her naked body against his. She rested the side of her face against his muscular chest as he held her tightly in his arms. And he continued to stroke up and down, deep inside of her, with his dick gaining more and more friction from her the more he pushed. She was getting smaller, not bigger, as her cunt clamped around his dick and caused him to nearly go out of his mind with heightened sensations.