Earnestine stared at her daughter. She’d heard the rumors about Reno’s infidelity too. “It’s tough to stop a train, baby girl,” she said.
“I know that too,” Trina agreed. “But Reno’s doing his part. That’s why he came all this way. He could have kept his butt right there in Vegas, selected any random female he wanted, and did his thing. But he came to me instead. I’m not tempting fate twice.”
Earnestine nodded. She fully understood what Trina meant. Then she exhaled. “He’s a good man, Tree. And I’m sure he’s worth the effort. But I don’t envy your position.”
Trina understood what she meant. Being with Reno was not an easy thing. It was hard. But Trina disagreed with her mother. Women did envy her. Many of them wanted to take her place. And if she was in their shoes, she would want to be next to Reno too. Trina felt blessed every time she thought about the fact that he was her man, and she was his woman. “You may not envy my position,” she said, “but there are plenty of other women who do. I’ve got to go back home, Ma.”
Earnestine exhaled. “It’s going to break Cecil’s heart to have to part with our grandkids this soon. Could they stay for the four days? We’ll take care of them. You know we will. Reno can send the plane for them then.”
Trina smiled. “Yes,” she said. “I don’t think they’re ready to leave anyway.”
Earnestine smiled. “Now I’m happy again,” she said. “Not that we don’t love you, because we do,” she added. “But loving those grandkids is love on an entirely different level. There’s no comparison. But believe you me, we won’t step on your toes. After four days of dealing with Dommi, we are probably going to be anxious to give them back.”
Trina laughed.
“But Reno won’t say no, will he?” Earnestine asked. She was no fool. She knew Reno ran that household.
“He knows Daddy can handle Dommi. Otherwise, he would say no. So don’t worry. They’re yours for the next four days.”
Earnestine nodded. “Good times all around,” she said.
CHAPTER THREE
Five days later and Dommi was not only back in Vegas, but was back to his old tricks again. Which meant he slipped off of the indoor playground in the back of the PaLargio, slipped away from the other children out there, and made his way through the lobby. Although Sophie’s school started today, Dommi’s school wasn’t back in session until tomorrow. He wanted to have more of those good times while he still had a chance.
He was no stranger to the valets. Every chance he could, he’d go outside of the lobby and laugh and talk with the happy-go-lucky valets that assisted the guests. And to a man they loved little Dommi. He had a way about him, a style even, that elevated him from just another snot-nosed kid bothering them, to a kid they actually enjoyed being around. They knew their outsized view of him had a lot to do with the fact that he was Reno Gabrini’s snot-nosed kid. But the rest of their admiration was all Dommi’s doing.
That was why, when he came out of the lobby and stood under the portico by the valet podium, Lopez, one of the younger valets, smiled. “What’s up, Dom?” he asked.
“What’s up, ‘Pez?” Dommi responded.
Lopez grinned. “‘Pez,” he said to his fellow valets. “Check this kid out. He calls me ‘Pez.”
“That’s the thing,” Marcus, the valet supervisor, said to Lopez. “He’s no kid.”
“Tell him, Markie,” Dommi responded.
The other valets laughed. But Marcus, not at all enamored with that nickname, looked at Dom. “Do I look like a Markie to you?” he asked.
“Yeah, you do,” Lopez said between his laughter. “Dom hit it right on the head!”
Cars began to arrive in succession and the valets began getting back to work.
“You get out there too, ‘Pez,” Marcus said with a smile.
“Yes, sir, Markie,” Lopez said with a smile of his own. “I’m getting back to work right away, Markie,” he added as he left.
“Real funny!” Marcus yelled back. Then he looked at Dommi. “So you’re Dom Rickles now? Got you a show here in Vegas now? Very funny for a little kid.”
Dommi didn’t know whom Dom Rickles was, but he ignored that part. “I’m no kid,” he said instead. “Even you said that. I’m in fifth grade now.”
Marcus grinned. “Yeah, you’re a regular old man. Ready for retirement now. Real smart, kid. Are you smarter than a fifth grader? That’s what they used to ask.”
Dommi looked at Marcus. “Well are you?”
“I’m smarter than your ass! You’ve got street smarts, little man, yeah, you do. I don’t know how you got’em, being all rich and shit, but you’ve got’em. But I question your book knowledge. And books are where it’s at. And what are you doing out here this time of day anyway? Shouldn’t you be in school learning or something?”
“Maybe,” Dommi said as he watched a car pull up near the back of the line of cars the valets were suddenly overseeing. A car that interested him. “Maybe not.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“My school isn’t back in session until tomorrow.”
“Oh,” Marcus said, nodding. “So what are you up to then? Other than insulting me? Mr. G. knows you’re out here? Does Mrs. G. know?”
“Maybe,” Dommi said again, still looking at that one particular car in the back of the line. “Maybe not.”
“So why are you out here then?”
I’m waiting,” Dommi said. “What does it look like?”
“Waiting for what?” Marcus asked. “Your gambling partners? Your co-workers? Or maybe a hooker,” Marcus said with a smile. “Looking for a trick, Dominic?”
“Tricks are for kids,” Dommi said with a half-cocked smile, and Marcus laughed.
But Dommi’s attention was elsewhere. Soon Marcus’s was too. Especially when not only were guests arriving, but many other guests were coming out of the hotel asking for their cars. It became so busy so fast that even Marcus had to pitch in. He left Dommi’s side. Dommi looked around. The valet station was now crazy busy. But he knew an opportunity when he saw one.
His Uncle Sal had taught him the mechanics. Many times did he allow him to sit on his lap and learn whenever he could. He felt he knew how to drive better than most grownups. But cars intimidated him. They were just too big. Until today, when that little Fiat drove up.
He grabbed a ticket pad from the valet rack and hurried over to the Fiat that sat quietly waiting its turn. It was going to be a long wait, as the valets were super-busy. But Dommi came to their rescue. The driver pressed down the car’s window.
“If you’ll go around these cars and pull up to the very front of the line, sir,” Dommi said to the driver as he pointed toward the end of the circle of the front entrance portico, “I’ll get you signed in.”
The driver was at first doubtful, but who was he to complain? He thought it would be a long wait, and he was already getting service? “Very well,” he said, and did as Dom had instructed.
“He looks awfully young,” the man’s wife said as they drove past numerous cars and made their way around the circle to the front of the pack. “Like a child.”
“Why would they have a child valet?” the driver asked. “Come on, now. Don’t be foolish. He’s small because he’s a midget.”
“Little person, dear. They like to be called little people, not midgets anymore. But I don’t see how that’s possible. He doesn’t have a big head or anything.”
The driver rolled his eyes. His wife was getting on his nerves before their vacation even began. “All midgets do not have big heads, Ethel. Look at that pint-sized guy on Game of Thrones. His head isn’t big.” Then he thought about it. “Is it?”
While they pondered the question, Dom was running toward their car. Once there, he filled out a valet ticket, gave the driver the bottom stud, and asked for the keys.
“You guys can check in,” Dom said. “I’ll have a bellhop get your luggage and meet you at the check-in counter. I have to tell you, though,
it’s a long line.”
“Yes,” the driver said as he and his wife got out. “We figured that out already.” He handed Dom the keys.
Dom hurried over to the outside phone and dialed 1022. “This is Gabrini,” he said over the phone. “Send a bellhop out here now!”
He didn’t say that he was Dominic Gabrini, Junior for a reason. If they thought it was his father, or even his big brother Jimmy, they would move faster. If they knew it was him, they’d laugh.
The bellhop was surprised to hurry out and see that it was him. But when Dom instructed the bellhop to get the luggage out of the Fiat and meet the owners at check-in, the bellhop didn’t laugh. Dommi was a kid, but he was Reno Gabrini’s kid.
Dommi hurried into the lobby of his father’s grand hotel and, once certain that the couple waiting in line at Check-in wasn’t giving him a second glance, took his father’s private elevator upstairs to the penthouse. Once inside, he grabbed two pillows and stuffed them into a garbage bag, grabbed a pair of Reno’s sunglasses, and then made his way back downstairs, his heart pounding.
The valet station was still clogged and busy as heck as he walked to the Fiat, careful not to run or appear overly excited. He got in and put the pillows beneath his butt.
And then, just like his Uncle Sal taught him, he cranked up that baby, smiled his smile, and drove away. He was a happy boy, even though he knew he was going to be a dead boy if his father, or even his mother, ever found out about his big adventure. But he was certain they wouldn’t. He was certain he would be back long before they ever knew he had gone.
“There he is,” Quinn Chan said to the blackjack player as they both looked toward the casino’s main entrance. Reno Gabrini was making the rounds and had just come into their view.
Trent Chappell first heard about Reno Gabrini when he was a kid on the Strip finding johns for hookers, but he never laid eyes on him until now. On first glance, Chap didn’t see what all the fuss was about. Gabrini looked to him like nothing more than some rich casino owner in a tailored suit, backslapping his male guests and putting his best charm offensive on the females. He moved from table to table like a surgeon diagnosing his patients, not to make them feel better about themselves, but to make them feel better about returning again and again and blowing all their money inside his place of business. Chap noticed that even the men seemed easily enamored with Gabrini, but not necessarily because of the physical way he was turning the ladies on, but because of the power the men knew he wielded.
But on second look, as Gabrini was walking away from those guests and heading to his next table, to his next gullible marks, Chap saw it. He saw an intense, menacing look began to emerge on Gabrini’s attractive face, and a hard edge that made it clear he was not the one to trifle with. Gabrini had a reputation as a badass you didn’t mess with. He had a reputation as a man who was so mafia nobody could pinpoint a single member of the crew he ran. That was the man Chap saw as he moved away from one table and headed to the next one. Not some backslapper. Not some happy-go-lucky businessman. That face of menace was the Reno Gabrini he’d heard about, and even feared, when he was a kid on the Strip. He nodded his head. “I see what you mean,” he said to Quinn.
“Now you see what I mean?” Quinn was excited, as if she’d been vindicated. She stood beside his chair at the blackjack table. She was supposed to be working. She was, after all, one of Reno’s executive assistants, but work was the last thing on her mind. “Didn’t I tell you he was sexy?”
“I don’t know about all that,” Chap made clear as he tossed in a few more chips. A lady and three other men were playing at the big table too, but they were clean on the other side engaged in their own conversations. The blackjack dealer was also on the other side. They couldn’t hear a word. “I see what you mean about Gabrini’s toughness. I see what you mean about the scale of the job. That’s all I see.”
“But the scale of the man ain’t bad either,” Quinn said with a grin.
Chap looked over his shoulder at her. She was his baby sister. They had the same mother, but different fathers. Although both were biracial half-Asian and half-African-American, her extremely grayish-black complexion gave off more of a Southeast-Asian vibe than an African-American one. Chap’s browner complexion and almond eyes gave off just the opposite vibe. “Are you sure you’re in this for what you’re telling me you’re in this for, sis?”
Quinn looked at him. “Why would you ask that? Yes, I’m in it for what I said. I didn’t order you to come to Vegas under false pretenses.”
“You didn’t order me to do a gotdamn thing, first of all,” Chap pointed out. “You brought me a ticket to this bitch and I decided on my own accord to grace your presence with my presence. But you know how I roll, Quinn. Your ass is no innocent. If that money starts looking funny, and don’t roll in like you said it’s going to roll in, you’re going to wish I would have kept my black ass in Jersey.”
Quinn knew her brother wasn’t bullshitting. Chap had been on the wrong side of the law all their lives, and was to this day a small-time con still looking for that big score. She believed he loved her, but he didn’t agree to come just because she asked. He came for the money. “Don’t worry,” she said. “You’ll get paid.”
“I better get paid,” Chap said firmly as Quinn returned her attention to Reno. That fact wasn’t lost on Chap either. He shook his head. “Don’t try to con a conman.”
“Give it a rest, will you? I’m not conning you. I didn’t get you down here under any false pretenses.”
But Chap still had his doubts. “I heard Gabrini can fuck like a motherfuck,” he said, “and that’s why all you ladies want him. But if that’s what this is about; if you’re pulling this shit so you can be the last woman standing in his life when all the dust settles, then you’d better tell me now, Quinny.”
Quinn was getting tired of Chap’s suspicions, although she knew he was right to have them. “I told you already,” she said. “It’s not about that! You just do what you’re told and you’ll get your money. You’ll get paid.”
“And another thing,” Chap said as he tossed in more chips. “I don’t get the angle. I don’t understand why y’all starting with the kid. Why Jimmy Mack? I heard Reno was nuts about his old lady. Why can’t we start with her? Why can’t we start at the top?”
“He’s nuts about Jimmy Mack, too,” Quinn said. “Don’t think for a second he’s not. He watch that boy like a hawk. And we’ll get to his wife, don’t worry about that either. I know what I’m doing.”
“Yeah?” Chap asked as he shuffled his cards and stared at Quinn. He knew she was holding back a lot of intel from him. “And who’s doing you?” he asked. “Who’s the money man running this show?”
“Stop worrying, big brother! Dang. I got this.” Then Quinn smiled a devastatingly charming smile that Chap had never seen before. When he realized why, his suspicions only grew.
“Reno, hey!” Quinn said.
Reno Gabrini was approaching their blackjack table, but his entire focus, it seemed to Chap, was on Quinn. Chap heard how Gabrini liked to sleep around. Was Quinn, he wondered, already in his bed? “Aren’t you supposed to be working?” Reno asked her.
“I am working!” Quinn said too defensively, Chap thought. “I’m working this nice young man right here so he can spend more money.”
Reno laughed. “Well that’s alright then,” he said, and extended his hand to Chap. “I’m Reno.”
Chap played dumb. “Reno Gabrini? The owner?” He shook Reno’s extended hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir. A real honor. How are you?”
“I’m good if you’re enjoying yourself. Terrible if you aren’t.”
“Then you’re doing great because I’m having a blast. Best time ever.”
Reno laughed and gave Chap a back slap. “You’re a good liar, I see that.”
Chap couldn’t help but laugh too. Gabrini had what it took, he could see that.
“Could I borrow this lady for a sec?” Reno
asked his guest.
“By all means,” Chap responded.
Reno placed his hand in the small of Quinn’s back, and ushered her out of earshot of Chap. Quinn felt her heartbeat quicken, and her vagina throb, as soon as Reno touched her.
“What’s up, boss?” she asked, when they were out of earshot of anyone else.
“What the fuck you think is up?” Reno responded. “Get your ass upstairs and get back to work. Schmooze with customers on your own dime. Not mine.”
Quinn’s soaring heart crash-landed. His constant and unyielding rejection of her was exactly why she was going to enjoy his downfall. “Yes, sir,” she said, and hurried away.
As Reno made his way back over to the blackjack table to introduce himself to the other players, Quinn headed toward the elevators. She was angry and bitter inwardly, but outwardly she smiled heartily as she went.
But before she could make it out of the casino, Lee Jones, a tall African-American executive in Reno’s company and one of his oldest friends, hurried past her and made his way up to Reno. “We’ve got a problem, boss,” he said as he arrived.
Reno already knew it was serious. Lee wouldn’t be downstairs if it wasn’t. “What is it?” he asked.
“Guess who took the car of one of our guests and is at this very moment heading up the Strip?”
Reno frowned. “Who? And what do you mean they took a car?”
“He stole a car belonging to one of our guests and is now driving that same car up the Vegas Strip. The he being Dominic Gabrini, Junior.”
Reno’s heart dropped through his shoes. “Dommi stole a car? And he’s driving that car?”
“Up the Vegas Strip,” Lee added.
Reno was dumbstruck. “Up the Vegas fucking Strip?” he yelled. And he took off running. He ran like a high school track star. He ran across his massive casino toward the lobby so fast that even the faster Lee Jones could not keep up.
Reno Gabrini: A Family Affair Page 4
