CHAPTER FOUR
“Get his mother!” Reno yelled as he ran. “She’s in her office. Get Tree now!”
“I called her while I was coming to get you,” Lee said as he ran behind Reno. “She’s on her way down.”
And by the time Reno ran into the lobby and was about to run out of the front entrance, Trina was just running off of the elevator and heading for the exit too. Although she was coolly dressed in a pearl-white, short-jacket Chanel pantsuit and heels, there was nothing cool about her. Where Reno was stunned by his son’s behavior, she was beyond stunned. “Where is he, Reno?” she asked anxiously. “Where’s Dommi?”
Reno saw the anguish in her big, hazel eyes. “We’ll find him,” he responded assuredly, as he grabbed her hand and they both ran out of the exit, with Lee Jones still trying to keep up behind them.
When they ran outside, Reno’s Porsche had already been pulled around and was waiting for them. Lopez opened the passenger door for Trina. The valet supervisor, Marcus, held the driver’s door open for Reno. “I already have two cars trying to catch up with him now, sir,” Marcus said as Reno approached. “He’s driving a blue and white Fiat. I’m hoping they get to him before the police does.”
“Fuck the police!” Reno said, as he got into his car. “He’d better hope I don’t get to him first!” Trina got in too, and they sped off, even as the valet had to jerk his hand away in an attempt to close her door. Trina closed it herself.
Reno glanced at Trina as he waited for cars to pass before he could make it onto the busy street. He could feel her fear.
“Driving a car,” she said incredulously, shaking her head. “Wait until I get my hands on him. I’m going to beat his bony ass!”
Reno sped in front of a car, barely missing it, and made his way onto the street. His face was a mask of anguish. “I didn’t even know he could drive. Did you?”
Trina frowned. “He can’t drive, Reno, what are you talking about? He’s in fifth grade! How can he even see above the steering wheel?”
“He’s not that little,” Reno said. “He can see. At least I pray to God he can.” Then a horrible thought occurred to him. “Good Lord, Trina, what if he can’t even see?!” The thought of Dommi driving blindly through the streets of Las Vegas, slamming around cars as if they were bumper cars, scared the shit out of both of them. And Reno drove faster.
Then Reno grabbed Trina’s hand, and they both began to pray.
Nearly a mile away from his father, Dommi was driving along the Strip and having the time of his life. He knew how all the functions worked. He knew how to brake, how to accelerate, how to steer. He didn’t plan to steal a car and test that knowledge, but when he saw the opportunity, he took it. When that little Fiat drove up, he knew it was his opportunity.
Now he was driving along like a seasoned pro. Enjoying the view. Enjoying the freedom. Planning to have the car back in the round before anybody knew it was missing. He even had on a pair of his father’s sunglasses, although he was sitting on the edge of the pillows to see through the windshield, and to reach the brakes. But he could reach them. He even tried to lean a little to the side, the way he saw the cool guys do in rap videos. He was having a time.
He also knew he was flirting with danger. He knew his father would kill him if he ever found out. But Dommi’s constantly calculating brain was certain that he had covered his tracks sufficiently enough that no way his father, or mother for that matter, would ever know.
His small brain was enlightened, however, when he stopped at a red light the way his Uncle Sal had always instructed him, and two cars pulled up on either side of him. The guys in one of the cars he recognized as his father’s valets. He tried to hide his face from them. But when he looked to the right side of his stolen Fiat, and saw, not some strangers, but his father AND mother, his heart momentarily stopped beating. He almost pissed in his pants. And when his father jumped out of his Porsche and began pointing at him and hurrying to his car, yelling words he couldn’t hear, Dommi knew he had two choices: either die at his father’s hands, or floor it.
He was about to floor it. But his father beat on the passenger side window and angrily pointed a finger at him, motioning for him to let the window down. Dommi pressed down the window, realized it was the driver’s side window, and then pressed down the passenger window. He decided to smile, to play it off. His parents always liked when he smiled. “Hey, Daddy,” he said jovially. “Funny I should see you here.”
But Reno wasn’t trying to play with his incorrigible son. “Move from this spot and I’ll kick your fucking ass!” he said to him. “You hear me, boy?”
Dommi’s heart was pounding. And he was nodding. “Yes, sir,” he said. And all thoughts of flooring it, or even pretending that he had done nothing wrong, went out the window too.
By now cars behind them were honking their horns and Reno was ordering his valets in the second car to drive off to clear up that lane. Trina was also getting out of the Porsche so that she could get behind the wheel to drive it back to the PaLargio. They both wanted to give a finger to the honkers, but they were still too terrified for their son.
Dommi quickly moved over to the passenger seat in the car, taking his pillows with him, as his father got in behind the wheel. Reno quickly snatched those shades off of his son’s face.
Dommi’s mother, Trina, was already out of the Porsche and heading toward the Porsche’s driver side. But as Reno was getting into the Fiat, she poked her head into the passenger side window. “Have you lost your damn mind?” she asked her son. Her anger was driven by the terror she felt for her son too. She was shaking. “You could have killed somebody, Dommi!”
“If he hasn’t already,” Reno said, shaking too. He looked at his son. “Did you run into any cars, boy?”
“No, sir,” Dommi said sincerely. When Reno and Trina continued to look at him as if they were doubtful, he frowned. “I swear!”
“Wait until we get you home,” Trina warned with clenched teeth. “Wait till we get you home!” Then she got into Reno’s Porsche, and sped off. She moved in front of the Fiat, and Reno followed her in.
Reno was pleased that Dommi was safe, that the world was safe from Dommi, and that the stolen vehicle was now under his care and control. He was no longer fearful. But his anger was rising as every second passed. He watched Trina as she drove his Porsche. The way she kept running her hand through her flowingly beautiful hair, something she only did when she was super nervous, made him angrier. He hated when anybody upset his wife. Especially when it was all a bunch of bullshit.
And this was bullshit on steroids as far as Reno was concerned. He said nothing to his son. He was too afraid he would rip him apart if he spoke right now. He just drove in that little-ass car that was the direct antithesis to any car Reno Gabrini would be caught dead in. But, to his surprise, it wasn’t a bad ride at all.
But Dommi, who often forgot about his father’s rage until it was far too late, wasn’t thinking about the ride anymore. He was shaking in his boots. And knowing his father, he knew he had good reason. Knowing his father, he knew this was only the beginning of his pain.
CHAPTER FIVE
The pain was excruciating to Dominic as Reno had him over his knees and was putting a tan on his behind. He was not holding back. They had barely made it into the PaLargio’s penthouse, which was one of their two residences in Vegas, before Reno was on the couch spanking their son. Trina was heading for the bar near the back of the room. She knew Reno was going to need a drink afterwards. She certainly needed one herself. But Dommi was crying for her.
“Mommy!” he cried as Reno spanked him. “Mommy!”
Trina wasn’t trying to hear that. He should have thought about Mommy when he was stealing and joyriding. “Don’t mommy me,” she said. “You’re the little gangster now. You’re the little thief. You can take it!”
“No, I can’t!” Dommi cried. “I can’t take it, no, ma’am, I cannot take it! Not even a tiny bit! It hurts so bad!”
Trina stopped walking and looked at her son. He was in tears. He was in pain. “I’m sorry that it hurts, Dommi,” she began saying. Then she shook her head. “Why am I lying? No, I’m not sorry. It’s supposed to hurt! Your ass have got to understand you can’t pull all this craziness you’ve been pulling around here. Me and your father, we can’t take it! Stealing a car? Driving a car? You are out of your damn mind, boy! Beat his ass, Reno. Beat his ass!”
Reno was beating his ass.
“But it hurts!” Dommi cried.
“Tough,” Reno replied. “If you would have killed yourself on that Strip, or somebody else, you don’t think that would have hurt me and your mother? You don’t think that would have killed us?”
And just the thought of what could have been, and what it would have done, not just to him, but especially to Tree, made Reno spank harder. He couldn’t let up. He couldn’t make Dommi think for a second that his little escapades were going to be celebrated, or even tolerated, a second longer.
Jimmy Mack was laughing so hard he was in tears. When he ended the phone call, his wife Val, holding their baby girl, was looking up at him. They were in the VIP booth at Lexie’s, a new restaurant inside the PaLargio that Reno named after Jimmy’s youngest sibling, Sophia, or Lexie, as Reno called her. As his father’s only girl, she was quickly emerging as his father’s favorite and the only child that had never felt his wrath. Jimmy felt it many times. Dommi felt it often.
“What’s so funny?” Val asked him, as she held their on-the-verge of sleep daughter, and ate more salad. Madison, their baby girl, was also being spoiled by her grandpa Reno. “Tell me. I can use a good laugh.”
“It’s the Little Rascal again,” Jimmy said.
“Dommi?” Val asked.
“Who else? And it’s not funny, not really.”
“What did he do this time?”
“Lee says he stole a car and was cruising the Strip.”
Val was stunned. She stopped eating. “He stole? He drove? My word! Is he okay?”
“That cat has nine lives. You know he’s just fine and dandy.”
“Is the city okay?”
Jimmy laughed. “He didn’t hurt anybody, if that’s what you mean.”
“But how could it be? He stole a car, and drove it?”
Jimmy continued to laugh. “Ain’t he something?”
“But I don’t understand,” Val said. “He’s only a child! How could he do such a thing?”
“We are talking about Dommi, Val,” Jimmy reminded her. “Dommi will go where even hardened criminals will not roam. That little rascal is something else!”
Val looked at her husband. He was handsome and biracial just like Dommi, only Jimmy wasn’t Trina’s biological child, but was the product of a relationship Reno had with another black woman when he and the woman were both teenagers. Although Jimmy’s mother was dead, Trina, for all intents and purposes, filled the mother role more than admirably. Trina and Jimmy were very close. But Val knew she didn’t marry a mama’s boy. She married a man. A man who, to her constant consternation, seemed to glorify gangsters. Men like his Uncles Sal and Tommy, his Uncle Mick, and especially his father, whom Jimmy idolized and who seemed, to Val, gangster to the core. In Val’s opinion, Reno had too many mob connections to just be a businessman.
Now Dommi seemed to be heading right down that road to perdition too, and Jimmy was enamored with it. She dreaded it for Jimmy, the father of her child. “You talk like you admire Dommi,” she said.
“He’s my little brother,” Jimmy said. “Why wouldn’t I admire him? He’s a good person. He’s just tough. But I’m still his big brother. I know how to kick his ass if he gets out of line. Dad and I can handle Dommi, don’t worry. Mom can too.”
“But I told you, Jimmy, I don’t believe in corporal punishment. When our daughter gets older, and she does something wrong, I believe in Time Out. Not spankings and whippings like Reno put on y’all. Because I guarantee you that’s exactly what he did to Dom when he found out.”
Jimmy didn’t respond to that. He loved Val, but sometimes she was unrealistic in her views of marrying into the Gabrini clan. She didn’t marry into a family of choirboys. She needed to understand that. One day, if they were going to stay together, he knew he was going to have to make her understand it.
“Give me the baby,” he said, and Val gladly handed her across the table to her father. As Jimmy snuggled the baby, she smiled briefly, and fell back asleep. She was Jimmy’s heart. He understood why his father loved Sophia so.
“That’s a load off,” Val said with a smile, as she began to eat her salad more vigorously.
Jimmy exhaled. He looked at Val. She was a pretty black woman, with youth, smarts, and kindness. She wanted him to advance as badly as he wanted to advance. But he knew she wasn’t going to like this. “I have some news,” he said to her.
Val chewed and stared at him. “What news?”
“Dad wants me to work for him.”
“You’re already working for him. You’re his floor manager.”
“Not on that level,” Jimmy said. “He wants me to run his northeast operations. He wants me in charge of all of his smaller hotels across the northeast.”
“Wow,” Val said. “That’s great news, Jimmy! I remember a time when he was hesitant to let you run even one of his restaurants. That’s wonderful news.” But she stared at him. “What’s the catch?”
“What catch?”
“Why are you giving me the constipated face? What’s wrong?” Then she thought about what he had said. He was going to be in charge of Reno’s northeast operations. “We will remain headquartered here in Vegas though, right?”
Jimmy shook his head. “That’s the thing. We’ll have to move to New Hampshire.”
Val frowned. “New Hampshire?” She said it as if it was a foreign country. “Why way up there?”
“New England is the region where he’s going to have a lot of hotels, and also a few in Canada, and he wants somebody to check on them regularly. He wants me close to the action. The branch office will be located in New Hampshire.”
“But why not Boston? He could at least let us live in Boston.”
Jimmy shook his head again. “He said no. He wants me where he wants me, Val. I can’t negotiate with him. You know that.”
But Val didn’t like it, as Jimmy had already expected. Whereas Jimmy wasn’t thrilled about leaving his family behind, Val hated the idea of leaving her father behind too. Jimmy knew why she was hesitant. “He’ll be okay, Val,” he said.
But Val looked at him suspiciously, wondering if he knew. Did he know that she not only was going to miss her father, but his father too? She had a crush on Reno that wouldn’t quit, and she would die if Jimmy ever truly knew the extent of that crush. “What do you mean?” she asked him.
“I know you dread leaving your father behind,” Jimmy responded. “But he’ll be okay.”
Val felt better. Jimmy spoke the truth, although it was only a half-truth. “It’s been my father and I for so long,” she said. “Ever since my mother died. I can’t just leave him here by himself. And he adores Madison. She’s his only grandchild. I don’t want her to leave him either.”
“Then what are you saying? I can’t take the job?”
“I’m saying I don’t know. This is a big decision, Jimmy. When does Reno have to know?”
“You know Dad. He’s upset I didn’t decide on the spot. But when I told him I need to check with you first, he understood.”
“At least that,” Val thought. Reno was a lot of things, but he did respect a wife’s role in a marriage, and the importance of a couple being on the same page.
Then Jimmy frowned. “What’s that smell?” he asked.
Val looked at their daughter. When she saw her with a little grimace on her face, she smiled. “Give her to me. Time for the changing table in the ladies room.”
Jimmy smiled too, handed the baby back to Val, and Val, with her big carrying bag, carr
ied Madison to the restrooms. But as soon as Val disappeared inside of those rooms, Trent Chappell walked up to their booth and, instead of asking to sit down, sat down. Jimmy didn’t like it. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked him.
“Sorry if I’m offending you,” Chap said.
“Then don’t offend me and get the fuck up!” Jimmy responded.
“I can’t do that.” Then he tossed a set of photographs over to Jimmy’s side of the table.
Jimmy stared at the big, burly guy, and then he looked at the photos. When he saw one of them, his heart squeezed in shock. He picked up the rest.
“Yeah, big boy,” Chap said as Jimmy viewed each picture. “That’s right. Real graphic, aren’t they?” Then he tossed one of those throwaway phones onto the table too.
Jimmy picked up the phone and then looked at Chap. Chap could see the devastation on his young, handsome face. This was working better than he thought it would. “The real-time, video version,” he said to Jimmy, “is on that phone.”
Jimmy stared at him. “Where did you get this from?” He thought about his friend and employee Finn. But Finn wouldn’t do that to him!
“Those are the shortened versions,” Chap said. “I have the complete editions too. You can have them all, complete with the date and time sequence, for two hundred thou.”
Jimmy frowned. “Are you crazy? I don’t have that kind of dough!”
“But your old man does,” Chap quickly retorted. “And you are going to get it for me, Jimmy Mack. Because, guess what? I’ll not only go to your wife: she’s beautiful, by the way. But I’ll go to your old man himself. He may not take too kindly to a son, an irresponsible son if those photos are any indication, running any company of his. Especially a son in charge of raising his only grandchild.”
Jimmy’s heart was hammering. His career was about to skyrocket. It took years, but he was finally winning his father’s confidence. Now this? He looked at the man at his table. “Who are you?”
Reno Gabrini: A Family Affair Page 5
