“That’s about as important as what color is this table. I want the money.”
Jimmy exhaled. “By when?”
“Twenty-four hours.”
Jimmy’s eyes stretched. “That’s impossible!”
“You’d better make it possible. Because that’s all you get. On the back of that last photo is a number. Call it when you’re ready. If you call after this time tomorrow, you’ll be out of time.” Then Chap smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “Reno Gabrini is supposed to be getting a key to the city. He might not like the look of those images splattered all over the gossip pages of his city. He might not like it at all. And your cute little wife? She might not want to be your wife after she sees what you’ve really been up to. But what do I know, right? I’m just the messenger.” Then Chap smiled again, stood up, and left.
Jimmy put those photos and that phone in his pockets, and leaned back with anguish in his eyes. He thought about Val. And Madison. Val would leave him, and try to take Maddie with her, declaring him unfit to be around her. Then he thought about Reno. Just the idea of his father seeing those photos brought on even more despair for Jimmy. Because he knew, if his father ever saw what he’d just seen, he would be a dead man walking. And then, when his father took a second look, he wouldn’t be walking at all. Just dead.
CHAPTER SIX
“He’s asleep?” Trina asked when Reno entered their master bedroom. It was only one in the afternoon, but Dommi had given them both such a scare that it drained them of all their energy. Trina was lying across their king-sized bed.
Reno fell across the bed beside her. “He’s asleep,” he responded.
“It was amazing the way he drove that car, Reno. I’ll never tell that hellyun to his face, but I was impressed.”
Reno smiled too. “Guess who he said taught him how to drive?”
“Somebody taught him?” Trina looked at Reno. Then she caught herself. “Of course somebody had to teach him, what am I saying? But who? Jimmy?”
“Hell no. Jimmy knows better than that.”
“Then who?”
Reno exhaled. “Sal.”
When Trina heard it, she smiled. And then laughed. “Why didn’t I think of him? I’ll bet Sal was a man-child too, when he was a kid.”
“He was,” Reno admitted. “But that shit ain’t funny to me. Because Dominic is my man-child. Sal was out of line.”
“Oh, Reno, you know how Sal is. He treats our children as if they’re his own.”
“I understand that. And I appreciate that. But he needs to know the boundaries. I’ll be having a little conversation with that joker.”
“Be nice, Reno.”
“And give Sal a heart attack? Never!”
Trina laughed. Then she exhaled, as their problem in the other wing of their penthouse returned to their attention. “That boy is going to be the death of us yet,” she said.
“I think I died a few times when I was chasing his ass up the Strip,” Reno said.
Trina shook her head. “Can you imagine? What was he thinking? What kind of mind would even think to do something that idiotic?”
“He’s a lot like I was when I was a kid,” Reno admitted. “But he’s like ten times more daring. He’s me on steroids.” A distressed look appeared on Reno’s face. “He’s going to be stone cold.”
“You used to say that about Jimmy.”
“I still say that about Jimmy.”
Trina looked at him. “How so? He’s settling down to be a wonderful young man.”
“I’m a wonderful full grown man. But that doesn’t mean I’m not stone cold. I am. And unfortunately,” Reno said, with pain in his voice, “my sons are going to follow in my footsteps.”
Trina turned on her side, toward him. Reno was still lying on his back. She flapped her arm across his stomach. He placed his hand on her arm. “What do you propose to do about it?” she asked.
“I’m getting Jimmy out of Vegas.”
“You mean with that New Hampshire job?”
Reno nodded. “Yeah. The pace is slower there. There’s less chance for him to turn gangster there. He still can turn if it’s in him, I know, but the opportunities to exercise that thug in him won’t be as prevalent there as they are here. Besides, Charles Sinatra will be one state away, over in Jericho, Maine. He’ll keep tabs on him for me.”
“I like Charles,” Trina said. “He’s rough like his brother Mick, but he’s smooth too. Mick is just rough.”
Reno laughed.
“And the way they call Charles Big Daddy Sinatra,” Trina said with a smile of her own. “When his wife told me that was his nickname, I couldn’t believe it. He’s no old coot. Why are they calling him Big Daddy? But when she said it was a derisive term for the townspeople, a kind of play on the big brother analogy because Charles owned a lot of the town’s businesses and property, I got it. But his wife says everybody calls him that now. Even she does every now and then. It’s like they took what some meant to be a bad term and made it affectionate too.”
“Charles is a very moral man,” Reno said. “That’s what I like about him.”
“I agree,” Trina said, nodding her head. “He and Mick are like night and day.”
“But they’re both tough,” Reno said. “I respect them both to the fullest. But Big Daddy is different. He’s moral, but he’s tough as nails too. I need a strong man like him in charge of my son. You know how Jimmy can be.”
“But doesn’t Big Daddy have his hands full with his own sons and those two adopted daughters of his?”
“He does,” Reno admitted. “But he’s onboard. He said it will be his honor to watch after my son. And I’ll intervene should Jimmy still try to get off the reservation. But that’s the only chance I see for him. Between Charles and myself, we just might save Jimmy.”
“What about Dommi?” Trina asked. “You can’t ship him off to New Hampshire.”
“No,” Reno said with a smile. “He’ll steal a ship and come back.” Then his look turned serious again. “I’m going to have to teach him, Tree. I saw it today.”
“Teach him? Teach him what? How to drive?”
“How to be a wise guy and get away with it,” Reno said. “Right now, he’s just a little thoughtless thug who doesn’t get away with shit. If I don’t do something, he’ll be in prison, or sleeping in his grave, before he’s eighteen.”
Trina stared at Reno. There was a time when she would have objected. Dommi still could be changed into this good little boy who grew up and went to college, got married, and lived a quiet, suburban life. But after today, she knew better. She saw it too. “But how can you teach him to be a wise guy without condoning that kind of lifestyle, Reno?”
“Hell if I know,” Reno admitted, rubbing the back of his hand across his eyes. “But that’s what it’s come down to.” He began unbuckling his belt, and then unbuttoning and unzipping his pants. Trina pulled out his penis, and began to rub it. “I’ve got to teach him or that boy is going to get out in this world ill-equipped to handle his own nature. My old man didn’t teach me. I had to figure it out for myself. It nearly cost me everything.” Reno closed his eyes and began to groan at Trina’s touch.
Trina saw his distress. And she felt it. She also felt his joy as she rubbed him. He began to grow bigger in her well-experienced hand. “I don’t know if teaching will work,” she said, “but I know this: you’ll do right by him. And Jimmy too. As for that little girl of ours and our little granddaughter? They’re spoiled princesses already.”
“I wish I had all girls,” Reno said.
Trina smiled. “I called the school and spoke to Sophie before you came in here. She wanted to know why Dommi didn’t have to go to school today, and she did. When I told her Dommi’s school hadn’t started yet, but her school had, she still didn’t believe me.”
Reno smiled. “That’s my girl. She’s a show-me woman. Ah,” he added, as Trina moved down and put her mouth on it. “Just like her mother. Oh, Tree!
And Trina was giv
ing him the kind of head that made him want to jump out of his own skin. Her lick, her suck, the way she went all the way down on him was the kind of turn-on that turned him completely up. And when she began to move her mouth up and down along his shaft, he didn’t do as other men did and place his hand on her head to guide her. Trina needed no guidance. He didn’t move a muscle. He just laid there. And allowed her direction to move him.
And when his pre-cum was coming at an alarming rate, and he was so enthralled with her mastery that he was on the verge of cumming in her mouth, he pulled out. He laid on his side, and began undressing her.
“Now it’s your turn,” he said, when her clothes were removed.
He opened her legs and moved in between them. Trina knew to lay still too as his tongue took her there. He had a way of eating her that made her toes tingle and her breasts tighten. There was no better lover than Reno.
And he loved her. He ate her ferociously. He ate her with his affection showing in the movements of his tongue, until the throbbing of his penis, and the pulsations of her vagina, became too much. He knew time was running out.
He eased on top of her. When he guided his penis inside of her, and they both looked at each other as that feeling of first entry thrilled them to the roots of their hair, they smiled. But as he pushed in further, and further still, all smiles were gone. And the full force of those sensual feelings took over.
They embraced each other and settled down to a long, slow fuck. They made love like a married couple with no more points to prove, but determined to prove every point all over again. Reno pumped into her and Trina felt him gliding across her womanhood, puncturing her with every stroke, until she was raising her legs, wrapping them across his back, and preparing for her climax.
It came hard. Like a ton of bricks on her chest. She could barely breathe, but it was a great breathlessness. Because it made her cry out. It made her feel every inch of his rod as it slid up and down and then pounded her. Reno did not let up. And as her orgasm sizzled, his ejaculation spilled out and covered her. And now they both were in the throes of a passion that kept them tight, uptight, and disjointed all at the same time. Reno kept stroking. Reno kept pouring and pounding. And they came. They came in each other’s arms.
CHAPTER SEVEN
To Jimmy’s great relief, his father did not return to the office. He knew he probably was emotionally spent after that craziness with Dom, but he never thought he’d leave at midday and never return. And although Reno’s staff didn’t leave until well after midnight, it was still far earlier than Reno’s super-late, sometimes all-night work hours. Which gave Jimmy enormous hope. By the time the elevator doors opened on the floor of his father’s suite of offices, it was just after one am. Everybody had gone.
Jimmy’s heart was pounding nonetheless as he put in the combination code and opened his father’s office door, quickly entering and closing it back. Then he walked over to the side wall, pressed a button behind the bust of Beethoven that sat on a side table, causing the wall to open and a safe to be revealed.
Jimmy had the combination, not because his father had given it to him, but because he had seen his father open that safe a hundred times and he memorized it. And when he opened the safe, and saw the cash his father kept inside, his heart squeezed in anxiety. Jimmy had never stolen a dime from his father. Not one red cent! He wasn’t raised to steal from anybody. Now he was about to steal two hundred thousand dollars from the man he most loved, feared, and respected in this whole world? His hand was shaking, when he opened his garbage bag, and reached in.
But after he filled the bag, closed it up, and was about to close the door of the safe, he could hear somebody inputting the code to open his father’s office door. His heart fell through his shoe. If his father caught him he was a dead man. He knew it. And he held the evidence of his crime right in his hands! So he dropped the bag in the area behind the wall, stepped out, and quickly pressed the button behind the bust of Beethoven again. The wall closed within a millisecond of the office door opening. When he saw that it was Quinn, he was too relieved to even realize how odd it was that she should be there too.
“Jimmy?” she asked, as if it was his presence in his own father’s office that demanded explanation. “What are you doing here?”
It was that accusatory look she gave him, as she approached him, that woke him up. He knew Quinn. He knew what kind of games she played with people. “You’re asking the wrong question,” he said. “What are you doing here is the question?”
She lifted a stack of papers in her hand. “I am your father’s assistant.”
“One of them, yes,” Jimmy noted. She was once his father’s senior executive assistant. But not anymore.
“I’m also the one he asked to get signatures on these contracts,” she continued. “I was going to leave them on his desk. Now what’s your excuse?”
“My reasoning is none of your business,” Jimmy responded.
Quinn was offended, but she smiled. “Good for you, Jimmy Mack. Getting all tough.” Then she remembered the time she and Jimmy Mack used to hook up, and how good he used to put it on her. She looked down, between his legs.
“What are you waiting for?” he asked. “Put the contracts on his desk and beat it.”
Quinn began walking toward the desk. “You know,” she said as she walked, “there’s no-one up here but you and me.”
Jimmy frowned. “And?”
“And,” she said, as she walked around to the side of the messy desk and placed the contracts on top of another stack of files. Then she sat on the edge of the desk, facing Jimmy, and reached beneath her skirt. “We won’t be heard.”
Jimmy’s mouth began to water as she pulled down her panties.
“You can do me as rough as you like,” she said, “and nobody will ever hear.”
She slipped one leg of her panties off of her stiletto shoe, and opened both legs wide.
“So come on, Jimmy Mack, you know you want it.”
Jimmy’s heart was pounding. He wanted it alright.
“You can eat it,” she suggested, “if you’re afraid to fuck it.”
He was already in trouble. He was already skating on thin ice with everybody. Hell, he was about to steal two hundred grand from his own father because he was being blackmailed for his messed up behavior! What difference would a quick fuck make? What difference would a little taste make?
Quinn smiled her best reptilian smile. He went for it, as she knew he would. He went to her, got down on his knees, and was about to lick his ass off. But he smelled it. And it was foul. It was nothing like that fresh smell he had grown accustomed to with Val. And then he thought about Val. And their precious baby. And here he was about to betray them both and throw his vows, his loyalty, his devotion to his family straight into the ocean. And for what? A fuck with Quinn Chan? A fuck with a woman he could hardly stand? And she was stank on top of it? He got off his knees.
“No thanks,” he said. “Now beat it.”
Quinn was stunned by his reaction. “What?” she asked. “No? Are you dumb? No other man has ever turned me down!”
“My father did, I’ll bet you that.”
He didn’t, because Quinn never had the nerve to go there with Reno, but that was for her to know. “Ha,” she said as she pulled back up her panties. “That’s what you think.”
Jimmy stared at her when she said that. He knew his father had a reputation around Vegas as a ladies man, but he knew him too well. He would never cheat on Trina with a woman who worked at the PaLargio. Jimmy knew he would never hurt Trina that way. He couldn’t say his father never cheated at all. There were too many rumors for him to be that certain. But he could say without question that his father never cheated with Quinn. “Quit lying,” he said to her. “Just take your stank ass on out of my father’s office.”
“Yeah, whatever, Jimmy,” Quinn said as she began walking out. “There was a time you used to like it. You couldn’t get enough of it, in fact. Wonder how Reno woul
d feel if he found out?”
“Same way he would feel if I told him what you just said about him. The cheating part?”
Quinn stopped and looked at Jimmy. “You wouldn’t.”
“Oh, but I would. He may be angry with me, but he’ll fire your ass. So I think you need to cool it with the telling.”
Quinn knew it too. She smiled. “I was just playing anyway. Me with your father? No way. I don’t mess with men I work with.”
“You don’t work with him, you work for him. And everybody with half a brain knows you sleep with anything moving. Some of which has already crawled up inside of you and died. Just leave please.”
Quinn was embarrassed. She hated some jumpstart like Jimmy to best her at anything. But she had to stay focused. He was going to get his. She smiled anyway, and left.
When she was gone, Jimmy sighed relief. But he knew Quinn. He had to make sure. He walked up to the door, and quickly opened it. Sure enough, Quinn was leaning against it and trying to listen so hard that she nearly fell when the door opened. When she straightened up, Jimmy watched her as she stood erect, got on the elevator, and left.
When she was completely gone, he hurried back into the office, closing the door behind him. Then he hurried back to Beethoven, pressed the button behind the bust for the wall to slide open, and then grabbed his loot-filled garbage bag and left. He still had an apartment inside the PaLargio, the one his father gave to him before he got married. He would make his way there. He would put the money in a briefcase, and, later in the day, call that number. The meeting would be set in broad daylight, in a place of his choosing. He’d call his Uncle Sal and see if he could “borrow” a couple of his men. Unlike his father, he knew Sal would say yes without asking why. He’d just tell him to be careful and then give him not a couple, but four or five of his best men. The blackmailer would get the money, but then Sal’s men would follow him, beat him down into submission and dare him to try to blackmail Jimmy again, and then give the money back to Jimmy. And Jimmy would return it without his father ever knowing it was missing. Jimmy was a man with a plan.
Reno Gabrini: A Family Affair Page 6
