“Because he is,” Trina admitted. “But not for the reason you think. He’s protecting Jimmy. He doesn’t want him to go down the same road he went down. That’s his only reason.”
Val nodded. Now she felt even worse.
“Oh, Val,” Trina said with a smile. “Reno’s just a crush. You have a crush on him, it’s no big deal. We all have our fantasy men.”
“But you’re concerned?” Val asked her.
“I’m concerned, yes,” Trina admitted. “But it’s not about you hooking up with Reno, because I know Reno’s not going to hook up with you. My concern is when your young, pretty self eyeballs another attractive older man. And that particular older man is not only willing to hook up with you, he’s willing to pursue you for that hookup. That’s when you’ll be in trouble. That’s when your love for Jimmy has got to be stronger than your preference. Because if it’s not, you need to tell him so now. New Hampshire is not Vegas. It’s loaded with older men. So moving to a state like that might help Jimmy. But will it help his marriage?”
Val understood everything Trina was saying. And there was an element of fear in her heart. But she nodded her head. “I love Jimmy,” she said. “And if moving to the east coast is going to help him stay out of that gangster life, then I’ll make the move.”
“And you and your preference for older men?” Trina asked her.
“I love Jimmy,” she said. “He’s my preference now.”
Trina knew it sounded good. She only prayed Val kept her word. They were going to be less than a hundred miles from Big Daddy Charles Sinatra, one of the sexiest men Trina had ever seen. She remembered how Val kept taking peeps at him during their family reunion in Philly. To be fair, Trina knew that every woman there was eyeing Charles too. But every woman there didn’t have a thing for powerful, older men the way Val did. It was different.
“You have to work at a marriage,” Trina said. “I suggest getting yourself into somebody’s church as soon as you make it to New Hampshire, and working hard at it. You’re a very moral young lady. You’ll do the right thing.”
Val smiled. “Thanks, Ma,” she said.
A few minutes later, Reno was walking through the door. Val’s heart began to pound. She couldn’t help it. Trina saw the difference in her.
“I’d better get going,” Val said, as she took little Maddie off of Trina’s knees and pulled her into her arms. Her security blanket, Trina felt.
Val expected Reno to hurry over and play with Maddie the way he always did, but this time he didn’t even break a smile. “Hey, Val,” he said. “Hey, Maddie Mae,” he said to his grandchild.
“We were just leaving,” Val said. “Jimmy in the casino?”
“The Gray Room,” Reno said. “Freckles the clown died.”
“Oh no!” Val and Trina said in unison. Reno was surprised. He didn’t think they knew who Freckles was.
“Sophie and Dommi are going to be so disappointed,” Trina added.
“Maddie likes watching him too,” Val said. “What awful news. I’d better get down there. See you later. And thanks, Ma,” Val added, as she left.
Reno had his hands in his pockets and was staring at Trina. Trina already detected a mood about him, but she assumed it was because of the fight they had three nights ago and the fact that she wouldn’t discuss it any further. She couldn’t. She didn’t even know what they wanted yet and whether or not she could handle it without Reno ever finding out. He sat on the sofa beside her. They were within inches of each other. His hair was a mess, his suit was wrinkled and well-worn, and his eyes were a combination of blue and red.
“You look awful,” she said.
He looked at her. Her hair was immaculate, her clothes were understated and classy, and her smooth brown skin radiated with warmth and beauty. “You look wonderful,” he said.
Trina stared at him. “Reno, what’s wrong?”
“You lied to me the other night,” he said bluntly. Trina’s heart began to hammer. “I haven’t figured out why,” he added, “but you lied to me.”
Trina didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t in a position to say anything yet. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“Does it have to do with Jimmy?”
Trina frowned. “Jimmy? Why would it have to do with Jimmy?”
“Quinn says you were the one who set him up with that tranny.”
Trina’s response was exactly what Reno knew it would be. She was floored. “She said what? Why that bitch! That’s a lie, Reno!”
Reno placed his arm around her. “I know it is.”
But she pulled away from him and stood up. “Then why would you even fix your mouth to ask me something like that?”
But her response only angered him. “Why do you think?” he asked, standing up too. “You still haven’t told me what you were up to that night we were supposed to meet with Sal!”
“Are you for real? You still haven’t told me what you’re up to every night when your ass comes home late!”
“You know what my ass is up to. I’m working my ass off, that’s what it’s up to!”
“And I’m not? I’m the number two at the PaLargio, and I have a store to run! You don’t think I work my ass off?”
Reno let out a sharp exhale. “Yes,” he said. “I know you do.”
Trina expected more fight out of him. She was thrown.
“What’s breaking my heart,” he said, “is the fact that I know something’s going on with you, but you won’t tell me what it is.”
“Because there’s nothing to tell, Reno. I’m fine!”
Reno stared at her. She wasn’t. Not by a mile. The stress in her eyes alone told him that much. But he knew she wasn’t ready to confide in him yet. And it hurt him to his core. Maybe they were losing something. Maybe he wasn’t her knight in shining armor anymore.
He began leaving.
“Where are you going?” she asked him. “Reno?”
But he didn’t respond. When he walked out, he slammed the door behind him.
Trina, upset herself, grabbed her cell phone and called his office. “Put Quinn on the line,” she ordered.
“Ah, I’m sorry, Mrs. Gabrini,” Reno’s secretary said, “but just a few minutes ago Quinn was escorted out of the building by Security. It doesn’t appear as if she’ll be coming back.”
Trina closed her eyes in anguish. This was fast becoming a nightmare of epic proportions. “Okay,” she said into the phone, and ended the call.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Boss just drove up,” one of Reno’s men said to the others as they stopped playing cards and stood to their feet. They were in the safe house, with two detainees, and Debrosiac had already warned them that it might be a new day, but Reno was in a foul mood. But when the door opened, they didn’t see the foulness. Reno was all business.
“Where and where?” Reno asked as soon as he entered the house.
“Chap is in the basement,” Debrosiac responded. “Quinn Chan is in the room over there.” He was pointing toward the room to the right.
Reno made his way to that room, with Debrosiac following him. Quinn was sitting on the bed in the small, windowless place. When she saw Reno walk in, she stood up. “Reno, I swear I didn’t---”
“Shut the fuck up,” Reno responded.
“Sit down,” Debrosiac ordered her.
Quinn, angry herself, sat back down.
Reno pulled up a chair and sat in front of her. He crossed his legs and stared at her. The room reeked with the muskiness of her own sweat.
She was trying to cry, but her eyes were as dry as Reno’s. “Why am I here?” she asked with a whine in her voice. “I didn’t blackmail Jimmy. I was just doing what I was told! I was just trying to hold onto my job!”
“My wife,” Reno said calmly, “has nothing to do with this.”
“I knew you wasn’t going to believe me. You think she’s this angel when she’s not!”
Debrosiac stood straight from the wall he was leaning against. Was s
he nuts? Nobody talked about Trina Gabrini that way. At least not in front of Reno. He looked from Quinn to Reno. But Reno remained calm, and continued to stare at Quinn.
And Quinn continued her Trina-bashing. “She treats me like I’m beneath her every time she sees me,” she said. “I try to be friendly to her. I try to get along with her. But she doesn’t want to have anything to do with me. What did I ever do to her? Yeah, I slept with Mick Sinatra when he was in town, but she was a married woman. Why should that bother her? I can’t help it if I’m classy. I can’t help it if I’m beautiful!”
Debrosiac was stunned. Was that fool implying that she was beautiful, but Trina was not? Was that the implication she was trying to suggest? Debrosiac, again, looked at Reno. This time Reno spoke.
“You wouldn’t know beauty if it rammed down your fucking throat,” he said. “You wouldn’t know class if it sat on your fucking face. You aren’t gorgeous. You’re grotesque. You think beauty is only skin deep and class is how wide you can open your legs and still pretend to be dainty.”
Quinn was surprised by his harshness. He was behaving as if he loved Trina so much that it hurt him to his heart to hear anything negative about her. He acted as if he really loved that woman! It made Quinn hate Trina even more.
But Reno wasn’t finished with his attack. “Forget not being in the same ballpark with my wife,” he said to her. “Forget not being in the same league with my wife. You aren’t even in the same country with my wife when it comes to beauty and class. You’re just an easy piece of ass to men and a pain in the ass to women. You do your job well. That’s the only reason I kept your ass around. You knew what you were doing. But to try and implicate Trina in your bullshit? To try and denigrate her and think I’d take your word over hers? To think that you can put daylight between me and my wife? Reno and Trina? You must be out of your gotdamn mind.”
Quinn knew she had to clarify her position. “I wasn’t trying to put any daylight between you and her,” she responded. “I was only trying to tell the truth.”
But as soon as she said that last word, Reno quickly stood up. Quinn, terrified that he would strike her, leaned back.
“Come with me,” he ordered, and headed out of the bedroom.
Quinn was too terrified to move, but Debrosiac prodded her on. “Didn’t you hear the man?” he angrily asked her. “Get up!”
Quinn stood and hurried to follow Reno out of the bedroom. Debrosiac followed behind her. But when they made their way back into the living room, Debrosiac was accosted by another one of Reno’s men who had intel for him. Reno continued to head downstairs, to the basement, while Debrosiac motioned for yet another man to take charge of Quinn and follow the boss. The man grabbed Quinn by the arm, and forced her downstairs too.
When they made it downstairs, and Quinn was able to see her brother strapped in a chair in the middle of the damp room, beaten so badly that both of his eyes were completely shut and his face looked twice its normal size, her knees buckled. She couldn’t believe Reno could be this harsh! She looked at him.
But Reno wasn’t bullshitting anymore. He grabbed the steel bar one of his guards downstairs held, and walked up to Chap. Without attempting to get anything more from the stubborn thug, Reno swung that steel bar against Chap’s head as if his head was a baseball, and knocked him out of the park. The blood gushed out as if it had suddenly been unplugged, and Chap fell over dead, taking the chair to the floor with him.
Quinn screamed her own blood curling scream as she witnessed her brother’s brutal murder. Reno tossed the bloody bar aside and headed over to her. She backed up until she was backed against the wall.
“What else you want to say about my wife before I kill your ass?” he asked her.
“Nothing,” she said forcefully, shaking her head. “All that stuff about beauty and class, I was just talking. I was just jealous of Mrs. Gabrini. I was just jealous that she had somebody who loved her so much. Please don’t hurt me. I was just jealous!”
“Who wanted to blackmail my son?” Reno asked her.
Quinn was crying real tears now. “I told you who. But you won’t believe me.”
“I’ll believe you when you tell me the truth!” Reno responded.
But Quinn was looking at her brother again. “It’s all my doing,” she said. “If I would have never called him here, he would be alive today!”
“Fuck him!” Reno said. “You’d better start worrying about your own life. Now who set this shit up? Who got you to recruit your brother? Who, Quinn?”
Quinn knew she was done for. She knew her life was going to go the way of her brother’s life just as surely as she stood in that basement. Unless he really did love Trina as much as he claimed. “Trina told me to find somebody,” she said as if she was resigned to her fate. “You don’t want to hear it, but Trina is the one. She’s the only one I was dealing with.”
“You’re a fucking liar,” Reno said, and began moving closer to her. But just as he was about to lay a hand on her, Debrosiac hurried into the basement. “Boss,” he said as he ran downstairs, “you’ll want to see this.”
Reno looked at Debrosiac as he held a cell phone in his hand. Reno, perturbed but certain Debrosiac would not have interrupted if it wasn’t vital, walked over to him. “What?” he asked.
“A few nights ago you told me to put a couple men on your wife again.”
“So?”
“You told me to make sure they were super discreet and if she ever found out she was being tailed that they would lose the gig.”
“Get to the point, Dee.”
“They got something. Something major.” Debrosiac said this, and then handed Reno the cell phone.
Reno at first frowned. Because it was a video of his wife knocking on the door of a motel room. She wore sunglasses and was looking from side to side as if to make sure nobody had been following her. When the door opened, a big guy stepped out, a white guy, and ushered her inside. He looked around too, before he closed the door. End of video.
Reno looked at Debrosiac. “Who the fuck was that?” he asked him.
“We didn’t know at the time.”
“What do you mean you didn’t know?”
“We’ve never seen him before, Reno.”
“What was he doing with Trina?”
“We don’t know that either. All we know is they stayed in that motel room for half an hour, and then she left.”
“Did you send somebody to the motel’s office to find out who that character was?”
“Sure we did, boss. But we got nothing. According to the manager, nobody stayed in that room in weeks. So apparently they paid under the table for a couple hours get together. It’s a hooker motel. That’s what they do.”
“And let me guess: no cameras?”
Debrosiac shook his head. “None.”
Reno exhaled. Quinn was now very much interested in this conversation.
“That’s not all, boss,” Debrosiac said, and played a second video. “This was the next day.”
Reno watched. It was Trina again, this time knocking on the door at a different motel. But the same guy answered, looked around, and let her in.
“They spent another thirty-forty minutes together, and Mrs. Gabrini left,” Debrosiac said.
“They tailed the guy?”
“They were ordered to tail her. They tailed her. And since it wasn’t their job to spy on her, just keep her safe, they didn’t tell.”
Reno exhaled.
“But this is the kicker, boss,” Debrosiac said, as he played video number three.
“What is it?”
“This is why they brought it to my attention. A totally different guy meeting with her at yet another seedy motel. This meeting just took place this morning.”
Reno frowned as he watched Trina knock on the door of the motel room and get ushered in by yet another man.
“But this time,” Debrosiac said, “they stayed over an hour together. And this time,” he added, “they left toget
her.”
Reno looked at him.
“The guys called me when they left together,” Debrosiac said. “I told them to tail the guy after the drop off.”
“She dropped him off?”
“Yeah. In the parking lot at Target. So our guys followed him. But guess where they followed him to, Reno?”
“Where?”
“The FBI office.”
Reno’s heart dropped. “What?”
“And they checked him out,” Debrosiac continued. “He’s an FBI operative, Reno. He’s Fed. We ran a check on the other guy too. The first guy she met with twice? He’s Fed too. We didn’t want to come to you with it, until we had an ID on both guys. We confirmed them both as FBI agents. It was just confirmed.”
Reno couldn’t believe it. “Why would Tree be meeting with the Feds? This doesn’t make any sense.”
“It does,” Debrosiac said, “if we believe Quinn. I hate to say this, boss, but according to Quinn she turned on Jimmy. Is she turning on you?”
Reno knew better than that. Trina wouldn’t do that to him. He’d turn on himself before he believed Trina would. “She’s not turning on me,” he said to Debrosiac. “Forget that shit.”
“But Quinn said---”
“Quinn is a liar.”
“Then why is Mrs. Gabrini meeting with the Fed?” Debrosiac said. “You don’t believe that either? She’s either giving them intel or they’re running a train on her ass. One of the two.”
The other guard couldn’t believe Debrosiac said that. Reno couldn’t either. He decked Debrosiac so hard he nearly passed out as he fell. “Run a train on that, motherfucker!” Reno said.
Debrosiac was dazed, but he did what he had to do. “I apologize, boss. I didn’t mean any disrespect, sir. But what else are we to make of this? I’m only thinking about you and your organization. We aren’t clean enough for the Feds to be snooping around us. And if she gives up any information, no matter what the reason, it can destroy us. I know you love her and would never believe anything like that, but we didn’t just make this shit up. She met with those agents. She did that. What are we to make of it, boss?”
Reno didn’t know. But he knew Trina wouldn’t betray him. They could show him a thousand videos just like the ones he just viewed and he still wouldn’t believe what Debrosiac was suggesting.
Reno Gabrini: A Family Affair Page 12
