Reno Gabrini- the Trouble With Dommi

by Mallory Monroe

  Once the office was cleared, and the cops were seated in front of Reno’s big desk, Reno, with Dommi by his side, leaned against the front of his desk and folded his arms. “How can I help you?” he asked.

  “Mr. Gabrini, my name is Detective---”

  “I don’t give a fuck,” Reno said bluntly. “How can I help you?”

  The lead detective moved around in his seat, as if he wanted to cuss Reno’s ass out. But he knew Reno Gabrini. He knew his job, and possibly his life would be at risk if he overplayed his hand. “We aren’t here to see you this time, Mr. Gabrini,” the lead detective said. “We need to talk to your boy. To Dominic.”

  “About what?” Reno asked.

  “He knows what,” said the second cop.

  “About what?” asked Reno again, to the lead detective.

  “About last night,” said the leader. “About what happened in that alley last night, outside of Mo’s.”

  Reno wanted to unfolded his arms, but he didn’t. “What happened in an alley outside of Mo’s?” he asked the lead detective.

  “Your son knows.”

  “I don’t know shit,” Dommi said.

  Reno’s jaw tightened. Didn’t he tell that boy to keep his trap shut? But that was the problem, and Reno knew it. He was trying to control a kid, but Dommi wasn’t a kid anymore. “He doesn’t know shit,” Reno said, echoing Dommi. “Now either tell us why you’re here, or get the fuck out of my office. I’m a busy man. I have work to do.”

  The lead detective had had it with Reno’s attitude. He was offended now. “We’re busy too,” he said to Reno. “We’re busy trying to keep the streets of Vegas safe from predators like your ass.”

  As soon as the detective spoke so disrespectfully to Reno, Dommi didn’t hesitate. That sudden, violent anger rose up within him and he hurried to that lead Homicide detective and punched him hard. The detective, stunned, became wobbly from the hard hit and fell over backwards in his chair.

  Reno stood erect from leaning against his desk. He was in shock. He couldn’t believe what Dommi had done!

  The cops couldn’t believe it, either, as the second detective immediately drew his weapon on Dommi. “Step back!” he yelled. “Step back!” he yelled. “Step back!”

  Reno pulled Dommi backwards against the desk as the lead detective hurried to his feet from the floor, and pulled out his weapon too.

  Although Reno’s heart was pounding, he knew he had to be the voice of reason. “Alright, guys,” he said, his hands exposed, “put those guns away.”

  “Put your hands in the air!” yelled the lead detective angrily. He was wiping blood from the side of his mouth. “Both of you put your hands in the air!”

  “This isn’t necessary,” Reno said.

  But the lead detective placed the gun against Reno’s nose. “Put your gotdamn hands in the air now! Right now!” he yelled.

  Reno put his hands up.

  “You too!” the lead detective yelled at Dommi.

  “Do as he says,” Reno said to his son. “Do as he says!”

  Dommi placed his hands in the air, too, not because the cops ordered him too. But because his old man ordered him to.

  But Reno didn’t care at that point. Just as long as Dommi was safe, and complied with the order. Although Dommi looked more like a white guy than a black guy, both of those cops, Reno knew, had to know that Dommi’s mother was a black woman. They knew Dommi was half-black. And Reno was sweating bullets because he knew they knew. He’d given his son the talk, but Dommi wasn’t exactly a compliant boy. Because nowhere in Reno and Trina’s talk to Dommi about being a black man in America did they include knocking the shit out of a cop if you didn’t like his tone. Nowhere was that in any conversation of theirs!

  “Keep your weapon on this one,” the lead detective said to the second cop, as he motioned toward Reno.

  The second cop hurried to Reno and kept his weapon trained on him.

  The lead cop then put his gun away, walked over to Dommi, turned him around violently, leaned him over his father’s desk with his hands hitting the top with a hard thump, and then he began pulling out his cuffs. “Your ass going down for this,” the detective was saying to Dommi. “Your black ass is going down!”

  And as soon as he had the muscular young Gabrini cuffed, the lead detective then turned Dommi around and began punching him in the face.

  That caused Reno’s anger to rise and he didn’t hesitate either. He immediately snatched the gun from the second cop’s hand, grabbed the second cop and slammed him, back first, onto the floor, and then he hurried to the lead cop and put that gun to the lead cop’s head. “Touch my son again and I’ll blow your motherfucking brains out!” Reno said.

  The lead detective backed up, his hands in the air now, looking at Reno. Dommi grabbed the cop’s revolver, punched the cop again, for good measure, and then hurried over to the second cop, who was wise enough to remain on the floor. They were in Gabrini territory, and he knew it.

  Dommi put his big shoe on the cop’s chest, and pointed his partner’s gun at that chest. Then he looked at his father. Another mess that he had no clue how in the world were they going to get out of.

  But just as he thought it, the lead detective’s cell phone began ringing. When he realized it was his Force phone, which meant it was one of his commanders, he felt saved by the ring. “It’s my department issue,” he said to Reno.

  Reno knew what that meant. One of his superiors were trying to contact him. “Answer it,” he said to the cop. “But put it on Speaker.”

  “You can’t get away with this,” the lead detective said.

  “Answer that motherfucker and shut the fuck up!” Reno yelled at him. Reno knew exactly what he was doing. Unlike Dommi, he knew the full extent of the Gabrini reach.

  “Where are you?” a voice said on the phone. When Reno realized it was Captain Jiles Norred, he exhaled. Red was on Sal’s payroll.

  But the lead detective didn’t know that. “I’m at the PaLargio,” he said. “I need backup,” he said and looked at Reno. He was surprised Reno was even letting him answer the call.

  “Backup for what?” Norred asked.

  “Dominic Gabrini, Senior, and Dominic Gabrini, Junior, are under arrest.”

  “What the fuck for?” Norred asked.

  “Junior knocked me out, for starters,” said the lead detective. “And his old man has a gun on me as we speak.”

  “Gotdamn,” said Norred. “Who’s with you? Merridian?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Both of you get your asses out of there,” Norred ordered.

  “Get out? But we need backup! And what about what happened at Mo’s? Witnesses that were inside the club said Dom Gabrini went out back and never returned. Just like the victims. Are we gonna ignore those witnesses? And what about what they just did? Gabrini and his son can’t get away with beating up cops. We’ve got to--”

  “Didn’t I just give you an order?” Norred said. “Nobody’s getting arrested. We’ve got that nightclub situation under control. Gabrini had nothing to do with it. And in case you’re wondering, it’s not just me saying this shit, the Sherriff is saying it too. Get the fuck out of there!”

  The detective looked at Reno. He knew it was all corrupt. Reno had undoubtedly made his phone calls before he even came down to meet with them. Money talked. Power talked. Honest cops were lucky they could walk away.

  “Yes, sir,” the lead detective said, and ended the call.

  “Let him up,” Reno said to Dommi.

  Dommi, surprised by that phone call himself, lifted his shoe off of the second cop’s chest, and the cop rose to his feet. Reno handed the second cop his gun. Dommi handed the lead cop his gun.

  Then Reno looked at the lead cop. “You heard your commander. Get the fuck out of my establishment and keep the fuck out of my life.”

  The lead detective and his partner gave Reno a hard look, but they knew they were playing with fire. They left.

 
Dommi hurried around Reno’s desk and pressed one of the buttons on the intercom system. “Hey, Quince,” he ordered, “those two cops are coming back downstairs. Make sure you escort them off of the premises. And they aren’t allowed back.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Quince, and Dommi released the button. Then he looked at his father, and smiled. “We pulled that shit off, Pop,” he said. But then Trina walked in.

  “How did it go?” she asked both father and son.

  “It went great, Ma,” Dommi said with a smile on his face. “We pulled that shit off!”

  But Reno wasn’t smiling at all. “We didn’t pull anything off,” he said.

  Dommi was surprised by his reaction. “What’s wrong, Reno?” Trina asked him.

  “Yeah, what’s wrong, Pop?” asked Dommi. “The Sheriff told those cops to back off, and they backed off.”

  “Who gives a damn about a couple of cops?” Reno asked. “We’ve got to know who those fuckers are you jumped. Who do they work for?”

  Dommi shook his head. “I never saw’em before.”

  “But what possessed you to go in that alley in the first place, Dommi?”

  “I saw Mariah going out back. I told you. Well, first I saw her so-called date talking with Amber and then he whispered something to those guys, and the guys went out back first.”

  “Who’s Amber?” Reno asked.

  “Some girl that calls herself liking me. She’s the girl who I figured set up Mariah for that gangbang, just because I like kicking it with Mariah. That’s why Jonathan, Mariah’s date, went to Amber first.”

  “Maybe we need to talk to this Jonathan to find out who those guys are,” said Reno.

  But Dommi was shaking his head. “I already planned to pay Amber a visit. She’s the one running that show. Jonathan’s just her flunky. She knew those guys. Jonathan, I think, was just relaying her message to them.”

  “We need to talk to Amber then,” said Reno.

  “I’ll talk to her,” said Trina, and both men looked at her. “I don’t want Dommi losing his temper with that girl and making things worse. Besides, she might clam up if a guy approached her. But I’m the mother of the boy she likes. She’ll be happy to talk to me.”

  But Dommi was already doubtful. “I don’t think so, Ma,” he said.

  But Reno knew his wife. “Might work,” he said, to Dommi’s surprise. “Let’s do it,” he added.

  Trina nodded. She loved the fact that Reno didn’t baby her, and didn’t shut her out. He used to, but then he saw when Tommy tried that shit with Grace and they ended up divorcing. Tommy and Grace later remarried, but it was a lesson learned for Reno.

  But as they began to walk toward the office exit, Reno, walking behind his wife and son, spoke up. “And Dom,” he said.

  Dom turned around. “Yeah, Pop?”

  Reno slapped him so hard across his face that his big, curly hair bounced. “If you ever put your hands on a cop again I’ll kick your ass.”

  Trina was shocked. “What did he do? He hit a cop?”

  “Knocked his ass down,” Reno said. “Almost got both our asses killed.”

  Trina couldn’t believe it. She angrily slapped Dommi too. “Are you out of your mind, boy?” she asked him. “We taught you better than that, Dommi. That shit ain’t on us. We gave you the talk. You can’t go around beating on cops, are you insane? What in the world possessed you to do that?”

  “He was disrespecting, Pop,” said Dommi. “Nobody disrespects Pop.”

  “Except you?” Trina asked. “You think killing that man last night, and putting another one in the hospital, was honoring your father? His heart can’t take all of this shit, Dommi. He’s already on high blood pressure medicine because of us. You aren’t putting my husband in an early grave, you hear me?”

  “I’m not trying to do nothing like that,” Dommi said. “You know I wouldn’t do nothing like that, Ma!”

  “Then cut that impulsive shit out!” Trina ordered. “Cut it out.”

  Dommi nodded. “Yes, ma’am,” he said as if he meant it.

  But neither one of his parents were buying it.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Reno drove Trina’s Mercedes-Maybach and parked in front of Amber’s suburban home. While Reno and Dommi sat on the front seats, Trina got out of the backseat and made her way to Amber’s front door.

  “I don’t think this is a good idea,” Dommi said, as both men watched Trina.

  “She’s alright,” said Reno, as he stared at his wife. She looked gorgeous, he thought, in her flair-legged dress pants and heels. She wore a matching head ban and sunglasses. She was a stylish woman who always made Reno proud.

  “But what I’m saying is that I don’t see how you can --,” Dommi started saying, but stopped himself.

  Reno looked at him. “How I can what?” he asked his son.

  “How you can let your wife do dirty shit like this,” said Dommi. “I would never let my wife go anywhere near a skank like Amber.”

  “Yeah, you sound like your Uncle Tommy. He wouldn’t let his wife go around skanks either. He shielded her until she got rid of his ass.”

  “But they remarried.”

  “But why would I wanna go through all of that drama? I’m not letting Trina leave me, that’s how you do that shit. Don’t try to manage her until she’s managing you and leaving your ass. If you choose a strong woman, treat her the way she is, not the way you want her to be. Because I’m telling you, Dommi, black women don’t play that shit. You aren’t handling them.”

  Dommi looked at his mother as she knocked on the door. “I hear what you’re saying,” he said. “But she aren’t as strong as you think.”

  Reno looked at him again. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “She cries a lot,” Dommi said, “when you stay out all night.”

  “I’m running a casino!” Reno barked back.

  “I know that. But I’m just telling you what I hear when I go upstairs to check on her sometimes late at night. Sometimes she doesn’t see you for days. None of us do, unless we go looking for you. And all those rumors we have to live with. She’s strong, but she’s vulnerable too. That’s what I’m saying.”

  Reno stared at Dommi, and then he looked at Trina as she waited at Amber’s front door. He knew there were all kinds of rumors around Vegas about him having all kinds of affairs with all kinds of women. Those rumors started the day he married Trina, and they never let up. He knew he fed into them with his behavior. He was a natural flirt whenever he saw a certain type of woman, which didn’t help. But he would never hurt Trina. “She knows her worth to me,” he said. “Don’t you worry about her. She knows she’s number one with me.”

  Dommi wasn’t so sure, but he let it slide. The one thing he learned was to never try and tell his father anything about how to run a casino, and how to love his wife.

  But when the front door was opened, and Trina was talking to Amber, both men shut up and watched. But when Amber went back into the home, closing the door behind her, and Trina began walking back toward the Mercedes, Dommi frowned.

  “I told you it wouldn’t work,” he said. “She wouldn’t even talk to Ma.”

  But Reno was withholding judgement until Trina got back onto the backseat of her own car, a car Reno had purchased for her, and she closed the door behind her.

  He looked at Trina through the rearview. “Well?” he asked.

  “She’s coming out,” Trina said.

  Reno looked at Dommi. “You see what all of that leaping-to-conclusions shit gets you?”

  Dommi smiled such a charming smile that it made Reno smile. He had himself a beautiful boy, he realized. A hotheaded, but beautiful boy. “Yes, sir,” Dommi said.

  And then they waited. “What were you guys talking about?” Trina asked.

  Reno tried to smile. “Dommi says you cry your eyes out when I’m not home at night.”

  Trina frowned. “Quit lying,” she responded. Dommi said nothing. He knew he wasn’t lying.
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  Then Reno looked at Trina through the rearview, and Trina looked at him. Then they both looked away. And continued to wait for Amber to reappear.

  “What the fuck she had to do?” Reno asked. “Take a bath and get her hair done? You told her you wanted to talk to her now, didn’t you?”

  “No, Reno. I told her I wanted to talk to her next month,” Trina fired back. “Of course I told her now, what else was I going to tell her? She’s coming.”

  Reno gave Trina a hard look, but he didn’t say anything. She was the only human alive he let slide that way. But just to a point. It was well known in the family that Reno wasn’t adverse to putting Trina over his knee if she went too far. He used to do it all the time. He stopped that shit when Trina started refusing to let him daddy her like that, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try it again.

  And then the door to the home opened, and Amber came walking out.

  Reno gave her an up and down look. “Pretty girl,” he said. Then he looked at Dommi. “But you don’t think so?”

  “She’s pretty,” Dommi agreed. “It’s her ugly attitude I don’t like.”

  “Oh, and your attitude is gorgeous?” Reno asked his son.

  Dommi smiled. “No,” he said, “but I don’t make a sport out of being cruel to people. Give me a girl with a good heart. Fuck the beauty queens.”

  Reno was proud of his son. Trina was too. “That’s right, baby,” she said. “Go for the heart every time. You’ll never lose if you go for the heart of a woman. Not her ass, like your daddy.”

  Dommi laughed.

  Reno looked at Trina. “I went for you. Are you saying you had no heart? You’re saying I only wanted you for your ass?”

  “We were fucking on our first date, Reno,” said Trina. “Then I didn’t hear from you again until I was applying for a job at the PaLargio and you happened to be the owner.”

  “We hooked back up,” Reno said.

  “Yeah, we hooked back up. But it wasn’t because you thought I had a good heart.”

  Dommi laughed again.

  And then Amber was upon them.

  Because of the tint, she couldn’t see who was inside. But it wasn’t until Trina opened the back door, and Amber slid in beside her, did she realize who else was in that car.