Jimmy looked at his father. “If I was what?”
Reno began to hunch his shoulders and play it off. “If you know, if you was kind of---”
“Kind of what, Dad?” Jimmy asked with a smile on his face. He knew exactly where his father was going with this, but he enjoyed seeing him go there.
“If you was gay, okay? I used to wonder if my oldest boy was a gay guy.”
“And what if I was?”
“But you’re not so what the fuck it matters?”
Jimmy and Trina laughed. “Anywho,” Jimmy said with a limp wrist wave in a stereotypic impersonation of a gay guy. Trina laughed again.
Reno, however, was pissed. “That shit ain’t funny, all right? Now get on with it. What about this girl? Why didn’t I know anything about her?”
“Oh no, you didn’t say that,” Jimmy said, still putting on his gay act.
“What?” Reno asked, genuinely puzzled.
Jimmy got serious. “Dad, when do you have time for anything but work? You work day and night, all the time. Whenever you do call me to your office to, as you put it, eyeball me, you always have five other people in that office eyeballing you! I can’t talk to you about something like that around all those people.”
Reno knew he was being neglectful of his family, and it bothered him. But he also believed it was a temporary situation. “It’s just a hectic time right now,” he said.
But Jimmy would have none of that. “It’s always hectic,” he said, just as Trina had said before him.
“I’m going to slow down, all right? Don’t blow smoke up my ass. As soon as we select the expansion sites, I’ll slow down. But stop changing the subject. What about this girlfriend? What’s her name? Where does she live? Who’s her family?”
“Her name is Ashley,” Jimmy said. “She’s from a small town in Pennsylvania, where her parents still live. She lives here in Vegas, on Rondo Road.”
“Where the fuck is Rondo Road?”
“It’s in a nice little subdivision, Dad. She’s Cooper’s sister.”
“Coop’s sister?” Reno asked. “Your best friend’s sister? How original, James.”
“She’s nice. For real though. You’ll love her.”
“How does she look? Is she fat, skinny, tall, short, good looking, ugly, what?”
Jimmy smiled. “She’s not ugly,” he said. But that was all he was willing to say about it. “You’ll see,” he added. “That is, if you can get away long enough to have dinner with us.”
“Don’t be a smart-ass,” Reno said coarsely. “I eat smart-asses like you for lunch every day.”
Jimmy was offended. He always was when his father spoke down to him like that. “So I’m a smart-ass,” he said. “It takes one to know one.”
Reno looked at him. Sometimes he wondered if his son fully realized just what his father was capable of. A man could end up with a bullet in his brain for disrespecting Reno Gabrini. But this son of his here took all kinds of liberties with him. “Watch it, kid,” Reno warned him.
Jimmy exhaled. His father could dish it, he thought, but he certainly couldn’t take it. “Whatever,” Jimmy said dismissively, revealing, however slightly, that dark side Reno knew he had. “The question is, can I set up the double date?”
“Yeah, you can set it up,” Reno replied. “Who said you couldn’t?”
“I was thinking about the Shell,” Jimmy said.
“The Shell?” Reno asked disagreeably. “What the . . . what’s the Shell?”
“It’s a nice restaurant on Baystone Street,” Trina offered. Trina was amused at how often Reno used the f-word, then remembered the baby was around and stopped using it. Then he’d began using it right back again.
“A restaurant on Baystone Street?” Reno asked. “Why do we have to go over there when we have perfectly fine restaurants inside the PaLargio?”
But Trina and Jimmy both reacted negatively to that idea.
“Not the PaLargio, Reno,” Trina said.
“I want it someplace else, Pop,” Jimmy said. “Someplace neutral so Ash won’t feel as if she was outnumbered and outgunned.”
That didn’t make a lick of sense to Reno, but Tree was going along with it. So he went along, too. “Whatever,” he said the way Jimmy had said it, and both Trina and Jimmy laughed.
“So when can we do it, Dad?”
Reno smiled. Jimmy didn’t realize it, but he tended to call Reno Pop whenever he was a little perturbed with him, and Dad whenever he wasn’t. That was Reno’s single most accurate gauge of his son’s various moods.
Reno started to pick a day and time, but he decided to let Jimmy pick it for once. And he would work around whatever time was selected. “When do you want to do it?” he replied.
Jimmy was surprised by his father’s flexibility. He decided to try him. “Tomorrow night?” he asked. “Around eight?”
Reno and Trina both knew any night at eight was usually a busy time for Reno inside the PaLargio, but Reno nodded anyway. “That’ll work,” he said.
Jimmy smiled genuinely this time. “Thanks, Dad,” he said.
Reno nodded. He knew his son like he knew the back of his hand. Then he looked at his other son. He hadn’t fed him in a week. “Up you,” he said to Trina, taking the bowl and spoon from her hand.
Trina smiled. “Well it’s about time you help out,” she said as she stood up and Reno took her place.
“What time is your appointment?” he asked her.
“Oh, that’s right.” She looked at her Cartier watch. “In about thirty minutes,” she said.
“Then shove off,” Reno said. “Don’t have those people waiting for your always-late ass. Sooner you can get there, the sooner you can get back home to your family.”
“Ah, Reno, thanks,” Trina said, grabbing her purse and keys from the center island and kissing him on the cheek. “You’re a sweetheart.”
“Where’re you going?” Jimmy asked her.
“To look at real estate,” Trina said.
“Oh, for the boutique?” Jimmy asked. It wasn’t lost on Reno that Jimmy knew about this undertaking of Trina’s before he did.
“Wanna come?” Trina asked.
“To see a boutique? No thank you very much.”
Trina laughed. And looked at the baby. “Bye, Dommi,” she said as she blew a kiss at her small son. “I’ll call you, Ree.”
“Oh, yeah?” Reno said. Then he looked at her. “With what?”
Trina looked back at him. And then she stopped walking. She began to reach inside of her purse, but then realized her blunder.
“You have my phone, don’t you?”
Reno shook his head. “You’re hopeless, you know that?”
“I thought I had it.”
“You thought you had it? You haven’t had it all day, but you thought you had it? That shit ain’t funny, Tree!”
“The sooner you give it to me is the sooner I can leave, and the sooner I can leave is the sooner I can return to your ugly mug.”
Jimmy laughed. Reno, at first, was offended, but then he couldn’t help but smile, too.
“It’s in the living room,” he said. “And keep it turned on. If I call it and it’s off, then you’re going to answer to me, young lady. And you know what that means?”
“What the fuck it means?” Trina asked, looking Reno up and down as if she was provoking him.
“Oh, the language around the baby,” Reno said to her the way she said to him. “Nice.”
Trina couldn’t help but smile. “What I mean is, what the heck do you mean that I will have to answer to you?”
“Keep that phone turned off and you’ll find out. Your ass is gonna be so red you won’t be sitting anywhere for at least a week, or two if I’m particularly upset.”
“Oh, please,” Trina said, dismissing his threat with a smile as she began heading for the living room. But then she thought about it, and how she actually wouldn’t put it pass Reno. She’d seen how angry he could get with her. She even found
herself touching her butt cheek at just the thought of him spanking the color out of it the way he claimed he’d do. Then she dismissed such thoughts again, and continued toward the living room.
Reno and Jimmy, who watched her apprehension, laughed when she left. And then Reno relaxed.
It felt good to be back home.
CHAPTER THREE
The Shell was a sports bar/restaurant with an electric, youthful crowd. Jimmy and Ashley fit right in as they watched Reno’s Porsche drive up to the Valet parking entrance, and Reno and Trina stepped out.
“That’s him?” Ashley asked as she stared at Reno from their window booth inside the restaurant. Reno was standing at the opened door of his Porsche, putting on his suit coat. The Valet was standing at the ready. Ashley didn’t give Trina a second look. She met her a few weeks back. It was Jimmy’s father, she knew, that she had to impress.
“That’s them,” Jimmy said as he looked on proudly at his parents.
Ashley was surprised. “Wow, Jimmy,” she said. “I didn’t know your father looked like that.”
“Like what?” Jimmy asked, confused.
“Like some movie star or something! He’s beautiful.”
Jimmy laughed. He loved her sweet personality. “He is gonna love you,” he said with a smile. Then he took her hand. “But not as much as I do.”
Ashley, however, couldn’t take her big blue eyes off of Reno. She knew he was rich. Any man who owned a hotel and casino as opulent as the PaLargio had to be swimming in cash. But everything Eddie had said about Reno Gabrini seemed true now that she was looking at him in the flesh. Eddie said a guy like him wasn’t about to let her marry his precious son. Eddie said the best she could do was buy some time until they could extract the biggest payday possible out of her association with a Gabrini.
When she met Trina, she thought she stood a chance. It was like one female to another female and they both were pulling for the other one. But seeing Reno put on his suit coat and then place his hand on the lower back of his beautiful black wife as they both headed inside the Shell, made her antsy. He looked old school Italian. He looked too much like a man who would spit on his mother’s grave before he allowed the likes of her into his family. Eddie was right. She had made excuse after excuse to Jimmy about not meeting his father. She couldn’t continue going that way if she expected Jimmy to remain one hundred percent in her corner. This dinner tonight was key. This dinner tonight would determine if she could continue bidding her time, or if she was out of time altogether, and had to make her move.
But as Jimmy’s parents made their way to the table, she still couldn’t get over how gorgeous his father looked. That was unexpected. But that could be her wild card tonight. A man who looked like him had to be a player who could not possibly be faithful to one woman, not with all of these bitches out here who had to be trying to get into that man’s pants. There was no doubt in Ashley’s mind about that.
But she had to be careful. A man who looked like him also was well experienced with seduction. She could never let him know that she, in her sweet innocence, was making a play for him. And she did know how to play men. She’d played them all of her adult life. Guys, especially white guys, tended to think more with their lower head when it came to a good looking woman. It never failed with Ashley. All she had to do was charm them with her body and she would have them eating out of the palm of her hand. That was Ashley’s job tonight with Reno. Get him on her side, too. It wasn’t going to be an easy job, but given his great looks she was now convinced it was going to be a doable job.
Jimmy, wearing a suit for a change, stood to his feet when his parents arrived at their table. “Welcome,” he said with a kiss to Trina’s cheek. They turned out nicely, he thought. Trina wore a beautiful short gray dress with hanging shrills at the hem, reminding Jimmy of a cancan girl from some of those old movies he liked to watch. Reno wore a light-brown Valentino suit that seemed to match his hair. Hair, Jimmy noticed, that was perfectly groomed for a change.
“Dad,” Jimmy said proudly, “I want you to meet my lady. Ashley Cooper.”
“Hi,” Ashley said cheerfully as she stood her petite body on her feet and gave Reno a hug. She was careful to rub the soft skin of her cheek against his cheek as they stopped embracing. “Nice to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you.”
“Have a seat, please,” Reno said, glancing down at Ashley’s sizeable breasts. He waited for Trina to sit down next to the window and across from Ashley, and then he and Jimmy sat down too. They were facing each other. Even Jimmy couldn’t help but notice what a captivating couple his parents made.
After the waiter took their drink orders, Reno put on his reading glasses and studied the menu. He already felt like an old man in this place overrun with people so young they were practically children, but he didn’t care how he looked in specs. He was too hungry to care.
Ashley kept taking peeps at him, Trina noticed, as if she was either smitten with him, or was plotting a way to get him to accept her as Jimmy’s woman. Trina wanted to warn her. Reno was nobody’s fool. If she tried too hard he would view her as some gold digger and would eat her up and spit her out.
But then again, Trina thought slyly, if she was smitten with Reno and had some misguided designs in that direction, then eating her up and spitting her out was exactly what she expected him to do to her. She therefore didn’t warn Ashley about a thing. Trina, instead, sat back and observed.
“You look great, Ma,” Jimmy said when it was obvious his father was more interested in the menu right at the moment.
“Thank-you,” Trina said with a smile. “You and Ashley look pretty spiffy yourselves.”
“Doesn’t she?” Jimmy said as he looked lovingly at Ashley.
She was pretty, Trina thought, with a slamming body and big breasts. But unfortunately she wasn’t nearly as innocent as Jimmy took her for. Trina tried to tell him when she met her a few weeks ago, but he wouldn’t listen. He knew she wasn’t perfect, he kept saying, but Trina knew better. That boy was so over-the-hill infatuated with Ashley that perfection was exactly how he viewed her. But Trina was a firm believer in letting people learn for themselves. Jimmy was a grown man. Young, yes, but grown. He had to learn about females for himself.
“Don’t you agree, Dad?” Jimmy asked his father. He seemed to want to push his father’s buttons a lot more lately, Trina was beginning to notice. And she couldn’t understand what caused such a change in him.
Reno looked up from the menu he was perusing, and glanced over the rim of his glasses. “Don’t I agree about what?”
“About Ashley,” Jimmy said, who, he felt, was the guest of honor Reno was ignoring. “That she looks so pretty tonight.”
Reno looked at Ashley, from her face down to her breasts. “Yeah, she’s cute,” he said.
“Cute?” Jimmy said as if he was offended. “Puppies are cute. Ashley’s hot.”
Reno removed his glasses as if he was about to give a Jimmy a little piece of his mind, but Trina, under the table, touched his thigh.
With her touch, Reno let it slide. “How long have you known my son?” he asked Ashley.
Ashley lit up as if meeting his son was the highlight of her entire life. “It’s been a good year ago,” she said. “He and my brother were best friends, so he used to come around a lot.”
“Come around a lot to your house?”
“Yes, sir. Me and my brother came out here to Vegas together, and rented us a house together. He looks out for me, and I look out for him.”
“Good for you,” Reno said nodding. “Family is very important. Where do you work?”
Ashley was ready for that one too. “I’m in college right now.”
“Oh, yeah? Maybe you can get that knucklehead over there to go to college, too.”
“College is for kids,” Jimmy said with a smile. “I’m a businessman now.”
Reno wanted to laugh. Some businessman, he wanted to say. “What are you studying?” he asked Ashley, instead.
“Business management actually. I hope to own my own company someday.”
“I told her Ma was looking to do the same thing,” Jimmy said. “So you can relate, can’t you, Ma?”
Reno moved around slightly in his seat. The idea of Jimmy comparing this child to Trina!
But Trina didn’t seem to mind. “I certainly can relate,” Trina said. “It’s tough, but know what you like and stick with it.”
“That’s great advice,” Ashley said. “Thank-you, Mrs. Gabrini.”
And it went on like that all night. Ashley was laying it on thick and Jimmy was drinking her Kool-Aid as if it was the finest wine ever served. To Ashley, her pitch worked with Trina. But she couldn’t read Reno at all.
Trina couldn’t read him either. It wasn’t until she was back in his Porsche and he was driving them home, did he finally come out with it.
“I don’t like her,” he said.
Trina continued to look out at the night in front of them. The convertible top of his car was down and the night air breeze made her feel super relaxed. She wasn’t exactly surprised by her husband’s statement. She wasn’t all that in love with Ashley, either. But Jimmy was.
“That’ll break Jimmy’s heart,” she said.
“I can’t help that. She’s not for him. Not her.”
Trina looked at Reno. “And why’s that?”
“She’s a whore, come on,” Reno said as if it had been obvious from the start. “She’s an over-teased, over-confident, trash-barrel whore with the fakest breasts I’ve ever seen.”
“Oh, so she’s a whore because she has breast implants?”
“Because she’s a whore, Trina. She’s a whore because she’s a whore. There’s a long history of pole action in that girl’s past and a sugar daddy in her present. You’d better believe it. She’s looking to get a ring on that finger from Jimmy, to secure her future, but that’s not happening.”
“You didn’t even know she existed until yesterday. He could have eloped with her months ago and you wouldn’t have known it.”
MOB BOSS 6: THE HEART OF RENO GABRINI (Mob Boss Series) Page 4
