Reno and Son: Don't Mess with Jim (The Mob Boss Series)

by Mallory Monroe

  “Now I’m wide awake,” she said, and Reno smiled.

  Trina turned her head upward and looked at him. “You okay?”

  “I’m better than okay now.”

  She laid her head back onto his shoulder. “Wonder if Jimmy made it home yet.” Jimmy had an apartment inside the PaLargio too.

  “He’s probably home,” Reno said, “like he is every night. Which doesn’t make a lick of sense to me. Here’s a young man with a beautiful woman right there for the taking, a woman who adores him, and he rarely ever spends the night with her. What’s wrong with that boy?”

  “Who says it’s his choice? It might be her choice.”

  “Her choice?”

  Trina smiled. It was inconceivable to him that any woman in their right mind wouldn’t want to be with a Gabrini man twenty-four-seven, especially if that Gabrini man was his own young, handsome son. “Yes, her choice,” she said. “She’s a smart girl. Perhaps she made a conscious decision to not allow any man to lay up on her like that.”

  “What lay up? I spent almost every night I could with you when we first hooked up, and I spent many of those nights at your apartment too, so what are you talking? You’re smarter than she’ll ever be, and you let me lay up with you.”

  “Yeah,” Trina said, “but my background and Val’s are like night and day. I used to wait tables in a strip joint. She’s never had it hard like that.” Then she remembered something. She looked at Reno. “How did it go today? With Val, I mean? Was that restaurant she showed you a good fit?”

  “She showed it to me, but I haven’t decided if it’s a good fit or not. My contractors will take a look at it, let me know if it’s even worth the renovations cost. We’ll see.”

  “It was nice of you to throw that kind of business her way.”

  “I’m giving her a tryout. But just like I told her, if she doesn’t produce, she can forget a second try. I’ll give anybody a shot, but when it comes to my business, they’ve got to produce.” Then Reno thought about Jimmy. “Which brings me to that son of ours.”

  Trina steeled herself. Reno and Jimmy had a very complicated relationship. They loved each other more than any father and son ever could, but they also had a lot of strain and stress in their union. Reno didn’t feel Jimmy was living up to his full potential, and Jimmy felt Reno wasn’t giving him a chance to be who he wanted to be, rather than who Reno wanted him to be. He even said Reno didn’t want a son, he wanted a clone. “When he’s the last person on earth I want to be like,” Jimmy had said in anger one time. Trina had to remind Jimmy that Reno didn’t want that either, but Jimmy didn’t believe her.

  Although Jimmy was not Trina’s biological son (his mother was deceased), she nonetheless treated him as if she had birth him the way she birth Dommi and Sophia. And the fact that his mother had been African-American too, like Trina, only made it seem official in the eyes of the world. To them, Reno’s biracial oldest son had to be Trina’s biological child too. There was no other answer for it, at least not in their minds. “What about that son of ours?”

  “He had the nerve to ask me if he could run the new restaurant.”

  Trina stared at her husband. She knew how that conversation probably went. “I hope you wasn’t too hard on him, Reno.”

  “Of course I was hard on him! He’s my son, not my daughter!”

  “But you can be harsh sometimes, and it bothers him.”

  “But I’m worried about him. I don’t want him ending up a bum, relying on his folks to get by. That boy has so much potential, more than I ever had, but he’s content to hang out with his friends, smoke weed---”

  “Weed?” Trina asked.

  “Hell yeah that boy’s smoking pot! I told him I’ll kick his ass if I ever see him doing it, he knows how I hate that shit, but he denies doing it every time I bring it up.”

  Trina laid her head back against Reno’s chest. “He’ll come around,” she said with confidence. “He’s a good kid. He’ll make you proud.”

  “He already makes me proud,” Reno said. “I want him to make himself proud.”

  Trina thought about that. She couldn’t agree more.

  But they didn’t discuss it any further. They, instead, sat in silence, thinking about Jimmy, and Sophie, and Dommi, and the PaLargio, and anything and everything until Trina was fast asleep, the baby and the Nanny were still asleep, and Reno was slowly beginning to succumb to sleep himself.

  But then his cell phone rang, waking up not only Trina, but the Nanny as well. Reno frowned, wondering who was bothering him this time of night. But when he looked at his Caller ID and saw that it was Valerie Wellstone on the line, he frowned. “It’s Val,” he said, prompting Trina to sit at attention too.

  As soon as Reno pressed the button, he was speaking. “Is Jimmy okay?” He didn’t wait for her to say hello.

  “It’s Val.”

  “I know who it is. Is Jimmy okay?”

  “No, Mr. Gabrini,” Val hated to admit. “No.”

  Reno’s heart began to pound. “Where is he?”

  “He’s. . .” She couldn’t bring herself to continue.

  Now Reno was really worried. “What? What happened?”

  “We were hanging out at this bar when this guy slapped me. And you know Jimmy wasn’t going to go for that. So he got into a fight. He beat the guy really badly, sir. I mean really bad.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “They rushed him to the hospital---”

  “My son?”

  “The guy your son beat.”

  “Fuck that motherfucker!” Reno blared. He was certain the guy deserved it or Jimmy would not have beaten his ass. “Who the fuck cares about him? Where’s my son? That’s what you need to tell me. Where’s Jimmy?”

  Val exhaled over the phone. It was a sure bet, Reno knew, that she wasn’t accustomed to the likes of him. But tough. If she wanted to ever be a Gabrini, her ass had better get used to it.

  “Where is he, Val?” Reno asked again.

  “You don’t have to yell, Mr. Gabrini.”

  Reno couldn’t believe the nerve of this chick. “Look, little girl,” he said to Val, but Trina elbowed him before he could unleash. It worked to calm him back down. “Tell me where my son is,” he said forcefully, but this time with a calmer voice. “And you tell me now.”

  “They arrested him,” Val said.

  Reno’s heart plunged. “They took him downtown already?”

  “They, yes. They took him to jail.”

  “Was he hurt in the fight?”

  “No, sir. Not a scratch.”

  Which, Reno knew, meant big trouble for Jimmy. Cops hated one-sided fights, and always wanted to make an example of the victor. Add that to the fact that Jimmy was a Gabrini, was Reno’s son, and Reno knew he had a world of trouble on his hands.

  “What bar was it?” Reno asked Val.

  “It was . . . Excuse me? Which what?”

  Reno almost threw his phone, but Trina gave him that look. “What’s the name of the bar? You said it was a bar fight. What’s the name of it?”

  “Oh. Yes, sir. Skillian’s.”

  “On Bronston?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay,” Reno said, and was about to kill the call without saying anything more to Val, but Trina quickly snatched the phone from his hand. When Reno was worried, he had zero manners.

  “Thanks for calling us, Val,” she said to the girl she hoped would one day be their daughter-in-law. “I know this is a terrible thing for you to have to experience.”

  “It was so . . . surreal.”

  “I know. But his father will take care of it. Don’t worry.”

  “I wasn’t trying to be disrespectful to Mr. Gabrini. But I won’t allow my own father to yell at me like that.”

  This girl was in a world of hurt then, Trina thought, if she did marry Jimmy. There wasn’t a day that went by when Reno wasn’t yelling at somebody.

  “I wasn’t trying to be disrespectful,” Val said again.<
br />
  “And I fully understand that,” Trina replied. “And Mr. Gabrini does too, so don’t even think about it. But what about the other man. Who was he?”

  “He says his name is Costco. He sits at the bar and was drinking himself to death. And hitting on the ladies.”

  “He tried to hit on you?”

  “Yes, ma’am. That’s why Jimmy did it. The guy slapped me.”

  “And you said this Costco was hurt?”

  “Yes. Very much so.”

  “But no weapons were used or . .. “

  “No ma’am. The way Jimmy was beating on him a weapon wasn’t necessary.”

  Trina exhaled. “And you’re okay?”

  “I’m, yes, I’m fine. Thank-you for asking.”

  “Okay, dear, and thanks again. We’ll keep you posted.”

  “Thank-you,” Val said, and Trina then killed the call. She looked at Reno. He was already thinking, plotting, contemplating his next move. Contrary to his personality, he never jumped up and did something without giving it considerable thought first. He never operated half-cocked.

  “Need me to phone Shell?” Shell was Shelton Goldberg, the Gabrinis’ attorney.

  But Reno was still contemplating that next move. Then he patted her on the hip. “Yeah, call him,” he finally decided as Trina stood up and took the baby. “Tell him to meet me downtown.”

  “Let me go with you, Reno,” Trina said.

  But Reno was already shaking his head. “No.”

  “I’m worried about him too.”

  “And you’re going to stay here and worry about him.” He kissed her on the lips, his eyes filled with his own concerns. Then he frowned. “Stop worrying so much anyway,” he said. “What are you worrying about? You think I can’t handle this? That I need my woman sitting home worrying about it? Stop worrying, you hear me? I’ll take care of it.”

  Trina knew he would, but her heart went out to him. He’d already had a long day of work, she’d already made him suffer through a long night with that art exhibit at Liz’s house, and now this. But it had to be done. She placed her hands on either side of his luscious mouth, and kissed him. “You be careful, you hear me?”

  Reno looked into her beautiful eyes. He managed to smile through his concerns. “I hear you, babe,” he said, and then he kissed his still sleeping brown-faced baby girl on the cheek, and headed for the exit. He was already on his cell phone, calling his men, as he left.

  FOUR

  Reno sat leaned forward on the small, backbench in the temporary holding cell, while Jimmy stood at the front of the cell, his arms folded, his blue tie askew. He knew he had gone too far. He knew it even as he was doing it, but he couldn’t stop himself. That was the scary part for him. He couldn’t stop.

  Reno, his arms resting on his thighs, finally looked up at his son. Jimmy stood there, his back to his father, a tall, handsome, strapping young black male. Reno’s young black male. In jail, Reno thought painfully.

  “Talk,” he said to Jimmy.

  Jimmy hesitated. He didn’t want to face his father right now. But he knew he had to. He turned around. “What do you wanna know?”

  “Everything. What happened?”

  “We were at this bar, this club, having a few drinks and enjoying the music, when this guy starts getting fresh with Valerie. I knew she could handle that part, so I didn’t do anything about his jawing. But then he slapped her, and that did it.”

  “Damn right,” Reno said, agreeing with him. Even that guy’s jawing at Trina would have gotten Reno up.

  “So I got up,” Jimmy continued, “and called him out on it. With my fists.”

  “So it was a fist fight?”

  “If that’s what you want to call it.”

  Reno frowned. “What do you mean if that’s what I want to call it? What are you calling it?”

  “An ass whooping.”

  Reno would have smiled if the situation wasn’t so serious.

  Jimmy stared at his father. “The cops say the guy’s in pretty bad shape. That true, Pop?”

  Reno leaned back. To Jimmy he still looked distinguished, even in a jail cell. “It’s true,” Reno replied.

  “How bad?”

  Reno ran his hand across his face. “Bad. Life support.”

  Jimmy didn’t close his eyes, but they became so anguished he may as well had. Then he shook his head. “I don’t even know his name,” he said.

  Reno looked angrily at his son. “What the fuck difference does that make? He’s in that hospital fighting for his life, and I feel bad about that. But your ass is in this jail cell fighting for yours. And it’s your ass I’m concerned about. So don’t even start that, James. You’d better forget about that soft shit and get concerned too.”

  “I am concerned! I didn’t want to put anybody in the hospital. But he hit Val. What was I supposed to do?”

  “Beat his ass, that’s not at issue.”

  “Then why did I get arrested? Because I won the fight?”

  “Just tell me what happened. He slaps Val, you kick his ass.”

  “Right.”

  “And what did he do?”

  “What did he do? He didn’t do anything.”

  Reno looked at his son. “He fought back.”

  “No.”

  Reno frowned. “He didn’t fight back?”

  “No.”

  “Then why did you nearly kill him?”

  “Because he slapped Val!”

  “But Jimmy . . .” Reno was staring at his son. He couldn’t believe he didn’t get it.

  “What?” Jimmy was beyond confused.

  “What are you killing him for if he’s not fighting back? He slapped your woman, so hell yeah you rough him up. You kick his ass. You make sure he understands who he’s dealing with. But you don’t kill him over it.”

  “Ah, Dad, come on! You’re telling me if that was Trina, if that was Ma, you would have eased up? You would have shown restraint?”

  “Stop comparing yourself to me! You’re a young man with your entire life ahead of you. And I’ll be damned if you’re going to spend any part of it in prison! But if you don’t learn how to control yourself, then that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”

  “But you don’t control yourself. Why is it okay for you to do all those things you do, but it’s not okay for me? You’re such a hypocrite.”

  “Watch your mouth.”

  “But it’s true! You do everything you’re bad enough to do, and that’s fine. But I do it? Something’s wrong with that. First you get on my case for not being tough enough. So I get tough. This is what my old man wants. He says I’m too soft. So I get tough. Now you’re on my case for being too tough!”

  “Not tough, Jimmy,” Reno said. “You aren’t being tough. You’re being stupid! The guy wasn’t fighting back, what are you trying to kill him for? You have to know what you’re doing at all times. You have to understand the costs at all times. You calculate the risk. You fight back, your ass better fight back, but is it a fight to the death? Every fight can’t be a fight to the death or your old man, the one you were just talking about, wouldn’t be here. I would have been dead a long time ago. You’re a smart kid, but you can’t let anger take away your smarts!”

  Jimmy leaned back against the cell bars. There were so many rules that sometimes he wondered if life itself was some kind of elaborate game. He stared at his father. He used to blame him for his mother’s death. He used to blame him for the fact that he was seventeen years old before Reno even knew he existed. It wasn’t Reno’s fault, it was his mother’s fault, but there was a time when Jimmy couldn’t distinguish the two. Reno didn’t know he existed, but Jimmy somehow felt he should have known.

  A police officer came to the holding cell with Shelton Goldberg, Reno’s attorney. Reno stood up as the cell was opened, Shelton walked in, and the officer closed the door.

  When the officer left, Shelton exhaled. “In the old days they didn’t even search attorneys. Now they make us go through
all of these magnetometers and gadgets and wickets just to speak to a client in the holding cell. Hello, Reno. How in the world did you get back here?”

  “I told him I was Jimmy’s attorney.”

  Shelton was amazed. “And he believed it?”

  “He didn’t even question it. I also dropped your name. Told him you should be here shortly. Since I wasn’t packing, had my ID, and got by all of the gadgets without sounding any alarms, he let me come on back.”

  Shelton smiled. “Yeah, he did mention something about my partner being here already. Good thing I didn’t question it. What a young incompetent. But it works for us,” Shelton said with a grin.

  But this was no laughing matter for Reno. “What’s the bottom line, Shell?”

  “They wouldn’t let me see Bruni,” Shelton said. “But one of his assistants made it clear that it doesn’t look like they will be playing ball on this one.”

  “Meaning?”

  “They want a scalp, Reno. A Gabrini scalp. Jimmy may not have the same rep that you or Sal or Tommy have, but he’s still a Gabrini and that’s all the public will see. A Gabrini has been tried and convicted and DA Bruni has a big win under his belt.”

  “Sorry-ass loser,” Reno said.

  “The biggest ever,” Shelton agreed. “No DA has had a worse record than Bruni has. But that doesn’t help us, that hurts us.”

  Jimmy looked at Shelton. “Hurts us how?”

  “Bruni needs to make an example of you. That’s why he’s probably going to go at this hard. That’s why he’ll charge you pending status update on the victim.”

  “In other words,” Reno said, “if that guy dies they’ll slap Jim with a murder rap.”

  “Right,” Shelton said.

  Jimmy leaned his head back in anguish.

  Reno was anguished also. “That’s why you think hard, Jimmy. You don’t just hit. You hit, but you think. He disrespected your lady, but you don’t decide to kill the man!”

  “I didn’t kill him.”