A Mob Boss Christmas: The Pregnancy (24 page)

“
Got
dammit!”
Dirty screamed.
 
“What’s wrong with you, boy?”

The door opened and the nurse entered.
 
She immediately began backing up.

“Go and get my husband,” Trina demanded.
 

“What’s going on in here?” the nurse asked, looking
not at Trina, but at Jimmy just as he did a takedown of Dirty.

“Get my husband!” Trina demanded again, terrified
that Dirty might harm Jimmy.

But the nurse’s attention was still on the two
men.
 
“You can’t do that sort of thing in
here!”

“Shut the fuck up and get my husband!” Trina
yelled.
 
“He’s in the cafeteria!”

The nurse looked at the two men rolling on the ground
as they knocked over Trina’s tray of food.
 
She knew who they were.
 
She knew
all of the
mob ties associated with the Gabrini name.
 
And she was terrified of doing anything to
upset these people.
 
She ran to get Reno.

Reno was standing in line with Tommy and Fran when
the nurse entered the cafeteria.
 
They
had decided to get some breakfast and take it upstairs.
 
Fran had thought it silly, given that Reno
could easily call for his own restaurants to bring food in, but Reno didn’t
want that.
 
That would mean extra people
would have to be called to work, away from their families on Christmas day,
just to accommodate them.
 
He would never
be that kind of selfish, thoughtless boss.
 
This cafeteria food would have to do.

But when the Nurse told him that his wife was calling
for him, and that two men were in her room fighting it out, he and Tommy took
off running so fast that they left Fran and the nurse reeling.

They took the stairs, two to three at a time, until
they were back on the maternity ward and busting into Trina’s hospital
room.
 
Jimmy, by this time, was on top of
Dirty, holding him down.
 
Reno
 
looked
at Trina,
saw that she was all right, and then he looked at his son.

“Good job,” he said to Jimmy as Jimmy stood up.

“I wouldn’t let him get away, Pop.”

“Damn right,” Reno said as
Dirty
scrambled to stand up, too.
 

“I told that fool I was just coming to talk to you,
Reno,” Dirty insisted.

“Quit lying,” Trina replied.
 
“You came to talk to me and Jimmy Mack
wouldn’t let you.”

“No, now, Tree,” Reno said.
 
“Let’s take Dirty at his word.
 
Let’s assume he came to talk to me.
 
So that’s why you’re here, Dirty?
 
To talk to me?”

Dirty was less certain now.
 
“Yeah,” he said.
 
“Man to man.”

Reno wanted to puke.
 
They would be one man short, he wanted to say.
 
But he held it in.
 
“Tommy, Jimmy,” he said to his cousin and
son.
 
“Give us some space,” he said.
 
“And lock the door on your way out.”

Dirty’s heart pounded when Reno said that.
 
Tommy hesitated, too.
 
He had been a cop for many years for crying
out loud, a police captain at that.
 
In
addition to the restaurants he owned, he also owned a security firm that worked
closely with law enforcement to this day.
 
He had no business condoning the kind of shit Reno was down with.
 
But he also knew that Reno didn’t bring Dirty
to this hospital to intimidate Trina.
 
Reno didn’t make Dirty beat up on Fran.
 
Tommy thought of what he would do had he been in Reno’s shoes, and it
amounted to the same thing Reno was about to do.
 
Which was what Jimmy had
concluded too.

They headed for the exit.

“And Jimmy,” Reno said.
 
Jimmy turned around.
 
“Find a wheelchair.
 
Mr. Marcasi here is gonna need one.”

Jimmy looked at Dirty.
 
Dirty’s heart pounded against his chest.
 
“Yes, sir,” Jimmy said, and left.

“Now Tree,” Reno said, “I want you to turn over and
keep your eyes focused on that curtain over there.”

“Why can’t I see it?” she asked.
 
“Dirty deserves what he’s about to get and I
want to witness it.
 
Why can’t I?”

“Because I said so,” Reno shot back.
 
“I don’t want any baby of mine witnessing
anything like this.”

“Your baby hasn’t even been born yet, Reno.”

“I’m not talking about that baby,” Reno said. “I’m
talking about you.
 
Turn your ass
around.”

Trina had to smile at the way Reno could be so
loving, and yet so ruthless at the same time.
 
But she turned her ass around.

And Reno didn’t delay.
 
He beat Dirty’s ass.
 
Dirty tried to fight back, and tried to
pretend to be so sorrowful that a monk couldn’t have been more apologetic.
 
But Reno would have none of it.
 
He beat, kicked and stomped.
 
He thought about how horrific Fran looked
after her beating, and he put an even worse beating on Dirty.
 

Reno should have hated it.
 
It was Christmas for goodness sake!
 
He should have abhorred the drama he always
couldn’t shake.
 
But he didn’t hate the
beating he was putting on Dirty.
 
All he
had to do was think about how Fran looked, and the nerve Dirty had even
approaching Trina, and any regret disappeared.
 
It was all about payback with Reno.

And then, when there was not a part of Dirty’s body
that wasn’t in pain, Reno stood up, his arms exhausted from the pounding he’d
just put on Dirty.
 
He unlocked the
door.
 
And then Jimmy strolled in with
Dirty’s transportation.

The wheelchair was rolled to a different floor and stopped
against the wall in the corridor.
 
Dirty
was blood-soaked and nearly unconscious as Jimmy Mack left him there, looked
around, and then walked away.
 
Jimmy Mack
wasn’t a violent man, but he understood where his father was coming from.
 
You had to protect your own.
 
That was what it meant to be a Gabrini.
 
And as Jimmy walked away, he realized just
how much of a Gabrini he was beginning to become.
 
He was Reno’s son.
 
Make no mistake about that.

Dirty certainly realized it when
Jimmy had held him down and wouldn’t let him leave that hospital room.
 
He was the reason why Reno caught him.
 
If it wasn’t for Jimmy Mack, Dirty would have
gotten away.
 
Now he was in more pain
than he’d ever suffered in his entire life.
 
And if he couldn’t pay back Reno, he was going to pay back that boy of
his.
 
Jimmy Mack would get his.
 
And Reno would feel the same intensity of
pain Dirty was feeling today.
 
Reno got
him today, but Dirty’s day was coming.
 
It was coming!
 

Then
Dirty
managed to smile
that sinister smile of his.
 
They didn’t
call him Dirty for nothing, he tried to say.

But then the pain of Reno’s beating returned, and he
moaned.

EPILOGUE

Four Months Later

“What do you mean it’s coming now?” Reno asked as the
limo that had been on its way to Spring Valley made a U-turn and started
heading back to Vegas.

“It’s coming now,” Trina said again, as the
contractions that had just started were already changing.

“But that’s not possible, Tree.
 
How can it be coming now?
 
Your contractions just started!
 
Your water didn’t break!”

“It doesn’t have to,
Pop
,”
Jimmy offered, and Reno, flustered, looked at him.
 
“Seventy-five percent of the time women are
well into labor before their water break.
  
They could dilate more than nine centimeters before their water break.”

“And you know this how?” Reno asked him.

“I read about it.”

“It’s not gonna wait, Reno!” Trina complained.
 
“I’m telling you it’s ready to pop out now.”

“But it can’t pop out now!” Reno said to her.
 
“It can’t be ready already, Tree!”

They were in the backseat of the limo.
 
Reno and Trina were on one
side,
Tommy and Jimmy were on the opposite seat.
 
Trina’s contractions started just after the limo left the Vegas city
limits in a slow drive to take Tommy back to the airstrip in Spring Valley,
where his private plane waited.
 
Tommy
had been in Spring Valley on business all day, and stopped by to see the
Gabrinis before he was to fly back to Seattle.
 
Now Trina, to his shock, was in actual labor.

“It’s not gonna wait!” she yelled again.

“But it has to wait!” Reno yelled back.

“It’s not gonna wait, Reno!”

“Oh, Lord,” Tommy said, looking around at the
near-deserted highway that surrounded them.
 
“What are we going to do?
 
We
don’t know
nothing’
about birthing no babies!”
 
It was a line straight out of
Gone
With
the Wind
,
but he felt it was amply applied here.

Reno pressed the intercom button.
 
His face was even more flustered than
Tommy’s.
 
“Step on it, Lonnie,” he
ordered his driver.
 
“The baby’s coming
sooner than we thought.”

“The baby’s coming now, Reno!” a distressed looking
Trina declared.

“The baby’s coming now, Lonnie!”
Reno yelled to his driver, which picked up even more speed.
 
“But how can the baby come now?” Reno asked
Trina.
 
“They said you could be in labor
for hours!
 
Nobody told me about
no
two-minute baby!”

Trina began putting her legs up on the seat.
 
“We may have to do it ourselves,” she said as
Reno helped lift up her legs.

“Oh, Lord,” Tommy said again, looking around
again.
 
How did he get himself in a fix
like this?

“What do we do, Reno?” Trina asked her husband.
 
She needed reassurances.

But Reno didn’t know squat either.
 
He looked at Tommy.
 
He was a ladies man.
 
Surely he’d witnessed a few of these
emergency births firsthand.

But Tommy looked at Reno as if he’d lost his mind for
even thinking he would have such an experience.
 
“I don’t know nothing’ about birthing no babies!” was all he could think
to say again.

“What do we do, Reno?” Trina asked again.

“Okay think, Reno, think,” Reno admonished
himself
as he began removing his suit coat and tie.

“Remove her panties,” Jimmy said, and Reno and Tommy
both looked at him.

“Excuse me?” Reno asked his grown son and gave him an
odd look.

Jimmy’s heart dropped.
 
“I didn’t mean, I meant so the baby could
have a way to come out, I mean.
 
So his
head wouldn’t get stuck in the panties.”

“Oh,” Reno said, embarrassed that he hadn’t thought
of that himself.
 
“Right.
 
But you look the other way, and call 911,
that’s
what you do.” Jimmy did as he was ordered, and Tommy
looked the other way, too.

“Not you, Tommy!” Reno blared as he removed Trina’s
panties.
 
“I need you!”

“What do you need me for?”
 
Tommy ,
mortified,
wanted to know.

“All those women you’ve been with, you’ve got to know
something about labor.”

“That’s absurd!
 
I don’t know a thing about labor!
 
Why would I know about labor?”
 

Tommy was dressed to the nines, in a powder blue
Valentino
suit,
and the idea of being put in this
helpless position left him uncommonly uncouth.

“Just help me, then.”

“Help you do what?”

“What do they do in the movies?” Reno asked.
 
“They boil water, right?
 
Do something like that!”

“Boil water?” Tommy asked incredulously.
 
“How am I going to boil water in the backseat
of a limousine, Reno?”

“Oh, Reno!”
Trina said as
the contractions began to intensify.

Reno looked helplessly at his son.
 
“What’s the 911 operator saying, Jimmy Mack?”

“She put me on hold.”

“Oh, for crying out loud!”
Reno screamed.

“What are we gonna do, Reno?” Trina yelled.