A Mob Boss Christmas: The Pregnancy (8 page)

“Yeah, so?”

“Good looking guy like that?”

Reno’s heart began to pound.
 
What was
Dirty
getting at?
 
“Yeah, he’s good
looking.
 
So?”

“I’m just saying.
 
All I know is that a good looking guy like that wouldn’t be hanging
around
no
wife of mine.”

“A good looking guy wouldn’t want to hang around a
wife of yours, Dirty,” Jimmy joked.

“Hey, that’s my sister you’re joking about,” Reno
reminded his son, causing Jimmy’s heart to drop.

“You tell him, Reno!”
Dirty agreed,
with satisfaction.

“But it was a good joke,” Reno added, and Jimmy
laughed.

But Reno was still wondering what Dirty’s little
comment was implying.
 
He knew his
brother-in-law well enough to know that he didn’t make snide little statements
unless he had the goods on somebody.

“I just came to ask if you wanted to grab some lunch
with me,” Jimmy said.

“Since when are you done with your tutor at
lunchtime?
 
The only reason I agreed to
this homeschooling business was because I figured you’d get more knowledge
without the shock of being plopped down in a big city school for your senior
year when you’ve never attended a big city anything in your life before.
 
But you’d better not be bullying those
teachers into releasing your ass early.”

“I’m not,
Pop
, honest.
 
Miss Mear said we covered everything we
needed to cover for today and she said I could go.”

“Then I need to have a talk with Miss Mear.
 
No son of mine is gonna be a dummy.
 
You’re going to college and get your MBA
before you start running this
joint
.
 
You’re gonna be the total package.”

“You didn’t go to college and you’re the total
package.”

Although Reno appreciated his son’s confidence in
him, he still had to set him straight.
 
“And that’s where you’re wrong,” he said.
 
“I had to scratch and claw for every piece of
knowledge I learned about this business.
 
I didn’t know shit about running
a hotel nor
a
casino, are you kidding me?
 
My old man
was a mob boss, a gangster, a criminal.
 
He was teaching me business, all right, but the wrong kind of business.
 
I’m gonna teach you right.”

“I respected your old man with great respect, Reno,”
Dirty said.
 
“Your old man was a saint,
Reno.”

“My old man wasn’t shit,” Reno said with brutal
honesty.
 
“I loved him, but he wasn’t
shit.
 
And I don’t ever want my son to
say the same thing about me.”

Jimmy loved Reno, and the thought of him even
suggesting such a thing distressed him.
 
“You’re my hero,
Pop
,” he made clear.
 
“You’ll never have to worry about me ever
saying anything like that about you.”

But Reno knew better.
 
When he was eighteen, he used to think his father was the solution to
all of his problems, too.
 
By the time he
turned nineteen, he realized his father was the problem.
 

“You go get some lunch,” he said to Jimmy.
 
“Tree’s over at the Brink having lunch.
 
You might want to go over there and spend
some time with her.”

Jimmy liked that idea.
 
Although his mother was no longer with him,
and nobody was ever going to take her place, he liked Trina tremendously.
 
There was something so good and wholesome
about her that he completely understood why his father loved her so.
 
And that was also why seeing her yesterday
hugging on some strange man was almost as disconcerting to him as it was to
Reno.

And that was why he decided against the idea.
 
If he was going to be on anybody’s side
should there be a problem, it was going to be his father’s side.
 
“I think I’ll go see if Mikey’s at lunch, and
I’ll hook up with him.”

“Who’s Mikey?”

“One of my dealers,” Dirty said.
 
“He’s a good kid.”

“Dirty introduced us,” Jimmy said.
 
“He said we have the same personality.”

“You do,” Dirty said.
 
“Both of you think Reno can do no wrong, and both of you are terribly
misguided individuals.”

Reno and Jimmy laughed.
 
And then Jimmy left.

“This Mikey,” Reno asked Dirty.
 
“He’s legit?”

“Of course he’s legit, Reno.
 
Whatta you think I’m crazy?
 
You think I’d have your son hanging out with
mob material?”

“You’d better not.”

“I wouldn’t do a thing like that.”

But Reno never took chances with Dirty.
 
He made a mental note to have his security
people run a thorough background check on the dealer named Mikey.

“I came here for a reason,” Dirty said.
 
“And it didn’t include being insulted.”

“What’s your reason?”

Dirty smiled.
 
“I’ve got a secret,” he sang.

Reno knew Dirty was up to no good.
 
They didn’t call him Dirty for nothing.
 
“Oh, yeah?”
Reno
asked.
 
“And what secret is that?”

“If you make me a senior manager I’ll tell you.”

 
“Then I won’t
be finding out, will I?”

“Oh, Reno, come on!
 
I’m your brother-in-law for crying out loud!
 
I’m married to your sister.
 
And the best you do for me is
make
me a pit boss?
 
It’s embarrassing.
 
I should be
running operations around here, not Lee Jones.
 
I’m family.”

“I’ve got work to do, Dirt.
 
Now what’s the secret?
 
I don’t have time for this.”

Dirty stared at him.
  
“You think you’ve got it all figured out,
don’t you?
 
You’ve got the money, the
prestige, the respect, the wife you think is worthy of respect.”

Reno looked at Dirty.
 
Finally he was getting to the point.
 
“What do you mean I think she’s worthy of respect?”

“I told you I’ve got a secret.”

Reno’s heart began to pound.
 
Did it have to do with that Bob character
from yesterday?
  
“What is it?”

“What’s in it for me?”
Dirty asked.

This offended Reno.
 
Wasn’t it enough that he provided a massive apartment inside the
PaLargio for Dirty and his wife?
 
Wasn’t
it enough that they never had want for anything?
 
Wasn’t it enough that he gave Dirty a job
managing his casino tables when his only claim to fame had been as a bartender
and mob muscle for his father back in the day?
 
He knew how Reno felt about Trina, and he wanted to jerk him around
about it?
 

“Life’s in it for you,” Reno finally said.
 
“Because if you don’t tell me what this
secret of yours is, you might not live to tell anything else.”

“Trina had an abortion,” Dirty blurted out.
 
He knew when he was cooked.

He also knew when Reno was shocked.

Reno frowned at him.
 
“That’s a
got
damn lie!” he
declared.

“It’s the truth, Reno.
 
That’s why Fran went with her to the mall
yesterday.
 
She was supposed to meet some
man there and he was supposed to take her to have it done.
 
Fran going with her yesterday was a cover,
because Tree knew you would want somebody to go with her.
 
Fran told me all about it.”

Reno stood up.
 
This had to be some mistake.
 
Dirty and Fran had to be mistaken big time.
 
Trina wouldn’t do that to him.
 
He stumbled as he hurried from around his
desk.
 
Trina wouldn’t do that to him, he
kept thinking as he hurried out of his office.

Dirty smiled.
 
That’ll teach him to look down his nose, he
thought.

But Reno wasn’t thinking about Dirty.
 
Trina was on his mind.
 
He hurried downstairs to the Brink
restaurant, but Trina had already gone.
 
He hurried up the stairs to Trina’s office.
 
But she wasn’t there.
 
He hurried down the stairs to Cheri Dallas’s
office, and then to Lee Jones’ office, and then to the casino, but Trina was
nowhere to be found.
 
He tried her cell
phone number, but, as he should have known, it went straight to voice
mail.
 
Then he stopped to think.
 
Where would she be?
 

He hurried to the penthouse.

He flew open the door, ready to call her name, but he
looked across the expansive room and saw her lying on the sofa.
 
Which was strange to see Trina lying anywhere
in the middle of the day.
 
But seeing her
did help to calm him down.
 
Physically, but not emotionally.

He went to her.

“You’re home early,” she said to him.
 
After lunch with Fran her energy level went
to zero.
 
She had to take a break.

Reno sat beside her on the sofa.
 
She could smell his sweet cologne scent.
 
She could also see the concern deep within
his bright blue eyes.
 

“What’s the matter?” she asked him.

“I should be asking you the same thing.
 
Why aren’t you in your office?”

“Little
tired,
that’s all.”

But Reno was never a man to beat around the
bush.
 
“Is it true?” he asked her, his
heart pounding.

Trina stared at him.
 
Somehow she knew what was coming.
 
“Is what true?”

“Did you go to get an abortion yesterday?”

Trina braced herself.
 
“I went, yes,” she said.

But the look on Reno’s face stunned her.
 
He suddenly looked old and ghostly.
 
“Oh,
Tree
,”
he said in agony.
 
“Why would you do
something like that?
 
I know I said I
didn’t want us to have children right now, but you didn’t have to. . . Why
didn’t you just tell me, Tree?”

“You said you couldn’t bear bringing another child
into a world like this.
 
You said---”

“But I’m over that now.
 
I told you I was over that.
 
People wanna fuck with me
now,
I’ll just have to fuck’em back.
 
And if
they ever try to lay a hand on any child of mine, or my wife, they’ll rue the
day they were ever born.
 
I told you
those days of us living in fear are over.
 
I told you that, Tree.”

“But,” Trina started, confused.
  
“You mean you want to have a child?”

“Not just a child, but your child.
 
Not that I’m saying we should have gone out
and had a baby right away, I’m not saying that.
 
But if you would have told me you were pregnant then, yeah, I would have
wanted it.”

Trina was stunned.
 
“You would have wanted it?”

“I’d been thinking hard about this matter,
Trina.
 
And I realized I fathered two
children that I know of, and I never raised either one of them.
 
Now one is gone, and Jimmy Mack was seventeen
when I first knew he existed.
 
Seventeen,
Tree.
 
Your child, our child would have
been the first child I get to raise myself from birth, and see grow and mature
and become the person I want him or her to be.”

Trina smiled, but tears were in her eyes.
 

“And that child would have come from you?
 
Oh, Tree,” he said, anguished.
 
“Why didn’t you talk to me first?”

Tears began to drop from Trina’s eyes.
 
“That’s why I couldn’t go through with it,”
she said, and Reno looked at her.

“You couldn’t go. . . Whatta you mean you couldn’t go
through with it?”
 
Reno’s heart began to
soar.
 
“Are you telling me you
didn’t.
. . that you never had the abortion?”

Trina nodded her head.
 
“I couldn’t go through with it,” she started,
but before she could finish Reno had pulled her into his arms.
 

“Oh, Tree!” he said.
 
Then he pulled her back to look into her gorgeous hazel eyes.
 
“So you’re telling me that you’re pregnant
now, right?
 
You’re telling me that
you’re carrying my child right this very moment, right?”

Trina smiled.
 
“Yes,” she said.
 
“I’m carrying
your child, Reno.
 
I’m carrying your
baby.”

Reno pulled her into his arms again, unable to
suppress his gratitude.
 
Then he pulled
back again.
 
“But what happened
yesterday?
 
You said you went to have an
abortion yesterday.”