MOB BOSS 3: LOVE AND RETRIBUTION

MOB BOSS 3

LOVE AND RETRIBUTION

MALLORY MONROE

c2012

All rights reserved. Any use of the materials contained in this book without the expressed written consent of the author and/or her affiliates, is strictly prohibited.

AUSTIN BROOK PUBLISHING

This novel is a work of fiction. All characters are fictitious. Any similarities to anyone living or dead are completely accidental. The specific mention of known places or venues are not meant to be exact replicas of those places, but are purposely

embellished or imagined for the story’s sake.

MORE INTERRACIAL ROMANCE

FROM BESTSELLING AUTHOR

MALLORY MONROE:

DUTCH AND GINA:

AFTER THE FALL

DUTCH AND GINA:

A SCANDAL IS BORN

THE PRESIDENT’S GIRLFRIEND 2:

HIS WOMEN AND HIS WIFE

THE PRESIDENT’S GIRLFRIEND

MOB BOSS 2:

THE HEART OF THE MATTER

ROMANCING THE MOB BOSS

ROMANCING HER PROTECTOR

ROMANCING THE BULLDOG

IF YOU WANTED THE MOON

AND

FROM BESTSELLING AUTHOR

KATHERINE CACHITORIE:

LOVING THE HEAD MAN

SOME CAME DESPERATE: A LOVE SAGA

WHEN WE GET MARRIED

ADDITIONAL

BESTSELLING

INTERRACIAL ROMANCE:

A SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP

YVONNE THOMAS

AND

BACK TO HONOR:

A REGGIE REYNOLDS

ROMANTIC MYSTERY

JT WATSON

COMING SOON

MORE INTERRACIAL ROMANCE

FROM

MALLORY MONROE

DUTCH AND GINA

THE PRESIDENT’S GIRLFRIEND SERIES

ALSO ROMANTIC FICTION

FROM

AWARD-WINNING

AND

BESTSELLING AUTHOR

TERESA MCCLAIN-WATSON:

AFTER WHAT YOU DID

STAY IN MY CORNER

DINO AND NIKKI:

AFTER REDEMPTION

Visit

www.austinbrookpublishing.com

for more information

on all romance titles

ONE

“
An education in graciousness
,” Reno whispered as he leaned back and watched his wife on the closed-circuit monitor inside his office. She was in the balroom at the PaLargio Hotel and Casino, entertaining guests at his mother’s seventieth birthday celebration, while he was stil stuck in the office.

“An education in
what
?” Lee Jones asked. “What are you talking about, Reno? Did you hear what I said?”

Reno looked at his general manager, embarrassed by his blunder. “Of course I heard you. And the answer is stil no. No-more carnival acts, no more magic shows, no more has-been lounge singers with their sorry-ass Sinatra imitation. I want A-list only stars going forward, Lee. We’re the PaLargio, for crying out loud, not some two-bit hooker joint. Not some dumping ground for the acts nobody else wanted.”

“I understand that, sir,” Lee said, his dark brown hands clasped in front of him, his temper, as always, perfectly in check. “But we had no choice when you were in Seattle and Trina was trying to run this place. We couldn’t get the big names not even for a one-night only. People didn’t think the PaLargio was going to survive after al of that craziness. So Trina signed who she could sign and decided to give some new acts a chance.”

“I know what Tree did. And I know she did the best she could while I was away, I get that. But now I’m back. And if I see another clown on a tricycle with tops spinning on his head I’m going to barf, you hear me, Lee? This ain’t no Ringling Brothers circus we’re running here, this is the PaLargio Hotel and Casino! How many times I’ve got to tel you that? We’re almost as big as Caesar’s Palace here in Vegas, but we don’t act like it. I want the big names too. I want the Celine Dions and the Tony Bennetts and Beyonce if we can get her. Fuck I’l take Lady Gaga over some of these acts you’ve been booking lately. But we got nobody, Lee.” He tossed the entertainment list back to his general manager.

“Cancel al week-to-week contracts,” Reno ordered, “and don’t show your face again until you give me some big names signed, sealed and ready to go.”

“Yes, sir,” Lee said reluctantly as he took the list and stood to his feet. “But it’s not going to be easy.”

Reno looked at him, his bright blue eyes blazing. “Easy? What the fuck is that?”

Lee smiled. Then laughed. That Reno. “Talk to you later, boss,” he said, heading toward the exit. “Welcome back, Reno.”

“Yeah, yeah, some welcome. Carnival acts and clowns on tricycles. Some welcome, Leonard!”

Lee laughed, knowing that Reno only used his ful first name when he was chiding him, and then he disappeared out of the massive office.

Reno placed his hands behind his neck and stretched his exhausted body, his muscular chest and ribbed abs straining the fabric of his powder-blue dress shirt. Behind him, outside his floor-to-ceiling window, was a sweeping view of Las Vegas at night: lights, energy, nothing but activity up and down the crowded Strip. And inside of the PaLargio, in the balroom, everybody were partying and having fun.

But instead of sitting back and enjoying himself for a change, he was here, stil working, when he should have caled it a night hours ago. Trina, who felt he was working himself to death since his return, had already phoned him twice and told him to knock it off and come on down.

As he thought about Trina, he leaned back, his hand massaging the back of his stiff neck, and watched the monitor again. And there she was again. His eyes were unable to even glance at anybody else in the balroom. She was walking out onto the dance floor, some big, handsome, blonde-haired joker taking her by the hand. Reno had many women in his day, more women than he ever wanted to claim, but never a woman like Katrina. That was the thing. That lady had him so twisted up in love that he didn’t know how to handle it. She was one of a kind to him; a woman who stil made his heart beat faster every time she entered a room. Stil had it pounding whenever he so much as looked her way. And he was staring at her now.

She wasn’t particularly tal or thick, but unlike many of the other females in the room she wasn’t some flat-ass, slip of a girl either. She was al woman, tight and curvy, with that velvety-brown complexion that looked sweet as syrup to Reno, and with the most expressive, big bright hazel eyes he’d ever seen.

Her eyes told her story. She could claim until she was blue in the face that she was just fine, with no problems whatsoever, but her eyes never lied. If Reno wanted to know how she was realy feeling, he looked into her eyes. If she was as fine as she claimed, they would say so. If she wasn’t, if she was teling him she was fine so he wouldn’t worry about her, the truth would be as simple as staring into those two big, almond-shaped beauties beneath those curved, flowing lashes, until the real deal was revealed.

Her body told a story, too. It told Reno how fortunate he was to have a woman so fine. He was, in fact, thinking about that body as he watched her. And when her dance partner twirled her, and her short, form-fitting satin dress revealed every sensual curve, his penis came alive. That was Tree. It didn’t take much. And when she smiled that bright white smile of hers, tilting her head back so that her big breasts heaved and her long hair draped down in silky waves, he suddenly got a hard-on that he knew wasn’t about to ease up. Not until he had it sliding into her warm, wet, sweet folds.

But he looked away. The last thing she needed right now was some joker like him pumping on her. Truth was they hadn’t made love since his return to Vegas nearly two weeks ago. And it wasn’t just because of his anxiety, either. She also wanted them to take it slow. When he left her, when his enemies forced him into a mob war that caused him to lose his own son, for Trina’s own protection he left her for seven whole months. Although she understood why he had to get away, the fact that he had left at al stil had to hurt on a very deep level. He understood that.

And now he was back. He stil believed it was a mistake; he stil believed he was nothing but bad news for her; but he loved her too much, and was far too selfish, to let her go. And they were both stil careful not to derail this purposely slow-moving train.

The fact that the PaLargio was bleeding money now and Reno, its owner and CEO, needed to work eighteen hour days just to right this ship also caused their relationship to remain static. Trina was working with him too, as the company’s president, and they barely saw each other during most of the day. They knew this couldn’t last, but they also knew they had to tread carefuly. Reno almost lost it al in that mob war. He even almost lost Trina, which, for him, would have been the death of him too. He had to tread carefuly.

He got back to work. He stil had tons of paperwork to get through, and he stil had to figure out how to make the PaLargio the profit prince it used to be. But he kept glancing back at that monitor. He saw Trina’s dance partner whisper some joke in her ear that caused her to laugh. But when he saw that dance partner slyly move his hand down to the top tip of her ass, with a few of his fingers actualy moving down further and then lightly rubbing across that ass, Reno frowned.

“What the
fuck
,” he said aloud, as if amazed that anybody would dare disrespect him like that. Trina was laughing at the joke he had whispered to her, and was seemingly completely unaware that she was being mugged in plain sight by that smooth Joe with the smooth hands. But when Mr. Smooth did it again, and his finger escaped once more and lightly rubbed across the ass of Reno Gabrini’s wife yet again, that did it for Reno. Forget the paperwork. Forget the fact that the PaLargio had a long way to go before it was back to where it needed to be. He stood to his feet, grabbed his suit coat, and headed out of the office. Within seconds he was on his private elevator heading downward, to the festive balroom.

Trina saw him coming just as her dance partner was about to twirl her again. “There’s my hubby,” she said happily. Reno had made an appearance earlier, when his mother first arrived, but he’d been upstairs, in the office, ever since.

Her dance partner turned toward the balroom’s entrance when Trina mentioned the arrival of her husband. He expected to see some good looking black dude ready to reclaim this gorgeous lady. But when he saw that it was Dominic “Reno” Gabrini, the owner of the very PaLargio Hotel and Casino they were dancing in, a man reputed to have ordered the hit on the notorious Frank Partanna himself, he just knew there was some mistake.

“But that’s Reno Gabrini,” he said. Then he looked at her, shocked. “Reno Gabrini is
your
husband?”

Trina looked bemused. She didn’t know if she should be flattered or offended by his shock, but decided it didn’t matter. “That’s right,” she said with pride, but her dance partner, as soon as she said it, quickly removed his hands from anywhere near her body.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. She thought they were in the middle of a dance. But the young man’s eyes were already focused on Reno. He plastered a big, overly-grand smile on his round face and extended his hand even before Reno arrived.

“Mr. Gabrini, hi,” he said with such a nervous grin that Reno knew he was right to come and get his wife.

“Helo,” Reno said cooly, his stark blue eyes staring into the man’s pale brown eyes.

“This is Mikey, Reno,” Trina said. “He’s a friend of Dirty’s.”

Reno reluctantly shook the man’s hand, but then puled him toward him. “If you ever put your hand anywhere near my wife’s ass again,” he whispered into the man’s ear, “I wil personaly make certain that you never have possession of that particular hand again. Got me, pal?” Reno then leaned back and stared into the young man’s eyes.