Mob Boss 4: Romancing Trina Gabrini (32 page)

She looked at him outright.

“I’ll pick you up on the way and we’ll take
care of it,” he said to the party on the other end of his cell phone.
 
“Okay.
 
I don’t, either, but we have to.
 
Yeah.
 
Right.
 
Okay.
 
Okay, dear, I’m on my way.”

Reno then killed the call.

“Who was that?” Trina asked, especially since
Reno used a term of endearment with whoever it was.
 
“It was Nell,” he said.
 
“They’ve granted bail.”

“Praise the Lord!” Trina said, smiling.

“Yeah, thank God.
 
I’m pleased.
 
I’m real pleased.
 
I’m going to
get him now.”

Trina grabbed her purse.
 
“I’ll come with you.”

“No,” Reno said, coming toward her.
 
“Nell and I have decided to tell Jimmy the
truth after we pick him up.”

“Even before any DNA confirmation?”

“Even before that, yeah.
 
One of my attorneys got a copy of the kid’s
birth certificate.
 
He was born nine
months after that night I told you about.”

“But she could have been pregnant before you
was with her, Reno.”

Reno shook his head again.
 
“That’s where you’re wrong, sweetheart.
 
Nell was a virgin when I had her that
night.
 
I thought I told you that?”

He hadn’t told her any such thing, because
Trina would have remembered that.

“I told you Nell was a good girl,” Reno
continued.
 
“She didn’t play that
sleeping around shit.
 
And still don’t.”

He made her sound like a nun, Trina
thought.
 
“But I still don’t see why
can’t I come with you,” she said.

“You can’t come because I don’t want you
caught up in the blowback.
 
If this kid
takes it poorly, he’s gonna hate everybody associated with this news.
 
If you aren’t there, it’ll have no reflection
on you.”

And as usual, Trina thought, Reno made that
decision for both of them, giving her no input.

He kissed her on the cheek.
 
“You go to the house,” he said.
 
“I’ll keep you posted.”
 
And then he looked at Dirty.
 
“We’ll talk later, asshole,” he warned him.

“What did I do?”

“Shut the fuck up!” Reno roared.
 
“I said we’ll talk later.
 
Does this look like later to you, you
prick?
 
Get back out there to that bar and
train my staff since that’s why you were so eager to bring your ass all this
way in the first place,” he said snidely.
 
“We’ll talk later.”

Dirty hated it, but he left.

Reno kissed Trina again, and left, too.

And all of that negative stuff Sully had said
to her that morning, about Reno and Nell and Jimmy and why Reno came to Crane
in the first place, came flooding back.
  

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

After being released on bail, Jimmy Mack got
into the backseat of the best looking car Jimmy had ever seen.
 
It wasn’t just a Porsche, he realized, but a
Panamera Turbo S, easily a two-hundred thousand dollar car.
 
It smelled brand new, and the interior
leather was the most expensive he’d ever seen.
 
Reno Gabrini was behind the wheel, and his mother was seated on the
front passenger seat, looking happier than he’d seen her in a long time.
 

It was the first time, in fact, that Jimmy
began to wonder if his mother was having an
affair
 
with
her boss.
 
He began to wonder if that was why her boss
decided to fly in all of these high priced attorneys for him.
 
He needed the help, and he was pleased to see
his mother happy, but Gabrini was married to that attractive black lady that
was with him when Jimmy first met him.
 
He didn’t want to see his mother heartbroken again.
 
His dad had done enough of that with his
cheating and lies to last his mother a lifetime of heartache.
 
Jimmy didn’t think she could take another
break.

But whatever the reason for Gabrini’s
generosity, Jimmy was glad to be free.
 
At least temporarily free, he thought again, as that depression over his
legal limbo crept back in.

He looked at Gabrini as he drove the car.
 
He had a lot of thick, brown hair, and a
little five o clock shadow, but his large blue eyes and straight Roman nose
made it all work somehow.
 
He was a very
handsome man.
 
He could see even his
mother, who wasn’t impressed with any man, be impressed with him.
 

He was rich, for one thing.
 
Or at least his bad ride and the fact that he
owned Clauson’s and the fact that he hired all of those attorneys seemed to
indicate he had some serious money.
 
That
was another plus in his favor, as far as Jimmy was concerned.
 
But even more than that, Jimmy liked Reno’s
toughness.
 
He liked the fact that he
didn’t let him get away with stuff, the way his mother and every other grownup
always had.
 
Reno saw right through his
lies about not having sex with Kandi Tucker right away.
 
He saw right through it.
 
And although Jimmy didn’t like to be caught
in a lie, he was glad somebody finally forced him to stop playing that
I’m the perfect young black male honor
student
game, and get real.

But he met a different reality when Reno
stopped the car at the near-empty Russo Park, they all got out and sat on the
only bench in the small park, and his mother told him a truth he had suspected
all his life.

Fred Ridgeway, his mother finally admitted,
was not his biological father.

For the longest time, Jimmy said nothing.
 
He just sat there.
 
And then he asked why, and Nell painstakingly
explained about being a single parent with a two year old and how Fred was
willing to be a father to him, and on and on she went.
 

Reno was quiet too, but he was staring at
Jimmy.
 
The kid knew all along.
 
Somehow he could tell that Nell wasn’t
telling him anything he hadn’t already figured out himself.
 
She was just filling in the details.
 
Reno also began to wonder, as he continued to
listen to Nell explain, if Jimmy hadn’t already reached the conclusion that, since
Fred Ridgeway wasn’t his biological father, then the man seated on the bench
with him must be the one.
 
But somehow
Jimmy was still digesting his mother’s confession to even consider that there
could be more.

Reno stared unblinkingly at Jimmy.
 
He could see the strength in his eyes, and
the cut of his jaw.
 
And the longer he stared
at the young man, the more he began to question his own judgment.
 
Before this moment, everything within him was
telling him that the kid was innocent.
 
And now that
Dirty
confirmed that Drag might be
involved, he was convinced of it.
 
But
now, looking deep into those big, green eyes, something more was speaking to
Reno.
 
Something that made it all the
more clearer to Reno that Jimmy Mack was his son.
 
This kid had the ability, he believed, to be
a great man or a great monster.
 
This
kid, like Reno himself, had it in him either way.

Then, after a painstaking explanation from
Nell, Jimmy, too, admitted a truth.
 
He
knew it all along, he said.

Nell wasn’t all that surprised by her son’s
knowledge, either.
 
It seemed to Reno
that both of them had been living in an alternate universe.
 
It was obvious that deception was all around
them, but because of their love for each other, and their dependence on each
other, they never acknowledged the deception.
 
They played along.
 
It always
baffled Reno how so many people learned how to play along.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Nell was now asking
Jimmy.
 
It was the exact same question
Jimmy had asked her.

And like Nell’s response, Jimmy’s reason was
ultimately about protecting himself.

“I liked being Fred’s son,” he admitted.
 
“I was afraid if he knew I knew that he
wouldn’t want me around anymore.”

It was painful for Reno to hear, but he knew
he had some explaining to do himself.
 
He
remained silent.
 
Because it was now time
for them to tell Jimmy the full truth.

“Fred isn’t your father,” Nell said
again.
 
“But. . .”
 
She couldn’t pull herself to say it.
 
She looked her distressful eyes at Reno.
 
Jimmy looked at Reno, too.

Reno’s heart was pounding.
 
“I’m your father, Jimmy,” he said.

Jimmy’s heart hammered.
 
He stared at Reno.
 
“You are?”
 

Reno nodded his head.
 
“Yes.
 
I am.”

Jimmy continued to stare at Reno.
 
He should have put two and two together.
 
Somehow he should have figured it out.
 
But he never did.
 
He already felt gratitude toward Reno for
coming to the jail with his mother, and for doing all he did to get him out on
bail.
 
But he never dreamed. . .

“Are you telling me that you’re . . . that
you’re my. . .”

Reno nodded.
 
“Yes, Jimmy.
 
Yes.
 
I’m your father.”

“But,” Jimmy said, looking confused.
 
This wasn’t some bum on the street who
couldn’t take care of himself, let alone a kid.
 
This wasn’t some cut throat convict who he wouldn’t want to know even if
he was his father.
 
This was the owner of
Clauson’s.
 
This was a man who drove
around in a two-hundred-thousand dollar car.
 
He could hardly believe it.

“But I don’t understand,” he said.
 
“You could have. . . You
was
able to. . .”

“It’s tough, Jimmy, I know,” Reno
suggested.
 

But Jimmy wasn’t hearing him.
 
He was still overwhelmed by the sheer
impossibility.
 
He thought his father was
the lowest of the low and that was why his mother kept him secret.
 
But he was this big man Reno Gabrini all
along?
 
He shook his head.
 
“Where have you been?
 
I mean,” he looked at Reno.
 
“Where have you been?”

Reno’s heart dropped through his shoe.
 
“I know how you feel, son.”

“Where the fuck have you been?!” Jimmy
exploded.

“Jimmy!” Nell shouted.

“You just knocked up my mother and jumped in
your fancy car and took off?
 
When she
was young and had nothing?”

“No,” Nell said, hurrying to her son.
 
“He didn’t know, Jimmy.
 
I never told him.
 
You’ve got to understand, son, I never told
him.
 
Reno didn’t know!”

Jimmy looked at his mother.
 
“He didn’t know?”

“He never knew I was pregnant.
 
I left town
after.
.
. that same night I left town.
 
And I
never told Reno.”

“But why didn’t you tell him?
 
Why wouldn’t you tell him?
 
He was no bum.
 
He could have
took
care of you!”

Nell looked away from Jimmy.
 
She was too distressed.

Tears began to appear in Jimmy’s big
eyes.
 
“I thought you were protecting
me.
 
I thought you didn’t tell me because
you were protecting me from a bad man who left you all alone.
 
But it wasn’t true?
 
He never knew I even existed?”