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Authors: Mallory Monroe
Reno and Son: Don't Mess with Jim (The Mob Boss Series)
RENO AND SON
DON’T MESS WITH
JIM
By
MALLORY MONROE
Copyright©2014
Mallory Monroe
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This novel is a work of fiction. All characters are
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PROLOGUE
She stood quietly, at the foot of her son’s
grave, and waited.
From dust to dawn she
waited.
She walked around, looking at
other graves, wondering if he was still the youngest one.
And he was.
Nobody came close.
She sat in her
car, when tiredness came, but she could still see the grave from where she
sat.
Then she was up again, looking at
his tombstone again, removing a leaf, a twig, a whatever that had blown onto
the grave again.
And still no Reno.
He used to come.
Years ago.
He used to make it his business to come.
But after Trina gave birth, not once, but twice, everything
changed.
Now he didn’t come at all.
He had moved on.
Moved
on
, he once told her.
And she needed
to do the same.
She needed to
move on
too.
As if her own child’s death could be movable
from her heart.
As if he was replaceable
the way a car, a home, a pair of shoes were replaceable.
That
one didn’t work out, so let’s get another one
.
Let’s be happy.
Let’s enjoy this trip called life.
Let’s move on.
But she waited.
She didn’t move an inch.
She waited until it was too dark to see.
She waited, to give him the benefit of the
doubt, before she finally concluded the obvious.
He didn’t show up.
He was never going to show up.
He had moved on.
And for Marcy there was only one answer for
it.
She pulled out her cell phone, found that
familiar face, and pressed the
Send
icon.
It almost went to Voice Mail, but
then he answered.
“Is it time?”
“It’s time,” she said.
“Set it up.”
ONE
Jimmy Gabrini stood at the dust-smeared window
inside the vacant roadside restaurant and waited for his father.
Across the highway he could see two
homeless-looking men rummaging through a brown paper bag and arguing over its
contents, and an overweight woman in spandex walking fast and dragging along a
little boy as she hurried for the bus stop.
Compared to his father’s hotel and casino on the Vegas Strip, this
place, near the outskirts of town, was a dump in every sense of the word.
Why was his father even bothering?
Why would he want this headache?
Valerie Wellstone was waiting inside the
restaurant too, seated at one of the tables in her skirt suit and heels, as she
reacquainted herself with the particulars of the listing.
If Reno Gabrini liked the place and agreed to
purchase it, such a purchase would represent the biggest deal she’d ever struck
in her real estate career.
But as they
waited, and she looked over at her brooding boyfriend, it wasn’t her career
that was on her mind.
She worked for her
father, and their realty company was doing just fine.
Whether this deal succeeded or failed was of
little consequence in the big picture of her life.
But Jimmy concerned her.
He was right around her age, they both were
in their early twenties, but she’d never met a young man that seemed so
old
the way Jimmy seemed to her.
She sat her smartphone on top of her
clipboard, stood up, and walked over to the window beside him.
She looked out at the parking lot as it sat
abandoned and neglected, with high weeds coming out of the cracked concrete and
her lone BMW parked against the speed bump, and then she looked at Jimmy.
She first met him when she was showing him a
house he was interested in buying, and she thought he was just the cutest guy.
He was obviously a biracial young man,
half-white and half-black, with beautifully thick, curly hair, yellow-toned
skin, big greenish-gray hazel eyes, a tall, slender body, and a quiet strength
that belied his youth.
But he was
different too.
She couldn’t put a finger
on it at the time, but in the nearly year-and-a-half that she’d known him it
was as if she still didn’t really know him.
She felt more in tune with his parents, who were outgoing souls the way
she was, than she ever felt toward their much more reserved son.
“Going to let me in on it?”
He glanced at her, and then looked back out
of the window.
“In on what?”
“The conversation you’re having in your
head.”
He smiled and looked at her again.
When they first met, he was drawn to her
too.
It wasn’t just because she was
shapely and pretty and had that dark-chocolate skin he always found sexy, but
it was mainly because she seemed so comfortable in her own skin.
So self-assured and self-possessed.
And even when he eventually told her that his
father owned the PaLargio, to see how she would react, she didn’t flip out like
all those other girls did and immediately want to meet him.
She couldn’t care less about meeting Reno
Gabrini.
Jimmy loved that about her.
But that was over a year ago.
Now she was tripping all over herself about
Reno too.
Reno even took her out once,
to get to know her better he claimed, and ever since then she’d been what Jimmy
called a
Renoid
: an unabashed, bona
fide Reno lover.
It changed their
relationship.
“I’m going to ask him,” he said to her.
She folded her slender arms and waited for
Jimmy to clarify what he meant.
But, as
usual with Jimmy, he didn’t bother.
“Ask
him what?”
“If I can run this restaurant for him.”
Val’s heart sank.
Why was Jimmy always testing his father this
way?
Why was he always setting himself up
for such rejection?
“That’s a lot to
ask, Jimmy,” she said honestly.
“I don’t think it’s so much to ask.
He’s my father.”
“But you don’t have that level of
experience.
To run an entire restaurant,
I mean.
And you know how your father is
when it comes to his business.”
For some reason her chumminess with his
father was beginning to annoy him.
“No,
I don’t know,” he said snappishly.
“Why
don’t you enlighten me about my father.
He’s
my
father, mind you, but
why don’t you enlighten me?”
Val didn’t like his tone.
“Don’t be mean, Jimmy.”
“What am I being mean about?
I’m just telling the truth.
You’re a
Renoid
now, let’s face it.
You can take it.”
Val frowned.
“I’m a
what
?”
“A
Renoid
.
A Reno lover.
He can do no wrong in your eyes.
But me?
Everything I do,
everything I say, is wrong.”
“That is so not true and you know it.”
“But you know him, right?
You know how he handles his business, right?”
Val looked at Jimmy.
She knew where his anger was coming
from.
Every woman he’d been serious about
in the past always ended up more interested in his father, and his father’s
great looks and vast wealth no doubt, than in Jimmy himself.
And although Val knew she wasn’t like that,
and Jimmy knew it too, sometimes he would still try to lump her in that same
gold-digger category.
Which irritated
her no end.
But if he thought for a
second she was going to be one of those girlfriends who told him what he wanted
to hear just to stay in his good graces, he thought wrong.
“I was making a statement of fact,” she
said to him.
“And the fact is, the ideal
that your father would let you run this entire restaurant is a far-fetched
pipedream.
It’s not going to happen.”
Jimmy looked at her.
She was different from his previous
girlfriends, he’d admit that.
But lately,
when it came to praising Reno, she was right up there with the rest of
them.
And what was worse in Jimmy’s eyes
about Val’s infatuation with his father was the fact that, unlike all of those
other females who had their eyes on Reno, Reno seemed just as infatuated with
Val.
If
not more so
, Jimmy thought.
“I don’t see where it’s all that
far-fetched,” he said.
“I work for him
now, at the PaLargio. This place is a drop in the bucket compared to that.”
“But you’re a pit-boss at the PaLargio,
Jimmy.
You’re a floor manager.
You’re in charge of a tiny section of a
massive casino.
You don’t run the
casino.
You’re talking about running
this.
And yes, I am telling you that
your father is not going to go for that.”
She kept it real with him, and he appreciated
that about her.
He even inwardly
smiled.
“Maybe if you ask him, he’ll say
yes.”
Val looked at her boyfriend.
She couldn’t tell if he was being serious or
sarcastic.
She pointed at him.
“Now you’re being ridiculous,” she said.
Jimmy laughed.
“It’s not so crazy!
You’re the one who’s claiming to know him so
well.
And we both know how much he loves
and adores you.”
Val
looked at Jimmy as if he was nuts.
“He
loves me?”
“Hell yeah my dad loves you.
And you know he does.
He asks about you all the time, and every
time he’s around us he can’t take his eyes off of you.”
“Oh, Jimmy,” Val said dismissively.
She wasn’t about to feed into Jimmy’s
paranoia.
Although, if she could
inwardly be real about it, she knew she and Reno did have a friendly connection.
There was something intoxicatingly powerful
about him.
Something so in your face
that created an excitement all its own.
But in a quieter way Jimmy had that same quality, he was absolutely his
father’s son.
He just didn’t realize it.
“Admit it, Val, you know it’s true,” Jimmy
said, smiling now.
“My father loves my
girlfriend.”
“He may love me like a daughter,” she
admitted.
“But that’s it.”
“A daughter?
Yeah, sure, Val, his daughter.
Yeah, right.
His wife just had a daughter by him, why would he need you to be his
daughter too?
He’s got a daughter.
Why would he need to view you that way?”
“I can ask you the same thing, Jimmy.
Why would he view me the other way?
The way you mean?”
“Because he likes the ladies,” Jimmy
quickly retorted.
“He loves the ladies.”
Val stared at Jimmy.
She’d heard about his father’s reputation
around town as a ladies man, but she always assumed that was the way he used to
be.
Before he met his wife.
“You mean he cheats on Mrs. Gabrini?”
“That’s not what I mean at all,” Jimmy
responded defensively.
“He doesn’t love
anybody more than he loves Ma.
But he
loves the ladies.”
What
does that mean
, Val wondered.
Did he love the ladies
and
Mrs. Gabrini?
Then she
shook her head.
“That’s why I’ll never
get married,” she said.
Jimmy looked at her.
Because he had a very different thought in
mind.
“Why not?”
“You can’t trust men.
You just can’t.
They all cheat.”
“Not all of them,” Jimmy said
sincerely.
“I don’t cheat, and never
have.”
But that was what they all claimed as far
as Val was concerned.
“Yeah, well, keep
living.”
But Jimmy wasn’t backing down.
“That doesn’t make any sense, Val.
I didn’t cheat with any of my other
girlfriends.
Not with one of them.
Why would I cheat now with the woman I
love?
Why would I cheat when I have
you?”
Val’s heart melted.
And she
remembered why she loved Jimmy so much.
He could infuriate her sometimes, and their relationship was hardly smooth,
but he always had the right words to say when she needed to hear them
most.
She rubbed his arm.
“You’re different, that’s for sure.
If any man can pull off that faithfulness
thing, it’ll be you.
You’re the total
package, Jimmy.
Good looks, good mind,
good heart, and very good. . .”
She squeezed his arm and glanced down, at
his mid-section.
Jimmy knew what that
meant.
She was thinking about last
night, when he did her last.
“And very good what?” He asked this as he
looked at her and started thinking about last night too.
“And very good, mind-blowing, never had it
so fantastic sex.
Okay, I said it.
Satisfied?
You’re excellent in bed, James Gabrini.
But you know that, don’t you?”
Jimmy smiled that half-cocked smile she
loved.
“I’m not one to brag,” he said in
a bragging voice.
“Sure you aren’t.
You’re Mister Humble.
I forgot.”
“I’m not talking humility,” Jimmy said,
looking down at her breasts, and at the way her mounds were just a little bit
exposed out of her white, frilly blouse.
She handled her business and dressed conservatively in a brown skirt
suit, but the skirt was just above her knees and her blouse was open at the
cleavage just enough to give her a sexy edge too.
Jimmy loved her style.
He moved closer to her, as his penis began to
awaken.