Reno and Trina: In the Shadows of Love, Book 12 (16 page)

Reno and Trina entered the lobby of their hotel hand
in hand.
 
They spoke to all of those who
were speaking, which was pretty much their entire staff, and then they made
their way toward their private elevator.

“I told you,” Reno said as they walked.
 
“Everybody knows your name around this
joint.”

Trina smiled.
 
“I’m glad we did it that way,” she said. “It was really good and
refreshing.”

“Good my ass,” Reno responded.
 
“It was the best.”

“It was close, you’re right.”

Reno looked at her.
 
“It was close?
 
What’s that
supposed to mean?”

“It was almost the best I’ve ever had.
 
A close second.
 
But Bugsy was still better.”

Reno stopped walking, and wouldn’t release her hand so
she was forced to stop walking too.
 
It
took all Trina had not to laugh.
 
“Who
the fuck is Bugsy?” Reno asked.

“Just this guy I dated before I met you.
 
Now he was something else.”

Reno stared at her with a look so sincere Trina
couldn’t hold it in any longer.
 
She
laughed.
 
“You know I’m kidding, boy,”
she said as she wrapped her arm around his arm and pulled him along.
 
They continued to head for the private
elevator.
 
“I don’t know why you don’t
know when I’m joking.
 
You’re my
boo.
 
What’s wrong with you?”

Reno smiled and shook his head.
 
“Your boo,” he said, as they made it to the
elevator and he swiped his keycard.
 
“Yeah, I’ve got your boo alright.
 
I’ve got your boo right here.”
 
Reno looked down.
 
Trina
laughed.
 
The doors opened and they
stepped onto the elevator.
 
But just as
the doors were about to close, Jimmy ran on too.

“There you are!”
 
He slid between the closing doors, just barely making it.
 
“You guys are just getting back from dinner?”

“I thought you were babysitting,” Reno responded.
 
“You and Val.”

“Val is. I had a fight to handle.”

“A fight?” Reno asked.
 
“Which lounge?”

“None of the lounges,” Jimmy said.
 
“The fight was in the casino.
 
Two old ladies with oxygen tanks fighting
over some equally decrepit old man. It was ludicrous.”

Trina laughed.
 
“I’ll bet they were having fun, though.
 
Nothing ludicrous about that!”

The elevator doors soon opened, and deposited them
into the penthouse itself.
 
They walked
around, toward the living room.
 
But Reno
saw blood before he saw anything else, and he stopped his wife and son in their
tracks, pulled out his gun, and moved in front of them.
 
That was when he saw Val, on the floor,
gurgling.

“
Dear Lord
,”
Trina said, when she saw it too.

Jimmy was the last to see it, and when he did, his
heart plummeted.
 
“Val!” he yelled, and
ran to his wife.
 
“Oh my God, Val!”

And as soon as Reno and Trina realized the scene, and
saw that Val had in fact been shot, they both came to the same conclusion and
ran as if their lives depended on it toward their children’s rooms.

“Dommi!
 
Lexie!”
Reno was crying as he ran.

“Dommi!
 
Sophie!”
cried Trina as she ran.

First they ran into the Nursery.
 
No one.
 
Then Dom’s room.
 
No one.
 
Then the playroom, their hearts pounding as
if they were going to explode with anguish.
 
And that was when Reno saw his baby girl, beneath the bed.

“Lexie,” he said, relieved, as he ran to her.
 

“Daddy!” Sophia said as she reached for Reno and he
lifted her into his arms.
 

“Oh, baby,” Trina said.
 
“Where’s Dom?”

“Where your brother, baby?” Reno asked too.

But Sophia didn’t know.
 
All she knew was what Dommi had told
her.
 
“He told me to stay put.
 
And I stayed put.”

“Did you see anybody, darling?” Trina asked her.

“Nobody, Mommy.
 
Nobody.”

“Did you hear anybody?” Reno asked her.

She nodded her head.

Reno and Trina exchanged a glance.
 
Then he quickly checked the closet to make
sure their unwelcomed guest wasn’t in that room, and then he pulled out a
second hand gun and gave it to Tree.
 
“Lock it and wait here,” he ordered her, as he hurried out of the
playroom and closed the door behind him.

Trina hurried to the door and did as Reno ordered her
to do.
 
She locked herself and their
daughter inside.

Reno hurried through his entire penthouse, checking
it, calling his son’s name, and then he made his way back into the living
room.
 
“How is she?” he asked Jimmy.
 
But Jimmy was cradling her, rocking her in
his arms: too devastated to speak.

“Did you call 911?” Reno asked him.

He nodded.
 
“I
called.
 
But she don’t look good, Daddy.”

Reno got down on his knees beside his son.
 
Reno squeezed his son’s shoulder, and pulled
out his cell phone.
 
“How the fuck could
this happen?” he asked.

The penthouse security chief, Mike Jannick, answered
the call.
 
“Yes, sir, boss?”

“Get a crew up here now and get your ass up here with
them.
 
Somebody kidnapped my son and shot
my daughter-in-law.
 
Right under your
fucking nose!”

“
What
?”
 
Jannick was stunned.

“Get here now!”
 
Reno killed the call.
 
And then he
looked at Val.
 
“Dear Jesus,” he
said.
 
And then his cell phone rang.
 
He immediately answered.
  
“This is Reno.”

“No cops,” a disguised, muffled voice said on the
other end.
 
“Nobody is to know about your
son.
 
The cops can never know that your
son has been kidnapped.”

Reno’s heart dropped.
 
He had been hoping against hope that Dommi had somehow escaped. “You
have my son?” he asked, and Jimmy looked at him.

“I have little Dominic,” the voice said.
 
“And I will kill little Dominic if you don’t
do exactly as I tell you to do.
 
You will
not involve the police.
 
You will not
involve the FBI.
 
You will not even
involve your cousin Sal and cousin Tommy.
 
This is going to be between you and me.
 
Or that little rascal of yours, Dominic Gabrini, Junior, will be dead.
 
No ands, ifs, or buts about it.
 
Do we understand each other, Mr. Gabrini?”

“How do I know he’s alive?” Reno asked.

“Say hello to your father, Dominic?”

A voice came onto the phone.
 
“Daddy.”
 
Reno’s heart slammed against his chest.
 
“Daddy, help me!”

“Are you hurt, Dommi?”
 
Reno asked him.

“No, sir.
 
But
they’re mean, Daddy.
 
They say they’re
going to finish you.”

“You do whatever they tell you to do.
 
You hear me, Dom?”
 
He knew his son.
 
He was a hard-head if ever there was one.
 
“You hear me, son?
 
Don’t worry about what they say about
me.
 
I’m fine.
 
We’re all fine.
 
You do whatever they tell you to do.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll get you home safe, son.
 
I promise you.”

 
“You tell the
cops or anybody else about your missing son,” the muffled voice returned on the
other end, “then your missing son will become your dead son.
 
You hear me, Gabrini?
 
You fuck with me, and your boy is dead.”
 
And then the call went dead.

“Wait!” Reno yelled, rising to his feet.
 
“Motherfucker!”

“Who was it?” Jimmy asked.

“I don’t know.”

Jimmy looked back at his wife.
 
She was breathing, she was still alive.
 
But barely.
 
“Hold on, Val, okay?
 
The
ambulance is on its way.
 
It’s going to
be all right.
 
Please, hold on!”

Then the door opened swiftly, and Jannick and an army
of men hurried in.

“What happened?” he asked as he entered, his eyes
looking at Val.

But Reno’s head was spinning.
 
He could hardly believe what was
happening.
 
He hurried out of the room,
down the hall, to the playroom.
 
He
knocked on the door.
 
“It’s me, Tree,” he
said, and Trina unlocked and opened the door.
 
When she saw Reno’s face, her heart fell.
 
“What is it?
 
Is it Val?”

Reno’s hard blue eyes began to water.
 
Trina grabbed hold of his coat lapel.
 
“Reno, what is it?”

“They took Dommi, babe,” Reno finally said.
 
“They took our boy!”

Trina began shaking her head, staring at her husband
and shaking her head.
 
“No,” she
said.
 
“No!”
 
Memories of Reno’s other son Nicky, and what
those mobsters did to him, flashed through her head.
 
Not her baby boy.
 
Not Dommi!
 
She couldn’t take it.
 
She wasn’t
going to be able to handle this.
 
And
before she realized just how emotional she had become, she began to collapse.

Reno quickly grabbed her, and his baby girl in her
arms, and held them up.

It was eight
the next morning.
 
Val had been in
surgery through the night.
 
Reno and Trina
sat on either side of Jimmy in the hospital waiting room, with both of them
holding one of Jimmy’s hands, and Sophia was asleep on her father’s lap.
 
Reno didn’t want to bring his baby to a place
like this, but Trina wasn’t letting Sophie out of her sight. They took
Dommi.
 
They wasn’t taking Sophie too.

Buddy
Wellstone, Val’s father, was also in the room.
 
He was pacing the floor in his imported suit and alligator shoes, now
one of the most successful realtors in Vegas thanks to the major business Reno
sent his way.
 
But he’d give up that
success in a heartbeat if it could change this fateful night, and what happened
to his little girl.

“Look like
they would have told us something by now,” Buddy said as he paced.
 
“I’ve had surgery before.
 
It never took this long.”

Jimmy knew
what his father-in-law was going through.
 
He was feeling the same pain.
 
He
got up, and went to Buddy.
 
“She’s going
to be all right, Dad,” he said, and squeezed his shoulder.
 
“Let’s go get some coffee.”

But Buddy
was reluctant to leave the ER area, even to get coffee.
 
He looked at Reno.

“If the
doctor comes in,” Reno said, “I’ll hit you up on your cell, Buddy.
 
Go with Jim.”

That seemed
to be enough.
 
Buddy nodded, he trusted
Reno.
 
And then he and Jimmy left.

Trina looked
at Reno.
 
“Have you heard anything?”

“Nothing.
 
But my men are out there, blanketing this
city.
 
If there’s something to be found,
they’ll find it.”

“What about
the cameras at the PaLargio?
 
How did
that guy get inside the penthouse?”

“Inside
job,” Reno said.
 
“One of my men was paid
handsomely to turn off all cameras and to give him access up. He tried to claim
he forgot to turn them on, including the backups, but I didn’t buy it.
 
He’s gone now.”

Trina knew
what that meant.
 
The horrible things
Reno had to do!
 
“Are you going to call
Sal and Tommy?” she asked.

“They said
Dommi’s dead if I do.”

“You believe
them?”

“I have
to.
 
For Dommi’s sake.”

“Whoever has
him knew about your relationship with Sal and Tommy,” Trina pointed out.

“Which narrows
it down to just about everybody,” Reno pointed out.

“But don’t
you think we need their help?”

“Hell yeah
we need it, Tree.
 
We need all the help
we can get.
 
But what do you want me to
do?
 
These fuckers might be serious.
 
I don’t know that they aren’t.
 
I’m not risking it.
 
Besides, they’re too far away anyway.
 
Tommy’s already in Japan and Sal and Gemma
are almost there.
 
I’m not waiting for
any return flights.
 
This shit ends
today.”

Then Reno
ran his hand over his tired eyes, and exhaled.

“Dom will be
okay, honey,” Trina said, rubbing his back. “He’s a fighter.”

“He’s a
handful,” Reno said.

Trina
couldn’t agree more.
 
“He’s going to talk
those people to death.
 
They’ll probably
throw him back to us just to shut him up.”

Reno smiled
an affectionate smile just thinking about his son.
 
But then he thought about the alternative,
and how they could just as easily kill Dom if he got on their nerves that
badly, and his smile was gone.

He handed
Sophia to Trina and stood up as if he couldn’t bear sitting still another
moment.
 
With one hand on his hip and the
other hand coursing through his hair, he began walking around the room like a
wounded animal.
 
He tried not to think
about his deceased son Nicky, and how he was unable to save him, but he
couldn’t stop thinking about that hellish time.
 
Until the door opened, and two of his men, Jannick and Debrosiac, walked
in.

Reno hurried
to them, and Trina, hoisting Sophia onto her hip, hurried too.
 
“What you got?” Reno asked them.

Jannick
looked at Trina as if he didn’t know if he should talk in front of her.

“What the
fuck are you looking at me for?” Trina angrily asked him. “That’s my child
too!”

“I didn’t
mean any disrespect, Mrs. Gabrini.”

“Talk
got
dammit!” Reno ordered.
 
“Tell me what you know!”

“At first we
couldn’t find out anything,” Debrosiac said.
 
“Nobody was talking, nobody heard nothing, we were getting no-where
fast.
 
But there was an undercurrent of
fear.
 
Like whatever was going on
everybody was too scared to tell it.
 
Jannick said I was crazy, he didn’t feel any undercurrent.
 
But I felt it.”

“Good,” Reno
said, nodding his approval.
 
Debrosiac
was all street.
 
He wasn’t settling for
any surface shit.
 
Jannick used to be
that way, that was why Reno promoted him, but now he was getting too fat and lazy
and comfortable to be of any use.
 
“What
was in the belly of that beast, Dee?” Reno asked Debrosiac.

“Cat named
Stanislav Provensano,” Debrosiac said.
 
“Stan Pro they call him.
 
Ever
heard of him, boss?”

Reno was too
stunned to speak.
 
They wouldn’t dare, he
thought.
 
They wouldn’t dare!

“What is it,
boss?” Jannick asked him.

“I got a
visit from three guys.
 
Palameri was the
ringleader.”

“Leo
Palameri?” Jannick asked.
 
“But he’s a
nobody!
 
He wouldn’t dare pull this shit
on you.”

“What does
Palli have to do with Provensano?” Debrosiac asked.

“He, Connie
Parks, and Rice Balentino wanted me to put the squeeze on Provensano.
 
He was taking over their territory and they
couldn’t stop him.”

“Did you
help them?”

“No.”

Jannick and
Debrosiac looked at each other.

“You said
no,” Trina said, “but that may not be what they told Provensano.”

Reno and his
men looked at her.
 
“You mean bait and
switch?”

“Yeah,”
Trina said.
 
“They may have shown him proof
that they met with you, and from that they could have claimed that you were
going to help them.
 
They might have
thought that was enough for Provensano to back off and leave them alone.”

Reno
nodded.
 
“That’s possible,” he said.

“But instead
of backing off,” Debrosiac said, “Provensano could have snatched your kid for
insurance.
 
That’s possible too, boss.”

“Yeah,” Reno
said.
 
Then he pulled out his cell phone
and pressed Jimmy’s face on the screen.
 
When Jimmy answered, he ordered him to come back to the room to stay
with Trina and Sophia.
 
“I’ve got to make
a run,” he said into the phone.
 
He had a
wall of security outside of this hospital room, and security undoubtedly followed
Jimmy and Buddy on their coffee break, but he wasn’t trusting anybody but Jimmy
to watch his wife and daughter.

When he hung
up, Trina looked at him.
 
“Where are you
going?” she asked him.
 
“Does this guy,
this Provensano, live here in Vegas?”

“No,” Reno
responded, “but I’m not going to see him.”

“But why
not?” Jannick asked.

“Because I
don’t begin shit in the middle.
 
That’s
how you get fucked up.
 
Palameri started
this.
 
I’m starting with Palameri.”
 
He then looked at Trina.
 
Her agreement was the only one he was after.

Trina
thought about it, and then she nodded.
 
Reno was a lousy by-the-book general, but he was the best street general
ever created.
 
He was instinctive and he
was strategic.
 
She’d follow him to the
ends of the earth.
 
“Yeah,” she
said.
 
“Begin at the beginning.”

Jimmy and
Buddy returned.
 
Trina handed Sophia to
Jimmy.
 
“Watch her,” she said.

Reno looked
at her.
 
“What are you doing?”

“I’m going
with you.”

Reno
frowned.
 
“Like hell you are!”

But Trina
wasn’t backing down.
 
“That’s my son,
too, Reno.
 
I’m his mother!”

Reno not
only saw her pain, he felt it.
 
But she
still wasn’t coming with him.
 
“And I’m
his father,” he said.
 
“And I’m also your
husband.
 
Your ass is staying right here.
 
I look out for y’all, not the other way
around!
 
You’ve got to trust me to handle
this, Tree.
 
I’m no fucking novice, I
know what I’m doing.”

But the
strain was wearing on Trina, and Reno saw that too.
 
He pulled her into his arms.
 
She snuggled against him.
 
How could such a great night go so wrong,
they both couldn’t help but wonder.
 
“I’ll bring him home, Tree,” Reno said.
 
“I promise you I will.”

Then Reno
stopped embracing his wife, told his son to take care of the family, and he and
his men left.

Buddy
Wellstone walked over and hugged Trina.
 
“If anybody can bring that boy back home,” he said, “Reno can.”
 
Then Buddy looked at her.
 
“You know that.
 
Right?”

Trina
nodded, wiping her tears away.
 
She knew
it.
 
But that didn’t make it any easier
to bear.

Palameri Signs
was a small company in northwest
Vegas.
 
Reno, Debrosiac and Jannick sat
silently in the lobby waiting to be escorted up.
 
Jannick thought it was ridiculous that some
small-time nobody like Leonard Palameri could be treating Reno Gabrini this
way, but Reno didn’t care.
 
He just
wanted his son back.
 
He wasn’t flying
off any handles or demanding any respect right now.
 
He just wanted to see, to smell, to touch his
child again.

“Right this
way, gentlemen,” a gentle-voiced lady walked up to them and said, and they
followed her into an elevator and up to the fourth floor: to Palameri’s office.

When they
walked in, Palameri stood to his feet.
 
“Reno, welcome,” he said jovially.
 
“Have a seat.”

Reno sat
down, and Jannick sat beside him.

“Grab that
chair, Dee,” Palameri said, and Debrosiac grabbed the chair and sat on the
opposite side of Reno, sandwiching Reno in.

Palameri sat
back behind his desk.
 
“So, what do I owe
the pleasure of your company, Reno?
 
I
thought you didn’t want to have anything further to do with me.
 
Oh.
 
I
forgot.
 
You aren’t here to help me.
 
You’re here to get your son back.”

Jannick and
Debrosiac both looked at Reno, stunned.
 
But Reno remained cool.
 
Not in a
million years would he have expected Palameri to be this forthcoming, but he
had to hear what he knew first.
 
Reno
decided to go for broke.
 
“You have my
son?” he asked him pointblank.

Palameri
smiled.
 
“I do.
 
Of course I do!”

Reno,
Jannick, and Debrosiac immediately jumped from their seats, pulled out their
guns, and pointed all three barrels at Palameri’s head.

Palameri
seemed unfazed.
 
He held up his
hands.
 
“You can shoot me now, and let
your son rot for all I care.
 
Or you can
come to your damn senses and hear me out.”