Reno and Trina: In the Shadows of Love, Book 12 (22 page)

Trina looked
up at him.
 
And Tommy was right.
 
He looked absolutely gorgeous in his blue
suit and shades.
 
But if he thought all
was forgiven just because he hopped a plane to Seattle, he was vastly
mistaken.
 
“Hey,” she said, and looked
back at the kids.

But Reno was
still staring at her.
 
“You look tired,”
he said.
 
“Did you get any sleep last
night?”

“Very
little,” Trina admitted.
 
“But I’m fine.”

“Neither one
of us are fine,” he said, and Trina realized she had forgotten whom she was
talking to.
 
Reno was not the small talk
type.
 
He was not that man.

Reno became
bold.
 
He didn’t come all this way not to
be.
 
He sat down on the lounger beside
his wife.
 
It surprised Trina, but Tommy
was pleased to see that she allowed it.

“You look
tired,” Reno said again as he looked even closer at her. “When was the last
time you had something to eat?”

“This
morning.
 
We ate.
 
I ate.”

“Good.”
 
Reno could smell her fresh, perfume
scent.
 
He saw the smoothness of her
brown skin.
 
He glanced down at her
breasts, and remembered how wonderful it felt to suck them, and then he felt
guilty for thinking that way at a time like this.
  
But he wanted her back.
 
All of her.

He placed
his hand on her, and she moved slightly.
 
“Don’t, Reno,” she said, and looked him dead in the eye.
 
His heart slammed against his chest when her
big, beautiful, hazel eyes looked at him.
 
Even in her tiredness, she was a lovely sight to behold.
 
But her words were just the opposite.
 
“I’m not ready yet,” she said to him.

And what
could he do?
 
Tell her that she didn’t
mean it?
 
Remind her that he never
touched Amy and Amy even admitted it?
 
Erase all that she’d been through since hooking up with him?
 
He couldn’t do that, and what he could do
wasn’t going to help.
 
It was funny, but
it took him traveling a thousand miles to realize what Sal tried to tell him in
the beginning: he was going to have to give her more time.

And then
Dommi saw him.
 
“Daddy!” he cried and
Reno, even in his pain, couldn’t help but smile.

“There’s my
boy,” he said almost to himself as he stood up and began walking toward the
edge of the pool.
 
Dommi swam and
splashed his way toward him, with Sophie, thanks to one of the nannies, following
behind.

And Reno
wanted to cry.
 
His family shouldn’t be
here in Seattle, relying on another man to protect them.
 
They should be with him, in Vegas, in their
big house and their big pool living their own happy existence.
 
But he didn’t cry.
 
It would break Dommi’s heart if he did.
 
And he’d broken enough hearts already.

“Dommi!” he
said excitedly as he knelt down and opened his arms.
 
Dommi pushed out of the pool and ran between
his father’s legs into his father’s arms.
 
It was the smell of his children that he always missed, and he became
intoxicated in Dommi.
 
And when Sophie
made it to him, he smothered her too.

Tommy was
watching Trina as Reno held his children.
 
Trina was emotional too, as she wiped away tears.
 
But she was also a woman of a strong resolve
and wasn’t going to respond based on emotion alone.
 
As much as Tommy knew it was going to hurt
Reno, he was going to have to give her more time.

Then Reno’s
cell phone rang.
 
Only it wasn’t his
regular phone, which he could ignore and had been ignoring.
 
It was his emergency phone.

“I’ve got to
get this, kids,” he said, and answered.
 
He glanced at Trina.
 
She probably
thought he was an asshole for answering.
 
But it couldn’t be helped.
 
Nobody
called him on his emergency line, unless it was a serious emergency.

“This is
Reno,” he said.

Debrosiac
was on the other line.
 
“It’s me, boss.
Dee.”

“It better
be good.”

“We found
him.”

Reno’s heart
almost stopped.
 
His look changed so
decidedly that Trina was concerned. “Where?” Reno asked.

“Indonesia.
 
But we can’t pick him up.
 
We wouldn’t begin to know where to take
him.
 
When we get to him, we’ll have to
take him out right there and then.
 
And
you already told us you and nobody else was taking him out.”

“I’m in
Seattle now.
 
I’ll head out as soon as my
pilot can get the okay.”

“Call me
when you’re landing and I’ll be there,” Debrosiac said, and Reno ended the
call.

“You’ve got
to go, Daddy?” Dommi said, disappointed.

“Just for a
few days,” Reno said. “But I’ll be back.”

“You
promise?” Sophia asked.

“I promise,”
Reno said.

“That’s my
daddy,” Sophia said.

But Dommi
was in no mood to play.
 
He left his
father’s arms and went to Trina’s.
 
Trina
held him and she and Reno looked at each other.
 
Dommi was no fool.
 
He knew
something was off in paradise.
 
He just
knew it.

Reno kissed
Sophia, and gave her to Trina too. Dommi started crying, and because he was
crying, Sophia started too.
 
Trina looked
up at Reno.
 
“They’ll be okay,” she said.
 
“You be careful.”

Reno
nodded.
 
He knew his children were in
good hands with Trina, and Trina was in good hands with Tommy.

He shook
Tommy’s hand, looked at his splintered family once again, and then left.

Tony Bennett
left his heart in San Francisco.
 
He was
leaving his in Seattle.
   

CHAPER NINETEEN

A few days
turned into nearly a week as the logistics in Jakarta, Indonesia was
nightmarish.
 
Every time they thought
they had a way to corner Palameri, a pile of others would show up in the
overcrowded city and that moment would fade.
 
And Palameri was no fool either.
 
He surrounded walked with, slept with, surrounded himself with an
entourage of innocent women and their children as he offered them food in
exchange for their protection.
 
They
didn’t know that they were human shields for him, but they were.
 
And only trained eyes like Reno and Debrosiac
would realize it.

But they
finally caught a break on the sixth day of Reno’s arrival.
 
Palameri let his guard down.
 
He visited this prostitute every couple days,
and his entourage would often go in with him.
 
This time, apparently feeling especially horny, he made them wait
outside.
 
Reno and Debrosiac came, not
with food the way Palameri came at them, but with money.
 
Boatloads of it.
 
More than they could have ever hoped
for.
 
And each one of them gladly
accepted the cash, grabbed their children, and left Palameri as easily as he
had found them.

Debrosiac,
then, stood guard, and Reno entered the shack of a house.
 

They were
fucking already.
 
Palameri was naked on
top, the lady was naked on the bottom, and the filthy cot was nearly to the
floor from the weight and activity.
 
Reno
sat there, watching them but thinking about how it would feel to fuck Trina
again, until Palameri finally climaxed and pulled his small, limp dick out of
the sorry hooker.
  
Reno was astounded
that he wore no protection, but then again he wasn’t.
 
This was Palameri he was talking about.
 
This was the man who thought he could kidnap
Reno Gabrini’s baby boy and live to tell about it.
 
He was talking about a fool.

The hooker
saw Reno first, and jumped from the cot, and then Palameri looked over.
 
When he saw Reno, and Reno smiled and waved,
his entire countenance dropped.
 
Because
he knew he was done for.

But Reno
knew he wasn’t going out without a fight, even as he smiled back at Reno, as if
he was giving in, and said “you got me, pal,” as if it was total
surrender.
 
But then he reached across
the bed for his trousers, and undoubtedly his gun, but Reno pulled his own
weapon and didn’t hesitate.
 
He stood up
and shot Palameri’s balls off.

The hooker
screamed and ran, and Palameri cried out in agony.
 
His hands forgot about any weapon and tried
to smother what remained of his bleeding balls.

But Reno
wasn’t finished with him.
 
One shot and
he was done wasn’t going to capture how he truly felt about this prick.
 

As Debrosiac
grabbed the hooker who tried to flee out of the house and came inside the house
with her as his hostage, Reno grabbed Palameri and pushed him off of the bed,
his body rolling on the dirt floor.
 
And
then Reno took his expensive shoe and stomped the shit out of Palameri’s
face.
 
No-where else, just his face.
 
Reno stomped and stomped.
 
Palameri’s nose was the first to collapse,
then one and the other eyeball.
 
But Reno
kept stomping.
 
The blood was all over
his shoe, and his pants, as he stomped and stomped and stomped and
stomped.
 
He thought about Dommi in that
dungeon of a place, terrified and crying for Reno, and he stomped.
 
He was killing Palameri for other shit that
had nothing to do with him, like his tattered marriage, but he kept
stomping.
 
He stomped until Palameri, who
was already dead, was unrecognizable.

And Reno
just stood there.
 
He was breathing so
hard that he could hardly control himself.
 
The hooker was crying and covering her face.
 
She couldn’t bear what she had just
witnessed.
 
And Reno was sorry about
that.
 
But he wasn’t sorry about
Palameri.
 
He wasn’t sorry at all.

He pulled
out his handkerchief, wiped the splatters of blood that had gotten on his face,
and headed for the exit, still trying to regulate his breathing. “Take
pictures,” Reno ordered Debrosiac.
 
“I
want every prick with any thoughts to see what their end was going to be if
they fucked with me and my family.”

“Yes, sir,”
Debrosiac said.
 
He didn’t ask about the
hooker, because he knew what he had to do to her.

And when
Reno walked out, he looked at Palameri and shook his head.
 
“Vicious,” he said to the hooker, then fucked
her, and strangled her to death.
 
He
hated to do it, but they had to get out of Jakarta alive.
 
She was a talker and a stone that could turn
on them.
 
No stones unturned was Reno’s
motto, and it now Debrosiac’s too.
 
He
strangled the life out of her.

He took
pictures afterwards, not of the hooker, but of Palameri, and continued to shake
his head.
 
Reno would go to the ends of
the earth to get his revenge.
 
But these
assholes still tried him.

Debrosiac
couldn’t understand why, as his camera clicked and clicked and clicked.

Reno arrived
back at his Vegas estate the next day.
 
He had spoken to Trina and the children his first night in Indonesia but
the children had cried so much, and became so upset by his absence, that he and
Tree both decided it was best that he didn’t phone until he was back
stateside.
 
But Tommy kept him
posted.
 
She and the kids were okay, was
the most he was telling Reno, and while Reno was so far away, that was enough
for him to hear.

But now he
was back in Vegas.
 
Not Seattle.
 
Because he was determined to give Tree her
space.
 
The way he took out Palameri, the
violence of it, made him realize what it meant to be attached to him.
 
It made him realize how Trina could be having
second thoughts about their marriage.
 
Mick Sinatra often said how he wasn’t a good man.
 
Well Reno wasn’t either.
 
He should have realized it long ago.
 
He realized it in Jakarta.