Reno Gabrini: For His Lover (The Mob Boss Series Book 14) (11 page)

Trina released Val from her grasp, and Val folded her arms
again.
 
“It’s a long story, Dad,” she
said.

“Give me the short version.”

“He was my client.
 
I
was selling a house to him.”
 
She
paused.
 
“And one thing led to another
thing.”

“Bullshit!” Reno said.
 
“One thing don’t lead to another thing unless you lead it there.
 
So are you telling us you were sleeping with
this joker?
 
You were sleeping with this
Kap?
 
Is that what you’re telling
us?
 
You were real bold when your ass was
fucking his.
 
Now you can’t own it?
 
Did Jimmy find out and follow you here?”

“I didn’t plan to cheat on him,” Val insisted.
 
“You make it sound as if I planned this!”

“It wasn’t planned?”

“No!”

“You just happened to end up in these fucking woods
fucking?
 
I would have put a cap in
Kap
if my old lady was holed up in this
hellhole bonking him too!”

“Reno stop,” Trina said.
 
“Val is just a confused kid looking for love in all the wrong
places.
 
She’s been through enough
tonight.
 
She’s been punished enough.”

“Let’s just go,” Reno said, unable to shield his
frustration.
 
He just wanted his boy
safe.
 
He just wanted his child back home
and unharmed.
 
Fuck Val.
 
“My men will be here to clean up this mess,”
he said.
 
“Grab everything you own.
 
And I mean everything, Val.
 
Leave nothing behind.
 
And let’s go.”

Val grabbed her purse, and her cellphone, and her Mace, and
the panties she still hadn’t put on.
 
She
looked at Kap again, at the blood, at his dead body, and her heart rammed
against her chest.
 
But she knew there
was nothing she could do.
 
She knew only
Reno could protect her now, even though she also knew he hated her right
now.
 
But she followed him and Trina
out.
 
She followed them.

Later that night, Sal Gabrini drove his Porsche under the
portico at the PaLargio, jumped out and ran into the revolving doors without
tossing his keys to any of the valets.
 
When one of them looked into the car and saw that no keys were in the
ignition either, he looked at his fellow car parkers.

“What is he doing?” the young valet asked.
 
“Somebody needs to tell that guy he has to
move his car!”

“You go tell Sal Gabrini what he has to do,” an older valet
responded.
 
“I dare you.”

The other valets laughed.

The young valet was defensive.
 
“I didn’t know it was Sal Gabrini,
alright?
 
Dang, what y’all laughing at?”

But inside the PaLargio every member of Reno’s staff knew
Sal, and every one of them attempted to greet him.
 
But Sal was in a hurry.
 
He ran across the marbled floors of the
massive lobby as if he was running track.
 
He ran all the way to the back private elevators, used the keycard his
cousin Reno had given him for unfettered access, and made his way up to the
penthouse.
 
His heart was pounding by the
time he entered the living room.

“Any word?” he asked when he saw the family assembled.
 
“Any word from Jimmy?”

“We haven’t heard a thing,” Sal’s wife, Gemma Jones-Gabrini,
said.
 
She was sitting on the sofa,
comforting Trina.
 
Normally he would have
hurried to Gemma, he’d been in Chicago when word came and hadn’t seen her in
two days, but he turned his attention to Trina.
 
He knew what she had to be going through.
 
The idea that Jimmy killed somebody in cold
blood, and now was missing?
 
This had to
be some mistake!

“Trina,” he said heartfelt, and hurried to her.
 

Trina stood up as he arrived.
 
“Hey, Sal,” she said as they hugged.
 
He was closer to Trina than he was to Reno.

Sal was no touchy-feely type, but he held onto Trina.
  
“I can’t imagine what you’re going
through.
 
You okay?”

“I’m okay,” Trina said, the worried look on her face
betraying her desire to have it together.
 
“I just wish he would phone.”

“We’ll find him, don’t worry.
 
I’m sure Reno has an army times ten out there looking for him
already.
 
I’ve got every available man
under my command out there too.”

Trina smiled weakly and patted Sal’s arm.
 
They could always depend on him.
 
“Thanks, Sal,” she said as she sat back down.

Sal leaned down to Gemma as her small, dark face looked up at
him.
 
He kissed her on the lips.
 
“How you doing?” he asked.

“I’m with Trina,” Gemma said.
 
“I just wish Jimmy would phone.”

“Don’t you be up here worrying either,” Sal admonished
her.
 
“Reno and I will do enough worrying
for the both of you.
 
Where’s Val?”

“She’s in the den with her father,” Trina said.
 
“The baby was with Buddy, thank God, when it
all went down.
 
She was staying at his
house while Val was in town.
 
But you
know Reno.
 
He wanted everybody
together.
 
So Buddy brought the baby
over.”

Sal shook his head.
 
“She must be a nervous wreck, that Val.”

“She is,” Gemma said.
 
“She’s in a bad way.
 
From what
Trina told me, she witnessed it all.
 
I
thank God her father’s here to calm her down because we couldn’t do it.
 
She was so hysterical.”

Sal exhaled.
 
He wanted
the details, but he didn’t want Trina and Gemma’s details.
 
They would only give him the facts.
 
He wanted Reno’s details.
 
He would tell him what he thought was really
going on.

When he saw that Reno was seated at the bar counter in the
back of the living room, ending a phone call, he made his way back there.
 
Sal had been in a meeting and was still in
his suit and tie.
 
It was odd for him to
see Reno, who was always working too, so casually dressed.

“Hey,” Reno said when Sal walked up.

“What the fuck, Reno,” Sal said as he sat on the stool beside
Reno.
 
“I was going to call Tommy, he
hates when I keep him out of the loop, but he’s in Israel.
 
What the hell is he going to do from Israel?”

“Nothing, but still let him know.
 
You know how he worries.”

“I’ll call him,” Sal assured him.
 
“But what’s going on, man?”

Reno tossed his cellphone onto the countertop.
 
“A man is dead, and my boy is missing.
 
I don’t know what the fuck is going on, and I
don’t care.
 
I just want my boy back.”

Sal felt Reno’s pain, and actually squeezed his
shoulder.
 
“What happened?
 
Why would Jimmy ice some dude?
 
And Valerie was there too?”

“Yeah, it happened at some hunting lodge off of Lane Coast.”

Sal was even more puzzled.
 
“What were Jimmy and Val doing at a hunting lodge?
 
They hunt now? I didn’t even know they were
going to be in town this week.”

“I didn’t either,” Reno said.
 
“And hell no they don’t hunt.
 
Val
was there with the guy who owns the place, some black guy named Kapper
Cole.”
 
Reno looked at Sal.
 
“That name ring a bell?”

Sal thought about it, but quickly shook his head.
 
“No.
 
That’s who Jimmy dropped?”

“That’s the guy.”

“But what was Valerie doing there with him?” Sal asked.

“Fucking him,” Reno said, as only Reno could.

But Sal didn’t believe it.
 
“Get out of here!
 
That sweet
girl?
 
She was messing around on Jimmy?”

Reno exhaled.
 
“According to Val, she told Jimmy she was coming to Vegas to close on
the house they used to live in, which was true.
 
They did have a buyer.
 
But what
she didn’t tell him was that the buyer for their house was the same man she had
been having an affair with.”

“
Got
damn!” Sal
said.
 
“That bitch!”

“Jimmy got wind of the affair somehow,” Reno said, “and he
decided to come to Vegas too.”

“Val left my grandbaby with Buddy while she gallivanted
around town with this Kap Cole guy.
 
I
asked Buddy to bring the baby here until we got a handle on what was going
on.
 
The baby, Dom and Sophie, are all
asleep.”

“Thank God.”

“Yes,” Reno agreed.
 
“But Jimmy found out somehow where Val and this Kap Cole were going to
be, went there, and according to Val he iced Kap Cole as soon as he found
them.”

“What did he find them doing?” Sal asked.
 
“Fucking?”

Reno nodded.
  
“Fucking,” he said.

Sal shook his head.
 
“She’d better be glad he didn’t ice her too,” Sal said.
 
“She’d better be glad Jimmy didn’t put a cap
in her ass while was putting a cap in Kap.”

Reno smiled weakly at Sal’s name pun, since he’d had his own
version too, but even a smile couldn’t ease the distress he felt.
 
“Why didn’t he come to us, Sal?
 
Why didn’t he come to you if he didn’t want
to come to me?
 
You guys are close.
 
We would have handled this shit.
 
I told Jimmy time and time again I didn’t
want him involved in all of the drama.
 
That’s why I got him out of Vegas and tapped him to run my Manchester
office.
 
Now Val’s shit has him right
back in Vegas and right back smack in drama.”

Reno’s voice began to crack.
 
“I know my boy, Sal.
 
He thinks
with his heart.
 
He’s sensitive like
that.
 
He really loved Val and thought
they could have something special together.
 
And here she is cheating on him?”

“This Kap Cole,” Sal asked, “was he an older guy?”

“You know it,” Reno said.

Sal nodded.
 
“That
figures,” he said.
 
“I don’t know why she
would marry a young guy when she knows she likes them old.
 
And why would Jimmy marry her if he knew
that’s what she was into?”

“Because he didn’t know,” Reno corrected Sal.
 
“At least not the full extent of her
attraction.
 
He thought she just had some
little nothing crush on me, like some of his other little silly
girlfriends.
 
He had no idea.”

Then Reno’s cellphone rang.
 
Reno picked it up instantly.
 
“What?” he asked quickly.
 
Then he
looked at Sal.
 
“Where?”
 
He stood up, causing Sal to stand too and for
Trina and Gemma to get off of the sofa and rush over.

“Yeah, I know the place,” Reno said on the phone.
 
“But you stay put.
 
Don’t approach him, I know my son.
 
He’ll leave if you try to approach him.
 
I’m on my way!”
 
Reno ended the call.

“They found him?” Trina asked.

“They found him,” Reno said, hurrying toward the exit.

“Where?” Sal asked, as they all followed Reno.

“A parking lot,” Reno said and then stopped everybody by
turning around.
 
He looked at Trina
especially.
 
“I’m going alone,” he said.

“Reno!”

“Don’t Reno me!
 
Jimmy
sees all of us and it’ll be too emotional for him.
 
Too embarrassing.
 
You know how he is, Tree.
 
I have to do this alone.”

“But I can comfort him, Reno.”

“What am I, a rock?” Reno asked.
 
“I can comfort him too!”

“But, Reno,” Trina said with frustration in her voice.

“Reno’s right, Tree,” Sal said.
 
“It’ll hurt Jimmy too much to see you in all
of this agony.
 
Let Reno handle it.”

Trina knew they didn’t have time to waste.
 
And she also knew, if Reno and Sal both
agreed on something, it didn’t really matter what she wanted to do.
 
They weren’t going to let her do it.
 
So she gave in, and gripped Reno’s
sweatshirt.
 
“Bring him back alive,” she
ordered him.

Reno felt her anguish.
 
He nodded.
 
“I will, babe,” he
said.
 
“I will.”