Reno Gabrini: For His Lover (The Mob Boss Series Book 14) (13 page)

“You okay?” she asked.

“I’m okay,” he said.
 
He pulled out a bottle of whiskey, but his hand was shaking.
 
Trina took over and began pouring him a
glass.

Reno was still shook up.
 
“He tried to kill himself tonight, Tree,” he said.

Trina looked at Reno.
 
“Good Lord, no, Reno!”

“He might have done it if I hadn’t showed up in time.
 
He might have done it, Tree.”

Trina couldn’t believe it.
 
She sat the glass back down.

“You know what I keep thinking?” Reno asked.

“What?”

“That day, the day I decided that he had to be the one to die
to save you and Dommi, destroyed him.
 
He
doesn’t think he’s worthy, Tree.
 
And
it’s all because of that decision I made.
 
And please don’t tell me I had no choice.”

“You had a choice,” Trina said honestly.
 
“You should have chosen me to die that day.”

Reno stared at her.
 
Her honesty, sometimes, could be brutal.
 
“I needed you to raise Dommi,” Reno said.

“You would have raised him just fine,” Trina shot back.
 
“You and Jimmy.
 
But you loved me more than you loved Jimmy,
Reno.
 
That’s the truth of it.
 
And Jimmy knows that.
 
He knew it before that day.
 
So stop believing that one episode in his
life, that terrible episode, is the reason for all of his problems.
 
Val is right.
 
We’ve got to stop doing that.
 
Jimmy is the reason for all of his problems, and until he get some help,
and get himself straightened out, he’ll continue to have these problems.
 
We haven’t taught our children shit about
coping skills.
 
They don’t know how to
cope!
 
That’s what we’ve got to teach.”

“What are you suggesting?” Reno asked.
 
“Family counseling?”

“Yeah,” Trina said. “At least that.
 
We all can use some professional help.”

Reno couldn’t argue with that.
 
He kissed her. “Okay,” he said.

Sal came over.
 
“Jim
told us what happened,” he said.

Reno and Trina were surprised.
 
“He told you what happened in that parking
lot?” Reno asked.

“Yup.
 
He told us he
was going to kill himself, but then he heard your voice.”

Reno closed his eyes and drank his whiskey.

“I said good thing it was him,” Sal said.
 
“Because if I would have heard your annoying
voice, I would have shot you first and then shot myself.”

“Ah, fuck you,” Reno said, opening his eyes.

But Trina smiled.
 
“You’re wrong for that, Sal.”

Then Sal turned serious.
 
“One of my men got a read on Kap Cole.”

This interested Reno.
 
He knew Sal was a mob boss with far-reaching contacts.
 
“Yeah?”

“They said he bragged about calling the social workers on
you.
 
He thought it was funny.
 
He also bragged about bonking your
daughter-in-law.
 
He thought that was
funny too.”

“Yeah, well,” Reno said, “that motherfucker ain’t laughing
now.”

“You got that right,” Sal agreed.

Then Sal hesitated.
 
“What are we going to do about Jimmy?” he asked.
 
“Maybe he needs some help or whatever.
 
Some therapy.”

“He does,” Trina said, “but we’re going as a family.”

Sal laughed.
 
“Yeah,
right.”
 
Then he looked at Reno.
 
Reno wasn’t laughing.
 
“Are you serious?”

“For my son?
 
Hell
yeah,” Reno said.

The days came and went after that night, as one day turned
into several days, and by the end of the week the counseling session had been
scheduled.
 
And that Gabrini tradition,
of pulling yourself back together and getting on with it even after horrific
events, remained intact.
 
Jimmy and Val
continued their separation, with Val moving back to Vegas and staying with her
father, and Jimmy returning to New Hampshire.
 
But Jimmy returned to Vegas by week’s end to see his daughter.
 
And also, although he didn’t see where it was
needed at all, to attend a family counseling session with his parents.

Jimmy and Trina arrived together, and arrived on time.
 
Reno was nowhere to be found.
 
After nearly twenty minutes of waiting, even
the therapist suggested that maybe he was not here because he did not want to
be here.

Trina, standing at the window with her arms folded, was
feeling the frustration too.
 
“He wants
to be here,” she said to the therapist.
 
“I just wish I knew where he was.”
 
He wasn’t answering his cellphone, which wasn’t unusual when Reno was
especially busy, and many staffers around the PaLargio said they saw him
earlier, but had no idea where he was now.

“Is he usually late?” the therapist, a tall, toothy LCSW,
asked.

“Yes,” Jimmy responded.
 
“He’s always late.”

They were in the therapist’s office in downtown Vegas.
 
She was seated in the chair in front of the
couch, with her clipboard on her lap.
 
Jimmy was seated on the couch.
 
Trina had been pacing the floor, and was so frustrated with Reno’s
tardiness that she almost told the therapist to get started without him.
 
But, as usual in their lives, the very reason
they were there had Reno at its core.

“It is my experience,” the therapist said, “that habitual
tardiness, where there doesn’t appear to be a negative consequence for the
behavior, requires an enabler.”

“Oh, yeah,” Jimmy said with a nod and a smile.
 
“That would be Mom.
 
She lets Daddy get away with everything.”

“Oh, and you’re Mister Innocent?” Trina asked him.
 
“You let Daddy get away with all kinds of
shit too.
 
Don’t play.”

“But I only do it because you do it.”

“What do you call that, Doc?” Trina asked the therapist.
 
“Deflection or transference, or something
like that?”

The therapist laughed, and then her intercom buzzed.
 
She pressed the button.
 
“Yes, Jayla?”

“Mr. Gabrini has arrived,” her assistant responded.

“Finally!” Trina said with relief and irritation, as the
therapist told her assistant to let him in.

When Reno walked in, Trina pounced.
 
“Where in the world have you been?”

Reno, dressed in a black suit, with shades dangling from his
hand, wasn’t about to give in that easily.
 
“What are you talking where have I been?
 
Where do you think I’ve been?
 
I
have a business to run.”

“So do I, Reno,” Trina pointed out, “and I was here on time.”

“So was I,” Jimmy echoed, “and I live in New Hampshire.”

“One day I’m going to stop enabling your ass,” Trina said as
she made her way to the couch.

“What enabling?” Reno asked.
 
“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means the next time you’re this late I’m not going to
wait for you.
 
I’m going to leave.”

“So leave!” Reno shot back.

“Yeah, right, Dad.
 
She
leaves and you’ll be, ‘where’s Trina? Where’s Tree?’ all day long.
 
You wouldn’t be able to function!”

“That’s what you think,” Reno said, sitting on the sofa
beside Trina.
 
He found himself
sandwiched between Trina and Jimmy.
 
“And
why do I always end up in the middle?” he asked.
 
Jimmy laughed.

But Reno’s tardiness wasn’t the only problem, and all three
of them realized it almost immediately.
 
The counselor began the session by asking very introductory questions to
understand the family dynamics, and they gladly answered.

And then the real question: “So,” she asked, crossing her
legs, “why are we here?”

That question stumped them all.
 
All three were frozen.
 
They gave some bullshit answer, some skirting
around the truth conversations, but it wasn’t until after the session, and Reno
and Trina were in Reno’s car heading back to the PaLargio, did they verbalize
their problem.

“I never even considered that,” Trina said.
 
She was on the passenger seat.
 
Reno was driving.
 
Jimmy followed them, driving Trina’s car.

“When she asked why we were there, I was thrown too,” Trina
added.

“Like what were we going to say?” Reno asked.
 
“We’re here because our son killed the man
who was banging his wife?
 
We’re here
because one day I had to let some mobsters shoot my oldest son rather than
shoot my wife and baby?”

Trina smiled.
 
“She
would have declared all three of us crazy and committed us on the spot.”
  

They laughed.
 
Then
Reno looked at Tree.
 
“Commit who?
 
You?” he asked.

And that was the end of their counseling sessions.
 
Not because they wouldn’t participate, but
because everything they needed to discuss was the very things they could not
mention.
 
Jimmy spent that weekend with
his daughter, and then returned to New Hampshire.
 
Life went on after all of the drama, as it
always did.
 
It was, as Reno put it, the
Gabrini way.

It was also the Gabrini way to look out for their children.
The following weekend, Jimmy returned to Vegas and Reno and Trina drove him
over to Buddy Wellstone’s house so that Jimmy could pick up the baby.
 
The plan was for the four of them to go to
dinner, but when he took too long, they became concerned.
 
Everything had been amicable.
 
Val never once kept Maddie from spending the
weekend with her father, and even she and Jimmy weren’t at each other’s
throat.
 
They wanted to keep it that way.

That was why, when Jimmy still did not come out of that
house, Reno and Trina got out of the car and went inside themselves.

Val and Jimmy were in the den, playing on the floor with the
baby, when they walked in.

“You forgot we were out there?” Reno asked his son.
 
He and Val weren’t exactly lovey-dovey, but
they were at least on speaking terms again.

“Hey Ma,” Val said, as she and Trina hugged.
 
“Hey Dad.”

“How are you?” Reno asked her, picked up and kissed little
Maddie, and then looked at Jimmy.
 
“Well?”

“Well what?” Jimmy asked, as Trina took the baby from Reno
and hugged and kissed her too.

“What’s taking you so long?” Reno asked.
 
“You forgot we were waiting on you?”

“Nothing’s taking me long.
 
And I was gonna tell you.
 
I
decided that I’m going to hang here for a while.”

Reno didn’t get it.
 
“Hang here?
 
What for?”

Jimmy wanted to roll his eyes.
 
“I’m going to hang here,” he said again.

“You’re going to hang here with the woman who cheated on
you?” Reno asked.

“With the woman
I
cheated on,” Jimmy fired back.
 
“Yes.”

Val smiled.

“And there’s that little detail,” Trina added, “that she’s
the mother of his child.”
 
Trina handed
the baby back to Jimmy.
 
“Let’s go,
Reno.
 
We’ll see you guys later.”

Reno didn’t like it, and Trina knew it.
 
He had this double standard when it came to
women.
 
Jimmy could cheat, but he had to
be forgiven.
 
Val could cheat, but she
had to be ostracized and forever punished.
 
If it was up to Reno she would be kicked to the curb permanently.
 
But Trina wasn’t having it.
 
Jimmy and Val both messed up, and especially
Jimmy, given what happened at that lodge.
 
Trina placed her arm in Reno’s and escorted him back to the car.

“They break up to make up,” Reno said, when they got
outside.
 
“It makes no sense.”

“We’ve had our breakups too, Reno,” Trina reminded him. “I
don’t know why this seems so strange to you.”

“She cheated on him,” Reno reminded her.

“Yeah, but look what Jimmy did to that man she cheated
with.
 
Don’t you think she’s suffered
enough?”

“No,” Reno said bluntly.
 
“Hell no.
 
That man got what he
deserved and the only reason Jimmy didn’t pop a cap in her ass too was because
of her status as the mother of his child.
 
But now they’re back together?”

“They aren’t completely back,” Trina said.
 
“They’re working on it.”

“But how can he trust her?
 
A man has to be able to trust his woman.”

“They both have things to work on,” Trina said.
 
“It’s a two-way street.”

“So what are you saying?” Reno asked as he opened the car
door for Trina.
 
“Forget about it?”

Trina looked at her husband.
 
Reno sometimes had a way of breaking it down to the real.
 
He had on his shades, so she lifted them up,
revealing his gorgeous blue eyes.
 
“That’s a start,” she said with a smile, kissed him, and got into the
car.

But as soon as they got into the car, Reno’s phone
buzzed.
 
He looked at the text.
 
It was from Stephanie.
 
She was back in town.
 
“I’ll drop you off at Champagne’s,” he said.
 
“I’ve got to make a run.”

“What about?” Trina asked.

“Just business,” Reno said, which was his usual line.
 
And Trina, for peace sake after too much
drama already, let it go.