Reno's Gift (Mob Boss Series) (33 page)

“Rig?” the driver
responded, confused.

“Yes, rigged you foreign
motherfucker!
 
Is it rigged?
 
Is a bomb in there?”

“Bomb?” the driver asked,
attempting to get away.
 
“No bomb!
 
Me no like bomb!”

“Get your skinny ass back
over here!” Sal slung him back.
 
But it
didn’t matter.
 
Reno grabbed his son and
pulled him out of that musky cab.
 
Without giving the cabbie a second thought, he rushed, with his bouncing
baby boy in his arms, inside the house.
 

To Mom.

FOURTEEN

Less than a half-hour
later, with mother and child reunited, Reno had them all assembled in the
living room.
 
Grace and Gemma were there
with Tree and the baby, and Jimmy, Sal, and Tommy surrounded Reno.
 
The cab driver had been allowed to
leave.
 
He could barely describe the
woman, just that she was white and skinny and had short black hair.
 
Could have been twenty, thirty or forty.
 
He didn’t really pay her much attention and
couldn’t say if it was her if he was to ever see her again.
 
All he knew was that she paid him generously,
he would have to work all day to make what she paid him, and he did what she
asked.
 
It was unconventional, and he
knew it, but he drove the baby home.
 

Reno was so pleased that
he paid him too, equally as generously.
 
But he was no happy fool.
 
He also
ordered a couple of his men to follow the cabbie for the rest of the day and night,
just in case there was more to know than meets the eye.

But nobody could figure
out why the kidnappers would release the baby, and keep Fran.
 
The baby, surely, was their trump card.
 
Why didn’t they play it?

“Maybe because they found
out that we were on to Belle,” Sal suggested, “and they had to scuttle their
plans.
 
Maybe Belle was the mastermind.”

“I doubt that,” Tommy
said.
 
“Belle said Reno was going to cry
tonight.
 
If she was running anything,
why would she be so certain that it would continue to fruition?”
 
Tommy shook his head.
 
“No.
 
Belle couldn’t have been the
 
mastermind.
  
But the question
remains: who is?”

“A mother,” Reno said.

“A mother?” Jimmy asked.

“A mother who wouldn’t
hurt a child.
 
That’s why Dommi was
released.”
 

Reno stood up, as his
thoughts began to take shape.
 
Every eye
was on him as he moved around the room.
 
Trina thought he looked rejuvenated.
 
His beautiful hair was still a hot mess, and his expensive clothes still
hung on him as if they were thrift store specials, but she could see new life
in her man.
 
They still had his
sister.
 
There was still a major league
problem he had on his hands.
 
But his
baby was safe and back in the arms of his wife.
 
Trina knew him better than anybody alive.
 
She knew what it would have done to him if
anything would have happened to Dommi.
 
He would be devastated if anything happened to Fran, but it would be a
different devastation.

“Yeah, that’s got to be
it,” Reno said as if he was thinking out loud.
 
“A mother.
 
Not just a woman, a
mother.
 
She wouldn’t hurt a child.
 
And she’s an old school mother, too.
 
An older woman.”

“But the cab driver said
the woman who asked him to take Dom home was twenty or thirty,” Jimmy
said.
 
“That’s not old school.”

“Twenty or thirty or forty
or fifty,” Sal said dismissively.
 
“Who’s
gonna trust that guy’s eyesight?
 
She
could have been a hundred for all he saw.
 
Could have been bent over half dead.
 
All he saw was that cash floating his way.
 
All he saw was green.”

“She could have been the
daughter, or an assistant, or somebody like that,” Reno said to his son.
 
“But I’m talking about the mastermind.
 
That woman is a mother and she’s old school.
 
That’s why she took Fran instead of
Trina.
 
Maybe the only reason she took
Dommi at all was because he was with Fran at the time.
 
Belle knew me.
 
She knew if she took Fran she could get my
attention, yeah, she could get my attention.
 
But if she took Trina, if she took my wife, she could get my life.”

“But an old school mother
wouldn’t see it that way,” Grace said.

“No, she wouldn’t,
Grace,” Reno replied.
 
“She’d believe
that blood was thicker than water.
 
Nobody sat at a higher place at the table than your blood kin.
 
A sister, in her world, was always more
valuable than a wife.
 
And Belle was working
with her.”

“With who?” Trina asked,
desperate to follow where Reno was leading.

“Not Bruno,” Reno
said.
 
“But Bruno’s mother.”

Sal was floored.
 
“The Dolph’s widow?”

Tommy found this
plausible.
 
“Bruno was killed just after
he got out of prison, after all,” he said.
 
“And if she was anything like her son was, she had to blame you.
 
She blamed you when the Dolph had his heart
attack.
 
She blamed you when Brew got
locked up.
 
On some level she had to
blame you.”

“But what the fuck does
Belle have to do with the Luccis?” Sal wanted to know.

“I say we go find out,”
Reno said.
 
“What say you, Tommy?”

Tommy thought about
Grace.
 
He thought how traumatic all of
this must be to her, especially since he was supposed to be bringing
 
her to Vegas because
 
of that stunt Cameron pulled.
 
He looked at her.
  
“What say you, Grace?” he asked her, and
Trina looked anxiously at Grace.

Grace was torn.
 
She didn’t expect him to ask her opinion at
all.
 
She was pleased that he did.
 
But that didn’t mean she wanted him to go.
 
She didn’t.
 
But she knew he had to.
 
“You go,”
she said.
 
“Absolutely.”

Tommy would have gone
regardless of what Grace would have recommended, he had to back up his
family.
 
And a part of him, probably the
biggest part, was elated that she sanctioned his decision.
 
But a smaller part of him wasn’t so
thrilled.
 
A smaller part of him hated
that the woman he loved was about to become caught up in the world of the
Gabrinis.
 
Caught up forever, if he took
her down the aisle.

But he went.
 
That was what Gabrinis did.
 
He handled his business.

The Lucci family used to
live in an expansive estate in Vegas, but, to Reno’s surprise, the widow had
moved to Spring Valley nearly a decade ago.
  
It turned out to be a modest home and demonstrated to Reno just how narrow
the Dolph’s reach really was.
 
After he
died, and after Bruno was locked up, there was nothing left for Maude Lucci but
to downside and lay low.

They entered from the
back.
 
Reno and Jimmy, Tommy and
Sal.
 
They had back up with them too,
mostly Reno’s body men, just in case it wasn’t as simple as it appeared it
might be.

Tommy owned a major
security firm and was considered a top expert in the field, but getting into
the small, two-bedroom home was as easy as walking through the backdoor.
 
Mainly because, as soon as they entered, they
encountered gunfire.

One armed man and one
armed female fired at will at the opening of the door.
 
They were waiting for their arrival.
 
But even with the advantage of surprise, they
did not get the upper hand.
 
Reno was able
to take out one of the gunman, the male, and Sal took out the female.
 
Tommy and Jimmy cornered Maude.
 
And although she was a woman of a particular
age, sixty if she was a day, she was no weakling.
 
Tommy had to wrestle a rifle from her grasp
and get her under control.

“Damn lady!” Sal yelled
angrily when he, too, had to intervene with the feisty old broad.
 
He grabbed her by the shoulders and forced
her into the kitchen chair.
 
“Settle your
old behind down before we put a cap in your ass!”

But Maude Lucci wasn’t
thinking about Sal.
 
“You’ll rot in hell,
Reno Gabrini!” she yelled.
 
“You’ll rot
in hell!”

Reno pulled out a chair
and sat down in front of her.
 
Jimmy
remained with his father, both of their guns still drawn, both of them amazed
by the old lady’s strength.
 
Tommy and
Sal, along with Reno’s body men, made their way throughout the little house,
making sure there were no surprises or booby-traps, and seeking to find Fran
among the rooms.

“Long time no see,
Maude,” Reno said to the
 
homeowner.

Maude, however, would not
cooperate.
 
“Go to hell,” she said to
him, the liver spots and wrinkles on her face shielding the fact that in her
day she was a very beautiful woman.
 
But her
day had been a long time ago.

“You show such
hostility,” Reno said to her, although her behavior, and the fact that gunmen
were waiting for their arrival, only confirmed his suspicions.
 
She had Fran.
 
She was the mastermind.
 
“What
have I done to deserve your wrath?”

“You killed her,” she
said as if she was still attempting to believe it herself.
 
“You killed my daughter!”
 

Jimmy and Reno exchanged
a glance.
 
Then Reno looked at her.
 
“What?” he asked her.

“You killed my daughter,
you asshole!”

“That’s a gotdamn lie!”
Reno fired back.
 
Then he thought about
it. “What daughter?”

Maude looked away from
him, pain in her small, round eyes.

“What daughter?” Reno
asked again.
 
“You mean Belle?
 
But that can’t be.
 
The Dolph wasn’t her father.”
 
Then Reno realized what she meant.
 
“But you’re her mother.”
 
Reno was floored.
 
“That’s why Belle got involved in your hatred
of me, isn’t it?
 
Because Bruno was her
half-brother, and you were her mother.”

“You ruined my family,”
Maude said.
 
“You killed my husband.”

“Your husband had a heart
attack, Maude.”

“You killed my husband!”
she shouted.
 
“He never would have had a
heart attack if you wouldn’t have destroyed Bruno with your lies!
 
You killed my husband as surely as you would
have put a knife in his back.
  
And he
loved you.
 
He thought of you as a
son.
 
But you didn’t give a damn about him.”

She hesitated.
 
Her hatred was as real as the air in the
room.
 
“You killed my husband,” she said
again.
 
“You killed my son.
 
Now you took my daughter away from me.
 
They found her body on the side of the road,
like a dog, and they didn’t have to tell me anything. I know you did it.
 
You took my daughter away from me.
 
But you’ll get yours, Reno.
 
You’ll rot in hell you bastard!”
 

Maude rose from her seat
in anger, but Jimmy shoved her back down.
 

“It’s Pop’s time to
talk,” he said to her.

“You’ll rot there too,”
she said to Jimmy.
 
“Your black ass.”

“I’ll bet it’s firmer
than your white ass,” replied Jimmy.

“Where’s my sister,
Maude?” Reno asked her.

But Maude gave Reno a
scathing look and said nothing.