Reno's Gift (Mob Boss Series) (5 page)

“That’s
right,” Reno said, proud that Jimmy was finally internalizing what he had been
preaching to him.
 
“It’ll show from the
foundation to every brick laid.
 
The
tourists won’t understand why, but they just won’t get a connection to your
place.
 
Something will be wrong to them,
and eventually they’ll stop coming.
 
So
good,” he said as he led them up a ramp to a bench that overlooked the shore.
 
“I’ve been toying with this idea of building
here in Jersey for years and years and still haven’t pulled the trigger.
 
Now that I have you feeling pretty much the
same way I do, I just might keep it holstered for a little while longer
still.”
  

They
sat on the bench and watched the barely populated white sand beach as the early
tide rolled in.
 
The ocean breeze had
Reno’s thick brown hair blown forward, framing his face and squinting his blue
eyes, and Jimmy, looking at his father, was taken aback by his old man’s
beauty.
 
He always knew he was a good
looking man, but here in Jersey, not far from where he was born and raised, he
never looked more relaxed and attractive to Jimmy.
 
And Jimmy got it now.
 
He finally could easily see why so many of
his female friends had been trying foolishly to give him their numbers to give
to his father.

For a
long few minutes they stopped talking and chose to take in the ease of the
morning instead.
 
Reno had one leg
crossed over his knee and his arm across the back of the bench, effective
hugging his son without touching him.
 
Jimmy sat straight back and still, with his arms folded and his eyes
straight ahead.
 
Reno looked at his
oldest child.
 
He didn’t raise
Jimmy.
 
He didn’t even know his son
existed until a few years ago when his mother, who was now deceased, finally
came clean.
 

But
as he looked at his son he saw a mixed-race version of himself.
 
He had Gabrini eyes and Gabrini intensity,
and although his complexion was closer to his African-American mother’s complexion
than his father’s Italian heritage, his nose and lips and cheeks were all
Reno.
 

It
wasn’t in looks alone, either.
 
But in
style too.
  
He had his old man’s
swag.
 
He had it in spades.
 
And although he wasn’t half the natural
leader his old man was, he was no follower either.
 
The way Reno saw it, Jimmy Mack was a young
man who danced to the beat of his own drum, and didn’t give a damn who liked it
or didn’t.
 

Reno
liked his style.
 
He liked his strength,
too.
 
That wasn’t the problem.
 
It was that fearlessness, that death wish
Reno sometimes wondered if Jimmy had, that concerned him about his son.
 
And after that awful episode that had Jimmy
fighting for his life, Reno could see it even more starkly now. It was as if
Jimmy cared even less about this life and therefore had it in him to take the
kind of risks that could cost him his life.
 
It was that side of his son, that reckless, devil-may-care side, that
still kept Reno up nights.

But
it wasn’t as if Reno was blameless in his son’s attitude.
 
He wasn’t.
 
And that was why he needed to talk to him.

His
cell phone buzzed as soon as he was about to go there, and he pulled it from
his pocket.
 
He read the text message,
responded to it, and then put his phone away again.
 
Jimmy waited for his father to tell him what
the message was about, but Reno didn’t say a word.
 
Which wasn’t surprising since he never
did.
 
Jimmy even wondered why he would
suddenly think, just because his father for the first time ever invited him on
a business trip with him, that he would tell him everything going on in his
life.
 
That was pure lunacy.
 
The way Jimmy saw it Reno didn’t even share
everything with his own wife, a wife he was super-close to, why would he go
there with his son?

“Nice
breeze,” Jimmy decided to say.
 
“You came
here as a kid, didn’t you?”

“I
did.
 
Used to run up and down that
boardwalk like it was nobody’s business.
 
This place was pulsating with life then.”

“Is
that maybe why you keep coming back here?
 
To see if you can recreate your carefree childhood maybe?”

“Maybe,”
Reno said, although he knew that wasn’t it at all.
 
But he needed to end that conversation so
that he could start a far more pressing one.
 
The one he had been avoiding for far too long.

He
looked at his handsome son, at his soft curly hair and warm golden skin.
 
“We haven’t discussed what happened, James,”
he said.

Jimmy’s
heart began to tighten.
 
He knew
immediately what his father meant.
 
“Nothing to discuss.”

“There’s
plenty to discuss.”
 
Then Reno’s face
frowned in distress.
 
“Look at me,” he
said to his son.

Jimmy
braced himself and looked at his father.
 
The care and concern in his eyes almost made him want to cry.
 
His father worried too much when there wasn’t
anything to worry about, and it bothered Jimmy.

“I had
to make a decision, son,” Reno said.

“I
know, Pop.
 
You made---”

“Hear
me out,” Reno said with a hint of irritation in his voice.
 
“It was a terrible choice, but I had to
choose.
 
My enemies saw to that.
 
But the thing is, son, I don’t want you to
ever think that because I chose you instead of your baby brother or Trina, that
it meant that I loved you less.
 
It
didn’t mean that at all.”

 
“I know that, Pop.”

Reno
stared at his son.
 
He only called him
Pop when he was upset with him about something.
 
And Reno knew it was all about that decision he made.
 
Jimmy might not know it yet, and he might
have convinced himself that he was cool with the decision his father made, but
Reno knew better. “You have every right to hate me, Jimmy, for what I forced
you to go through.”

“You
didn’t force me to go through anything,” Jimmy said, irritable himself
now.
 
“Tony Tufarna had a gun to Ma’s
head, and to little Dommi’s head.
 
What
were you supposed to do?
 
You couldn’t
let them kill the baby.
 
And Ma had to
stay around to take care of the baby.”

Reno
nodded.
 
“That was my thinking,
yes.”
 
Although Reno knew, and perhaps
Jimmy too, that it was far more complicated than that.

“So
how could I be upset about something you had no control over?” Jimmy
asked.
 
“Tony Tufarna said either I leave
this earth or they did.
 
You offered to
die for all of us, but he wouldn’t let you.
 
He figure killing one of us would be more punishment to you.”
 
Then he looked at his father.
 
“You did what you had to do, Pop.”

Reno
gazed into his son’s eyes.
 
He expected
to see coldness there, but it wasn’t there.
 
He saw compassion and concern.
 
It
actually startled him.
 
“You don’t hate
me?”

Jimmy
was genuinely shocked.
 
“Hate you?
 
How could I hate you?
 
Why would you think I would hate you for doing
exactly what I would have done?”

Reno
didn’t respond to that.
 
Truth, he knew,
could be unspeakable sometimes.

Jimmy
could see how unconvinced his father really was.
 
“I could never hate you, Pop,” he said
firmly.

It
was unspeakable, Reno decided.
 
He also
decided that dwelling on it would only make it worst.
 
He therefore looked at Jimmy and smiled.
 
“So you don’t hate me?”

“No,”
Jimmy said, glad to see a smile on his old man’s face.
 
“I’ll never hate you.”

“Oh,
yeah?
 
Then why are you calling me
Pop?
 
You only call me Pop when you’re
upset with me.”

 
Jimmy frowned.
 
“What?”

“You
only call me Pop when you’re upset with me.”

“No,
I don’t.”

“Yes,
you do,” Reno said firmly.
 
“That’s the
only time that word comes out of your mouth.
 
Otherwise, I’m Dad.”

Jimmy
smiled and then laughed.
 
“Pop, I mean
Dad, I mean fuck!”
 

Reno
laughed.
 

“I
call you Pop,” Jimmy said, “whenever we’re discussing something heartfelt.
 
I noticed that a long time ago.
 
It just comes out like that.”

“Heartfelt,
hun?”

“That’s
right.”

“So
when you were calling me Dad during that business conversation we had a few
minutes ago, meant we weren’t discussing anything heartfelt?
 
Right?”

Jimmy
wanted to laugh.
 
“I walked right into
that one, didn’t I?”

“Slammed
right into it,” Reno offered.

“From
here on out you’re Pop, okay?
 
No matter
how I feel.
 
No misunderstandings could
possible come from that.
 
Deal?”

Reno
chuckled.
 
“Deal,” he said and he and his
son shook hands.
 
Then Reno turned
serious again, and kept his son’s hand in his grasp.
 
“Just know you mean everything to me, James,”
he said.
 
“I love you dearly and I’ll
never hurt you again.”

“You
didn’t hurt me that time, Pop.
 
That
wasn’t on you.
 
That was all on Tony
Tufarna.
 
And I’m sure,” Jimmy added,
looking his father dead in the eyes, “you took care of Tony Tufarna.”

Reno
never wanted his son to know that side of him.
 
He never wanted his son exposed to the kind of violence he was exposed
to.
 
But Reno’s father was a mob boss and
that mob life latched onto Reno like a second skin.
 
It never let him go.
 
He never joined any mob or any crime family
or syndicate, but he didn’t have to.
 
He
never visited the rodeo, but the rodeo kept visiting him.
 
Now Reno had enemies that his son was taking
on as his own.
 
And although Reno never
visited the rodeo, Jimmy Mack seemed to be itching for an invitation.

“Yes,”
he said to his son, “I took care of Tony Tufarna.”

Jimmy
was pleased, and couldn’t suppress it.
 
He smiled.
 
“Good,” he said.

“I
hated to have to go there,” Reno said.
 
“That level of violence always takes something out of a man.
 
But I had to go there.”

Jimmy’s
smile dissolved.
 
His father always
brought him back to earth.
 
His father
always had a way of reminding him that there were always consequences.

“Let’s
go,” Reno said, patting his son on the leg as he stood to his feet.

“Where
to?” Jimmy asked as he began following his father.

“Café
just past the Tropicana.
 
I’ll race you
there.”

“You’ll
race me?
 
Are you serious?”

“As a
heart attack,” Reno said and took off running.
 
When Jimmy realized that his father wasn’t joking around, he took off
after him.
 

As
father and son ran along the boardwalk, generating looks and comments by their
sudden burst of activity alone, Jimmy was nonetheless confident that he would
eventually overtake Reno.
 
Reno was fast
for a man his age, but Jimmy was in a different league.
 
Even with his father’s head start, Jimmy just
knew he would overtake him. His age, and pride, demanded it.

But
as they ran past Caesar’s Palace, and Donald Trump’s hotel, and store after
store after store, Jimmy continued to lag.
 
It was a matter of a mere second or two, but Reno made it to the café
first.