Reno's Gift (Mob Boss Series) (6 page)

There
was a difference once they arrived, however.
 
Whereas Reno was now hunched over, barely able to catch his breath,
Jimmy’s juices were just beginning to flow.
 
He looked as if he hadn’t broke a sweat.
 

“You’re
getting old, Pop,” he said with a smile as his father bent over
hyperventilating.

“Fuck
you,” Reno said, not so far gone that he’d lost his feistiness.
 

Jimmy
laughed.
 
“Not a day goes by when I don’t
hear those wonderful words from your lips.
 
Reno “Fuck You” Gabrini.
 
What a
legacy you’re leaving your sweet, innocent son.”

“Sweet
and innocent my ass,” Reno said with a one-syllable laugh as he stood erect
again, brush his hair out of his face, and then made his way into the café.

Reno
stood at the entrance and began looking around.
 
Jimmy walked in and stood beside him.

“I’ve
got to pee, Pop,” he said.

“The
language!” Reno said seriously.
 
“We’re
in mixed company here.
 
The proper phrase
is, ‘I have to use the bathroom, Pop.’”

Jimmy
rolled his eyes.
 
His father was about as
“proper” as a pig in a sty, but he humored him.
 
“I’ve got to use the bathroom, Father.”

“Okay,
you go pee,” Reno said without realizing what he had just said.
 
“I see somebody I need to talk to.”

Jimmy
smiled and shook his head as he made his way for the restrooms.
 

Reno
headed in the opposite direction, around the bar and up to a window seat near
the back.
 
Belle Patrone was seated at
the table, smoking a cigarette in a no-smoking café, looking out of the
window.
 
Reno knew she had bodyguards in
that restaurant with her, but if they were any good he would not be able to
pick them out.
 
He picked out every one.

“Belle!”
he said as he approached her table.

Belle
looked at him and smiled.
 
“Well,
well.
 
My favorite mobster.”

Reno
grinned and leaned down to her.
 
“That’s
my line,” he said as he kissed her on the mouth.
 
Then he sat down in front of her.
 
Although she was always a few years older than
Reno was, she had aged beautifully.
 
He
sat there staring at her beauty.
 
He was
still fond of her.
 
“It’s been a minute,
hasn’t it?”

“A
minute my foot,” Belle said, tapping her ash onto the saucer on the table.
 
“It’s been more like hours and days and
months and years!
 
You don’t stay in
touch when you promised you would.”

“What
can I say?
 
Life got in the way, Belle,
and it was a motherfucker.”

Belle
laughed a loud, throaty laugh and then shook her strawberry blonde head.
 
“Same old Reno.
 
I missed you, my friend.”

“I
missed you too.”

“Yeah,
sure.
 
Is that why you didn’t bother to
call me all those other times you were in Atlantic City?”

 
Reno threw up his hands.
 
“Guilty as charged,” he said as the waitress
arrived to take his order.
 
“Nothing
yet,” he said to the waitress and then she hesitated before leaving.
 
Bad move, Reno thought.

“Ma’am,”
the waitress finally said to Belle, “I’m sorry but we don’t allow smoking in
this establishment.”

Belle
gave the girl her best blue-eyed devil look.
 
“Get the fuck away from me,” she said.

The
girl, undoubtedly stunned, scampered off.
 

Reno
shook his head.
 
“You need to cut that
shit out,” he said.
 
It was that side of
Belle, that crass, uncaring side, that made Reno dump her all those years ago.
 
The only reason they remained friends was
because he had an affinity for Belle’s father, who was a mob boss just as
Reno’s father, and Reno promised that he would look out for her when her old
man died.
 
But when he died such a promise
proved completely necessary.
 
Belle
looked out for herself.

Reno
leaned forward.
 
“So what made you text
me this time of morning when you never bothered all those other times I was in
town?”

Belle
had seen him last night.
 
He didn’t see
her, but she saw him.
 
And remembered
him.
 
Every inch of him.
 

“I
wanted to see you before you left town,” she said.
 
“I wanted to make sure you were okay.
Especially after that hit on the PaLargio.
 
Are you okay now?”

Reno
nodded.
 
“I’m good.
 
Thanks for asking.”

“I
heard you served it up to Tony Tufarna.”

“Guilty
again.”

She
smiled. “For a man who declares up and down he’s not Mafia, you serve it up
better than any mobster I’ve ever known, Reno.
 
And I’ve known them all.
 
In every
sense of the word.”

Reno
laughed.
 
“Yeah, I heard you were a
promiscuous so and so.”

“But
not when I was with you,” Belle said firmly.
 
“Let’s get that straight.
 
When I
was with you, I didn’t so much as look at another man thank-you very much.
 
You were fucking other women, and I knew you
were, but I remained true to you.
 
But
after you dumped me, hell yeah I played the field.
 
Why the hell not?”

Reno
decided to joke with her.
 
“Don’t tell me
you’re still bitter about our breakup?”

As he
expected, she snorted.
 
“Get real,” she
said, and Reno laughed.
 
“Breaking up
with you was the best thing that ever happened to me.
 
You had me dick-whipped, Reno.
 
You had me craving that big-ass dick of yours
day in and night out.
 
I didn’t want any
other joystick anywhere near my joyhole.
 
Not the way you kept me filled.
 
But now, forget about it.
 
I have
my pick of the litter.
 
Although,” she
said, looking hard at Reno, “none can compare, my friend.”

Reno
smiled weakly.
 
He was proud, but it was
an awkward pride.

“Well
thanks a lot,” Belle said when he didn’t respond to her compliment.

Reno
looked at her.
 
“What?”

“At
least you can return the favor by flattering me.”

She
was a tough broad, Reno thought, still staring at her.
 
He decided to keep it real.
 
“Even if it’s not true?” he asked her.

 
Belle smiled.
 
“Ah.
 
I see.
 
The wife?”

Reno nodded.
 
“Right.”

“So
she’s the one, hun?
 
So that black chick,
who excuse me is cute but isn’t exactly Miss America thank you very much, rocks
your world, does she?”

If
she only knew how much, Reno thought.
 
“Yes,” he said.

“Shame
on you.”
 
Belle said this
tongue-n-cheek.
 
“With all of these good
Italian girls running around.”

Reno
laughed.
 
That was always the line most
every Italian parent laid on every Italian boy.
 
“And I’m sure you only fuck Italian boys, right?”

Belle
snorted again.
 
“Yeah, sure.
 
But she’s the one?
 
That Trina person?
 
She used to be a stripper, didn’t she?”

“No,”
Reno said without any animation.
 
If she
had been a stripper, he wouldn’t care, just as long as she was Tree.
 
“She never stripped.”

“That’s
not what I heard.
 
I thought you guys met
at Boyzie’s?
 
I thought the first time
you saw her she was shimmying down some pole?”

Reno
knew Belle was being particularly nasty.
 
But it didn’t matter.
 
He and his
wife did meet at Boyzie’s.
 
The first
time was forgettable.
 
Trina was a waitress
there and Reno was helping Myra Rause get out of that jam with Bruno
Lucci.
 
Trina, to this day, didn’t
remember that particular encounter and would often remark, as only she could,
that back then she met hundreds a men a night at Boyzie’s and didn’t remember
any of them.
 
Why should he be any
different?

But
they met again, years after that first encounter, when Reno was thinking about
buying Boyzie’s and turning it into something a little more upscale.
 
That meeting eventually led to a marriage
that was predicted by almost everybody to be doomed to failure from its
inception.
 
But somehow they managed to
survive all of those rocky days and devastating nights, including a long
separation that almost ended it for good.
 
Now Trina was his soul mate, the woman he loved above any other.
  
Belle could joke around and denigrate all
she cared to, but at the end of the day his answer would still be the
same.
 
Trina was the one.
 
The only one.
 
And always would be.

“Anyway,”
Belle said when it was obvious that Reno wasn’t the kind of man who allowed
jokes about his wife, “I’d better get to the point. I’m sure you’re wondering
why I contacted you.”

“You’d
be wondering right.”

“I
contacted you because, friend to friend, I wanted to give you the heads up.”

“About
what?”

“Who.
 
Bruno Lucci.”

Reno
stared at her.
 
“Bruno Lucci?
 
What about him?”

“He
got out two-three months ago.
 
Got
paroled after ten years.”

“Yeah,
I heard something to that effect.
 
So
what?”

“He’s
been making noises.
 
Serious noises.
 
And not just in Vegas either.
 
I’m in Jersey and heard the chatter.”

“What
noise that clown can make?”

“Revenge
noises.
 
He wants you bad, Reno.
 
And he’s got a little money to throw behind
his talk.”

“Anything
concrete yet?”

“Not
yet,” Belle said.
 
“He’s not there yet,
from what I’m hearing.
 
But I wanted you
to be aware.
 
He’s a weakling, Reno.
 
He’s a nobody in the long run.
 
But sometimes they can be the worst
kind.
 
Points to prove and all of that.”

Reno
nodded.
 
He never took any of his enemies
for granted, and he wasn’t about to start with Bruno Lucci.

And
as they continued to discuss it, Jimmy Mack emerged from the restroom area and
looked around for his father.
 
When he
saw him, and saw that he was sitting at a table with some blonde that even from
a distance looked gorgeous, he hesitated.
 
He wasn’t quite sure if he should interrupt.
 
And then he took a seat at an empty table
further toward the front of the café.
 

He
watched his father and the woman.
 
He
thought about his stepmother, Trina, and how much she trusted Reno.
 
But Jimmy always wondered about his
father.
 
He was always being singled out
by females.
 
Every time he was with his
father, it was as obvious as the day was bright that he had what women
loved.
 
They would certainly give Jimmy a
look, maybe even a double look, but they stared at Reno. And these weren’t just
women Reno’s age, either.
 
Women Jimmy’s
age were doing it.
 
If females his age
were trying to get Reno’s dick inside of them, Jimmy could only imagine how
hard women who stood a chance with Reno were trying.
  
Especially sophisticated women like the one
at his father’s table now.
 

Trina
trusted Reno, and Jimmy trusted him too.
 
But damn.
 
There was just so much
resistance one man could endure with all of these females all but begging him
to take them on a ride.
 
And Reno
traveled often.
 
While Trina was back in
Vegas, doing her own thing, being the faithful wife, but maybe just a little
clueless.
 
Did she realize how
susceptible to infidelity Reno really was, Jimmy wondered.
 
Did she realize how easy he could have a
woman in his out-of-town bed?