Authors: Mallory Monroe
Reno, already angry with himself for having a sexual reaction to her, jumped defensive. “What I look like taking her in the bedroom? I’m a married man, Vito. You take her in the bedroom.”
“Fuck you, Reno!” Marcy shouted.
Vito touched her hand, to calm her back down. “I didn’t think you wanted your private business broadcast al over the place, that’s al I was saying.”
“What private business?” Reno asked. “You can’t say anything to me that my cousins can’t hear. I trust these two gentlemen with my life.”
“Tommy, yes, I could trust him with my life, too. But Sal Luca,” Vito said with a smile, “not so much.”
“Hey!” Sal objected. “What am I a piece of wood over here?”
“Why would Frank Partanna’s people snatch this lady’s son?” Tommy asked Vito, to get on with it.
Marcy glanced at the freakishly handsome Tommy Gabrini, and Reno could see her big blues giving him that quick appraisal she was famous for. Which gave Reno some pause. Something
wasn’t adding up here, he thought. A woman’s son has been kidnapped and she’s assessing some good looking dude? Something was wrong.
“Tel him Marcy,” Vito ordered. “Just put it on out there.”
“If it wasn’t for my son,” Marcy said, “I wouldn’t be here, Reno.”
“Fine, you wouldn’t be here,” Reno said, getting irritated. “You wish I was dead, you hate my guts, I get it. But what I don’t get is why the fuck would any of that matter if your kid’s been
snatched?”
It was now Marcy’s time to jump defensive. “What, are you caling me a liar? You think I would lie about something like this just to see your ugly mug again?”
Even Sal had to look at Marcy after that one. Reno could be caled a lot of things, asshole chief among them, but nobody in their right mind would cal him ugly. He was usualy always the best
looking man in any room. Unless Tommy, whose good looks couldn’t be rivaled, was in that same room.
“He’s a good kid, my boy,” Marcy continued. “And I raised him right, and I raised him alone. I didn’t ask for help from nobody! He’s a smart, funny, wonderful, gorgeous little man, and I
would never use him to get next to anybody! Least of al you!”
Tommy looked at Reno. Surely he understood.
Reno stared deep into Marcy’s eyes. Could it be true? Or was she deceiving him again? “How old is this bundle of perfection?” Reno asked, attempting to be snide although his heart was in his
throat.
Marcy stared back at him. “Six,” she said with a twinge of regret in her voice.
Reno ran his hands through his thick hair, ruffling it. Tommy closed his eyes and shook his head. And Sal Luca, who was always the last to get it, shrugged his shoulders. “What?” he asked his
cousin and brother. “Why y’al so distressed al of a sudden? What the fuck’s going on here?”
But nobody answered him. Marcy looked at Reno. Reno was staring at her.
TEN
Jeffrey Graham smiled a smile that could charm a wino, Trina thought, as he tossed his suitcase in the backseat of Reno’s Bentley and then sat down in the front seat.
“Damn girl,” he said, looking around at the wood grain finish, at the Ivory-colored leather seats, at al of the bels and whistles, “this is tight.” Then he looked at her, regret that he’d let her get
away filing his eyes. “You’re living large for real, though.”
Trina smiled. Jeffrey always knew how to make her smile. “Had a fun trip?” she asked as she puled away from the bus station and back into the thick Vegas traffic.
“I wouldn’t cal it fun,” he said. “My ass too sore for fun.” She laughed. “But I’m just so happy to be getting out of Dale, Mississippi that I would have been fine riding a donkey to Vegas. And
thanks again, Tree, for letting me stay in your old apartment. And don’t worry, I’l get out as soon as I get a couple paychecks and can afford my own place.”
“You just focus on doing a good job at work. That apartment was just sitting there empty anyway.”
“You plan to keep it?”
“Not realy, no. I won’t renew the lease. But there’s stil something like four and a half months left on it, so you’re straight.”
“Maybe I can just pay the rent and renew it in my name?”
“First see if you like it. If you like it, then that’s okay with me. But it’s paid up so that’s cool too.”
“So you had it going on like that, hun? Able to pay your rent for a year at one time?”
“Not me. Reno, my husband. He did it while we were stil dating. I didn’t even know he had. I went to pay it, and that’s when the landlord told me. Paid for the entire term of the lease. I was
so mad at Reno.”
“Mad?” Jeffrey said, amazed. “Why would you be mad?”
“Because I didn’t need him to do that for me. I could handle my own business. But it was done and the landlord wasn’t giving it back.” Jeffrey laughed at this. “So I had to just live with it too.
But now, by letting you stay there rather than just letting it sit there empty, makes sense.”
“You stil didn’t have to do this for me, though. I’m very grateful. Good looking out, Tree.”
“Good looking out my foot. I had forgot you were even coming.”
“Whaat? For real?”
“For real. When you caled me tonight and said you were here already, I’m like that’s right. I totaly forgot.”
Jeffrey looked worried. “But you talked to your husband, right? He’s agreed to give me a job, right?”
“He had to go out of town,” she said in truth, “and I didn’t think to even mention it before he left. But yeah, you’re in, don’t worry.” Another battle with Reno, she thought. But a promise was a
promise.
Jeffrey smiled again, and motioned as if he was wiping sweat from his brow. “Whew!” he said. “Thank-you for reassuring me. I couldn’t take any more rejection.” He and Trina exchanged a
glance.
Then his face turned somber. “I’m sorry about your mother,” he said. “I heard she’s stil in the hospital.”
“Yeah, she’s stil recovering. But she’s out of any danger, so we’re grateful for that.”
“I tried to cal you so many times after it happened, but your phone kept going to voice mail so I left a couple of messages. I didn’t know if the job offer was off or what, and I didn’t care. I just
wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“Thanks, Jeff,” she said. This was the Jeff she remembered before their disastrous try at romance. This was the Jeff she missed. “But I’m fine, thank God. I got out with barely a scratch.”
“I’l bet your husband was grateful.”
Trina smiled. “And how,” she said. Jeffrey, however, continued to stare at her. She glanced at him, and then back at the dark road ahead of them. “What?” she asked.
“I was checking out the PaLargio on the internet, you know. I mean, that place is like a palace. Everybody’s heard of it, but until you’ve actualy been there you realy don’t know much about it.
So I wanted to know more about it. That’s when I saw some articles about the owner. About your husband.” He hesitated. “I don’t know if I should say this, especialy since I’m kind of at your
mercy right now.”
“You can say whatever you want,” Trina said with al sincerity. She’d heard it al from her mother anyway.
“I mean, he seems to have a lot of affiliations with the Mafia and people like that, at least that’s what I read. They say the FBI recently questioned him about some man’s death out in California,
the man who may have had a hand in his own father’s murder, and it was just a lot of different hints and reputed to be this and reputed to be that. I mean . . .”
“You mean what, Jeffrey?” Trina asked as she stopped at a red light and looked over at him.
“I mean is it true? Is he--”
“A mob boss?”
Jeffrey nodded, staring at his friend. “Yeah.”
Trina shook her head. “No.
“Is that a flat no, or a no with asterisks?”
Trina laughed. “I’m not about to get you al up in my husband’s business. You just know that you have a job and, until you can get on your feet, a place to stay. That’s al you need to worry
your pretty little head about right now.”
Jeffrey smiled. And then laughed. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, as Trina laughed too and blew through the changing light.
***
He had a son.
They were stil in the hotel room watching the six year old, the kid Marcy said had been snatched; watching him on a tape Marcy had brought along, on a DVD player the hotel provided.
Although he had blonde hair like his mother, he had Reno’s sky-blue eyes, eyes, like his father, that were the highlight of his face. He was running around in some big backyard somewhere, in Schenectady, New York according to Marcy, and he was a sight for Reno, for Tommy and Sal Luca, to behold. This kid was their blood. And al three men, especialy Reno, knew it on sight.
And now he was a pawn in this deadly game Reno had been forced to play.
“What makes you sure it was Partanna’s people that snatched him?” Tommy asked. Reno wasn’t saying anything. He was too busy staring at the kid on the screen.
“Because Pags approached her a week or so after Partanna died,” Vito said.
“Approached you and said what?” Tommy asked Marcy.
“He said they needed my help.”
“To do what?”
“To get Reno’s attention.” Reno looked at her when she said this.
“To get his attention for what? To do what?”
“I don’t know what,” Marcy said. “To kil him, I guess.”
“What they need you to kil him for?” Sal Luca asked. “They wanna kil him they either kil him or put the contract out and get him kiled. At least they try, the motherfuckers.”
“I don’t know what they wanted to do, al right? They said I either do what they tel me to do, or they would turn my file over to the Feds. And he kept throwing hints about my son.”
“Throwing hints?” Reno said. “And you just let a psycho like Pags walk away and you did nothing to protect your son, to hide him?”
“What was I supposed to do, Reno?”
“Beef up security around your child! Get him to a safe house! Cal me, his father, gotdammit!” Reno’s sudden explosiveness caught everybody off guard. They al looked at him. Except
Tommy, who fuly understood. “You should have caled me, Marcy. But nooo, you were stil pissed because I dumped your ass. Stil angry because I didn’t want my woman seling her body to the
highest bidder!”
“I wasn’t seling my body,” Marcy shot back. “I was helping your father get compromising information on his enemies. I was helping your old man!”
“Yeah, you were helping him al right.” Reno would never forget that day at Marcy’s apartment for as long as he lived. Never forget when he came back early from a business trip and caught his
own father fucking her. He didn’t even know they knew each other. When it al came out, when his father told him that she was one of his lay people, which meant she’d have sex with one of their
targets and he’d pay her afterwards, a kind of mob hooker, Reno couldn’t believe it. But it was true. She didn’t deny it.
And Paulo Gabrini, angry that she would have gotten hooked up with his son when she knew the deal, wanted her dead. She, in fact, had to run for her life. Reno made his father spare her and
therefore pul the contract order, but his anger, his heart break, kept him from doing anything else. She actualy was one of the few women up to that point who had stood a chance with him.
“How did the snatch go down?” Tommy asked her.
Marcy stopped staring daggers at Reno and looked at Tommy. “We were just getting home. I opened the car door and he stepped out. Then another car drove up and two men grabbed him.
I fought like a prizefighter to stop them, contrary to what you think, Reno, but they were too strong. I held onto the car door as they drove off, my entire right side was bruised, until one of them
knocked my hands off of the door handle.”
“Did you recognize any of them?” Vito asked.
“No. I’ve never seen them before.”
“Let me see the bruises,” Reno said, staring at her.
She frowned. “What?”
“If you were as bruised as you claim, the bruising would stil be there. Let me see the bruising.”
‘You stil don’t believe me, do you?”
Reno didn’t respond.
Angrily she stood, took off her shirt, revealing a braless chest, and snatched down her pants and panties, rendering her virtualy naked before al four men. And it was true, she had bruises and
marks over her entire left side. What was also true, Reno noticed to his shame, was that her body hadn’t changed one iota since the days when he used to pound her.
“Aren’t you looking in the wrong spot, Reno?” she asked with a mischievous smile. “My pussy didn’t get a scratch.”
“Fuck you!” Reno yeled, stood up, and walked over to the window. “Put on your clothes,” he ordered with far less animation in his voice. How she could joke at a time like this was a mystery
to him. And it just wasn’t adding up.
She smiled and began putting back on her clothes. She loved the way he ordered it, as if he didn’t want the other men to see what he used to enjoy.
Tommy walked over to the window and stood next to Reno, both looking out of the window, neither seeing anything but the trouble ahead of them.
“What are you thinking?” he asked him, his voice too low to be heard beyond Reno.
“What are you thinking?” Reno threw back at Tommy.
“It smels like a trap.”
“Yeah, it does. And it doesn’t.”
“That kid’s yours. He looks just like you.”
“She fucked my old man too,” he felt a need to explain.
This stunned Tommy. “She what?” Reno didn’t repeat himself. “But I always thought Uncle Paulo was kind of hands off when it came to females.”
“He was hands off al right. He didn’t keep his hands off of any of them.”