Reno Gabrini: For His Lover (The Mob Boss Series Book 14) (12 page)

When Reno arrived at the parking lot nearly three miles from
their home, and drove up beside the SUV that had spotted Jimmy, he was thinking
about the promise he made to Trina.
 
And
he realized how tough a task bringing Jimmy back was going to be.
 
Because he knew Jimmy.

The SUV rolled down the window as Reno’s car stopped beside
them.
 
They all were looking at the small
Chevy Cruze, a rental car no doubt, parked further away.
 
“Any movement?” Reno asked the driver of the
SUV.

“None, boss,” the driver said.
 
“He’s just sitting there.
 
When we first got here he was just sitting
there.
 
He’s still just sitting there.”

“You did a welfare check?” Reno asked.

“Yeah, I got another car to drive by as if he was just a
regular driver and eyeball inside the car.
 
Jimmy was behind the wheel.
 
He
was alone.
 
He didn’t appear injured in
any way.
 
He was just sitting there.
 
All appeared to be well.”

Reno let out a sigh of relief.
 
At least he was physically okay.
 
“Hang tight for backup,” Reno said, “in case
he decides to drive away.
 
Have a car a
block or so further up, in case he gets out of this parking lot.”

“Yes, sir.”

And Reno slowly drove his Porsche toward the Cruze.
 
But unlike his men, when Reno drove up and
could see Jimmy inside the car, he immediately saw that all was not well at
all.
 
Because as soon as Reno looked into
that car, he saw Jimmy sitting there alright, but he was sitting there with a
rifle to his head.

Reno’s heart stopped.
 
It literally stopped.
 
“God, no!”
he cried as he through open his car door and attempted to get out of his car,
only to be restrained by his buckled seatbelt.
 
He unbuckled quickly, jumped out, and ran to his son.
 
“Jimmy, no!” he cried.
 
“Jimmy, don’t do it!”

But as soon as Jimmy heard his father’s voice, and looked in
his direction, he panicked.
 
He couldn’t
let him see him like this.
 
He couldn’t
let him know what kind of fuck-up he truly was!
 
Just as Reno was about to open Jimmy’s car door, Jimmy cranked up and
began driving away.
 
But Reno knew, if he
allowed his son to leave that parking lot, he would in all probability never
see him alive again.
 
And that was
unacceptable to him.

That was why Reno panicked too and jumped onto the hood of
the moving car.
 
Reno’s men in the SUV,
astounded by what they were suddenly witnessing, quickly took off toward the
action.

Jimmy was beyond astounded when his father’s big body landed
on the hood of the small car.
 
What was
he crazy?
 
Didn’t he know he could get
himself killed?

But Reno wasn’t thinking about his own welfare.
 
He was thinking only about Jimmy’s.
 
He was thinking only about how he was
determined to stop that car by the force of his weight alone, or die trying,
before he allowed his son to get away from him.

But Jimmy kept driving.
 
He could see his father struggling to hold on.
 
He could see the pain, the anguish, the hurt
in his father’s big blue eyes.
 
But Jimmy
wondered why wouldn’t Reno just jump off?
 
Why wouldn’t he save himself and jump?
 
Didn’t he know the devastation Trina would feel if something happened to
him?
 
Didn’t he know how Dommi would fall
apart, and Sophie too, if their father left this earth without them?

But Reno wouldn’t jump.
 
He wouldn’t save himself.
 
Because
Reno, Jimmy realized, wasn’t trying to save his own life.
 
Reno was too busy trying to save Jimmy’s
life.
 
And Jimmy, for his father’s sake
alone, slowed down and then stopped.

The SUV was just behind the Cruze, with a group of men
jumping out, when Jimmy finally stopped the car.
 
Reno slid off of the hood and motioned for
his men to stay back as he approached the driver’s side door.
 
Reno attempted to open it, but the door was
locked.

“Jimmy,” Reno said, unable to sound any way but afraid, “open
the door.
 
Open the door, son.”
 
He also attempted to sound as calm as could
be, although, inside, he was raging in agony.

When Jimmy wouldn’t unlock the door, but continued to just
sit there, Reno motioned for his men to go on the passenger side, just in case.
 
They were going to break every window in
this motherfucking car, Reno thought, if Jimmy didn’t open that door himself.

But he finally gave in.
 
Tears were falling from Jimmy’s big hazel eyes by the time he unlocked
the door.
 
And when Reno opened the door,
and moved closer to his son, Jimmy was in a full scale cry.
 
He was sobbing.
 
Reno knelt down and pulled his son into his
arms, and allowed him to sob.

But the fear was still there, and it was palpable to
Reno.
 
He knew how close he had
come.
 
Jimmy wasn’t just aiming that
rifle at his head.
 
He had his finger on
the trigger.
 
He aimed to leave this
world tonight.

Reno stopped embracing Jimmy and placed both hands on the
side of Jimmy’s handsome face.

“It’s my fault, Dad,” Jimmy said through his tears.
 
“Don’t blame Val.
 
I started it when I slept with that
transvestite.
 
I though he was a woman at
the beginning, but when I realized he wasn’t, I kept going anyway.
 
How could I have done something like that?”

“Listen to me, boy,” Reno said.

But Jimmy was still in his feelings so gravely that he
couldn’t hear anybody else.
 
“I’m
disgusting to Val.
 
I’m disgusting to you
and Ma and everybody who ever knew me.
 
That’s why women break my heart, Dad.”

“Jimmy, listen to me.”

“That’s why Val had an affair with that guy.
 
Because of me.
 
And now I’ve killed a man because of my own
inadequacies.
 
Because I couldn’t satisfy
my own wife.
 
I’m good for nothing,
Dad.
 
I don’t deserve to live!”

Reno shook Jimmy’s face as if he was shaking some sense into
him.
 
Reno’s eyes were hard, and
anguished.
 
“You listen to me, boy, and
you listen good.
 
You’re my son.
 
My
son!
 
And I love you.
 
Your father loves you, Jimmy.
 
If everybody on the face of this earth turns
you away, you run to me.
 
You hear me,
boy?
 
You run to me!
 
I’ll die for you, Jimmy.
 
They wouldn’t let me that day when I had to
choose, but I’ll die for you.”

Jimmy remembered that day.
 
It was the worse day of his life.
 
The worse day of Reno’s life too.
 
Because Reno was cornered.
 
His
wife, his newborn son Dominic, and Jimmy were all being held captive by Tony
Tufarna, the son of the PaLargio’s former owner.
 
Reno offered himself up. He got on his knees
and begged Tony to kill him to save his family.
 
But Tony wanted Reno to suffer.
 
Reno, he said, had to choose which one died for the sake of the
family.
 
Either Trina was going to
die.
 
Either Dommi was going to die.
 
Or Jimmy had to die.

Dommi had his whole life ahead of him.
 

Trina had to take care of Dommi, and he could never let
anything happen to Trina.

Tony refused to take Reno, so Reno chose Jimmy to die that
day.

Reno chose Jimmy.

And Jimmy nearly died too.
 
Tony shot him and he nearly left them forever.
 
All because of Reno’s decision that Jimmy, a
child he didn’t even know existed until Jimmy was seventeen years old, was
needed the least in the family.

“You did what you had to do that day, Dad,” Jimmy said.
 
“Don’t keep beating yourself up about that.”

He was always so understanding about it.
 
So good to point out the Hopson’s choice Reno
faced that day.
 
But Reno knew, deep
down, that the choice he made had to have devastated Jimmy.
 
It had to do something to his psyche, to his
emotions.
 
Reno saw the change in Jimmy
after he recovered from that gunshot.
 
He
recovered physically.
 
But he lost that
sparkle.
 
Reno believed, mentally, that
Jimmy never fully recovered.

That was why Reno felt that today, and this decision Jimmy
almost made to take his own life, was all on him.
 
His own damn fault.

Reno got his son out of that car, took that rifle away from him,
tossing it to one of his men, and then drove Jimmy, holding his hand the entire
time, back home.
 
He kept his promise to
Tree.

It had been a long night by the time Reno arrived at the
penthouse with Jimmy by his side.
 
Trina,
Sal, and Gemma ran to him, hugging him and, in Trina and Gemma’s case, crying
with joy that he was okay.

But when Buddy and Val came out of the family room, with Val
staying close to her father as if the Gabrinis were toxic, even Trina became a
little angry.
 
But she knew Val had been
through a lot too.
 
She held her fire.

Jimmy stood there looking at Val when she entered his
parents’ living room.
 
He still loved
her, but he knew their relationship had changed forever.
 
He stood there, with his mother on his left
side and his father on his right.
 
They
flanked him.
 
They protected him.
 
He knew they loved him.
 
He also knew, and was finally coming to grips
with the very real possibility that Val never did.

But he also knew that he was the one who started the fire
that burned down their house when he decided to toss their vows aside and
cheat.
 
This night was the accumulated
consequences of all of their bad decisions.
 
But especially his.

“I’m sorry about what happened,” Jimmy said to Val.
 
She was as flanked and protected by her
father as Jimmy’s parents protected and flanked him.
 
“I shouldn’t have shown up there.
 
I was wrong for that.”

“I shouldn’t have been there with him,” Val admitted.
 
“I was wrong too.” Anger, rather than tears,
were in her eyes.
 
“But you didn’t have
to kill him, Jimmy.
 
What did he ever do
to you?”

Reno and Sal both were astounded.
 
“What did he do to him?” Sal had pure shock
in his voice.
 
“The nerve you have.
 
He fucked his wife!”

“Yes, we had an affair,” Val admitted.
 
“Yes, we did!
 
And I’m not proud of that.
 
It was
wrong and it’ll always be wrong.
 
But was
that worth killing somebody over?”

“
Yes
!” Reno and Sal
said together.
 
“Hell yes!” Reno added.

Val couldn’t believe their reasoning.
 
And it was that kind of reasoning that angered
her even more.
 
“I see.”

“Easy, Val,” Buddy said.
 
“This is their world.
 
You knew it
going in.”

“What do you mean I knew it?” Val asked.
 
“I didn’t know an affair was an offense
punishable by death!”

“You didn’t die,” Sal said.

“But Kap did!” Val responded.
 
“And if I wasn’t the mother of Jimmy’s child, I guarantee you I would
have been dead right along with him.
 
And
you know it!”

“All I know is you got a lot of mouth,” Sal said in his
warning voice.
 
“That’s all I know.”

“Oh, so you’re gonna kill me now,
Uncle
Sal?”

Buddy put his hand on the small of his daughter’s back.
 
“Easy, Val,” he whispered to her.
 
“That’s Sal Gabrini you’re talking to.”

“I don’t give a damn who he is!” Val shot back.
 
She was having a field day tonight, and Trina
was intensely watching the show.
 
She
wasn’t sure if Val was still shocked by what she experienced in that hunting
lodge, and therefore had all of this courage, or had already crossed over and
was just plain crazy.

But Val continued with her courage.
 
“I asked you a question,
Uncle
Sal.
 
Are you going to
take me out?
 
Or are you going to call in
one of your mob boys to take me out?”

“That’s enough, Val,” Jimmy said.
 
“Don’t make it worse.”

“Don’t make it worse?”
 
Val’s voice was dripping with contempt.
 
“You killed a man who was only there because he cared about me, and you
think my words can make this worse?
 
But
that’s typical Gabrini.
 
That’s how you
people think and operate.
 
It’s always
somebody else’s fault.
 
It’s always
somebody else’s doing.
 
Y’all don’t do
shit.
 
It’s always somebody else!”
 
She began crying again.
 
Her father, anguished himself, pulled her
closer.

Trina and Gemma stared at her.
 
They’d had days like this, too, when they
questioned their Gabrini alliance.
 
But
they never disrespected the Gabrini name the way Val was disrespecting it.

“You’re all the same,” Val continued.
 
“And especially you, Reno.
 
You’re the granddaddy of this craziness.”

“Uh-oh,” Gemma said, knowing Val was going too far.

“Is she nuts?” Sal asked under his breath to Gemma, knowing
Val was too far gone already.

But Val didn’t back down.
 
She was going to have her say.
 
“You always want to blame somebody else when you’re the reason Jimmy’s
first way to handle his problems is to pick up a gun.
 
When I used to talk to Kap about what was
going on, he was amazed.
 
He said you had
to be the worse parent ever, Reno.
 
Who
else would let his ten-year-old son drive a car, with his baby sister in that car,
but you?
 
Kap couldn’t believe it!”
 
Her voice turned whiny.
 
“And now he’s gone!”

But Reno and company stared at Val.
 
They were still digesting, not her grief over
Kap, but the words she had said before she voiced that grief.
 
“You told him about that?” Reno asked her,
amazed.
 
“You told him that Dom drove
that car, and that my daughter was in it?”

Val didn’t respond.

“Answer me, girl!” Reno blared.

“Did you tell him, Val?” Trina asked, her face stern with
shock too.
 
“Did you tell Kapper Cole
about that incident at your house when Dommi drove your car?
 
Did you tell him about that kidnapping?”

Val didn’t understand why they were making a bigger deal out
of some conversation she had with Kap, rather than Kap’s death!
 
“Yes, I told him,” she said.
 
“So what?”

Reno couldn’t believe it.
 
“He’s the one who called that abuse report on us?”

“He said he ought to, but I don’t think he did.”

“He did,” Trina said.
 
“He did, Val!”

And Reno, understandably so, Sal thought, was livid.
 
“Your stupid ass almost caused us to lose our
children!” Reno yelled.
 
“Your stupid ass
caused my son to do something he would never do unless he was provoked!”

And Reno couldn’t take it.
 
He charged at Val.
 
Trina tried to
hold him back, Sal and Jimmy tried to hold him back.
 
Sal and Jimmy even fell over a chair with
Reno as they fought with all their power to hold him back.
 
Buddy pulled Val back too.

But with all of those attempts, Reno the bull still broke
free of Sal and Jimmy and got up, lunged toward Val, and knocked the shit out
of her.

Val fell back against Buddy, holding her jaw, as the pain of
everything overwhelmed her and she began crying even more hysterically.

And Buddy was about to fight to protect his daughter.
 
He knew she deserved scorn for cheating on
Jimmy, but she didn’t deserve this.
 
But
Jimmy ran between the parents.
 
“Dad,
stop!” he cried.
 
“There’s been enough
violence tonight.
 
Please stop it!”

Sal, Trina, and Gemma were there to intervene too if Reno
didn’t heed.
 
But he heard his son’s
anguished voice, and stopped.

Val looked at her father.
 
“I want to get my child,” she said, in tears, “and get out of here.”

“You can leave,” Jimmy said, “but you aren’t taking my
daughter.”

Val’s heart dropped.
 
Buddy was shocked too.
 
“What are
you talking about?” Val asked him.
 
“That’s my child, Jimmy!
 
You
can’t take her away from me!”

“She’s my child too, and I have as much right to her as you
have.
 
She’s mine too!
 
You aren’t leaving here with my daughter.”

“Jimmy, don’t do this,” Buddy said.
 
“I’ve been really patient tonight with you
people, because Val was wrong for what she did, and you were wrong too.
 
But my patience will be gone if you try some
shit like this.”

“Maddie is my baby,” Jimmy said.
 
“Val is not leaving this penthouse with my
daughter.”

“Yes, she is,” Trina said, and everybody looked at her.

Jimmy frowned.
 
“Ma, what
are you talking?
 
She doesn’t want
me!
 
She doesn’t want my daughter!”

But Trina would have none of it.
 
“You know she loves Maddie, so stop it,” she
said.
 
“And neither one of you two grown
folks are going to use that little girl as some pawn in your anger toward each
other.
 
You’ll get visitation rights,”
Trina added, “and you’ll make time in your already busy schedule for your
daughter.
 
But you will not take that
child away from her mother.”

“But will she give me visitation?” Jimmy asked.

They all looked at Val.
 
“I never tried to keep Maddie away from you,” she responded.
 
“You can see her anytime you want to see
her.
 
But you can’t take her away from
me, Jimmy.
 
She’s all I have!”

Buddy held his daughter closer.
 
“That’s one battle,” he said, “that I’ll be
willing to wage against you, son.
 
And I
care deeply for you, Jimmy.
 
But you
can’t take my grandbaby away like that.
 
Not away from her mother.
 
You
can’t do that.”

Jimmy looked at Reno.
 
Surely he would see his side.
 
But
Reno exhaled.
 
“They’re right,” he
said.
 
“You work as hard as I do.
 
You won’t have time to raise her the way Val
can, although I can’t stand her ass right now.
 
But that child belongs with her mother.”

Jimmy still wasn’t one hundred percent there.
 
He still was going to fight for custody in a
court of law.
 
But right now was probably
not the best time to take Madison away from Val.
 
They were obviously separating.
 
They might get back together, they might
not.
 
But he would be wrong to add fuel
to the fire.

“Okay,” he said.
 
“For
now.”

Trina nodded.
 
“I’ll go
get the baby,” she said, and headed in that direction.

But Jimmy was still staring at Val.
 
“Hear me well,” he said to her.
 
“If you tell anybody about what happened
tonight in that hunting lodge---”

Val was offended.
 
“Who
am I going to tell, Jimmy?
 
You’re still
the father of my child.
 
Who am I going
to tell?”

“You told that Kap Cole about our business,” Reno reminded
her.
 
“So don’t stand up here and act as
if you don’t have the chops to talk your ass off.
 
Because you do!
 
But he’s just giving you a friendly
reminder.”

“There’s no need to threaten her, Reno,” Buddy said.
 
“She knows not to tell.”

“You love to tell me that I’m my father’s son,” Jimmy said to
Val.
 
“But if you tell about what
happened tonight in that cabin, you’ll be proven right.
  
You’ll see just how much of my father’s son
I really am.
 
If you tell.”

Trina returned with the baby.
 
Val grabbed her and hurried toward the exit, with her father following
behind her.
 
She thought she knew what
she was getting into when she married a Gabrini.
 
She thought wrong.

When they left, Jimmy dropped down on the sofa.
 
Sal and Gemma sat on either side of him,
comforting him.
 
Reno ran his hand across
his face and headed for the bar.
 
Trina
followed him.