MOB BOSS 6: THE HEART OF RENO GABRINI (Mob Boss Series) (6 page)

And
Trina didn’t try to teach him.
 
The way
she saw it, he barely had time for them in the real world, how in the heck
would he find time for them in the virtual world?

When
they stopped embracing, Reno kept his hands on his son’s waist.
 
“You’re getting bigger every day,” he said
proudly.
 
Jimmy’s slender body was
gaining muscle, and with his good looks Reno knew he was going to be a smash
with the ladies.
 
But he also had an
impulsiveness about him that worried Reno, and that made him still immature in
Reno’s book.

“I’m
still working out,” Jimmy said.
 
“Carter
says I’m a natural at it.”

“Didn’t
I tell you?
 
He’s a good trainer.”

“Yes,
sir, you were right.”

Dommi
grinned.
 
Jimmy moved away from Reno and
smiled at his brother.
 
“Hey, baby
boy!
 
How you doing, baby boy?”

“He’s
getting his eat on,” Trina said as she continued to feed her son.
 
“That’s how he’s doing.”
 
She looked up at Jimmy.
 
“But how are you doing?”

Jimmy
nodded, although Trina saw some apprehension in his eyes.
 
“I’m doing great actually,” he said.

“Great?”
Reno asked.
 
“Does this
great
have something to do with what you
wanted to run by my wife before I got home?”

Jimmy
smiled sheepishly.
 
“You heard that?”

“I
heard that.
 
So give.
 
I know you tell Trina everything about your
life nowadays and tell me nothing, but do tell what you wanted to run by
her.
 
What is it?”

Jimmy
leaned over the center island, resting the back of his arms on it.
 
Reno was always taken by his beauty.
 
If he could contain that dark side he
inherited from Reno’s side of the family, then Reno believed the kid could go
far.
 
He could run the PaLargio himself
someday.

“I
wanted to see if it was a good idea,” Jimmy said.

“If
what was a good idea?”

Jimmy
ran his hand through his soft, curly hair, not unlike the way his father was
always doing.
 
Trina took it as a sign
that whatever Jimmy was about to tell them was a big deal to him.

“Well
spit it out, boy,” impatient Reno said.
 
“You wanted to know if what was a good idea?”

“A
double date,” Jimmy said.

Reno
and Trina glanced at each other, and then Reno looked back at Jimmy.
 
“A double date?”

“Yeah.
 
You and Ma with me and my girl.”

Reno
frowned.
 
“What girl?”

Jimmy
smiled.
 
“The one I’ve been dating for
nearly a year now, Dad,” he said.

Reno
was floored.
 
“You’ve been dating some
girl for a year?
 
I never saw you with a
girl once.
 
I was wondering if you
were---”

Jimmy
looked at his father.
 
“If I was what?”

Reno
began to hunch his shoulders and play it off.
 
“If you know, if you was kind of---”

“Kind
of what, Dad?” Jimmy asked with a smile on his face.
 
He knew exactly where his father was going
with this, but he enjoyed seeing him go there.
 

“If
you was gay, okay?
 
I used to wonder if
my oldest boy was a gay guy.”

“And
what if I was?”

“But
you’re not so what the fuck it matters?”

Jimmy
and Trina laughed.
 
“Anywho,” Jimmy said
with a limp wrist wave in a stereotypic impersonation of a gay guy.
 
Trina laughed again.

Reno,
however, was pissed.
 
“That shit ain’t
funny, all right?
 
Now get on with
it.
 
What about this girl?
 
Why didn’t I know anything about her?”

“Oh
no, you didn’t say that,” Jimmy said, still putting on his gay act.

“What?”
Reno asked, genuinely puzzled.

Jimmy
got serious.
 
“Dad, when do you have time
for anything but work?
 
You work day and
night, all the time.
 
Whenever you do
call me to your office to, as you put it,
eyeball
me
, you always have five other people in that office eyeballing you!
 
I can’t talk to you about something like that
around all those people.”

Reno
knew he was being neglectful of his family, and it bothered him.
 
But he also believed it was a temporary
situation.
 
“It’s just a hectic time
right now,” he said.
 

But
Jimmy would have none of that.
 
“It’s
always hectic,” he said, just as Trina had said before him.

“I’m
going to slow down, all right?
 
Don’t
blow smoke up my ass.
 
As soon as we
select the expansion sites, I’ll slow down.
 
But stop changing the subject.
 
What about this girlfriend?
 
What’s her name?
 
Where does she
live?
 
Who’s her family?”

“Her
name is Ashley,” Jimmy said.
 
“She’s from
a small town in Pennsylvania, where her parents still live.
 
She lives here in Vegas, on Rondo Road.”

“Where
the fuck is Rondo Road?”

“It’s
in a nice little subdivision, Dad.
 
She’s
Cooper’s sister.”

“Coop’s
sister?” Reno asked.
 
“Your best friend’s
sister?
 
How original, James.”

“She’s
nice.
 
For real though.
 
You’ll love her.”

“How
does she look?
 
Is she fat, skinny, tall,
short, good looking, ugly, what?”

Jimmy
smiled.
 
“She’s not ugly,” he said.
 
But that was all he was willing to say about
it.
 
“You’ll see,” he added.
  
“That is, if you can get away long enough to
have dinner with us.”

“Don’t
be a smart-ass,” Reno said coarsely.
 
“I
eat smart-asses like you for lunch every day.”

Jimmy
was offended.
 
He always was when his
father spoke down to him like that.
 
“So
I’m a smart-ass,” he said.
 
“It takes one
to know one.”

Reno
looked at him.
 
Sometimes he wondered if
his son fully realized just what his father was capable
 
of.
 
A
man could end up with a bullet in his brain for disrespecting Reno
Gabrini.
 
But this son of his here took
all kinds of liberties with him.
 
“Watch
it, kid,” Reno warned him.

Jimmy
exhaled.
 
His father could dish it, he
thought, but he certainly couldn’t take it.
 
“Whatever,” Jimmy said dismissively, revealing, however slightly, that
dark side Reno knew he had.
 
“The
question is, can I set up the double date?”

“Yeah,
you can set it up,” Reno replied.
 
“Who
said you couldn’t?”

“I
was thinking about the Shell,” Jimmy said.

“The
Shell?” Reno asked disagreeably.
 
“What
the . . . what’s the Shell?”

“It’s
a nice restaurant on Baystone Street,” Trina offered.
 
Trina was amused at how often Reno used the
f-word, then remembered the baby was around and stopped using it.
 
Then he’d began using it right back again.

“A
restaurant on
Baystone
Street?” Reno asked.
 
“Why do we have to go over there when we have
perfectly fine restaurants inside the PaLargio?”

But
Trina and Jimmy both reacted negatively to that idea.

“Not the
PaLargio, Reno,” Trina said.

“I
want it someplace else, Pop,” Jimmy said.
 
“Someplace neutral so Ash won’t feel as if she was outnumbered and
outgunned.”

That
didn’t make a lick of sense to Reno, but Tree was going along with it.
 
So he went along, too.
 
“Whatever,” he said the way Jimmy had said
it, and both Trina and Jimmy laughed.

“So
when can we do it, Dad?”

Reno
smiled.
 
Jimmy didn’t realize it, but he
tended to call Reno
Pop
whenever he
was a little perturbed with him, and
Dad
whenever he wasn’t.
 
That was Reno’s
single most accurate gauge of his son’s various moods.

Reno
started to pick a day and time, but he decided to let Jimmy pick it for
once.
 
And he would work around whatever
time was selected.
 
“When do you want to
do it?” he replied.

Jimmy
was surprised by his father’s flexibility.
 
He decided to try him.
 
“Tomorrow
night?” he asked.
 
“Around eight?”

Reno
and Trina both knew any night at eight was usually a busy time for Reno inside
the PaLargio, but Reno nodded anyway.
  
“That’ll work,” he said.

Jimmy
smiled genuinely this time.
 
“Thanks,
Dad,” he said.

Reno
nodded.
 
He knew his son like he knew the
back of his hand.
 
Then he looked at his
other son.
 
He hadn’t fed him in a week.
 
“Up you,” he said to Trina, taking the bowl
and spoon from her hand.

Trina
smiled.
 
“Well it’s about time you help
out,” she said as she stood up and Reno took her place.

“What
time is your appointment?” he asked her.

“Oh,
that’s right.”
 
She looked at her Cartier
watch.
 
“In about thirty minutes,” she
said.

“Then
shove off,” Reno said.
 
“Don’t have those
people waiting for your always-late ass.
 
Sooner you can get there, the sooner you can get back home to your
family.”

“Ah,
Reno, thanks,” Trina said, grabbing her purse and keys from the center island
and kissing him on the cheek.
 
“You’re a
sweetheart.”

“Where’re
you going?” Jimmy asked her.

“To
look at real estate,” Trina said.

“Oh,
for the boutique?” Jimmy asked.
 
It
wasn’t lost on Reno that Jimmy knew about this undertaking of Trina’s before he
did.

“Wanna
come?” Trina asked.

“To
see a boutique?
 
No thank you very much.”

Trina
laughed.
 
And looked at the baby.
 
“Bye, Dommi,” she said as she blew a kiss at
her small son.
 
“I’ll call you, Ree.”

“Oh,
yeah?” Reno said.
 
Then he looked at
her.
 
“With what?”

Trina
looked back at him.
 
And then she stopped
walking.
 
She began to reach inside of
her purse, but then realized her blunder.

“You
have my phone, don’t you?”

Reno
shook his head.
 
“You’re hopeless, you
know that?”

“I
thought I had it.”

“You
thought you had it?
 
You haven’t had it
all day, but you thought you had it?
 
That shit ain’t funny, Tree!”

“The
sooner you give it to me is the sooner I can leave, and the sooner I can leave
is the sooner I can return to your ugly mug.”

Jimmy
laughed.
 
Reno, at first, was offended,
but then he couldn’t help but smile, too.

“It’s
in the living room,” he said.
  
“And keep
it turned on.
 
If I call it and it’s off,
then you’re going to answer to me, young lady.
 
And you know what that means?”

“What
the fuck it means?” Trina asked, looking Reno up and down as if she was
provoking him.

“Oh,
the language around the baby,” Reno said to her the way she said to him.
 
“Nice.”

Trina
couldn’t help but smile.
 
“What I mean
is, what the heck do you mean that I will have to answer to you?”

“Keep
that phone turned off and you’ll find out.
 
Your ass is gonna be so red you won’t be sitting anywhere for at least a
week, or two if I’m particularly upset.”