Reno Gabrini- the Man in the Mirror

by Mallory Monroe

  He looked at his silent cousin. “We’ve got to go see Sam, Reno. There’s no way around it.”

  But Reno shook his head. “Nope,” he said. “I did that shit already. He comes to me. My men will go and get him, and escort his ass to the Bowels. He’s my godfather, but I’m ordering him here. I’m getting to the bottom of this on my turf. And I won’t be looking into that motherfucker’s eyes this time,” he added. “I’m going to be looking into his soul.”

  Tommy picked up speed. Even he knew how scary a look that was going to be.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The next morning was clear-out time. Tommy had to get Grace and the children back to Seattle, and Lucky, Sal and Gemma’s little boy, went with them. Sal wanted him out of this hotbed called Vegas, and under Tommy’s protection. Gemma, a lawyer, had to be in court that morning, so she had to leave. And although Sal had a massive syndicate to run, he, instead, went to court with Gemma. After what almost happened to Trina, she wasn’t going anywhere without him. But they all mainly left because they knew Reno wanted to handle that matter of his godfather all by himself.

  That left Reno, Trina, and their three youngest children, along with Carmine’s nanny, all by themselves. Which was fine by them. After so much activity and upset, they needed their family time.

  But as they sat around the breakfast table, and as Reno waited for word that his godfather had arrived, the events of the prior day wore heavily on them. They ate, but said very little. And when they did speak, it was usually about yesterday.

  “We don’t need counseling, Ma,” Dommi announced.

  They all looked at him. Even Nanny, who was taking Carmine from Trina to go lay him down. When Nanny left the room with the baby, and headed to the nursery, Trina looked at Reno. How in the world were they going to handle that pronouncement?

  “Why would you bring it up,” Reno asked, “if you don’t need it?”

  “I’m just saying,” Dommi said. “I mean, maybe Sophie does.”

  Sophie looked at him. “What’s counseling about, Daddy?” she asked.

  Dommi responded, before his father could. “That’s when they lay you down on a couch and beat some sense into you,” he said.

  Reno laughed. But Trina didn’t. “That’s not true, Dommi!” she admonished him.

  “That’s about the size of it,” Reno said, disagreeing with his wife.

  But Trina could sense yesterday had affected Dommi far more than usual. And she realized they should have picked up on it sooner. Dommi had to kill that man to protect his mother and sister. She looked at her son. “Why do you think Sophie would benefit from talking with a counselor, Dominic?” she asked him.

  “Because,” he said.

  Now Reno was looking at him. “Because why?” he asked. “And you better not say because she’s a girl.”

  Dommi looked at his father with amazement in his eyes. Because that was exactly what he was going to say! But then his big, strong eyes looked away from his father because he needed to say more. “I think she can use counseling,” he said, “because a kid her age shouldn’t have to see what she saw yesterday.” And then he looked at his parents.

  Reno and Trina’s hearts dropped. Because they knew exactly what he meant. And they knew Dommi was talking, not just about his sister, but about himself. But they also knew they had to be careful with Dommi. Too much babying and he’d rebel. “I think we need family counseling,” Trina said.

  He looked at her. “Family counseling?”

  Reno thought it was a brilliant idea, too. “Yeah,” he said. “Where all of us, not just Sophie, would go and talk to somebody.”

  “You mean somebody like Uncle Tony?”

  Both Reno and Trina nodded their heads. Tony Sinatra, one of Big Daddy’s sons, was a psychologist who not long ago helped Trina through a difficult period. “Yeah,” she said. “Tony would be an excellent choice. He knows us.”

  “He knows our lifestyle,” Dommi added.

  Reno smiled. That little rascal probably planned this all along. Reno wouldn’t be surprised if he already got in touch with Tony.

  “I took the liberty of calling Uncle Tony,” Dommi said.

  Reno laughed. “I knew it!” he said.

  “What?”

  “Just go on, Dommi,” Trina said. “Don’t mind any interruptions,” she added, side-eying her husband.

  “Uncle Tony said he’d love to help. He said he could be here whenever we’re ready.”

  Trina, smiling too, and shook her head. “Why did you take us through all those questions, Dommi, when you knew what we needed all along?”

  “Because y’all didn’t seem to know,” Dommi said. “It’s not my job to do your jobs. Although sometimes, Lordy, Lordy,” he added, “it seems like I have to do everything!”

  They all laughed. Including Sophie. “He’s crazy,” she said.

  Then the intercom buzzed. Reno and Trina looked at each other. They were certain what it was about. Reno pressed the button. “Yeah?”

  “Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Gabrini,” Stef said, “but Nanny’s sister has been cleared by Security. Would you like for her to come up?”

  Reno looked at Trina. The sister was in town on vacation, and was staying at the PaLargio. Nanny wanted Trina to meet her. But because of heightened security, she had to have a criminal background check first. “You want to be bothered?” he asked Trina.

  “Not really,” Trina said, “but it shouldn’t take but a few minutes. Let her up.”

  “Let her up,” Reno replied, and was about to end the conversation. But his chief interrupted him.

  “Sir?” Stef said quickly, as if he had just received some fresh information.

  “Yes?” Reno asked.

  “I just got word, sir. Sam Roustinconti is in the Bowels.”

  Reno’s heart pounded against his chest. “I’m on my way,” he said, and ended the conversation.

  Sam was tied to the chair in the basement inside the PaLargio. And as soon as Reno walked in, Sam lit into him. “You arrogant motherfucker!” he yelled at him. “How dare you round me up like a common nobody and drag me across this country? How dare you!”

  Reno sat in front of him. His men were nervous. Sam Roustinconti wasn’t as big a fish as Reno, but he was big.

  “I took your bullshit when you came to Jersey,” Sam continued. “I didn’t like it. It was disrespectful on every level. But I took it. You had built up capital with me, Dominic. When those bastards were claiming I had a hand in your daddy’s death, in the death of one of my closest and dearest friends, you didn’t go along with that bullshit. You treated me with respect. I was proud to call you my godson. That’s why I didn’t scold your ass when you came with that nonsense about accusing your boy of terrorism or whatever that nonsense was about. And now this!” He said that last word with a yank of his head.

  “I just want to find out the truth, Sam,” Reno said bluntly.

  “What truth?” Sam asked. “What am I supposed to have done now?”

  “That bomb blast at Kal’s restaurant. What did you have to do with it?”

  Sal frowned. “Why would I have anything to do with a terrorist attack? Do I look like a Muslim to you?”

  Reno didn’t expect him to fess up right away. But he didn’t expect this level of vitriol, either. And Reno was staring at him. A guilty man could not have been so convincing. Reno was flummoxed. He was looking into Sam’s soul, but he wasn’t seeing guilt.

  “Can you hurry this along?” Sam asked. “Whatever the fuck this is? I’m supposed to be on my way to Europe already. You’re cutting into my European vacation!”

  Now Reno was getting pissed. “You think I ordered you here for my fucking health?” he asked Sam. “My wife and children were nearly killed, and more than one person implicated you in this!” He frowned. “Why would they do that if it’s not true?”

  “Maybe they want us on opposite sides, Dominic. I told you that. Maybe they’re liars. How should I know why? Who are these
people anyway?”

  “Want me to go and get her?”

  “Go get her?” Sam asked hysterically. “I don’t have time to wait in this dungeon for somebody to come! I have a trip to make. I have a place to be. If we stay here another minute longer, then the only vacation I’m going to be able to enjoy is a weekend in Sleepy. Give me a fucking break!”

  “Shut the fuck up!” one of Reno’s men said. “Who gives a shit about your plans?”

  Reno looked at his man. He never disputed his men in front of others. Although he disagreed with the way he was disrespecting Sam, he didn’t rebuke him in front of Sam.

  “Just tell me who implicated me?” Sam asked. “You ain’t got to go get anybody. Just tell me. Can you at least do that?”

  But Reno realized he had just missed something. Something that flew past him fast, but then he caught it. “What did you say?” he asked Sam.

  “I said tell me who implicated me.”

  “You said Sleepy.”

  “What?”

  “You said Sleepy! Are you talking about Sleepy, Georgia?”

  “Yeah. What about it?”

  “How do you know about Sleepy, Georgia?”

  “How do you know about Sleepy, Georgia?” Sam asked Reno.

  “That’s my son’s Nanny’s hometown,” Reno said.

  “That’s Megan’s personal assistant’s hometown, too. Her name’s Nelta Allen. I think you met her when you came to Jersey. Why?”

  Reno jumped up. It made sense. This Nelta worked for Sam’s wife. She was in his household. She could use his name and people would believe it. It made sense! “Her sister is here,” Reno said as he began hurrying toward the exit.

  “Whose sister, Boss?”

  “Call Security!” Reno ordered as he pulled out his own cell phone. “Tell them to get inside the penthouse. Tell them to break down that fucking door if they have to! My wife is in trouble!”

  Inside the penthouse, just five minutes before Reno connected the dots, Nelta Allen, Sam’s girlfriend’s assistant, was rising to her feet. Not because she wanted to, but because Trina was ending their little getting to know you chat.

  “I wish I had more time to talk with you,” Trina said, as Nanny looked on, too, “but I really have to try to get some work done. My husband is forcing me to work from home today.”

  “After the horror of what my sister told me you endured yesterday,” Nelta said, “I imagine he very much wants you to stay safe.”

  There was something so phony about her that she made Trina’s skin crawl. “Well, anyway, nice meeting you, and I hope you have a wonderful time in Vegas.”

  “Thank you so much,” Nelta said, and Trina turned to head toward the stairs. But for some reason, she watched Nelta through her peripheral vision.

  And for good reason, too, because, as soon as Nelta thought Trina had turned away, she reached into her little clutch purse. As soon as Trina saw the first sign of a firearm, she turned as she began reaching into her waistband and pulled out a knife Dommi’s actions had inspired her to now keep on her person, and threw it at Nelta. Nelta pulled out her gun swiftly, and was about to fire, but the knife pierced through her gut and bent her over. Then she fell backwards. The gun flew across the room.

  “Nooo!” Nanny cried, when she saw her sister. She dropped to her knees beside her sister. And then she looked up at Trina. “How could you? First your husband kills her son. Now you killed her?”

  “My husband never killed her son,” Trina said.

  “He did kill him! He wasn’t the best boy, but he was her son. He worked for some criminal person. There was a gun battle, and her son was killed by your husband. She swore revenge. And now she’s dead, too! Nooo!” she cried again, and leaned down to her lifeless sister.

  Then Nanny made up her mind. Those Gabrinis and all of their carnage was about to come to an end. It was going to end today! She bent down, pulled the knife out of her sister’s gut, and ran, not toward Trina, but toward the nursery!

  “Oh, no,” Trina cried. “God, no!”

  Trina ran after her faster than she had ever ran before. She caught the nanny in the hall and jumped onto her back, causing both of them to fall to the floor. The knife fell from the nanny’s hand, but she and Trina both reached for it.

  But the nanny won. She grabbed the knife just as Trina was about to grab it. Then Trina got her hand on it, too. Both women fought to control the direction of the blade. But Nanny was much larger than Trina, and she managed to get on top of Trina and take control of the blade. And then the tip of the blade began turning toward Trina’s neck. And it got closer, and closer until Trina could feel the tip of the knife touch her delicate skin. She tried to slide her butt along the floor to get away from the nanny, but she couldn’t bulge.

  And then Nanny leaned up, and put her entire weight into jabbing that knife through Trina’s neck. But then just as she was about to make that powerful stab, there was a single gunshot. Trina, in shock, looked at the nanny to make sure she was the one hit. She was. The nanny slumped over, and then fell off of her.

  Just as she was falling off, the front door was flung open and Reno’s security team ran in. But when Trina looked up, it wasn’t Reno’s men who had fired that shot. It was Dommi who was standing there, holding the smoking gun.

  “Dommi!” she cried with so much relief that she could hardly bear it.

  Then Reno ran into the house, mortified. He looked at his son with the gun in his hand, he saw his wife, and he saw the two dead ladies. He took the gun from Dommi, and Dommi ran to his mother. Trina opened her arms and grabbed him and held him. Reno went to his wife, too. He knelt down to mother and child.

  “I called Dommi,” he said breathlessly. “I was so afraid. I trusted him above any man on my detail. I knew Dommi would protect you!”

  “Daddy called me,” Dommi said to his mother. “He said you were in danger and I had to help you. And I did! It’s second nature to me, Mommy. Protecting is what I was born to do!”

  Reno grabbed Dommi, and Trina, and pulled them into his arms. He still couldn’t believe that, in a time of crisis, he trusted his son to make sure Trina was okay, over anybody else. “I don’t know if you were born to do it,” Reno said. “But thank God you were born!”

  Dommi smiled, he felt fifty-feet tall, and hugged his parents happily.

  EPILOGUE

  “How many?” Oprah asked Jimmy.

  “A few,” Jimmy said.

  “How many, Jimmy?” she asked again.

  “Too many. Okay? I’ve had too many girlfriends in my lifetime.” Then he looked at her with one eye closed. “What about you? How many boyfriends have you had?”

  She smiled. “Too many,” she said, and they both laughed. But then she touched the side of her face, as the pain seared her again.

  They were in her hospital room, and although the threat had completely passed, Jimmy still came to see her every day before work, and every day after work. Sometimes he sat up in her room all night. She often wondered why.

  “Did your father ever find out why those ladies did what they did?” she asked him.

  “They worked for some drug dealer and he was hired by this crazy lady who blamed my father for the fact that her son was killed.” Truth was, Reno had killed Nelta’s son in a gun fight with a mob boss. He went down with his boss.

  But Jimmy wasn’t about to tell Oprah all of that. She’d heard rumors about his father’s mob connections, but she had no proof. For now, he planned to keep it that way.

  But Oprah was fascinated by all of it. “You said Mr. Gabrini thought his godfather was involved,” she said, “and his godfather’s wife?”

  “That’s what he thought,” Jimmy said. “But it was really the wife’s assistant. They didn’t know anything about it.” Reno, in fact, had to let Sam Roustinconti go. Their relationship, however, was over.

  “But how could she pull it off?”

  “By invoking the name of Dad’s godfather. She went around telling peo
ple that my dad’s godfather would pay them to do terrible things to Dad and his family. Since she worked in the man’s household, everybody apparently believed her.”

  “She probably had no intention of paying those people.”

  “None,” Jimmy said. “She didn’t have any money like that. But get this,” Jimmy added: “Her sister was Carmine’s nanny.”

  Oprah was shocked. “Did she know what was happening?” she asked.

  Jimmy shook his head. “Dad thinks so. She was the one who asked if her sister could come up to the penthouse to meet Ma. Her sister passed a criminal background check, of course, because she had no police record anywhere. So they let her up. And besides that, the nanny came onboard after Carmine was born, so she hadn’t been onboard that long. It could have been a setup all along. But who knows? She died when her sister tried to kill Ma. She took that little knowledge to her grave.”

  “I remember Trina said Carmine’s nanny had to wear a wire all the time she was at work.”

  “She did!”

  “She never talked to her sister while she was at work, or say anything to anybody else?”

  “Never. She never spoke about anything like that at work. But she was free to talk to anybody she wanted to when she wasn’t at work.”

  Oprah shook her head. “I’m just glad it’s over,” she said. “And I’m glad I’m going to be released soon. I need to get back to work.”

  Then, as soon as Oprah made that statement, a voice was heard: “Don’t you dare lay in this bed worrying about work.”

  It was Trina. She, Reno, with Carmine in his arms, and Dommi and Sophie, were walking into the hospital room. They all were dressed beautifully, Oprah thought, in their shorts, colorful PaLargio t-shirts, and sandals. Even Reno had on shorts, which made Jimmy smile.

  “You’re on paid leave,” Trina continued to say to Oprah, “as far as I’m concerned.”

  “I told her, Ma,” Jimmy said, “but she wouldn’t believe me.”