And he kept on pounding. She could hear the cum smashing against her clit, could feel it draining out of him and into her, and she’d never felt this good before. Never felt this connected to another human being before.
Reno felt the same way, connected to this woman. So in love with her that he could have pounded her all night. There was no tiredness when he was with her, no exhaustion, but nothing but unexplainable energy. And a searing electricity so intense that it made him want to fuck her in a way he could hardly contain. And it was he who was too loud now, so much so that it was Trina who had to whisper, “easy baby, we don’t want to get kicked out,” as every muscle in his body stretched, and he screamed.
+++
Over the next week, it was more street walking and sightseeing and Trina just knew she had died and gone to heaven. There was a day of Disneyland Paris, where they rode Space Mountain and they both felt like kids again, with Reno laughing so hard at Trina’s terror on that kiddie ride, that he had to excuse himself to the restroom afterwards.
Then there were the days of culture, where they visited places like the Louvre Museum where Trina got a chance to see Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa up close and personal, a moment that brought her to tears. She never dreamed, when she was a kid in Dale, when she was going through so much hell in Reno, when she was a waitress in Vegas, that this kind of life, this kind of world was even possible for her. But it was more than possible now.
And it didn’t let up. Because Reno seemed determined to give her the time of her life. Because there were more walks along Paris’s famed squares, to the Champs Elysees, the Arc de Triomphe, the Palais de Chaillot. They also, one night, visited Versailles and saw the Grand Eaux, where Trina watched in romantic awe as the fountains of Versailles exploded in magnificence to the sounds of music.
And later that night, when they crawled into bed, they were still so high that they didn’t fall asleep for hours. Just talking and talking like two kids in love who would eventually fall asleep on the telephone. And it was that night, that perfect night, that Reno got out of bed, pulled something from the drawer, got on his knees, and asked Katrina Marie Hathaway to be his wife.
Trina didn’t even look at the diamond ring that he had dangling before her, but her eyes, her tear-stained eyes, were trained on his.
“I know I’m not a perfect man,” he said to her, tears staining his own eyes, “and life with me won’t be easy. But what I do promise you, Katrina Marie, is that it’ll be grand. I promise you that I will love you and keep you and I will make decisions that will never compromise my life with you. I have never, Trina, asked any woman to be my wife. Not ever. I have never even considered any woman for that kind of commitment. Until I met you.”
This touched Trina in a way that seemed almost surreal. She stared at Reno.
“Somehow” he continued, “I knew it was going to be you that very first night we talked in your apartment, when we talked for hours. I think I was in love with you even then. I’d never admit that to anybody, but I was. Now I’m hopelessly in love with you, there’s no getting around it, kid. I want you in my life, in my bed, for the rest of my days. Will you marry me, Tree? Will you become Mrs. Dominic Gabrini for me?”
Before he could finish speaking, Trina was in his arms, her nakedness and his nakedness appropriate, she felt, for the bareness of their love. Because their love wasn’t about anything but the two of them, even if it pitted them against the world, and she knew unlike she had ever known anything before, that she was more than willing to take on that fight now.
“Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes!”
And that night, they didn’t make love, but slept with a oneness that made them feel as if they were already joined. They slept like a baby.
That next morning, however, reality hit. Reno was awakened, not by his cell phone ringing because he had purposely left it back in the states, but by the hotel manager knocking on their hotel door. When Reno returned to the bedroom, in his robe, looking as if he’d seen a ghost, Trina’s heart dropped.
Frank Partanna had responded to Joey and Dirty’s retaliation. But not in kind. No warning strike this time. He struck back, all right, but had changed the game. And Paulo Gabrini and Joey Gabrini were dead.
FOURTEEN
During the days leading up to the funerals, where Reno was as stoic as a man without a conscience, their life seemed to move in slow motion. Their wedding was still on, Reno made it clear that no devil in hell was going to stop him from making her his wife, but plans for where and when were put on hold by Trina. She wanted to plan her wedding in peace, not in turmoil. And although it was a silent turmoil, it was there like a invisible thief, robbing them of all happiness, sapping them of all joy.
And as for that turmoil, as for the fact that his father and brother had been gunned down by Frank Partanna’s men like dogs in the street, Reno didn’t want to talk about it. She tried to bring it up, believing it was better to get it off of his chest, but he refused to so much as mention it.
He, instead, immersed himself in his work, and she, in turn, immersed herself in hers. And after work, she stayed in her apartment, and he rarely called her to his. She knew it was because he needed time alone to grieve, to work this all out in his own head, and she was willing to give him that time. That was why he loved her so much, he once said to her, because she understood him so well.
But after the funeral, his change in mood began to worry her. He still apparently needed time, a funeral was a poor excuse for closure, and she accepted that. But when she went to talk to Lee Jones, and he told her to pay closer attention, she did, although he wouldn’t tell her why. But soon she understood why.
Men she’d never seen before were constantly coming to see Reno. And not at his office, either, but at the penthouse. He was, in fact, spending more time with these men, it seemed to Trina, than he was spending in his office. It became so obvious to her that something was up that, a week after the funerals, when Reno came home to his apartment and found her, to his pleasant surprise, in his bed, she asked him about it.
“What men?” he asked her. They were both naked, since they never slept together any other way, but they hadn’t had sex since Paris.
“I’m not a fool, Reno,” Trina said carefully, “so I’ll be very disappointed if you tried to treat me like one.”
Reno sighed, ran his hand through his hair, ruffling it into a mess. “They’re friends of Pop’s,” he said.
“By friends you mean mob bosses?”
“I mean friends.”
“Who happens to be in the mob?” Trina said this and looked at Reno, making clear that she didn’t wasn’t taking any of his bullshit.
“Yes,” he ultimately said.
“So what’s going on?”
“What you mean what’s going on?”
“Just what I said, Reno. What’s going on? Is it going to be another retaliatory strike?”
Reno got up and sat on the side of the bed, his head in his hands. Trina got out too, and sat beside him.
“What’s the matter, Reno?’ she asked him.
Reno could only shake his head. “It’s complicated.”
“Why are you having meetings with mob bosses?”
Reno didn’t respond. Tears began to appear in Trina’s eyes. “You promised me, Reno. You said you wouldn’t do anything to hurt me.”
Reno looked at her, astounded that she could ever think that he would hurt her. “I’m not gonna hurt you,” he said. “You know that.”
“But what are you planning?”
Reno looked away from her. “That’s not for you to worry about.”
“Oh, really? So you can go to prison, or you can kill somebody and get away with it, or be killed yourself, and I’m not supposed to worry about it? This is my life too, Reno!”
“I know that, Tree. I didn’t say it wasn’t.”
“You make it seem like I don’t have any skin in this game, like what you do won’t affect me.”
“What you
want me to do?” Reno exploded, standing to his feet. “What you want me to do, Tree? Nobody’s killing my father and my baby brother and expect no retribution! I’ll see them in hell first! And if you don’t like it, if you can’t live with that, if you can’t understand that, then I don’t know what to tell you.”
Trina stared at Reno, at the man she thought she knew so well but now realized she didn’t know at all, and stood to her feet. She slung on some clothes, neither saying a word, and left.
Reno stood at the massive window of his penthouse apartment, looking down on his city of a thousand tales, and held his resolve. She’ll be okay, he said to himself. She just need to cool off, too.
+++
The next morning, when he awakened, he expected to find her in her apartment at the PaLargio, fast asleep. But she wasn’t there. He went downstairs, to Amos office, but he hadn’t seen her. He went over to Lee Jones’ office, because he knew she sometimes talked to him, but he hadn’t seen her, either.
He kept trying her cell phone, but it kept going straight to voice mail. And he had meetings, with Japanese investors, who had flown in from Tokyo, that he couldn’t cancel.
After those meetings, he sought out Jazz, who was now working as Lee’s apprentice. According to Jazz, she spoke by phone with Trina late last night and Trina was in a very bad way. She, in fact, told Jazz that she was going home.
Although Reno was disturbed to hear that Trina was in more pain that perhaps he had realized, he took some comfort in knowing that at least she was okay. His mother and sisters had gone back to their home on the east coast, back to Jersey, with Carmine and Dirty to watch over them. He was watching over Trina. She was staying with him.
He went to her old apartment in the hood, driving his Bentley slowly, working out in his mind just how was he going to ever explain to her that a crime like the one committed on his family couldn’t go unpunished, it just couldn’t. He didn’t ask for this fight, but now that it was upon him, what did she expect him to do?
When he pulled in front of her complex, he was surprised that her Civic wasn’t there. It wasn’t at the PaLargio, so he was certain it would be there with her. He went inside her apartment anyway, using his key, only to find her nowhere to be found. He asked some of her neighbors, the ones he knew she was friendly with, and they hadn’t seen her, either.
He got back into his Bentley, almost panicking now, phoned Lee Jones, and asked to speak to Jazz.
When Jazz came on the line, he tried to control his anxiety. “She’s not here,” he said to Jazz.
“Not where?” Jazz responded.
“Here. At her apartment.”
“Her apartment?” Reno could just feel her confusion. “Oh, you mean her old apartment? Why would she be there?”
Now Reno was the one confused. “You said she went home.”
“Yes, sir,” Jazz said, amazed that she was able to talk this casually with the owner of the PaLargio. “She did tell me she was going home. But not there. I meant, she went home. To her home. To Dale, Mississippi.”
“Dale?” Reno said, his heart hammering. Dale, Mississippi? Was she kidding him? Was she telling him that Trina, that his fiancée, that the woman who was going to be his wife, the woman he loved with all his heart – who was his heart, had left him?
Reno dropped the phone.
FIFTEEN
Around a small kitchen table in a small house in a quiet neighborhood in Dale, Mississippi, Trina was attempting to explain to her parents exactly why she left Vegas. For Reverend and Mrs. Hathaway, seeing their daughter in such distress was devastating. They were never exactly close, when she lived in Mississippi, but when she left town with that no account Jeffrey Graham, the lines of communication were even more few and far between. Now she was back, heartbroken, not over Graham, but over some new guy, who also happened, they eventually discovered, to be white.
“Why y’all looking at me like that?” Trina wanted to know. They were drinking coffee at the table, with her on one side, her parents, married for nearly forty years, on the other. “Just because he’s white?”
“We don’t mean to look at you any kind of way,” her father said, “but what you’re telling us is some shocking news here. And it don’t have nothing to do with his race. You left here, against our better judgment and any six year old’s, with Jeffrey Graham. What happened to Jeffrey Graham?”
Jeffrey was so yesterday to Trina that she hadn’t even thought about him. “We been broke up,” she said. “Something like two years ago.”
Earnestine Hathaway, Trina’s mother, glanced at the Reverend, and then back at her daughter. Whenever they spoke by phone, Trina always made it her business to never discuss her business.
“And you’ve met this new man, this white man,” her mother said, “and he owns a hotel?”
“The PaLargio, yes.”
“The PaLargio,” Reverend Hathaway said, amazed. “That’s big time, ain’t it? That’s sort of like Caesar’s Palace, ain’t it?”
Trina nodded. “Yes.”
“And the man you’re dating owns it?”
“He’s asked me to marry him, yes.” To her surprise, her father smiled.
“Well hello,” he said. “At least you did something right.”
Both Trina and her mother looked at him, with a look that offended him.
“Well, what y’all want me to say? I’ve been worried sick about you, and you have too, Earnestine, so don’t even be looking at me like that. Working in some strip club, running off with that Jeffrey Graham, I was worried sick. Now she come busting in here talking about she’s engaged to a rich man, a man who owns a big-time hotel, and you want me to be upset because she ain’t still with some no-account like Jeffrey?”
“He’s white, Cecil,” Earnestine reminded him. “Don’t forget that part.”
“Well, is he good to you, baby?” Cecil asked his daughter.
“Apparently not,” Earnestine said. “Look at her.”
And her mother was right, Cecil realized. She looked on the verge of collapse.
“What’s he done?” Cecil wanted to know. “He been beating on you?”
“No,” Trina said, shaking her head.
“Cussing you out?”
“No.”
“Calling you a nigger and telling racist jokes?”
“No!” Trina said, amazed how off target he was. “He hasn’t done anything to me. He treats me wonderful. He treats me like his queen.”
Cecil and Earnestine looked at each other, and then looked at their daughter. “Let me get this straight,” Cecil said. “He’s rich, he doesn’t beat you, doesn’t cuss you out, doesn’t treat you like anything but the Queen of Sheba. And you’re upset, so upset that you ran home to us. Why again? Maybe I missed it.”
Trina was so drained that she didn’t know where to begin. “It’s complicated,” she ended up saying.
But her father wasn’t convinced. “That ain’t good enough, baby girl. You telling me this man treats you right, and that he’s good and all that, but you got to flee town like he’s some maniac you scared of? What’s going on here?”
Trina didn’t want to discuss it, but they deserved to know something more than what she was telling them. She leaned back in her chair, wrapped her hands around her coffee mug. “His father and brother were recently killed,” she said and both her parents gasped at the same time.
“What happened to them?” her now stern-looking father asked. “Was it a violent death?”
Trina nodded. “They were shot down.”
“Have mercy,” her mother said. “Who would do something like that?”
“Another mob boss,” Trina said.
Cecil looked at his daughter. “What you mean another mob boss? Don’t tell me that. You mean to tell me this man you dealing with got connections to the mafia?”
“He doesn’t.”
“But his daddy and brother did?” her mother asked her.
She nodded her head.
“
Goodness gracious child,” her mother said, “what on earth have you gotten yourself mixed up in? And why you bringing it here?”
“Because I love Reno,” she said.
“You sound like them battered women. They stay with the man because they love him, while he’s steady beating on them. Baby girl, baby girl,” her mother added, shaking her head, “this ain’t gonna end well.”
ROMANCING THE MOB BOSS Page 11