Jimmy laughed. “Just kidding. I’ll start paying right away.”
“We’re just messing with you, Jimmy,” Trina said. “Nobody’s collecting any rent from you.”
“Says who?” Reno asked seriously.
“Says me,” Trina replied.
When Reno had no comeback, Jimmy laughed. “Anyway,” he said, rising. “Uncle Tommy pays me very well because he knows I’m reliable. And sitting here chatting with you good people is nice, but it won’t pay the bills, hear what I’m saying? Adios!” He picked up Madison from Reno’s lap, gave Trina a kiss on the cheek, had Madison say goodbye to his parents, and they left.
As soon as the front door slammed shut, Trina looked at Reno. “Well?” she asked.
“Well what?”
Trina almost rolled her eyes. “Where have you been, Reno?”
“I had to take care of some business.”
“At four in the morning? I woke up around that time, and you were gone. What kind of business you were handling at four in the morning? It wasn’t PaLargio business.”
He picked up Trina’s cup of coffee and took a sip. “I had to handle a threat,” he reluctantly admitted. Then he looked at her. He could tell by the look in her eyes that she understood exactly what he meant.
“Those guys from earlier?” she asked him.
He nodded. “Those guys.”
“What kind of threat?”
“They want me to give them rights to a PaLargio Hotel in our regional market. I told them to fuck off. They told me they would be back, and wouldn’t be asking the next time. I had to make it clear I wouldn’t be answering the next time either.”
Trina looked at him with nothing but concern in her eyes. “What happened?”
Reno stared at the coffee in the cup.
“Something went wrong?” Trina asked him.
“Everything went wrong,” Reno said. “One of those bastards panicked because I was beating his brothers’ asses, and he tried to run me over.”
“But it didn’t work, right? You weren’t hurt?”
“No. But his stupid ass took out his brothers instead. And for my own preservation, I had to take him out.”
If Trina heard that line once, she’d heard it a hundred times from Reno.
“And don’t come with that bullshit about nothing would have happened if I hadn’t gone there. They laid down a threat, and I had to answer it.”
“It’s a vicious cycle,” Trina said. “You realize that? It’s never going to end.”
“Yes, I realize it.” Then he looked at Trina. “But do you realize it, Tree?”
Trina looked at the messages she had been strolling through on her phone. “Yes,” she said. “I realize it.”
“But?”
“You had to fight your father’s enemies. Will our children have to fight ours? And their children theirs? Is it that kind of never-ending, Reno? Are we in that kind of crazy-ass loop forever?”
A depressed look appeared on Reno’s face. And he exhaled. “Yes,” he said. “It’s that kind of crazy.”
Trina’s heart felt heavy. And she needed time alone. She rose to her feet. “I better get ready for work,” she said, and left the kitchen.
Reno rubbed his cheeks with both his hands, and then let out a sigh or exhaustion. And then his cell phone rang.
He pulled it out and looked at the Caller ID. It was his Booking Manager. “What is it?” he asked.
“We have a dignitary on her way.”
“So what? We get dignitaries every day. What are you bothering me for?”
“We don’t get this level of dignitary every day,” he said, “and she’s coming unannounced. No reservation, in other words.”
“Who is it?”
“Only Her Royal Highness the Queen of Morovia,” he said. “You know Morovia. That rich little country you’ve been trying to get a foothold in for nearly a decade? This may be our chance.”
Reno knew it too. “Let me take a shower, and then I’ll be down,” he said, and ended the call.
Fuck Morovia, he thought, as he headed upstairs. They turned him down repeatedly. Couldn’t even get a liquor license to run a ma and pop in that fucking country. Now their Queen wanted to stay in his hotel? And she had no reservation? Was just showing up? He got up those stairs quickly. It was his chance to tell Morovia where they could take their I don’t have a reservation but you’re going to let me stay anyway shitshow. He couldn’t wait to tell them. He wasn’t good enough for them, but they were good enough for him? They had another thought coming, he thought, as he entered his bedroom.
But then he saw Trina, slowly getting dressed, looking as if the weight of the world was on her shoulders, and then he thought about the Johnson brothers. She was right. When was it ever going to end?
With no words being spoken, since he had no answers, anyway, he went into the bathroom and gently closed the door.
Once closed, he leaned against it, and ran both hands through his already messy, tousled hair.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was an entourage that ran some twenty people deep, with their queen in the midst, and they all swept into the lobby of the already-busy PaLargio the way Siegfried and Roy used to sweep onto the stage at the Mirage. But their fast, certain, pay attention to us and us alone progression ran into a forced stop when Reno Gabrini, the man they all knew as the hotel’s owner, entered the lobby, too, and walked straight up to them.
Unlike the Morovia group, Reno’s entourage consisted of only one person: his senior security chief, Stef Siranno. And it was obvious to everyone in the Morovia group that both men, though well-dressed businessmen in expensive suits, were a lot more than just businessmen. Gangsters came to mind to some in the group. Thugs to others. But whatever they thought of Reno was immaterial to him: he was ready to kick their asses out and relish doing so.
Until he saw their queen.
She stepped up from the midst of the crowd when their movements were suddenly stopped. She wore a fur coat, and held a cat wearing a matching fur coat, in her arms. Stef’s mouth nearly gaped open. Not at the cat, but at the queen. He didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone so beautiful. Even Reno, who’d seen it all, was blown away too.
“Am I to assume you to be Mr. Gabrini?” she asked with a sweet smile.
“That’s correct,” Reno managed to say.
“Hello, sir. I am Ava. I am mostly known as Ava, queen of Morovia. But I prefer simply Ava.” She extended her gloved hand. “Nice to make your acquaintance, Mr. Gabrini.”
Reno shook her hand. Call me Reno, he wanted to say. That was what he would have ordinarily said. But he didn’t.
Ava was disappointed. Most men groveled at her feet immediately at first sight of her. But not this man. “Am I to assume you have accommodations for me?” she asked.
Reno’s weakness had always been nice looking dames. He knew it. Everybody who knew him knew it. But then he met Trina, and she became his weakness. Nobody compared to Tree.
Then why wasn’t he kicking her ass out, as he had planned all along? Mainly because Reno suddenly saw an opportunity. He still wanted in to that rich market. If he could feign interest in her; if he could behave as, undoubtedly, most men behaved around her, he just might get an opening. He just might be able to convince her that an alliance could work. “How many suites are required?” he asked her.
“A floor would be nice.”
“A floor I cannot do. Three suites at the most. Will that work?”
She smiled. “That will have to work. Thank you.”
“My security chief will escort you upstairs. Have a nice stay,” he said, and Ava and her entourage followed Stef toward the elevators.
Reno looked back, taking the measure of her as she walked away. Nice ass, he thought, but he also knew for a fact that Trina’s ass was nicer. He remembered how hard he fucked that very ass not that long ago. Although, after the Johnsons debacle, it seemed very long ago. Too long ago. He turned to head to the casino.
He tried to smile, to play it off, but none of them were going along with it. Dommi even took Trina’s hand, as if he had to protect her from his own father’s wondering eye, which wasn’t wondering at all. He walked over to them.
Although Sophia was always going to be Team Reno, and she looked up at him with sympathetic eyes, she was still as curious as her brother and mother. “Who was that, Daddy?” she asked him.
“Her? Nobody,” Reno said.
“Then why were you staring at her so hard?” Dommi asked.
Reno frowned. His children knew better than to question him, although Dommi always tried. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” he asked his son. “I stare at everybody. I’m staring at your ass right now. What does that mean?”
Dommi, always with the quick comeback, came back. “It means you’re absolutely correct,” he said. “What was I thinking?”
Sophie, knowing her brother’s wit, rolled her big eyes.
Reno, instead, looked at Trina. She was the one he always seemed to hurt lately, when he didn’t mean to hurt her at all. But his actions spoke louder than his words. “Where’s the baby?”
“Upstairs with the nannies,” Trina said. “Go see him. He misses you.”
“I will. After you drop the kids off, are you coming back here to work today?”
“No,” Trina said firmly. “I’ll be at Champagne’s today.” She was putting on her gloves. Dommi and Sophie already had on theirs. “Who is she?” she asked Reno.
Reno knew, this time, he couldn’t dismiss her question the way he had dismissed Lexie’s. “She’s a dignitary. The queen of a small, eastern European country called Morovia.”
Trina remembered the name. “Isn’t that one of the countries you wanted to expand in?”
Reno was surprised that Trina would have known that. He didn’t recall making any issue of it. “Yes,” he said.
“And didn’t they turn you down repeatedly?”
Reno was also surprised she would have known that fact too. “That’s right,” he said.
“Why would she come here? Or, more importantly, why would you let her?”
Reno couldn’t lie to Trina. “I planned to kick her out. That’s for damn sure. But she seemed like a nice lady.”
Trina gave Reno that look he knew so well. “Yeah I’m sure her ass is just loaded with personality.”
Dommi grinned, surprised by the shade his mother had just thrown at his father. Nobody got away with shading his father the way his mother did, he thought. That was why Trina was his real hero!
“Let’s go,” she said to the children, and they headed for the exit.
CHAPTER NINE
They were well on their way to the private school both children attended when Sophia asked the question.
“Mommy?” she asked. She was in the backseat. Dommi was up front.
“Yes?”
“Is Daddy faithful to you?”
Trina glanced at her daughter through the rearview. She knew how much Sophie loved her father. How much all of their children loved their father. “Why would you ask a question like that?” she asked her.
“Because.”
“Because why, Sophia?”
Sophie hesitated. Dommi turned around. “She asked you a question,” he said.
“Because of the way he was looking at that lady,” Sophie answered her mother. “Because of the way he’s always looking at ladies. Kids at our school says he’s a Lothario.”
Dommi frowned. “He’s a what? I wish one of those kids would call Daddy that word to my face.”
“You don’t even know what it means,” Sophia said.
“I do know what it means,” Dommi said. “Your little arrogant ass ain’t the only one who knows things, thank you.”
“Then what does it mean?” Sophie asked.
“It means he’s a cheater. What else could it mean since that’s the topic of our conversation? You and those nerds always saying unnecessary words. But me? I know exactly what y’all be talking about by the content of the conversation. I don’t have to read dictionaries like you do.”
“Is he, Mommy?” Sophie asked Trina.
“Is he what, Sophia?” Trina asked her.
“A cheater.”
And there it was. Trina wondered how long it would take before they had this conversation. “No,” she said plainly.
Even Dommi looked at their mother. “How would you know?” he asked her.
“Because I know your father. He’d never in a million years do anything like that to us.”
Dommi looked at his mother. “What do you mean us, Kemosabe?”
“She said us because anything that happens to mommy happens to us,” Sophia schooled Dommi.
Dommi, never one to be upstaged by his kid sister, nodded his head. “I knew that,” he said confidently, his naturally long eyelashes partly covering his big eyes and giving them a half-closed look. Then he looked at his mother. “But if you’re so certain of Dad’s faithfulness, why did you get mad at him for just looking at that woman?”
“It was a reminder.”
“A reminder of what?”
“I was reminding him that he was no cheater,” Trina responded.
Dommi grinned. “I don’t know if it works, but it makes sense. I’m with Ma, Sophie. Dad would never cheat on Mommy.”
“How do you know?” Sophie asked.
“Because Mommy would kill him,” Dommi said. “And he ain’t dead yet. Which is proof positive!”
Even Trina had to laugh at that, as she stopped at a red light.
But as soon as she stopped, a blue car suddenly pulled up beside their car and stopped too. Trina saw, out of her peripheral vision, the passenger side window of the automobile press down, causing her to glance over. But when she saw that the man in the car had lifted a gun, and was about to point it at them, her heart dropped. Her children were in that car! And for that reason, she didn’t hesitate.
Reno taught her long ago never to hesitate. Whenever she saw danger, he warned her, get the hell out. If getting out was dangerous, too, quickly weight the risks and take the one of least pain.
That was why, as soon as she saw that gun appear, and realized they were about to be ambushed, she floored it and blew right through the red light. She could handle the car if they got hit. She couldn’t handle bullets.
And as soon as Trina took off, the blue car blew through the light, too, and followed her. The security detail Reno had on his family was driving just behind the family car and they took off too. But the security car became one too many cars blowing through a red light. They were violently tee-boned by a tractor trailer as soon as they entered the middle of the intersection, and was split in half. The front end went one way. The back end another way. And all the men inside were badly injured.
Trina saw the accident, and was horrified by it, but that only stiffened her resolve. She was on her own. At that moment, she was the sole protector of her children.
She picked up even more speed. If those motherfuckers thought they were going to roll up on her and she was going to sit there and let them harm her children, they had another thought coming.
But she was getting nowhere fast. She floored it, and sped through those streets like a bat out of hell, but she still couldn’t break free. The blue car was flooring it, too, and with every corner Trina turned, they turned too. With every little momentum she thought she had gained, they gained too. Within seconds, they were right on her bumper.
“What’s happening, Mommy?” Sophia asked nervously. She’d heard the sound of the wreck further back, but didn’t see it
. But she saw the terror in her mother’s eyes. “Mommy, what’s wrong?”
Dommi, shocked, too, by the sudden turn of events, turned around in his seat. When he saw, through the back window, that a car was on their tail, and appeared to be giving them an all-out chase, he reached under the glove compartment and pulled out the gun his father kept strapped there, and checked for bullets.
Although Trina was confident in Dommi’s skills: she’d seen him in action too many times not to be, she also knew they were going to need serious backup. The kind Dommi was too young to give. But 911 was never the first call that came to Trina’s mind. Reno was. “Call your father,” she said anxiously to Sophia as she turned another corner, laid on the gas even more, and tried to will that car to pick up more speed. “Call Daddy!”
As Sophia nervously pulled out her cell phone, the car following them was right on their tail. Dommi, still checking for bullets, looked at his mother when he heard the panic in her voice, and then he looked out of the back window. When he saw just how close that blue car was now to them, he aimed that gun at the car behind them and ordered his sister to get down. “And stay your ass down!” he yelled.
Sophie’s father engrained in her brain from an early age that whenever shit went down and she was with her brother, her brother was in charge. No ands, ifs, or buts about it. In normal times, Reno wouldn’t trust Dommi to go across the street and come right back. But he’d trust him with his life, and the life of his beloved family, in a time of crisis. Sophie took off her seatbelt.
As Trina turned yet another corner so fast the car nearly swerved out of control, tossing Sophia against the back of the front seats, she got down just like her brother had ordered her to do. And quickly called her father, the man every one of them in that car always depended on, just as her mother had ordered her to do.
CHAPTER TEN
Reno was back in his chaotic office, standing behind his desk surrounded by three members of his senior management staff, when Bo Jackson, another senior manager and Reno’s right-hand man, walked in. Reno immediately stopped conversing with the three men, and looked at the new arrival. “Any word?” he asked him.
Reno Gabrini: Turn Back Time Page 4