“They’re still searching for his ass,” Bo said as he walked toward the desk. “Stef says they have a couple leads on where he might be, but nothing firm.”
“I’m still angry at you and Stef for letting his ass get away to begin with,” Reno said. “Fucker stills a hundred grand from me and just walk out? He’d better be found!”
“We’re on it, Boss. We’re on it.”
“Then what are you doing here if you have nothing new to tell me? You’re telling me shit I already know.”
“It’s the Queen,” Bo said.
Reno frowned. “What queen?”
“The queen of Morovia, or whatever that country is called.”
“What about her?”
“She wants to see you.”
Reno couldn’t believe it. One of the queen’s men had come to him already with that request. He told him the same thing he was about to tell Bo. “If she wants to see me, tell her ass to come down here and see me. What’s the fucking problem? And why are you here relaying the message? What do you have to do with it?”
“Absolutely nothing,” said Bo. “But her man was too scared to approach you again, and the rest of your staff wasn’t touching it with a ten-foot pole. That left me.”
Reno smiled. Bo was a young, sharp, African-American who had the brains to cheat the house repeatedly, and he almost got away with it. With that kind of talent, Reno hired him. He’d become a trusted employee and had been moving up the ladder ever since. What Reno most liked about Bo was that he had guts. “So you told me. Now you go back and tell her what I told you.”
“That’s the thing, Boss. It’s apparently beneath the dignity of the queen to come to somebody. You’re supposed to go to her.”
Reno smiled, and then laughed, prompting the three managers to laugh too. Then Reno’s smile was gone. He wanted a foothole in Morovia. There was no doubt about it. And he was willing to accommodate a little to get what he wanted. But that didn’t mean he was going to kiss her ass. “If she needs to see me,” he said, “tell her to come see me. Otherwise, tell her to stop bothering me with bullshit.”
Bo nodded. He knew that would be the response. But he agreed to present it anyway. “Yes, sir,” he said.
“I want your ass to focus on that prick that stole a hundred grand from me, and got away with it, not some entitled queen.”
“Yes, sir. We’re on it.”
“Don’t get on it. Get that prick to me.”
Bo smiled. Reno always went so hard! “Yes, sir,” he said again, and then he left.
After Bo left, Reno’s Booking Manager looked at him. “Think that’s wise, Boss?” he asked.
“I think what’s wise?” Reno asked him.
“Antagonizing the queen? We could make a serious killing in rich Morovia. I’m talking a big-ass return. I thought you agreed to let her stay here, despite the fact that she had no reservation, to try and convince her to give us a ticket in.”
“What the fuck you think I’m doing?” Reno asked.
“You’re alienating her,” another manager said.
“Okay, I expect my senior people to be sharper than this.”
The first manager frowned. “What do you mean?”
“If I ran my ass up to her suite every time she called me, what would that make me? A man she can respect and want to do business with, or a fucking pussy?”
The manager smiled. “A pussy.”
“Exactly. Now give me credit for something, and get your asses back to work too.”
“What about Cher? We’re still wooing her?”
“You know we are. I want the best. Whatever MGM has on the table, double it. She’ll more than pay for it.”
“I agree,” the Booking manager said, and the three managers left too.
Reno plopped down behind his desk. He was exhausted and knew he needed some sleep. But he also realized he was hungry. If Trina was around she’d already be in his office with food for him. “You forgot to eat, Reno,” she’d say. And he’d smile. She knew his schedule better than he knew it sometimes.
But she wasn’t around. She opted to work all day at Champagne’s instead. Which was understandable. She had a successful clothing franchise of stores and had to pay attention to her business. But she was also Reno’s righthand person. He relied on her more than any other employee. But their tumultuous relationship was rarely smooth. They were still, even after all their years of marriage, working the kinks out.
Reno looked at his staff. They sat at the long conference table inside his office working the phones or on their laptops or talking strategy amongst themselves. They were young and tireless workers. They kept the guests happy, the supplies flowing, and made sure the talent was giving their audiences what Reno paid them to give. They were his frontline workers. And Reno was trying to see which one wasn’t too busy to go and get him some food.
When he saw that one of them, a newbie who was sitting at the table smiling at him, with her cleavage so exposed that her boobs looked as if they could pop out of her blouse at any moment, he called her over.
She gladly jumped up and nearly ran to his desk, the way all of his young staff often did. They idolized Reno.
“Yes, sir?” she asked anxiously.
“Go over to the Barker Lounge and get me some breakfast. Tell Terrance I want a dozen hot wings and some coleslaw.”
She almost said, hot wings for breakfast, sir?, but caught herself. “Yes, sir,” she said, instead, and turned to leave, with her short skater skirt lifting up and exposing her underwear.
“And hey,” Reno said when he saw it.
She turned back around quickly, her skirt lifting up once more. “Yes, sir?”
“Don’t come to work again dressed like a hooker trying to pick up a trick. This is a business. I’m paying your ass to do a job. Not for your ass to get a hook up with some other ass.”
Her face turned beet-red, but he could tell it was more from guilt than embarrassment. “Yes, sir,” she said, and hurried out of his sight.
Reno leaned back and rubbed his stiffening neck. He’d always been rough around the edges, no matter who he dealt with. He was beginning to wonder if he was too rough. Why couldn’t he just tell her nicely? Why did he always get upset whenever he saw somebody trying to gain some advantage rather than just do what they were supposed to do? Why couldn’t he be like his best friend and cousin Tommy Gabrini, for instance, who knew how to finesse it? His ass was as rough as Reno and Sal, but you’d never know it to look at him. Dapper Tom was smooth as wine. Reno was about as smooth as a bumpy road.
Then he dismissed all that sentimental shit, sat forward, and turned on his computer. He had contracts to review, and plenty of them. May as well get to work.
But just as he was about to get into it, his cellphone rang. His phone was face down on his desk. So he turned it over to glance at the Caller ID. When he saw it was his baby girl, Sophia, he picked it up quickly. And leaned back. “Hey, Lexie, what’s up?” He crossed his legs.
But when she started screaming in the phone, his heart stopped. “Daddy, help us! Mommy said help us! Help us, Daddy!”
Reno uncrossed his legs and leaned forward urgently. “Help you? What’s happening, Lexie? Where’s Mommy?”
“She’s driving the car. These bad people are chasing us. Please help us!”
Dear Lord, Reno thought as he quickly rose to his feet and pulled up the computer GPS program that tracked Trina’s car. When Ryan, his chief assistant, saw his distress, as the other assistants saw him too, he ran over.
As soon as Reno pulled up where they were, and how they were moving so fast the map could barely keep up, he heard gunshots.
“Lexie? Lexie?” he was yelling in his phone. “Track my wife’s movements and tell me where!” he ordered Ryan.
“Yes, sir,” Ryan said quickly, running around the desk to the computer.
“Lexie?” he was saying again as he was hurrying for the exit. “Where’s Stef’s ass?” he was saying to his
staff. “Get him up here too!”
“I’ll do that, sir,” said another aide, who quickly picked up his cell phone.
“Lexie?” Reno was still yelling. “Lexie?” He was still yelling his daughter’s name into his cellphone as he ran out of his office. “Lexie?!”
But she was no longer talking. All he heard were gunshots. More and more and more gunshots. His family was in that car and all he could hear were gunshots! He slid up to that elevator he was running so fast.
It was a miracle he didn’t have a heart attack right where he stood, as he got on that elevator and pulled out a second cellphone, nearly dropping it as he pulled it out, and called his cousin Sal Gabrini: the man that got on his nerves more than any human being alive. The man he knew he could depend on unlike any other, in times like these.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The men in the blue car were shooting into Trina’s car, and Dommi was shooting out of the car at them, shattering the back window. But it was doing no good. Sophia was as far down as she could go on the car’s floor, and had her head covered. She had lost her phone in the panic to get down further when the bullets started flying.
But Trina knew they would not get out of this alive unless she lost their tormentors. She was constantly telling Dommi to stay down, and Sophia too, as she drove faster than she’d ever drove before.
But the car behind her was just as expert, if not more so, because they stayed right with her.
And it suddenly went from bad to worse.
As she drove through backstreets in Vegas she had never even been down before, she realized she was approaching train tracks. And to make matters worse, a train was on those tracks and coming their way! It was so close, in fact, that the guardrails were already coming down.
If she had to stop her car, to let that train go by, she knew she and her children were dead. There were no two ways about it. Those men, who had been trying to kill them, were not about to suddenly cut them some slack and let them live. They were dead. And she knew it.
She also knew she had to elevate her game. She had to go for broke or that drive would be the last drive her children ever made. One way or the other.
She went for broke.
Instead of slowing down and coming to a reluctant stop, feeding those men just the meat they were looking to eat, she hit the gas petal, and floored it. She wasn’t Reno Gabrini’s wife for nothing. She wasn’t going down without a fight.
She blew through those guardrails so fast that she knocked them off of their hinges. But even Dommi couldn’t believe it. His eyes went big as saucers when he saw that train coming down that track, and their car right in its path. “Oh, no,” he said, stunned witless. “Mom! Mom!”
But if Trina refused to be conquered by those men, she knew she wasn’t about to be conquered by some train. Her car ran over those tracks so fast that she lost traction and it sailed in the air, like an airboat, and then plopped down over to the other side. But it plopped down, not broadside, but on all four tires.
The blue car decided immediately, too, that if Trina was going to go across, they were going across as well. And they did it. They flew across those tracks as fast as Trina was flying across. And their car went airborne, too. And they almost made it the other side as well.
Almost.
The tail end of their car was caught by the speeding locomotive, and it ripped it so violently that it caused the rest of the car to spin backwards, and back into the train. By the time the train had spit it out, that blue car, and the men inside of it, were flattened.
Trina, well on the other side, slammed on brakes when she saw the destruction of their tormentors. Dommi was so emotionally terrified that he turned and sat down in his seat. He didn’t even want to see the aftermath.
He’d seen a lot of bad things in his short life. Nothing topped that one.
And Trina, the lady who took them over, could barely breathe. Her heart was pounding.
She looked at Dommi. He looked as if he had lost all color in his face.
She looked at Sophia, who was just sitting back up from where she had been hiding. She was crying.
Trina reached for her, and pulled her into her arms.
“Who were those people, Mommy?” Sophie asked as she cried. “And why did they try to kill us?”
It was a question, Trina knew, that no child should ever have to ask. But Trina couldn’t answer it. She knew the answer. She knew it was because last night, instead of remaining in their bed, Reno got out and got revenge on those men who had showed him up in the casino. Now those men’s men wanted revenge too. Or somebody else wanted revenge. She didn’t give a fuck who wanted the revenge. Because no matter which one of Reno’s enemies it was, they were ready to kill her and her children without batting an eye.
What kind of mother would subject their children to this?
Even Dommi leaned against Trina, and Trina hugged him too. Even Dommi, the kid who loved action as if he was born for that shit, was tired of it too.
CHAPTER TWELVE
By the time Reno made it to his family, nearly thirty police cars were on the scene and a helicopter hovered above. And Sal had just arrived too.
Both men jumped from their cars and, because they were both very well known by the Vegas police department, were both given passage into the cordoned-off area. Trina and the children were sitting on the tail end of one of the many ambulances at the scene, with Trina sitting in the middle hugging both Dommi and Sophia.
Reno could hardly believe the carnage himself. Body parts were everywhere, along with that flattened, mangled blue car, and even Trina’s car was riddled with bullet holes. The entire scene looked like a war zone.
Reno’s heart was pounding so fast he couldn’t even run. He walked to his family. But instead of the children jumping up and running to him, as they usually did, they just sat there, leaned against their mother, staring at him. His pounding heart broke. Because he knew he was the reason why, him and his crazy-ass thirst for revenge, that they nearly died.
But it was Trina that disturbed him most. She sat there, but it was as if she wasn’t there at all. Even Sal saw it too. And he elbowed Reno.
“Look at Tree, Reno,” he said as they walked. “Check out that look in her eyes. Something’s snapped.”
Reno knew exactly what Sal was talking about. They’d seen it all their lives in some of the toughest guys around. Killing after killing. Close call after close call, and nothing happens. They’re tough and they do what they have to do. Then suddenly one day, it becomes one killing too many, or one close call too many, and something snaps. And suddenly they can’t do it anymore. Some walk away. Some kill themselves. Some go on a killing spree. Reno and Sal saw it all their lives.
And when they made it up to Trina and the children, they saw it even more starkly. That spark in Trina’s eyes, in her beautiful hazel eyes, was gone.
Reno knelt down. He felt like shit, because he knew, someway somehow, it was his fault. And he knew that look on his children’s faces. You did this to us, was the look.
“Hey,” he said to them, placing his hand on Dommi’s arm and Sophie’s arm, to complete the circle.
“Where’s the baby?” Trina asked him.
“I called Jimmy. He’s gone to pick him up, along with Maddie, and take them to the house.” Besides their penthouse apartment at the PaLargio, they also owned a suburban estate on the outskirts of Vegas. “What about you?” Reno asked. “You guys okay?”
Dommi and Sophie didn’t respond. How could they be okay? They looked at their mother instead. Sophie had tears in her eyes as she looked at their mother.
But Trina, usually the one to calm the waters, couldn’t even calm herself this time. She couldn’t go along with it. Not this. Not anymore. What they put their children through, time after time after time, was maddening! “No,” she said, and then she looked at Reno. “We are not okay. This is not okay. No.”
And then she stood up, prompting the children to stand up, too, an
d they began walking away. They just walked right past Reno, and walked away.
Reno and Sal followed behind them.
Dommi looked back, but he was protective of his mother and stayed with her.
Sophie looked back, but then she ran back to her father. He lifted her into his arms.
“Those men you hired to protect us got hit by a truck, Daddy,” she said as he carried her.
Stef phoned and told Reno about the devastating wreck as he drove over. His men were going to have to be hospitalized, but were expected to be okay. “Yeah, I heard,” he said.
“We almost got hit by a train,” Sophie continued.
“Yeah, I heard that too, baby.”
“But Mommy saved us. Like you used to.”
When Reno heard those words, his heart squeezed. And he held her closer. “Yeah, I know,” he said to her, and she laid her head on his shoulder.
The police, who had already questioned Trina and the kids, allowed them to leave.
When they arrived at Reno’s car, Trina opened the back driver’s side door and Dommi and Sophie got in. Reno closed the door and placed his hand around Trina’s waist as he walked her to the passenger’s side front door.
“I’d better get back to my own life,” Sal said, walking with them. Then he looked at Trina. “Call you later, Tree.”
Trina reached out and squeezed his arm. “Thanks, Sal, for coming.”
“Anytime,” he said. “You know that. Just call me.”
Trina couldn’t force a smile, although she tried, and got into Reno’s car.
Reno and Sal shook hands, and then gave each other an affectionate one-arm hug. “She’ll be okay, Reno,” Sal reassured him. “Just give her some time.”
Reno nodded, and Sal headed for his own vehicle.
When Reno got behind the wheel, and began taking his family home, he badly wanted every detail. But the look on Trina’s face, on even Dommi’s face, told him they were still too spooked to talk. He would have to get in touch with his contacts on the police force to get any solid information.
Reno Gabrini: Turn Back Time Page 5