Mob Boss 4: Romancing Trina Gabrini (18 page)

Reno swallowed hard when he said this.
 
Trina felt that heaviness she felt whenever
she had to relive Reno’s sordid past.
 
Every time she thought there was nothing more to learn, there was
something more to learn.
 
She braced
herself.

“I got her out of there as fast as I could.
But I had to be careful.
 
I had to make
sure Pops didn’t suspect a thing.
 
So I
eased her to the back door, pulled my fucking dick out of her, and then I
pushed the door open for her to take off.”

“So she got away?”

“From Pop and Vito, yeah.
 
She
got away.”

“Thank God for that.”

“Yeah.
 
Thank God.
 
But that didn’t make what I did right.
 
I did what I had to do,
given
what we were up
against, but that still didn’t make it right.”

   
Trina stared at Reno.
 
It never
ceased to amaze her how moral Reno was.
 
For a man who’d committed some hellish acts because of his mob
connections, he never sugarcoated his past, or pretended it wasn’t bad.
 
In her view, he was too hard on himself if
anything, given the position people were always putting him in that often left
him no choice in the matter.
 
But that
was Reno.
 
She loved his sense of shame.

“But when you let her go,” she said to him,
“your Dad and Vito, they had to be pretty angry.”

Reno nodded.
 
“They were.”

“So what happened?
 
What did they do to you?”

“Pop tried to kill me,” Reno said with a smile
that didn’t reach his eyes.
 
“He had this
tire iron or crowbar or whatever it was, I can’t remember, but he was ready to
knock the life out of me.
 
His own son.
 
But I
was younger and stronger and took it from him.
 
Got off of my own back and flipped him on his.
 
Should have killed his ass.
 
But I couldn’t.
 
He was my father.
 
I’m not that kind of man and I’ll never be
that kind of man.
 
And so that was
that.”
 
He looked at Trina.
 
“And I just made Nell, not realizing it was
that
Nell, the new manager of
Clauson’s.”

Trina wasn’t sure if she liked that bit of
news, but her feelings were beside the point.
 
“Did she deserve the job?” she asked him.

“She was the assistant manager, and I sure as
hell had to get rid of the manager.
 
I
had some of my people come down here earlier and scope out the place, and at
the time, they gave the assistant manager higher marks than the manager.
 
So yeah, I would say she deserved it.”

“Then you did the right thing,” Trina
proclaimed.
 
“After the trauma your old
man and Vito put that woman through, it was the least you could do.”

“Yeah,” Reno said, raking his hand through
Trina’s hair and then pulling her back down beside him.

There was a hesitation as they laid
there.
 
Reno continued to rub her hair,
and he kissed her on her forehead.
 
Then
he looked at her.

“What’s wrong?” he asked her.

“What I don’t understand,” she said, “was why
you didn’t mention her before?”

“Are you kidding me?
 
I didn’t remember that woman.
 
That night was mild compared to some of the
other bullshit my old man put me through.
 
That was just one of a thousand examples I could give to you.
 
I mean Pops was. . . . He wasn’t a nice guy,
all right?
 
He didn’t do nice things, you
feeling me?
 
Besides, when I tried to
phone her after it happened to make sure she was okay, I was told she had left
town.
 
I assumed it was for good, I
didn’t know.
 
I thought she had gone on
with her life and good riddance, was how I saw it back then.
 
It never occurred to me that she’d still be
at Clauson’s.”

“Did she remember you?”

Reno shrugged his shoulder.
 
“Don’t know.”

“You’d think she would.”

“Yeah, you would.”

“Did she have a nasty attitude or---”

“No, no.
 
Nell’s not like that.
 
She was
always a sweet person,” he said.
 
“That I
remember now, too.
 
And she still is
sweet from what I could tell yesterday.”

“Is she still a beauty?” Trina asked, that
green-eyed monster she hated beginning to creep in.

“I guess, I don’t know.
 
I wasn’t looking at her like that.”

Trina believed him.
 
When it came to business, Reno was all
business.
 
“So how are you going to
handle it?
 
Just pretend it didn’t
happen?”

“You know better than that, babe.
 
That ain’t me.
 
I have to bring it up, and apologize to her
face to face.”

“Sooner rather than later you think?”

“Yeah, I think so.
 
I don’t want to bring it up, Lord knows I
don’t, but I have to man up and do it.”

 
Trina
didn’t respond to that.
 
Mainly because she didn’t know what to say.
 
Reno was the personification of a walking
contradiction.
 
His background was filled
with carnage and pain, but he wasn’t that kind of person at all.
 
He was kind and considerate and a man who
would never harm another human being unless he had no choice.
 
Then he’d be as ruthless as ruthless could
get.
 
It was just like Reno to want to
apologize to the woman.
 

But Trina was concerned, too.
 
She was concerned that the other woman, who
Reno already referred to as a “beauty” and “sweet,” didn’t mistake his kindness
for some invitation to feed at the trough.
 
Because Reno’s trough belonged to her, and she wasn’t
about to share it.
 

“We’d better get up,” she said, getting out of
bed.

Reno looked at her wet, naked body as she
headed for the bathroom.
 
He hated that
he had to tell her, once again, about some bad act from his past.
 
He was tired of telling it and he knew she
was tired of hearing it.
 
He took solace
in the fact that this particular tale wouldn’t lead to any mob wars or other
complications.
 
It was one bad night
that, in the end, caused him to step out of his father’s shadow.
 
End of story.

But as he got out of bed he felt odd.
 
As if it wasn’t the end.
 
As if that one fateful night, all those years
ago, was just the beginning.
 
Then he
dismissed such thoughts and headed to the bathroom.
 
To shower with his wife.

CHAPTER NINE

Reno shoved his penis deep inside of Nell and
she wrapped her legs around his naked body.
 
She lolled back her head and laughed as he put it on her.
 
She felt every inch of his rod as he pounded
her, and she never wanted him to pull it out.
 
Every time he tried to pull out, she clamped down hard, and forced him
back in.
 
Over and over he shoved back
in.
 
Like a workout.
 
He shoved down into her deepest pocket.
 
And hit her there hard.
 
Boing, boing, boing
.
 
He kept poking her there.
 
Boing, boing, boing
.
 
She wondered how
could a
dick
make a sound like that.
 
But
it was loud and rhythmic and hard.
 

Like a workout.

Boing,
boing, boing.

Until the sound itself woke her up. And she
suddenly realized it wasn’t Reno’s penis that was creating that odd sound, but
her hand.
 
Her hand was slapping down on
her bed, over and over, every time she felt Reno’s sex.

As she closed her legs and her thighs came
together, she realized she was wet.
 
Soaking wet.
 
The proverbial wet dream.
 
And it was seriously ironic to her.
 
For years these men around here had been trying and trying to get her
wet.
 
Reno didn’t even have to be here,
didn’t have to try at all, and he got her wet.

She continued to lie in bed, on her back,
thinking about Reno.
 
He was a force of
nature, that
was for damn sure.
 
A remarkably good looking force, too
,
 
that
even she
couldn’t ignore.

And suddenly the fact that the father of her
child was Reno Gabrini, and that this big, powerful man had that kind of
connection to her, wasn’t a terrifying thought.
  
It wasn’t a relaxing thought, either, given
his background and who he was.
 
But the
idea of him as Jimmy Mack’s father no longer seemed to terrify her.

But that didn’t mean she was going to tell
Jimmy anything right away.
 
Not yet.
 
She still had to get to know Reno
better.
 
What kind of man did she have on
her hands?
 
How would his white wife and
white kids feel about his half-black child? Would they handle the fact that
Reno had a half-black child?
 
How would
he
handle it?
 
Would he mistreat her son, and make matters
worse?
 

That was why she knew she had to stay
cautious.
 
She got out of bed determined
to wait and see.
 
There were still too
many unanswered questions, and too many risks.
 
She wasn’t subjecting her son to any rejections.
 

But as she headed for the shower, she felt
fanciful again.
 
Wouldn’t it be the irony
of ironies, she thought, if Reno Gabrini, after all these years, turned out to
be the one and only man for her?
 
Her
baby daddy would be the one?

Then she dismissed such silliness again, and
got her wet self into the shower.
 

Trina saw him get out of his SUV and make his
way into the café.
 
She saw women smile
at him and even give him second looks as he walked by.
 
She smiled.
 
She liked him, too.
 
She could see
them becoming fast friends easily.
 

But even if she didn’t have Reno in her life
and was free as a bird on that meat market of romance, she still couldn’t see
herself with a man like Sully.
 
He was
good looking, but he wasn’t her kind of good looking.
 
Trina had never been attracted to
straight-lace guys.
 
She couldn’t say
why, but she never had.
 
And even beyond
his looks, there was still something about Sullivan Chambliss.
 
There was something so subtle that she
couldn’t even verbalize what it was.
 
He
was nice and friendly and seemed like the perfect gentleman, but there was
still something there.
 

But as he entered the café, she smiled and
waved as he made his way to her booth.

“Well, hello there, Miss Katrina,” Sully said
as he slid onto the booth seat in front of her.

“Good afternoon.
 
And please stop calling me Katrina.
 
I haven’t been called that name in so long
that whenever I hear it now I think of a hurricane.”
 
Sully laughed.
 
“Trina, or even Tree, will do.”

“I beg your pardon, madam,” Sully said with a
playful bow.
 
“Trina, or Tree, it is.”

“So how are you, Sully?”

“I’m very good, Ka. . . Trina.”
 
Then he looked around.
 
“I expected Reno to be here already.”

“Then you don’t know Reno,” Trina said with a
smile.
 
“That man will be late for his
own funeral.
 
He’s probably wrapping up
some loose ends at Clauson’s before he could leave.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t ask me to meet the
two of you at Clauson’s anyway.”