Reno and Trina: In the Shadows of Love, Book 12 (10 page)

Even though he didn’t respond to her, Amy didn’t back
down.
 
“What, Reno?
 
She’s giving it to you that good?”

Reno looked at her.
 
Unlike hers, his anger was still there.
 
“You may not understand who I am,” he said.

“I know who you are.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Reno responded with a knowing
shake of the head.
 
“Because if you had a
clear concept about me, about who I am, then you would know exactly what will
happen to you if you even think about working for my wife.”

Amy’s heart pounded.
 
“You can’t take that away from me, too, Reno,” she pleaded.
 
“This job is all I have!”

But Reno roared with anger.
 
“You will not work for my wife!” he
yelled.
 
He was animated now.
 
“You will not be around her, you will not
have conversations with her, you will not have anything to do with her or I’ll
kill your ass!
 
You understand me,
Amy?
 
This shit real! This shit has
consequences.
 
Nobody’s coming between me
and my wife!”

Reno looked at her, and his look was so chilling that
Amy felt a sudden rush of terror.
 
And
she knew, at least for right now, she had to back down.
 
“You don’t have to worry about me, Reno,” she
said.
 
“I’ll stay in my lane.”

Reno looked at her as if she had missed the entire
point.
 
“What the fuck I care about what
lane you stay in?
 
I don’t give a
shit.
 
Because I’ll be all over the
highway, in and out of every lane, if you pull any stunts with my wife.
 
And you won’t see it coming.
 
You know why, Aim?”

“I’m sure that’s a rhetorical statement.”

“Do you know why?” Reno asked again.

Amy shook her head.
 
How could she have ever have loved this man?
  
And she once did.
 
Deeply.
 
“Why, Reno?
 
Why won’t I see it
coming?
 
Because I won’t have any eyes
left to see?
 
Is that the point you’re
trying to convey?”

“You’ll still have eyes to see,” Reno responded.
  
“And you’ll still have every other body part
too.
 
You just won’t need them.
 
Dead people never do.”
 
Then Reno gave her a stare so cold it chilled
her to the blood. “Stay away from my wife,” he ordered her.
 
“Turn down that job, and stay away from her.”

Reno got out of her car, and headed for his own.

Amy, terrified, cranked up and sped away.

They were
out back, on the patio that overlooked their three-acre estate, and dinner was
soon to be served.
 
Reno sat in one of
the patio chairs, his legs folded, a glass of wine in his hand, while Trina sat
on a swing bench, sandwiched between Dommi on her right, and Sophia on her left
and all three of them were swinging.
 
Jimmy and Val were also there, seated in patio chairs, both drinking
beer, and Jimmy started laughing when the butler escorted Quinn to the patio.

“I know why
you came,” he teased her, forcing Val to poke him in the rib with her
elbow.
 
“What?” he asked Val.
 
Then he looked at Quinn again.
 
“You never broke bread at Mom and Dad’s house
before.”

Trina and
Quinn exchanged a glance.
 
It was no
secret that there was no love lost between them, and if it was up to Trina she
would never step foot in her home.
 
But
it was Reno’s home too, and he had invited her.

“So why
suddenly show up now?” Jimmy asked her.

“I came to
dinner before,” Quinn said.

“At the
penthouse, yes,” Jimmy responded, “but never here.
 
Never at the estate.”
 
Jimmy smiled again.
 
“But I know why you’re here.”

“You sound
like a broken record, Jimmy,” Val said.

“You’re out
of luck, Quinn,” Jimmy said.
 
“He didn’t
show up.
 
Sorry.
 
All you have to keep you warm are us: the
Gabrinis.
 
Interesting folks, but surely
not capable of giving you the kind of warmth you had in mind.”

Jimmy
laughed after he said this but his smile disappeared because Quinn didn’t just
come to dinner because Mick was coming to dinner, she came to dinner
with
Mick.

It was her
time to smile when Mick stepped out onto the patio behind her, after taking a
moment to compliment the chef on what smelled delicious to him.
 
And Quinn rubbed it in.
 
“What were you saying again, James?” she
asked Jimmy.
 
“I wasn’t quite sure what
you meant.”

Jimmy smiled
and looked away.
 
“I don’t know what
you’re talking about,” he said, and Val, Quinn, and Trina laughed.

“What’s so
funny, Mommy?” Dommi asked.

“Grown
people stuff,” Reno responded to his son. “Don’t you worry about it.”

“But everybody’s
laughing,” Dommi explained.

“And what’s
that your business?” Reno explained. “Don’t you have enough to do being a
kid?
 
Now go play.
 
And take your sister with you.”

“Yes, sir,”
Dommi said reluctantly as Sophia gladly got down from the swing bench and took
Dommi’s hand.
 
They went out into the
well-lit back yard, to what Dommi called their
real
swing set.

Val was the
only one who had not met Mick before, and Jimmy introduced them.
 
“This is my wife,” he said as Mick shook her
hand.
 
“Her name’s Valerie.”

“Hello,
Valerie,” Mick said and kissed the back of her hand.
 
Val couldn’t help but smile when he kissed
her.
 
Jimmy knew Val had a thing for
older men (he wasn’t entirely sure if that monster crush she used to have on
his father had completely dissipated), and he gave her one of his
what’s so funny
looks.
 
But he didn’t comment.
 
Mick was a good looking guy, and even Jimmy
could see how he had that same animal magnetism his father and uncles had, so
he held his peace.
 
For now.
 

Reno stood
and shook Mick’s hand just as the chef announced that dinner was being served.
And when they all sat around the dinner table, Mick not only caught the
attention of Quinn, who seemed giddy with excitement to have him as her date,
but he also caught the attention of little Dommi too.
 
He couldn’t stop staring at Mick.
 
Reno noticed it before anybody else did.
 
Not because others were inattentive, but
because Reno knew his youngest son.
 
He
made it his life’s work to keep an eye on that little man.

But when
Dommi continued to stare, and when Mick caught him staring a couple of times,
Reno spoke up.
 
“What’s wrong with you,
son?” he asked him.
 
“What’s with the
staring?”

Dommi looked
his big, sincere eyes at his father.
 
“I
don’t know him, Daddy,” he said, prompting Jimmy to laugh.

“So what you
don’t know him?” Reno responded.
 
“You
don’t know most of the people in this world.
 
Does that give you a license to stare them down?”

“A license?”
Dommi asked, confused.

“What gives
you the right to stare the man down just because you don’t know him?” Reno
attempted to clarify.

But Dommi
was still unsettled.
 
“But who is he?” he
asked his father.

Jimmy
decided to answer, knowing that his little brother would give him an interested
answer if nothing else.
 
“He’s Uncle Sal
and Uncle Tommy’s uncle,” Jimmy said.

Dommi: still
confused.
 
“Their
uncle
?” he asked.

“That’s what
I said.”

“But. .
.”
 
Dommi’s eyebrows knitted.

Jimmy
smiled.
 
Dommi had a way of dropping
little gems when he wanted to.
 
“But
what?” he asked him.

“Stop
encouraging him,” Trina warned.

“But Uncle
Sal and Uncle Tommy are
our
uncles.”

Jimmy
frowned.
 
“So?”

“They are
our
uncles,” Dommi pointed out
again.
 
“They can’t have an uncle and be
our uncles too.”
 
Then he looked at
Reno.
 
“What’s an uncle, Daddy?” he asked
him.

Everybody
laughed.
 
“That boy,” Trina said, shaking
her head.

After
dinner, Mick sat down in one of the chairs on the patio, accepted a glass of
wine from one of Reno’s servers, and spent the balance of the evening listening
to small talk, talking very little himself, and staring relentlessly at Trina
by barely looking at her at all.

Reno was
seated beside him with a now sleeping Sophia in his arms.
 
He noticed Mick’s sly peeps at Trina, and the
intensity behind those peeps, when nobody else seen him look at all.
 
But Reno saw everything, and he saw it.
 
But he also saw intense admiration in Mick’s
look, not that lustfulness he saw in Shaun Connors and all those other men he
had to set straight in the past.
 

Looking with
admiration was okay with Reno.
 
Because,
as he looked at Trina too, he understood why Mick would be impressed.
 
Trina was in their expansive yard, running a
race with Dommi, her shapely legs coming out of the shorts she wore as they
simmered against the bright back lights, her ponytail making her look even more
youthful and fresh than she normally appeared.

“In a word,”
Reno said to Mick as he continued to look at Trina, “she’s stunning.”

Mick looked
at Reno, since most men didn’t have the balls to speak that highly of their
wives in front of other men, then he looked back at Trina.
 
And he nodded his agreement.
 
“Yes,” he said, unable to deny what was an
obvious truth.
 
“That she is.”

“But what do
I know, right?” Reno asked.
 
“I’m
unabashedly biased.”

Mick smiled.
 
“And unabashedly humble,” he said.

Reno
laughed.
 
“Humility?
 
Oh, yeah.
 
That’s me,” he added just as Dommi ran onto the patio.
 
He began patting Reno to get his
attention.
 
“Look, Daddy,” he said, still
patting him although he already had his father’s attention.
 
“I beat Mommy.”

Trina,
exhausted, made her way back onto the patio also.
 

“You beat
Mommy?” Reno asked his son as he watched Trina.
 
“Good for you, Dominic.”

“Don’t you
believe that boy,” Trina said as she plopped down in the chair beside Reno.
 
“He didn’t beat me.
 
He won because I was tired.”

“She’s
slow,” Dommi said.
 
He leaned against his
father’s chair.
 
“She’s slow and I’m
fast.”

Reno decided
to milk it for all he could.
 
“You outran
her, didn’t you, Dom?”

“Yes, sir,”
Dommi responded.
 
“It was easy.”

Reno
laughed.
 
“It was easy?”

“Easy my
foot,” Trina said, smiling too.

“It was real
easy,” Dommi doubled down.
 
“I could have
beat her with my hands behind my back.”

Reno leaned
back, stretched out his legs, held his daughter tighter, and laughed his head
off.
 
Jimmy, Val, and Quinn were laughing
too. Trina was shaking her head.
 
It
wasn’t
that
funny to her.

And as Mick
sat there surrounded by unbridled laughter, he realized all at once what he
most wanted but never had.
 
Love.
 
The most overused word in the world, the most
underused word in his life.
 
Love.
 
He wanted to love, he wanted to be
loved.
 
He wanted a family of his own,
something he swore off his entire life, but he wanted it now.
 
He wanted his own Trina.
 
He wanted his own Dommi.
 
He wanted his own
family
.
 
Because, as he sat
there, he accepted an inconvenient truth that plagued him now:
 
Many people respected him.
 
Many more feared him.
 
Nobody, not on the face of this earth, loved
him.

And after
dinner, as Mick’s chauffeured limousine drove him and Quinn to Quinn’s nice
home in suburban Las Vegas, Mick couldn’t stop thinking about that inconvenient
truth.
 
He was not a good man.
 
Reno had his faults, but he was a good,
loving father to his children and a good, loving husband to his wife.

Mick had
children, too, and he supported them financially just as soundly as Reno
supported his.
 
But he never raised
them.
 
He was never there for them
emotionally which he knew was far more valuable to children than money.
 
He was not a good man.

And when he
and Quinn entered her home, he needed to find an outlet for the aggression that
uncomfortable truth often caused him to display.
 
Quinn, like most women who wanted to be with
him, was more than willing and completely ready.
 
He was going to take it out on her.

She was
about to head to her bar, to prepare him a drink, but he took her by the hand
and pulled her back. “Where’s your bedroom?” he asked her.
 
“I need to release.”

She looked
down, at the growing thickness between his legs, and she smiled.
 
She adored real men who didn’t beat around
the bush.
 
He wanted her and he wasn’t
going to pretend he didn’t.
 
She loved
that.

“Follow me,”
she said, unable to hide her own lustful excitement, and led him into her
bedroom.

If she
thought she would get a gentleman in bed, she was wrong.
 
Just as blunt as he was about telling her he
wanted some, he was going to be equally blunt taking it.
 

He sat down
on the edge of her bed.
 
“Take it off,”
he said to her, and then watched her undress.
 
When he saw that there were no secrets beneath those clothes, and that
she had enough going for her to do it for him, he began to undress as
well.
 
But as soon as he pulled down his
trousers and briefs, and Quinn saw his dick dangle out, she did as many women
did when they first saw his member: she knelt down and began sucking it.
 

Mick lifted
his shirt over his head, his final piece of clothing, which revealed a tanned
body and ripped abs, with not an ounce of fat on any part of that body, and
then he laid back on the bed and let her do her thing.

She wasn’t
good at it.
 
She was trying too
hard.
 
And more than once he had to take
his hand and guide her head so that her mouth could move up and down along his
rod, rather than simply smother it.
 
But
that didn’t mean he didn’t appreciate her effort.
 
He appreciated it.
 
But he was not an altruistic man and
therefore did not ascribe altruism to others.
 
She wanted that dick inside of her, that was why she was so willing to
give him head, and that was all there was to it to Mick.
 
Women could tell him all day long how much
they wanted
him
, and how much they
cared so much for
him
.
 
But he knew better.
 
It was never about him.
 
It was always about
them
.
 
They wanted what he
could give to them.
 
Be it money, position,
power, or sex.
 
One or all of those.
 
Quinn, he decided, wanted his sex.
 
And since that was all he wanted from her
too, he got on with it.