Reno Gabrini: A Family Affair (2 page)

Two
Weeks Earlier

“You know what they say,” one of the inebriated
guests said as he leaned toward the others.
 
“When the cat’s away, the mice will play!” He laughed when he said it, meaning
nothing more than what he meant, but it seemed like a fateful thing to say to a
man looking for an excuse.
 
Jimmy Mack
Gabrini was looking for an excuse.

It was two o’clock in the morning, the casino was
jumping, and Jimmy was ready to take the plunge.
 
But he was antsy.
 
His father, Reno Gabrini, was in the
casino.
 
And although Reno already had a
crowd around him, mainly hotel guests from middle America who were fascinated
that they could actually have an audience with the owner of their favorite casino,
Jimmy knew slipping away wasn’t going to be as easy as walking away.
 
Not that he was some kid.
 
He was a grown ass man in his twenties.
 
But his father still kept him under tight
control.

Like last week.
 
Jimmy left his post, for half an hour tops, just to have a drink with a
few friends passing through town.
 
When
Reno got wind of it, he nearly kicked Jimmy’s ass when he tracked him down,
embarrassing him in front of his friends, and ordered him back to work.
 
Jimmy knew why he was doing it.
 
He was Reno Gabrini’s son and Reno had too
many enemies.
 
He kept close tabs on all
of their whereabouts.
 
But that didn’t
make Jimmy’s life any easier.

Now Jimmy was looking to do more than have a drink
with friends, and he knew he had to be careful.
 
His father was sitting in a swivel chair near one of the crap tables,
with his back to the table, and Jimmy was standing at his side.
 
What Jimmy loved about his father was the way
he put people at ease, but kept them on edge at the same time.
 
It was a fantastic feat to Jimmy.
 
The people felt comfortable around Reno, but
Jimmy could also see their reticence, as if they feared his father could turn
on them at any moment and they needed to stay on guard.
 
Reno was an old school Italian, big and
muscular, even sexier than he was handsome, and filled the room with his
outsized personality and oozing testosterone that put all other males to
shame.
 
He was admired by men, including
Jimmy.
 
And he had a captive audience.

But as Reno mesmerized the crowd with stories of how
he acquired the PaLargio Hotel and Casino all those years ago, adding his own
embellishments for dramatic effect, Jimmy knew an opening when he saw one.
 
As his father continued his amazing story,
and his audience remained captive, Jimmy eased behind him until he was away
from his father’s peripheral vision, and then eased out of the casino section
of the PaLargio altogether.

He hurried to the lobby of the hotel section of the
PaLargio, where his man Finn was waiting at the elevator.
 
He’d been waiting for nearly ten minutes, and
appeared super-nervous to Jimmy.
 
A small
crowd had assembled to get on the elevator too.
 
But Finn, a short black man and one of Jimmy’s closest friends, pushed
past the crowd and hurried to the back of the pack as Jimmy approached.
 
“What took you so long?” he quickly asked.

“I couldn’t just walk out,” Jimmy responded.
 
“Keep your shirt on!”

“I just don’t want her to leave.”

“So you did it?” Jimmy asked.

“Hell yeah I did it,” Finn said, and handed Jimmy
Mack the keycard.
 
“I told you I would,
didn’t I?
 
But what about your old
man?
 
I hear he’s making the rounds.
 
He’ll beat your ass and fire me on top of it,
if he finds out.”

“He’s entertaining guests.
 
If he asks you where I am, tell him I went to
take a dump.
 
He knows how long it takes
me when I have to do a number two.”

Finn frowned.
 
“Dang, Jimmy, TMI, boy!
 
I don’t
wanna know all that shit!”

“If he asks, just tell him what I told you.”

“I will,” Finn said.
 
“I got it.
 
But you can spare me
the details, aw’ight?”

“She doesn’t know who I am?” Jimmy asked.
 
“You made sure of that?”

“Do I look like a fool?” Finn responded.
 
“No, she doesn’t know, man, come on!
 
She’s some random off the street.
 
Just get in there and do what you do.”

Jimmy smiled, although his eyes told a different
story, and the elevator pinged in anticipation of opening.

“Admit it,” Finn said, as they moved closer to the
elevator doors.
 
“I’m the best employee
you have.
 
Just go on and admit it.
 
I go above and beyond the call of duty each
and every night.”

“Yeah, right,” Jimmy said, as if they both knew
better than that.

“But for real though,” Finn responded.
 
Jimmy was the floor manager in his father’s
casino, and Finn was one of his pit bosses.
 
“I figure with all the talent I bring to the table, I should at least
get promoted to assistant floor manager.
 
At least that.
 
What you say about
that, Jimmy Mack?”

The elevator doors opened.
 
Others piled onto the elevator ahead of
Jimmy.
 
“I’ll say what you said,” Jimmy
responded, and stepped on too.

But Finn was puzzled.
 
“What’s that?
 
What did I say?”

“Do I look like a fool?” Jimmy asked rhetorically.

Finn laughed.
 
“Okay, you got me that time,” he said, as the elevator doors closed him
out, and Jimmy in.
 
“You got me that
time!”

Jimmy smiled too as the doors closed, but this was
no laughing matter for him.
 
This was too
monumental.
  
He stood in the elevator,
saw that floor 7 had already been pressed, and stood back staring, like
everybody else, at the changing numbers above the door.
 
He had never done anything like this before
in his life.
 
But Val wasn’t putting it
out nearly enough when she knew he had a major league appetite.
 
And whenever he brought it up, when he
threatened to do exactly what he was about to do, she didn’t argue with him or
ask for clarification.
 
She just told him
he’d better not bring it around her.
 
What kind of response was that?
 
What did she expect him to do after giving him an answer like that?

He got off the elevator on the seventh floor, walked
up to room 749, swiped the keycard, looked around, and then walked on in.
 
It wasn’t a suite, but a standard room, one
of what they called their “deluxe” rooms.
 
The room was dark, but the bright neon lights of Vegas split the night
and still shined through the curtains just enough for Jimmy to see the figure
sprawled out on the bed.
 
Only a sheet
covered what appeared to be her sleek, naked body.

“Put your money on the table, big boy,” she
said.
 
“And come on in.”

Jimmy’s heart was pounding.
 
He never dreamed it would come to this.
 
But his cock was pounding more.
 
He put the money on the table, and went on
in.

Reno was still holding court downstairs, in his
casino, but the crowd had dwindled.
 
Word
had spread that the slot machines were hot and people were scrambling to get in
on the action.
 
Even Reno wasn’t enough
to keep gamblers away from making money.
 
That was why they came to Vegas in the first place!
 
But there was still the devoted few who
wouldn’t let Reno go.
 
They were
primarily the star-struck young ladies looking for a sugar daddy, and the
power-hungry young men looking for a hook up.
 
Reno wasn’t interested in either group.
 
For the past ten days, his wife, Katrina Gabrini, and their two youngest
children, were in Florida visiting her folks.
 
He’d been working practically nonstop since they left.
 
He was bone tired and wanted to do nothing
more than sit there.
 
Preferably alone,
but he knew that wasn’t possible.
 
He
would have to leave the casino altogether to be alone, and he didn’t have the
energy to do even that.

Besides, going home didn’t appeal to him
either.
 
His house was not a home when
Trina was away, and she still had four days left on her little vacation.
 
So he stayed where he sat, listening to the
small group tell their life stories to him, fighting just to keep his tired
eyes from closing.
 
Although Jimmy didn’t
know it, Reno knew he had slipped away from him earlier.
 
Not because he saw his son leave, but because
he
felt
him leave.
 
Whenever his wife or children were around
him, he could feel it.
 
Whenever they
left his presence, he could feel that too.

He looked to see if Jimmy was at his station, and
saw that he wasn’t.
 
That boy still had a
lot of growing up to do.
 
But he would
have to deal with that later.
 
Right now,
he was too tired to do anything but listen to his talkative guests.

Those talkative guests had Reno sufficiently bored,
and about ready to call it a night, until a certain woman walked into the
casino.
 
He did a double take, a move he
almost never made, because of her resemblance to his wife. Her body, Reno also
noticed, wasn’t bad either.
 
But it was
the resemblance that caught his attention.

For the next several minutes he continued to listen
to his guests, and continued taking peeps at her.
 
She was African-American like his wife, had
that gliding walk he loved, and had those same big, unmistakable hazel
eyes.
 
And although her complexion was a
lot lighter than Trina’s, and she was pounds thinner, he still couldn’t
overlook the resemblance.
 
She was
walking around the massive casino as if she owned the joint, looking at the
people enjoying themselves as if they were
her
people, enjoying
her
liquor, gambling
at
her
slot machines.
 
She was also coy, smiling at interested men,
but refusing to stop to talk with any of them.
 
She wasn’t ignoring them, she just wasn’t entertaining them.
 
She even glanced at Reno a time or two, as if
she was assessing his interest, but she never once bothered to come his
way.
 
Which was fine by him.
 
The only woman he was going to be banging was
in Florida.
 
Then she walked out of the
casino completely, as if she’d seen enough.
 
And that was that, as far as Reno was concerned.

But less than fifteen minutes after her departure,
Reno had had his fill too.
 
The guests
around him were talking crazy now, and he wanted no parts of crazy.

“What do you think, Mr. Gabrini?” one of the ladies
asked Reno just before his decision to decamp.
 
“Have you ever been in love the first time you saw somebody?”

“You mean lust,” Reno responded with his usual
bluntness, “because it can’t be love.”

“Oh, I disagree,” one of the young men chimed
in.
 
“I fell in love with my wife at
first sight.
 
She didn’t have to speak a
word.
 
I was already in love just looking
at her.”

Reno wanted to roll his eyes.
 
That kid wouldn’t know the meaning of love if
it bit him in his flat butt.
 
But instead
of offending one of his guests, he stood up instead.
 
“I’d better get back to work,” he said, and
left the small crowd without giving them a chance to object.
 
They were disappointed, and looked at the
young man unfavorably, as if it was his fault.
 
But it was nobody’s fault.
 
Reno
wasn’t just tired anymore, he was tired of
them
.

He made his way out of the casino and into the lobby
of his grand hotel.
 
By the time he began
walking toward his private elevator in the back of the lobby, he could see a
member of his lobby security step from behind his desk, as if somebody was
following Reno.
 
Before Reno could look
behind him, he heard a voice.