Reno Gabrini: A Family Affair (7 page)

The pain was excruciating to Dominic as Reno had him
over his knees and was putting a tan on his behind.
 
He was not holding back.
 
They had barely made it into the PaLargio’s penthouse,
which was one of their two residences in Vegas, before Reno was on the couch
spanking their son.
 
Trina was heading
for the bar near the back of the room.
 
She knew Reno was going to need a drink afterwards.
 
She certainly needed one herself.
 
But Dommi was crying for her.

“Mommy!” he cried as Reno spanked him.
 
“Mommy!”

Trina wasn’t trying to hear that.
 
He should have thought about
Mommy
when he was stealing and
joyriding.
 
“Don’t mommy me,” she said.
“You’re the little gangster now.
 
You’re
the little thief.
 
You can take it!”

“No, I can’t!” Dommi cried.
 
“I can’t take it, no, ma’am, I cannot take
it!
 
Not even a tiny bit!
 
It hurts so bad!”

Trina stopped walking and looked at her son.
 
He was in tears.
 
He was in pain.
 
“I’m sorry that it hurts, Dommi,” she began
saying.
 
Then she shook her head.
 
“Why am I lying?
 
No, I’m not sorry.
 
It’s supposed to hurt!
 
Your ass have got to understand you can’t
pull all this craziness you’ve been pulling around here.
 
Me and your father, we can’t take it!
 
Stealing a car?
 
Driving
a car?
 
You are out of your damn mind,
boy!
 
Beat his ass, Reno.
 
Beat his ass!”

Reno was beating his ass.

“But it hurts!” Dommi cried.

“Tough,” Reno replied.
 
“If you would have killed yourself on that
Strip, or somebody else, you don’t think that would have hurt me and your
mother?
  
You don’t think that would have
killed
us?”

And just the thought of what could have been, and
what it would have done, not just to him, but especially to Tree, made Reno
spank harder.
 
He couldn’t let up.
 
He couldn’t make Dommi think for a second
that his little escapades were going to be celebrated, or even tolerated, a
second longer.
 

Jimmy Mack was laughing so hard he was in
tears.
 
When he ended the phone call, his
wife Val, holding their baby girl, was looking up at him.
 
They were in the VIP booth at Lexie’s, a new
restaurant inside the PaLargio that Reno named after Jimmy’s youngest sibling,
Sophia, or
Lexie
, as Reno called
her.
 
As his father’s only girl, she was
quickly emerging as his father’s favorite and the only child that had never
felt his wrath.
 
Jimmy felt it many
times.
 
Dommi felt it often.

“What’s so funny?” Val asked him, as she held their
on-the-verge of sleep daughter, and ate more salad.
 
Madison, their baby girl, was also being
spoiled by her grandpa Reno.
 
“Tell me. I
can use a good laugh.”

“It’s the Little Rascal again,” Jimmy said.

“Dommi?” Val asked.

“Who else?
 
And it’s not funny, not really.”

“What did he do this time?”

“Lee says he stole a car and was cruising the Strip.”

Val was stunned.
 
She stopped eating.
 
“He
stole
?
 
He
drove
?
 
My word!
 
Is he okay?”

“That cat has nine lives.
 
You know he’s just fine and dandy.”

“Is the city okay?”

Jimmy laughed.
 
“He didn’t hurt anybody, if that’s what you mean.”

“But how could it be?
 
He stole a car, and
drove
it?”

Jimmy continued to laugh.
  
“Ain’t he something?”

“But I don’t understand,” Val said.
 
“He’s only a child!
 
How could he do such a thing?”

“We are talking about Dommi, Val,” Jimmy reminded
her.
 
“Dommi will go where even hardened
criminals will not roam.
 
That little
rascal is something else!”

Val looked at her husband.
 
He was handsome and biracial just like Dommi,
only Jimmy wasn’t Trina’s biological child, but was the product of a
relationship Reno had with another black woman when he and the woman were both
teenagers.
 
Although Jimmy’s mother was
dead, Trina, for all intents and purposes, filled the mother role more than
admirably.
 
Trina and Jimmy were very
close.
 
But Val knew she didn’t marry a
mama’s boy.
 
She married a man.
 
A man who, to her constant consternation,
seemed to glorify gangsters.
 
Men like
his Uncles Sal and Tommy, his Uncle Mick, and especially his father, whom Jimmy
idolized and who seemed, to Val, gangster to the core.
 
In Val’s opinion, Reno had too many mob
connections to just be a businessman.

Now Dommi seemed to be heading right down that road
to perdition too, and Jimmy was enamored with it.
 
She dreaded it for Jimmy, the father of her
child.
 
“You talk like you admire Dommi,”
she said.

“He’s my little brother,” Jimmy said.
 
“Why wouldn’t I admire him?
 
He’s a good person.
 
He’s just tough.
 
But I’m still his big brother.
 
I know how to kick his ass if he gets out of
line.
 
Dad and I can handle Dommi, don’t
worry.
 
Mom can too.”

“But I told you, Jimmy, I don’t believe in corporal
punishment.
 
When our daughter gets
older, and she does something wrong, I believe in Time Out.
 
Not spankings and whippings like Reno put on
y’all.
 
Because I guarantee you that’s
exactly what he did to Dom when he found out.”

Jimmy didn’t respond to that.
 
He loved Val, but sometimes she was
unrealistic in her views of marrying into the Gabrini clan.
 
She didn’t marry into a family of choirboys.
 
She needed to understand that.
 
One day, if they were going to stay together,
he knew he was going to have to make her understand it.

“Give me the baby,” he said, and Val gladly handed
her across the table to her father.
 
As
Jimmy snuggled the baby, she smiled briefly, and fell back asleep.
 
She was Jimmy’s heart.
  
He understood why his father loved Sophia
so.

“That’s a load off,” Val said with a smile, as she
began to eat her salad more vigorously.

Jimmy exhaled.
 
He looked at Val.
 
She was a
pretty black woman, with youth, smarts, and kindness.
 
She wanted him to advance as badly as he
wanted to advance.
 
But he knew she
wasn’t going to like this.
 
“I have some
news,” he said to her.

Val chewed and stared at him.
  
“What news?”

“Dad wants me to work for him.”

“You’re already working for him.
 
You’re his floor manager.”

“Not on that level,” Jimmy said.
 
“He wants me to run his northeast
operations.
 
He wants me in charge of all
of his smaller hotels across the northeast.”

“Wow,” Val said.
 
“That’s great news, Jimmy!
 
I
remember a time when he was hesitant to let you run even one of his
restaurants.
 
That’s wonderful
news.”
 
But she stared at him.
 
“What’s the catch?”

“What catch?”

“Why are you giving me the constipated face?
 
What’s wrong?”
 
Then she thought about what he had said.
 
He was going to be in charge of Reno’s
northeast
operations.
 
“We will remain headquartered here in Vegas
though, right?”

Jimmy shook his head.
 
“That’s the thing.
 
We’ll have to move to New Hampshire.”

Val frowned.
 
“
New Hampshire
?”
 
She said it as if it was a foreign
country.
 
“Why way up there?”

“New England is the region where he’s going to have
a lot of hotels, and also a few in Canada, and he wants somebody to check on
them regularly.
 
He wants me close to the
action.
 
The branch office will be
located in New Hampshire.”

“But why not Boston?
 
He could at least let us live in Boston.”

Jimmy shook his head again.
 
“He said no.
 
He wants me where he wants me, Val.
 
I can’t negotiate with him.
 
You
know that.”

But Val didn’t like it, as Jimmy had already
expected.
 
Whereas Jimmy wasn’t thrilled about
leaving his family behind, Val hated the idea of leaving her father behind
too.
 
Jimmy knew why she was
hesitant.
 
“He’ll be okay, Val,” he said.

But Val looked at him suspiciously, wondering if he
knew.
 
Did he know that she not only was
going to miss her father, but
his
father too?
 
She had a crush on Reno that
wouldn’t quit, and she would die if Jimmy ever truly knew the extent of that
crush.
 
“What do you mean?” she asked
him.

“I know you dread leaving your father behind,” Jimmy
responded.
 
“But he’ll be okay.”

Val felt better.
 
Jimmy spoke the truth, although it was only a half-truth.
 
“It’s been my father and I for so long,” she
said.
 
“Ever since my mother died.
 
I can’t just leave him here by himself.
 
And he adores Madison.
 
She’s his only grandchild.
 
I don’t want her to leave him either.”

“Then what are you saying?
 
I can’t take the job?”

“I’m saying I don’t know.
 
This is a big decision, Jimmy.
 
When does Reno have to know?”

“You know Dad. He’s upset I didn’t decide on the
spot.
 
But when I told him I need to
check with you first, he understood.”

“At least that,” Val thought.
 
Reno was a lot of things, but he did respect
a wife’s role in a marriage, and the importance of a couple being on the same
page.

Then Jimmy frowned.
 
“What’s that smell?” he asked.

Val looked at their daughter.
 
When she saw her with a little grimace on her
face, she smiled.
 
“Give her to me.
 
Time for the changing table in the ladies
room.”

Jimmy smiled too, handed the baby back to Val, and
Val, with her big carrying bag, carried Madison to the restrooms.
 
But as soon as Val disappeared inside of
those rooms, Trent Chappell walked up to their booth and, instead of asking to
sit down, sat down.
 
Jimmy didn’t like
it.
  
“What do you think you’re doing?”
he asked him.

“Sorry if I’m offending you,” Chap said.

“Then don’t offend me and get the fuck up!” Jimmy
responded.

“I can’t do that.”
 
Then he tossed a set of photographs over to Jimmy’s side of the table.

Jimmy stared at the big, burly guy, and then he
looked at the photos.
 
When he saw one of
them, his heart squeezed in shock.
 
He
picked up the rest.

“Yeah, big boy,” Chap said as Jimmy viewed each
picture.
 
“That’s right.
 
Real graphic, aren’t they?”
 
Then he tossed one of those throwaway phones
onto the table too.

Jimmy picked up the phone and then looked at
Chap.
 
Chap could see the devastation on
his young, handsome face.
 
This was
working better than he thought it would.
 
“The real-time, video version,” he said to Jimmy, “is on that phone.”

Jimmy stared at him.
 
“Where did you get this from?”
 
He
thought about his friend and employee Finn.
 
But Finn wouldn’t do that to him!