Reno Gabrini: The Trouble with Dommi Read online

  Reno laughed. And then a beautiful woman walked by that caught Reno and the tourist’s attention.

  “Which is exactly what I plan to do to some of these great looking dames in this joint,” the tourist said as he and Reno both watched her strut her ass.

  Then the tourist looked at Reno. “I bet a good-looking fella like you eat that P-trap any time you want around here, all these great-looking dames.”

  Jimmy found that line of conversation disgusting. Reno already was rumored to be a womanizer as it was. Now this guy was talking as if those rumors were fact. Rumors Jimmy knew hurt his stepmother Trina tremendously every time she had to hear them. “Pop,” he said to Reno, “you’re going to be late if you don’t get a move on.”

  “So that’s what they call the owner of the PaLargio, do they?” asked the tourist. “Everything I read said they call you Reno. Which I thought was odd. They call you Reno in Vegas, get it? Now I see that’s not really what they call you at all.”

  Reno looked at him confused. “They do call me Reno.”

  “Then why’s this guy calling you Pop?” the tourist asked.

  Reno frowned. “Why do you think he’s calling me Pop? Because I’m his Pop. I’m his father. He’s my son.”

  “Your son?” The tourist smiled, as if Reno was joking. “Him?”

  “Yes, him. What’s the matter?” Reno already had a good idea why the guy was mixed up, but he wanted to hear it from the tourist. “Didn’t think an ugly mug like me would have a handsome son like him?”

  “Well,” the tourist said. “Um, eh . .. yeah, that’s it. So what happened? Had some nookie on the side and got stuck?”

  Reno looked at him with a look so chilling the tourist quickly backtracked. “I mean, he has a different personality than you have, that’s what I’m trying to say.”

  “You lying motherfucker,” said Reno in his usual bluntness. “You said what you were trying to say, and that shit had nothing to do with his personality. Now get the fuck out of my face.”

  The tourist, stunned by Reno’s sudden rebuke, walked off in a huff. His buddy, who still hadn’t got a word in edgewise, left too.

  Jimmy was astounded. “Pop, what are you doing?” he asked. “You can’t talk like that to paying customers. Didn’t you always teach me the customer’s always right?”

  “They are,” Reno said. “But not that fucker. I can’t stand racists.”

  “Just because he was surprised a guy as white-looking as you would have a son as black-looking as me doesn’t make him a racist, Pop.”

  “What difference does it make, your color?” Reno asked. “Or mine? What the fuck difference should that make?”

  “None,” said Jimmy. “Except we live in America.”

  Reno began rising from his seat and looking toward the entrance into the casino. “Ah shit,” he said.

  “What is it?” Jimmy asked.

  “Hurricane Katrina just blew her ass in here,” Reno said. “I’m heading out the back way! Tell her I left ten minutes ago.”

  Jimmy laughed. “I told you to come on. Now you wanna run?”

  “Damn right I’m running. I don’t want her ass embarrassing me in front of all these people,” Reno said, as he began heading toward the back. “You know how she is.”

  But Trina’s voice didn’t allow for retreat. “Reno Gabrini!” she yelled across the crowded room.

  Reno stopped in his tracks and jerked his head downward. “Damn!” he said. “Damn! Damn! Damn! I was this close to a clean getaway!”

  Jimmy laughed out loud as Reno turned back around and Trina made her way up to the two men. Although Trina wasn’t Jimmy’s biological mother, they couldn’t be closer. “Hey, Ma,” he said when she walked up.

  “Hey, baby,” Trina said. But her focus was on Reno. “Why are you still in this casino?” she asked her husband. “You should be dressed and ready to go by now, Reno. You and Jimmy both.”

  “I was trying to get Pop to come on,” said Jimmy. “But he wouldn’t listen to me.” Then Jimmy smiled. “But I’ll bet he’s listening now.”

  Reno frowned at his son’s joke. “Just go get your own ass ready,” he said.

  Jimmy was laughing as he walked away.

  “I’m leaving now, alright,” Reno said as he continued to head toward the back hall that led to one of his private elevators. “I was about to head upstairs just before you walked in here anyway.”

  Trina was following him. “Liar,” she said.

  “I was!”

  “Then get your ass on! Why are you walking so slow if you were in such a big hurry?”

  Reno cut her a look. “Alright, woman,” he warned as they made their way up to the elevator. “Don’t get sassy with me.” He swiped his keycard and the elevator doors opened. “I still run this shit, and I run you too. Don’t make me have to handle your ass.”

  “Handle me?” Trina asked as they both stepped onto the elevator.

  “That’s right! You got a problem with that?”

  “I want you to handle me, Reno,” Trina mocked. “Please handle me.” Then she dismissed the very idea. “Sal and Tommy will kick your ass you try to handle me.”

  Reno frowned. “Who the fuck are they?” he asked angrily and then grabbed Trina by her arm and pulled her against his rock hard body. They were face to face. “They kick my ass, I’ll kick both of theirs.” Then Reno stared at his gorgeous wife, a woman he loved more than life itself even though they fought like cats and dogs. “And I’ll kick yours, too, while I’m at it,” he added.

  They both were staring into each other’s eyes and couldn’t break free.

  With Trina, Reno had hard blue eyes that became soft as butter whenever he looked at her a certain way. He was looking at her in that certain way in that elevator.

  For Reno, Trina’s hazel eyes always seemed so sincere, as if the burdens of the world were on her shoulders, but it wasn’t a burden to her. Just her duty. Just her responsibility. He loved her strength. It was a turn-on for Reno. So much so that his dick was getting bigger pressed against her, and his eyes were getting narrower, and hooded.

  He looked down, at her mouth, and then suddenly, as if he couldn’t control the impulse any longer, he slammed his mouth on hers and kissed her with a hard, rough, searing kiss that caused her to nearly stumble.

  Trina wrapped her hands around Reno’s already messy hair and ruffled it even more as she, too, returned his passionate kiss. Reno, slyly, pressed the Stop button on the elevator, and the elevator stopped mid-flight. And he pulled Trina closer and closer and kissed her harder and harder with so much passion and need that it bordered on desperation.

  Trina could feel him against her, getting bigger and bigger, and as much as she wanted it, and as much as she knew he had to have it, she also knew it was a road they couldn’t take. They had a graduation to attend. Dommi’s graduation. A once-in-a-lifetime event they both doubted would ever take place. Now that it was happening, she wasn’t about to let them arrive late and miss the moment.

  That was why, as soon as she heard Reno unzip his pants and shove his exposed penis beneath her skirt and between her legs, she stopped returning his kiss and tried to push him away. “We can’t, Reno,” she said forcefully as she pushed him.

  Reno knew the timing was all wrong, too, but he was too hot for her to turn back that easily. That was why he kept his hands around her waist even as she pushed his hard body away. He still wanted her.

  But Trina wrestled out of his grasp and was reaching for the Start button to get the elevator moving again.

  But then she glanced down, and saw that thick penis he held in one hand, and how aroused he really was. And when he started stroking it, just the sight of his arousal caused her to realize just how weak for Reno she really was.

  Reno knew he had her again when he saw her look down. But time was not their friend, and he knew he couldn’t delay or foreplay or any of his regular routine. He quickly lifted Trina up, and Trina quickly jumped into his arms,
and he rammed her against the back of the elevator stall. Then he tore the seat of her panties and entered her with a hard, penetrating thrust that caused her to groan.

  But as soon as he entered her, he could feel that she was already becoming wet. And when he felt that warmth between her legs, and the friction of her narrow passage, his frantic movements slowed. It felt so good he could hardly believe how good it felt. There was no way he could rush it, no matter what time it was.

  He looked into Trina’s expressive eyes as he pushed further and further inside of her, and as his rock-hard penis began stroking her with slow-motion strokes that glided across her womanhood. He slowly and passionately made wonderful love to her like a man in love. Like a man whose lust was just a symptom of his real weakness. Trina was his real weakness.

  To Trina’s own shock, she slowed down, too, and enjoyed Reno’s easy rhythm. His muscular body made for a muscular member that filled her up with a hardness that made her want to cum within seconds of its entry. But his slow-moving strokes kept her from going over too soon.

  Reno was on the verge of cumming the entire time too. And even though he had slowed it down, and was moving with a groove that kept Trina’s body rocking to the rhythm of his penis strokes, he wasn’t able to slow the tide from coming in for too long. Because when he stroked her one time too many, in that special place, it came in like a tidal wave, and there was no stopping that kind of push.

  They both came sooner than what was normal for them. Trina first, and Reno right behind her.

  Trina kept crying out yes as those feelings overwhelmed them, and as Reno kept ramming it into her and ramming it into her, fucking her harder and harder, as if he was riding her, and not the other way around. And all Reno could do was grunt and groan as he fucked her. He couldn’t get enough of her. And she kept crying yes!

  And when it was all over, and Reno was leaned against Trina, and that wall of that elevator stall was all that was holding both of them up, Reno let out a long exhale. And then he smiled.

  “What?” Trina asked when she noticed his smile. Both of them were still coming down from their high, and could barely speak.

  “He did it,” Reno said. “That rascal son of ours, who would never study, who didn’t know what homework looked like, pulled that shit off and got those people to actually give his ass a diploma. He did it, Tree. He did it!”

  And both of them, still shocked and happy, but worried about the future, too, laughed a heartfelt, elation-filled, but nervously optimistic laugh.

  Dominic Gabrini, Jr., their most gangster child, bar none, and, if they had a vote, the most gangster young man on the planet, was entering adulthood.

  Their world, they knew, was never going to be the same again.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The auditorium was filling up with parents and friends and loved ones, too, and Reno and Trina, along with Jimmy, his girlfriend Oprah, and Sophia and Destiny were the first Gabrinis to arrive. While the young people sat on the row behind Reno and Trina, making room for their aunts and uncles whenever they did arrive, Reno and Trina were looking around as if a high school graduation was as foreign to them as bungee jumping.

  They were still wondering if it was really going to happen.

  “I’m sweating like a pig,” Reno said to Trina as he loosened up his tie.

  “You?” Trina asked. “My heart is about to beat out of my chest.” Then she looked at her husband. “Can you believe this? Dommi is graduating! He just might pull this shit off.”

  “If they don’t realize their mistake before it happens,” Reno said and both of them smiled.

  But then they both looked at each other again, with more worried than happy looks, and Reno took Trina’s hand.

  “It’s the what’s next that I’m most worried about,” Trina said.

  “Yeah, that’s my number one concern too,” said Reno.

  “When Jimmy graduated,” Trina said, “you hadn’t that long ago found out that he was your son and he had just become a part of our family. But I birth Dommi. I know all about the pains I’ve had bringing him into this world.”

  “And the pain in the ass he’s been ever since,” added Reno.

  “But with Jimmy,” Trina continued, “we knew he would have his challenges. And he did. But we also knew he would be okay in the end. Now he’s running the Vegas office of Tommy’s corporation, he’s taking great care of his daughter, and he’s dating a wonderful girl. He’s on the right track. But that kind of track might be out of the question for Dommi, given who Dommi is, and that’s the part that hurts.”

  Reno squeezed her hand. It hurt him, too, but Dommi was who he was and there was no denying that.

  But Trina still held out hope. “What college can we bribe to get them to take him?” She was only half-joking.

  Reno didn’t crack a smile, because he knew that wasn’t going to happen. “The College of Hard Knocks, babe,” he said. “That’s about it. That boy of ours and college is like a match on gasoline. He’ll blow that shit up in no time flat.”

  Trina knew it, too, as she and Reno continued looking around the beautiful auditorium as if they were strangers in a strange land. The teachers and administrators of the exclusive, private school Dommi attended were beginning to populate the stage, but they were mainly just mulling around and talking too. Reno held onto Trina’s hand tighter. Neither one of them had ever stepped foot inside of college. They, like Dommi, were more gangster-material than college-material. But they were always more hopeful for their children.

  “I’m glad your parents are in town to look after Carmine and the others,” Reno said. “The last thing we need are a bunch of little kids running around here, disrupting the ceremony and making our asses more nervous than we already are.”

  But Trina’s mind was still on Dommi. “What’s next for him, Reno?” she asked. “And I don’t mean what we hope is next for him. I mean what’s going to be next for him. You know he wants to work for Sal.” She looked at Reno. “You know that, right?”

  “Sal my ass,” Reno responded. “He wants to work for Uncle Mick.”

  Trina was floored. “Uncle Mick? That boy’s crazy!”

  “But that’s what he wants. He figure he can give Teddy a run for his money.”

  Trina laughed. “That’ll be the day.”

  But Reno couldn’t pull himself to even smile. He had a fixed frown on his face. “Teddy’s tough as nails. He’s a worthy man to one day fill his old man’s shoes. And unlike his old man, he’s not as vicious as Mick. He’s got a big heart to match that toughness. Teddy’s got limits.”

  “And our son doesn’t?” Trina asked.

  “I know our son,” Reno said. “He’s got a good heart, yes, Dom has a big heart. But he’s got a big temper too. And if he thinks you did him wrong, or his family, or even the little guy, he goes in for the kill. That’s Dominic Gabrini. Junior. He’ll out-do them all, Tree. Including Teddy.” Then a sad look appeared in Reno’s eyes. “And I don’t mean that in a good way, either.”

  Trina’s heart dropped, because she knew it to be true too. “Maybe we ought to put him under Sal’s wings. Maybe we should have done it a long time ago!”

  “Nope,” said Reno bluntly.

  “At least Sal has limits too.”

  “No,” Reno said more forcefully. “Nobody’s taking my son under their wings but me. He stays with me. I was a gangster, an enforcer for my old man, before Sal knew what the real mob looked like. His old man was a fucking cop. He was a crooked-as-the-day-is-long cop, but he was still a cop. Sal was too. My old man was a mob boss, and a particularly nasty one at that. I was raised in that shit.”

  Then Reno exhaled. It wasn’t a proud part of his life. Jimmy was conceived when Reno had to protect Jimmy’s now-deceased mother from his ruthless, sadistic father. But it was what it was. “If anybody’s going to teach Dommi how to control and manage his crazy-ass instincts, it’s going to be me,” Reno said, and then he frowned. “It has to be me. I love that
boy more than life itself. I had to teach myself how to manage my impulses whenever anger took over me. I’ll have to teach Dommi. I’ve been teaching him all his life. It hasn’t worked so far, but that doesn’t mean I give up.”

  “No,” said Trina. “But you may have to give in, Reno. We’re Dommi’s parents. That’s all he sees in us. Yeah, you have to do what you have to do when some joker threatens your casino or whatever, but it’s different to Dommi. Uncle Mick and Sal, they’re mob bosses. He loves that shit, let’s face it. He wants to be a part of that shit, despite our best efforts to get him to understand how crazy that is. That’s what he wants. And you know Dommi. Whatever Dommi wants, he finds a way to get. That’s our son too.”

  Reno rubbed his forehead, because he knew it was true. And as both parents leaned back and sat in silence, that feeling that they didn’t raise Dommi right, or that they should have prepared him for adulthood and that gangster lifestyle better, or that they failed him miserably by exposing him to too much bad stuff early on, began eating them alive. They thought they were ready for this day. They thought wrong.

  But just behind them, Destiny was in a great mood. She elbowed Sophia with a big smile on her face. What?” Sophie asked.

  “Over there,” said Destiny. “Look over there.”

  Sophia looked across the auditorium and saw a smiling young man looking their way. “What about him?” she asked.

  Destiny looked at her cousin with a knowing look.

  But Sophia frowned. She still didn’t get it. “What? Who is he?”

  When it hit, Sophia was shocked. “That’s him?”

  Destiny nodded.

  “He followed you here?”

  “He likes me. What can I say?”

  “Girrl,” said Sophie, shaking her head, “Uncle Tommy will have a lot to say. You know he doesn’t play that, Des! I don’t know why you’re acting like it’s nothing.”

  “Because it is nothing,” said Destiny as she straightened her skirt. Then she smiled again, looking at him. “But isn’t he cute?” she asked her cousin.