CHAPTER FIVE
Reno Gabrini went from a bad nightmare of a dream about Trina divorcing him, to the top of the world. He felt as if he was on the top of the world. He was expanding his footprint on the French Riviera in a joint venture with his cousin Tommy Gabrini. His beloved daughter Sophia was staying at the penthouse while her husband, Jovie Capanna, was on a business trip to the bottom of the world in Perth, Australia. His sons were out on the town together for the first time in he couldn’t remember how long. And he was just getting into his rhythm with the love of his life.
He was hitting it every time he stroked, and Trina was expressing her appreciation of his precision strikes with the kind of moans and groans he loved hearing from her. Because he was doing the same. They both were feeling the heat. Their bed was jumping. Their hearts were hammering. And they were about to cum and cum hard.
And that was when the beep sound of the front door opening could be heard downstairs, and then Dominic’s loud voice. “Pop! Pop!”
But Reno poured into Trina. He couldn’t stop.
“Pop!”
“ Got dammit!” Reno could hear footsteps running up the staircase, but he kept pouring in.
But Trina wasn’t about to let her boys catch them that way. “Get off of me,” she yelled as she pushed Reno off of her and got under the covers.
“Bump Dommi!” Reno said angrily as he held his penis as the final trickle leaked out. “Interrupting me at a time like this!” He grabbed tissues from the Kleenex box on the nightstand.
But Trina could hear the stress in their child’s voice and she knew Reno was too busy cumming to hear any nuance about anything. She threw the covers over Reno’s nakedness, too, just before their bedroom door flew open and Dom, with Jimmy, hurried inside.
Reno and Trina were surprised to see Jimmy with him. Dom busted in on them all the time, but Jimmy never did.
“What’s the matter with you boy?” Reno yelled at Dom. “Don’t your ass know how to knock?”
“We got trouble, Pop,” Dom said as he and Jimmy hurried across the huge bedroom to the foot of their parents’ bed.
When Trina saw that look on Jimmy’s face, she knew it was beyond some casino foolishness or anything remotely like that. It was far more personal. “What trouble, Dominic?” Trina anxiously sat up with her covers held up to her chest.
“Paulie Bernardi got shot.”
Reno was floored. “Who shot Paulie?” He was wiping off beneath the covers. Then he frowned. “Are you nuts? You shot Paulie?”
“I didn’t shoot nobody, Pop,” said Dom. “Why you always blaming me?”
“Then what I care about Paulie being shot?”
It stood to reason to Dom that his parents would think he’d be the one rather than the good son Jimmy, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. “Jimmy shot him,” Dom said.
When he said those words, he could see a definite fear come over the faces of both his parents. They knew the Bernardis well. They knew what Paulie’s father was capable of.
Reno tossed the tissues aside and hopped out of bed. “Is he dead?” he asked as he quickly put on his pants.
“We don’t know that yet. His guys were rushing him to the hospital in his own ride. I told Jimmy we needed to get the hell out of there. So I got him out of there.”
“Good,” Reno said as he grabbed his phone off of the nightstand and began hurrying out of the room. Jimmy and Dom hurried behind their father as Trina got out of bed to get dressed too.
Reno phoned his cousin Sal and placed the call on Speaker. “What you calling me this time of night for?” a complaining Sal asked over the phone.
“We got trouble, Sal. Big trouble.”
Sal’s voice changed. “What happened?”
“B.B. Bernardi’s kid got shot tonight.”
“Shit, Reno. Who shot him? You?”
Reno was offended. “What I look like shooting somebody?”
Jimmy and Dommi glanced at each other. All those people their old man had shot in his life as a casino owner on the Vegas Strip, and in his former life as a mob boss and enforcer in his old man’s outfit, and he had the nerve to ask that question? Jimmy and Dommi shook their heads. The incredible hypocrisy of their father astounded them still.
“Who would be stupid enough to shoot B.B. Bernardi’s kid is what I wanna know?” asked Sal. “Was it Dommi?”
Dom frowned. “Why it’s always gotta be me, Uncle Sal? Why it’s always gotta be me?”
They landed downstairs as Reno looked at Jimmy with pain on his face. “It wasn’t Dom. Jimmy shot him, Sal,” Reno said into his phone.
“ Jimmy ?” They could hear the shock in Sal’s voice. “Good Lord. Is he alright?”
“He’s okay.”
“Paulie’s dead?”
“We don’t know yet. His guys rushed him to the hospital, and don’t ask me which hospital because we don’t know any of that shit yet either.”
“Right,” agreed Dommi, nodding his head.
“Damn, damn, damn.” Sal couldn’t hide his anxiety. “You know how crazy B.B. can get about his family. And Paulie is his chosen one. I’ll be damn.”
Reno ran his hand across his face. He was more flustered than Jimmy had seen him in a long time. “ Got dammit!” Reno said out loud.
“I’ll find out what’s going on and how B.B. plans to handle it, and get back with you. But don’t go calling your sources yet, Reno,” Sal added. “We don’t want word getting around too fast before we know the plan. Brocco can be a motherfucker if you come at him wrong. Let me and my people handle it,” he said, and they ended the call as a robe-clad Trina came rushing downstairs too.
They sat in the living room, with Reno and Trina side by side on one sofa, and Dommi seated on the sofa opposite his parents. Jimmy paced the floor.
“What happened?” Reno asked his oldest child. “And sit your ass down.”
A still-visibly shaken Jimmy sat down beside Dom, their shoulders touching. All of them were on the edge of their seats.
“What happened?” Reno asked again.
“Dom and I went to this house party a friend of his was throwing. I left after an hour.”
“Less than an hour,” Dom said. “That’s why I stayed.”
“When I was walking to my car, Paulie comes running out and starts confronting me about flirting with his girlfriend.”
Reno frowned. “What you messing with his girl for?”
“I wasn’t messing with anybody, Pop. I didn’t even know who he was talking about. I wasn’t paying attention to none of those chicken-headed females at that party. But he insisted I was, so we start fighting. Next thing I know, he pulls out a gun. So now it’s no longer a fight about a girl, but a fight for my life. And I reversed that gun away from me and it struck Paulie in the stomach.”
“Oh Lord.” Trina covered her mouth.
“I didn’t mean to shoot him, Pop. We’ve all known him and his family for years. I had no beef with Paulie. But it was him or me.”
“Damn right it was,” said Reno. “You did what you had to do so stop worrying about that. His ass came at you.”
Jimmy nodded.“Right.”
But that didn’t make it feel right to any of them as they could see how distressed it made Jimmy. “I didn’t mean to shoot him, Pop,” he said again. “I was trying to aim it away from both of us, but he was too big, and he wouldn’t let go.” Jimmy leaned back. “I wasn’t trying to shoot anybody.”
Trina could see the pain all over her stepson’s face and she got up, went to Jimmy, and pulled him into her arms. He gladly welcomed the comfort.
But Reno and Dom looked at each other. This was bad, and they knew it. And although Jimmy might have known Paulie well, they knew Paulie’s old man even better.
“B.B. ain’t taking this lying down,” said Dom. He used to work for his Uncle Sal Gabrini and once worked for the most powerful mob boss in the world, his Uncle Mick Sinatra. He knew the players well and they knew him. “The question of the night is simple: will he be open to a conversation? Or does he want war?”
“It depends on what happens with his kid,” said Reno. “Everything hinges on if Paulie lives.”
And the anxiousness of not knowing was beginning to overtake Reno, too, and he got up and began pacing. The one thing he hated most about that mob life was his children getting caught up in it. Dom got caught up in it because he was a hothead all his life. But he managed to keep Jimmy out of it, as well as Sophia and Jimmy’s daughter Madison. Carmine, Reno and Trina’s youngest child, was an open question. He had gangster tendencies all over his little ass.
They sat in silence and fear for nearly an hour as they waited for news. They waited on pins and needles until the front door of the penthouse apartment atop Reno’s hotel and casino opened again, and the second most powerful mob boss in the world, a very flustered-looking Sal Gabrini, walked in.