CHAPTER TEN
His thick hair was spiky and all over his head.
His wrinkled suit was even more disheveled than it usually was.
But his eyes were what gave it all away.
Reno usually had hard, focused eyes. The kind of eyes that made clear he was always thinking or scheming or sizing you up.
His eyes always had the look of a man one step ahead of everybody else.
But they looked wild and emphatic, and were darting from side to side like he couldn’t focus on any one person or any one thing if his life depended on it.
He looked so bad that Trina and everybody in that room stood to their feet.
“Daddy, what’s wrong?” Sophia immediately blurted out.
But Trina was still too angry. “Where the fuck you been, Reno? Where you been? You had me worried sick!”
But Reno was looking from Trina to his children to Sal and back to Trina. And then he began hurrying up the stairs.
“Reno?” Trina said, as she hurried toward the stairs. “Soph and Carmine could have died!”
Reno stopped in his tracks. He turned and looked at Sophia and Carmine. “What happened?”
“They were in a car accident,” Jimmy said. “A really bad one.” He didn’t have the heart to mention the crash he almost endured. Reno looked worried enough.
So much so that Sophia felt a need to blurt out: “But we’re okay,” she quickly said. She could see the pain in her father’s eyes.
Reno looked at Sophia. And he found momentary solace in her sweet face. But it wasn’t enough. Their accident only seemed to stiffen, not stifle, his resolve. He hurried on up the stairs.
“Reno!” Trina yelled after him and was about to hurry up those stairs behind him.
But Sal stopped her. “Tree?” he said.
She turned and looked as he began hurrying up the stairs instead. “I’ll go.”
Trina knew Reno and Sal shared secrets she would never be privy to. And given how Reno was looking, this felt like one of those times. She stepped aside and Sal hurried up the stairs, taking them two at a time.
Jimmy and Dom looked at each other. “What the fuck?” was the look on both of their faces.
Then they looked at Trina. She looked even more bewildered than they did.
But upstairs, Sal Gabrini remained chill even when he walked into the master bedroom and found Reno packing his suitcase.
He unbuttoned his double-breasted suit and watched as Reno haphazardly grabbed twenty-thousand-dollar suits and were throwing them in a garment bag as if they were off the rack from Walmart.
He crossed his shoes and folded his arms. “What’s going on, Reno?”
But Reno kept on packing.
“You’re beginning to worry me, pal. Tell me what happened? Did you find her? What’s going on?”
“Nothing’s going on,” Reno shot back snappishly as he stopped packing to look at Sal.
But that look in his eyes was a mile away from nothing. “I heard you had drinks with a blonde. Was it Lydia? Does she know?”
How would he know about that? “No. It’s nothing like that.”
“Bullshit!”
Reno continued packing.
“If it’s nothing, why are you packing like some wild banshee?”
“I’ve gotta get away for a minute.”
“Get away? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means what I said Sal.”
“Why you gotta get away? You got a family here.”
“That’s why I gotta get away.”
Reno zipped up his suitcase and garment bag, grabbed them, and began heading for the exit.
But Sal was in the way. “I’m going to ask you again: Why?”
Reno stared into Sal’s eyes. And he couldn’t hold it in any longer. “It’s here, Sal. And I’ve got to contain it before it destroy us all.”
Sal could feel his heart drop. “Let me help,” he said.
“What help?” Reno looked anguished. “Nobody can help. This is all on me, and I’ve got to handle it my way.” Then a determined look flickered in Reno’s eyes. “And I will.”
Sal stepped aside, and Reno began to leave. But he stopped momentarily and looked back at Sal. “Take care of Tree and my children,” he said. Sal nodded. And then Reno took off.
But when he got downstairs, Trina and his children were waiting. When they saw the suitcase, they all hurried to him.
“Reno, what are you doing?” Trina asked him.
“What’s with the suitcase, Pop?” Jimmy asked him.
“Daddy, what’s wrong?” asked Sophia.
But Reno didn’t say a word. He couldn’t even look them in their eyes. He kept hurrying for the front door.
But Trina wasn’t about to just let him go. She grabbed him by the arm and turned him around to her. But when she saw that dark, void look in his eyes, her heart sank. “Reno, what’s wrong?”
His now glassy blue eyes didn’t blink. He was staring at her as if he was staring through her. As if he was staring at a stranger. Then he snatched away from her and kept moving.
But Trina kept moving right along with him. “Reno? Reno?!”
“Daddy, what are you doing?” Sophia pleaded with him. “Where are you going?”
When Reno said nothing to his own daughter and was about to exit the penthouse, Trina grabbed him by the arm and turned him toward her again. But this time she was demanding an answer. “Tell me what’s happening, Reno? Now I mean it!”
Reno looked her dead in her eyes. “I want a divorce,” he said to her. “That’s what’s happening.”
Trina was so floored that her grip on him immediately loosened. There was an audible grasp from their children. Sal, who standing at the top of the stairs, could not believe it either.
But Reno couldn’t even look at any of them. His eyes stayed on Trina, the strongest person he’d ever known. He could see her crumbling before his very eyes.
Her beautiful face was a mask of anguish. “What are you talking about, Reno?” she asked him. “We haven’t discussed a divorce!”
“Yes we have. It’s all we discuss every single argument we have every single day. The word may not be used. But that’s what it is. You want out. I want out. I’m making it happen.”
It wasn’t a test. She saw it in his eyes. He meant every word. She was so hurt, and so scared, that she lashed right back at him. “Is there a woman involved?” she asked him pointblank.
He continued to stare in her eyes. And he was as direct as she was. “Isn’t it always?” he said to her as if he needed her to hate him. He needed her to put the blame all on him. Because that was where it belonged.
He stared at her. Wanted to stare at his children, too, but couldn’t. And then he left.
But a feeling came over Trina when he walked out that door that walloped her. It felt as if he was taking her heart with him. And she couldn’t bear it.
“Reno!” she cried out as she ran out of that penthouse behind him. The children ran behind them. Sal continued to stand at the top of the stairs. What they feared most was upon them. And he could hardly take it himself.
Out in the corridor, as Reno hurried to the penthouse elevator, nobody could take it. Especially Trina. “Reno, come back. What are you doing? Nobody wants a divorce. Reno? Reno? Reno, come back to me!”
Jimmy and Dom had to hold a hysterical Trina back as it was obvious Reno was not coming back.
Sophia was crying too. She couldn’t bear to see her mother in such agony. But Dom was angry. “Let him go, Ma. What are you doing? Don’t beg him. He wanna go, let him go!”
But Dom wasn’t as angry as Carmine. Because Carmine ran up to that elevator and began hitting his father so hard that it prevented Reno from pressing the elevator button. Reno had to lift his arms to prevent his son from breaking his jaw, that was the kind of punch Carmine was packing.
“Why do you keep hurting our mother?” he was crying and yelling at his father. “What kind of man are you? How could you do this to her? How could you do this to us?!”
Jimmy had to leave Trina in Dommi’s hands and hurry to pull Carmine off of their father. Reno didn’t fight back. He could have flattened Carmine and they all knew it. But he pressed the button, instead, and the elevator doors opened.
“How could you?” Carmine was still crying out as Jimmy held him back and as Reno stood on that elevator inwardly begging for the doors to close. “How could you?” he yelled at him again.
The security detail that was always present outside of the penthouse were in shock too. They’d never seen the family in this level of disrepair.
But the family didn’t care what they saw. And Trina didn’t care most of all. Dommi told her not to beg. But she was begging. “Reno, please don’t go,” she was crying out.
She used to be so big and bad. She used to insist she would leave Reno at the drop of a hat if he kept disappointing her. But now that he was leaving her, she couldn’t take it. “Reno, what are you doing?” She was falling to her knees with her two sons holding her up. “Reno? Reno? Reno?!”
But Reno stood there as if his mind was made up and there was nothing she could do about it, as the elevator doors closed him in, and kept her out.
“Renooooo!” Trina cried out on her knees. It was the kind of pain that ached to her soul.
What was he doing? How could this be? It was like a nightmare that she couldn’t wake up from. Her heart wasn’t broken. It was decimated. She’d never felt pain like this before. And it was so out of nowhere that it mystified her. And she couldn’t let it stand.
“Let me go!” she yelled at Dom, snatched away from him, and then got up and ran to that elevator. She pressed the button repeatedly, the doors eventually opened, and she hurried on.
Jimmy, terrified for Trina, gave Carmine to Dommi and hopped on that elevator with her.
Her other children tried to get on that elevator with her too, but Sal, whom they didn’t even realize had come back downstairs, stopped them. “Dominic, you, Sophia, and Carmine come inside. Jimmy’s got her.”
They wanted to defy Sal’s orders and be with their mother. But there were three men in the Gabrini family they knew they could never defy: Their father, their Uncle Tommy, and their Uncle Sal.
They went back into the penthouse and waited with Sal.