MOB BOSS 6: THE HEART OF RENO GABRINI (Mob Boss Series) (12 page)

Reno
and his second guard, Artie, began walking around to the front side of the bar,
where Jimmy’s vehicle was parked.

When
Jimmy saw that Reno had gone around front, he got out of the Porsche and went
over to Lou’s SUV.
 
Ashley and Cooper
were sitting on the backseat.
 
Lou rolled
down their window.

“What’s
happening, Jimmy?” Ashley immediately asked him.

“It’s
okay,” Jimmy said.
 
“He’ll take care of
it, you have to believe that.”

“But
where’s he gone?”

“To
take care of things, don’t worry.
 
He
knows how to handle situations like this.”

But
Ashley still looked doubtful.
 
Jimmy
reached in and touched her hand.
 
He
hated to see her in such distress.
 

“It’s
going to be all right, Ash.
 
Trust me,
okay?”

Ashley
looked at Jimmy.
 
“Where is he taking
us?”

“I
don’t know, but don’t worry about it.
 
I
told you my dad will look out for you.
 
You’ve got to believe me.”

“He’s
not calling the cops on us?”

“Of
course not,” Jimmy said as if such a question was ludicrous.
 
“He’ll never do anything like that.
 
He hates cops as much as you do.”
 
Then he squeezed her hand.
 
“Just settle down.
 
It’ll be okay.”

But
she still wasn’t convinced.
 
Jimmy was
beginning to get irritated by her lack of faith in him.
 

“Why
won’t he let you ride with us?” she asked him.
 
“There’s room.”

“You
need to calm down, Ash, I told you it’s okay.”

“But
why?
 
Why can’t you ride with us?”

“Because
he probably wants me to ride with him.”

“But
why?”

“Because
I’m his son, I don’t know.
 
How should I know
why?
 
You need to calm down.”

“That’s
easy for you to say!” Ashley decried.
 
“I’m the one facing prison!”

Jimmy
was getting upset for real now.
 
“Are you
joking?
 
I’m the one with the dead body
in my car, and you’re complaining?”

“But
your daddy’s gonna take care of it for you.
 
That’s probably where they’re gone now.
 
But what about me and Riley?”

Jimmy
shook his head and threw up his hands.
 
He’d had it.
 
“Whatever, Ash, all right?”
He said this and began heading back to his father’s car.
 

Cooper
looked at his sister.
 
“What’s wrong with
you?” he asked her.
 
“He’s only trying to
help us.”

But
Ashley’s distress still would not be abated.
 
She began to rub her small hands together and rock.
 
She was in a bad, bad place, and they both
knew it.

Jimmy
was back in the Porsche by the time Reno finally returned.
 
Artie was not with him.

He
got into his car, cranked up his pure power of an engine, and pulled off.
 
The SUV pulled off behind him.
 

When
they drove around front, Jimmy noticed that his car was already gone.
 
He was not surprised, then, when his father
turned left onto Clydesdale, and headed, with the SUV still following, for the
PaLargio.
 

“Where
did Artie take my car?” he asked his father.

Reno
gripped his steering wheel so tightly that Jimmy wondered if the Porsche’s
emblem would pop off.
 
But he wanted
answers.

“Dad?”
he asked again.
 
“Where did Artie take my
car?”

“So
you care now?”

Jimmy
frowned.
 
“Of course I care!
 
What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It
means exactly what I said.
 
You didn’t
give a damn about that vehicle when you were putting a dead body in the
trunk!
 
You didn’t give a damn about that
vehicle when you were committing felony after felony for that stank-ass girl!”

“What
are you talking about?” Jimmy asked angrily.
 
“I was helping my friends.
 
That’s
all this is about.”

“Like
hell it is!
 
What, her hello kitty that
sweet, Jimmy?
 
She worth going to prison
over, Jimmy?”

Jimmy
shook his head and looked out the window.
 
The car stopped at a red light.
 

“You
answer me boy,” Reno said, looking at his son with a baffled expression.
 
“You’re willing to throw away your freedom
for her?”

“No!”
Jimmy said forcefully and looked at his father.
 
“I told you it has nothing to do with that.”

“The
judgment you used tonight!
 
I oughta kick
your ass for the lack of judgment you used alone!
 
How could you let that girl talk you into
doing something that stupid?
 
I didn’t
raise you to be this dumb!”

“You
didn’t raise me at all, so there you have it.”
 
Jimmy said this with bitterness in his voice.
 
Then he looked back out of his side
window.
 

Reno
still felt the sting of those words as his son looked away.
 
Reno didn’t know Jimmy even existed until a
few years ago.
  
For the longest time
Jimmy thought his stepfather was his real father until the truth came out.
 
By then, his stepfather and mother were long divorced
and his mother died shortly after the truth came out.
 
Jimmy came to live with Reno.
 
Eventually changed his last name to Gabrini.
 
But Reno knew he spoke the truth.
 
He didn’t raise his son at all.
 

He
looked back ahead.
 
The light turned
green, and he proceeded through the intersection.
 
The SUV was still right behind him.

“If I
would have known you existed,” Reno said, “I would have raised you.”
 
Then he looked at his son.
 
“Bet that.”

Jimmy
felt bad for going there with his father.
 
Reno was the one human being he loved most in this world.
 
But he really needed him to back off.
 
Because he was coming too close to hitting a
nerve with him.
 
Jimmy knew the
deal.
 
He knew Ashley didn’t love him the
way he loved her.
 
He knew she had any of
a number of guys interested in her, and sometimes it felt as if he was just one
of them.
 
But his father made him sound
like he was a chump for her, and that wasn’t true.

“I’m
sorry,” he said.
 
“But it’s not like you
think it is.”

“Oh,
yeah?
 
Then enlighten me, son.
 
Tell me why it is that you would risk prison
for this girl?”

“She
was a friend in trouble, Dad.
 
She and my
best friend, her brother, were in trouble.
 
What did you expect me to do?”

“I
expected you to call me and let me handle this shit!
 
You keep your hands clean and let mine get
dirty like I’ve been drilling into your brain since you’ve been with me!
 
You don’t break any laws, you don’t twist any
facts. You call me.
 
That’s what I
expected you to do.
 
I expected you to
call me.”

“I
wanted to call you, but---”

“But
what?”

“But
they didn’t want me to,” Jimmy admitted.

“Who
didn’t want you to?”

“Ash.
 
And Cooper too.
 
They didn’t think you would understand.”

Reno
looked ahead, his mind going a mile a minute and in all kinds of
directions.
  
“You offered to call me,
but they didn’t want that?”

“The
only reason they thought it was a good idea to phone Ma was because they
figured she would understand.
 
So I
called her.”

“And
that wasn’t strange to you?”

Jimmy
thought about it.
 
“Not really, no.
 
I mean, they knew Tree used to work in a
strip club.
 
They figured she would
understand people like them.”

“And
I wouldn’t?”

“You
own the PaLargio, Dad.
 
They can’t relate
to that.”

But
Reno didn’t buy that
ah, shucks
routine Cooper and Ash were slinging.
 
Not an ounce of it.
 
He continued
to think of all of the possibilities.
 
This shit was beginning to stank worse than he at first thought it
did.
 

He
turned a corner, and picked up speed.
 

“Did
you know that body in your trunk had been stabbed?” he asked Jimmy.

Jimmy
looked at him.
 
“Stabbed?”

“Yes.
 
He was stabbed.
 
In the back.
 
I’m no doctor, but even I know stab wounds aren’t usually side effects
from a drug overdose.
 
But what do I
know, right?
 
Up-your-ass Ashley got all
the answers.”

Jimmy
frowned.
 
“She didn’t know he was stabbed
either!
 
What are you talking?
 
She thought he died from an overdose like I
did.
 
We didn’t lift his shirt and look
on his back.
 
Besides, there wasn’t that
much blood there.”

Reno
shook his head.
 
“That’s probably because
the body was moved from the scene of crime to Ashley’s house.
 
Just in time for you to come and implicate
yourself in that crime.”

“What
are you talking?” Jimmy asked his father again, as if the mere thought of
facing the truth about his girlfriend was too unsettling.
 
“Ashley wouldn’t do something like that.
 
What are you talking?”

“I’ll
tell you what I’m talking,” Reno said.
 
“I’m
talking blindness, son.
 
I’m talking
seeing stars when you should be seeing clouds.
 
I’m talking that girl and how twisted up she’s got you.”
 

Then
he exhaled.
 
“I’m also talking the next
time you do something this fucked up, you’d better not think about involving my
wife.”
 
He looked at Jimmy.
 
“Understand what I’m talking now?”

Jimmy’s
jaw tightened.
 
He knew his father loved
him, but he also knew that nobody came before Trina.
 
“Yes, sir,” he said.

Reno
picked up even more speed.
 
Because he
was bothered now.
 
This was the exact
kind of shit he didn’t want his son to have to ever face in this life.
 
The fact that it would happen like this, out
of the blue like this, disturbed Reno mightily.
 
It seemed awfully convenient that a man would die in his son’s
girlfriend’s house, and then that same gold digging girlfriend would beg him,
not to call his father, but to put the dead body in his own trunk and take it
to some special location.
 
If Jimmy would
not have sniffed out the fact that they were being tailed, Reno could only
imagine what would have happened next.
 

It
seemed very convenient to Reno.
 

Incredibly
coincidental.

When
no such thing, in Reno’s world, existed.

CHAPTER SIX

Reno
was in his home office making phone calls while they all sat on edge in the
living room waiting for him.
 
Trina was
seated in the chair flanking the sofa, while Jimmy, Ashley, and Cooper were
seated on the sofa.
 
Lou and Artie were
also in the room, at the bar, awaiting their own instructions.
 
It felt as if something monumental was
changing in their lives already, but Trina couldn’t figure out what.