MOB BOSS 6: THE HEART OF RENO GABRINI (Mob Boss Series) (7 page)

“Oh,
please,” Trina said, dismissing his threat with a smile as she began heading
for the living room.
 
But then she
thought about it, and how she actually wouldn’t put it pass Reno.
 
She’d seen how angry he could get with her.
 
She even found herself touching her butt
cheek at just the thought of him spanking the color out of it the way he
claimed he’d do.
 
Then she dismissed such
thoughts again, and continued toward the living room.

Reno
and Jimmy, who watched her apprehension, laughed when she left.
 
And then Reno relaxed.
 

It
felt good to be back home.

CHAPTER THREE

The
Shell was a sports bar/restaurant with an electric, youthful crowd.
 
Jimmy and Ashley fit right in as they watched
Reno’s Porsche drive up to the Valet parking entrance, and Reno and Trina
stepped out.

“That’s
him?” Ashley asked as she stared at Reno from their window booth inside the
restaurant.
 
Reno was standing at the
opened door of his Porsche, putting on his suit coat.
 
The Valet was standing at the ready.
 
Ashley didn’t give Trina a second look.
 
She met her a few weeks back.
 
It was Jimmy’s father, she knew, that she had
to impress.

“That’s
them,” Jimmy said as he looked on proudly at his parents.

Ashley
was surprised.
 
“Wow, Jimmy,” she
said.
 
“I didn’t know your father looked
like that.”

“Like
what?” Jimmy asked, confused.

“Like
some movie star or something!
 
He’s
beautiful.”

Jimmy
laughed.
 
He loved her sweet
personality.
 
“He is gonna love you,” he
said with a smile.
 
Then he took her
hand.
 
“But not as much as I do.”

Ashley,
however, couldn’t take her big blue eyes off of Reno.
 
She knew he was rich.
 
Any man who owned a hotel and casino as
opulent as the PaLargio had to be swimming in cash.
 
But everything Eddie had said about Reno
Gabrini seemed true now that she was looking at him in the flesh.
 
Eddie said a guy like him wasn’t about to let
her marry his precious son.
 
Eddie said
the best she could do was buy some time until they could extract the biggest
payday possible out of her association with a Gabrini.
 

When
she met Trina, she thought she stood a chance.
 
It was like one female to another female and they both were pulling for
the other one.
 
But seeing Reno put on
his suit coat and then place his hand on the lower back of his beautiful black
wife as they both headed inside the Shell, made her antsy.
 
He looked old school Italian.
 
He looked too much like a man who would spit
on his mother’s grave before he allowed the likes of her into his family.
 
Eddie was right.
 
She had made excuse after excuse to Jimmy
about not meeting his father.
 
She
couldn’t continue going that way if she expected Jimmy to remain one hundred
percent in her corner.
 
This dinner
tonight was key.
 
This dinner tonight
would determine if she could continue bidding her time, or if she was out of
time altogether, and had to make her move.
 

But
as Jimmy’s parents made their way to the table, she still couldn’t get over how
gorgeous his father looked.
 
That was
unexpected.
 
But that could be her wild
card tonight.
 
A man who looked like him
had to be a player who could not possibly be faithful to one woman, not with
all of these bitches out here who had to be trying to get into that man’s
pants.
 
There was no doubt in Ashley’s
mind about that.
 

But
she had to be careful.
 
A man who looked
like him also was well experienced with seduction.
 
She could never let him know that she, in her
sweet innocence, was making a play for him.
 
And she did know how to play men.
 
She’d played them all of her adult life.
 
Guys, especially white guys, tended to think more with their lower head
when it came to a good looking woman.
 
It
never failed with Ashley.
 
All she had to
do was charm them with her body and she would have them eating out of the palm
of her hand.
 
That was Ashley’s job
tonight with Reno.
 
Get him on her side,
too.
 
It wasn’t going to be an easy job,
but given his great looks she was now convinced it was going to be a doable
job.

Jimmy,
wearing a suit for a change, stood to his feet when his parents arrived at
their table.
 
“Welcome,” he said with a
kiss to Trina’s cheek.
 
They turned out
nicely, he thought.
 
Trina wore a
beautiful short gray dress with hanging shrills at the hem, reminding Jimmy of
a cancan girl from some of those old movies he liked to watch.
 
Reno wore a light-brown Valentino suit that
seemed to match his hair.
 
Hair, Jimmy
noticed, that was perfectly groomed for a change.

“Dad,”
Jimmy said proudly, “I want you to meet my lady.
 
Ashley Cooper.”

“Hi,”
Ashley said cheerfully as she stood her petite body on her feet and gave Reno a
hug.
 
She was careful to rub the soft
skin of her cheek against his cheek as they stopped embracing.
 
“Nice to meet you.
 
I’ve heard so much about you.”

“Have
a seat, please,” Reno said, glancing down at Ashley’s sizeable breasts.
 
He waited for Trina to sit down next to the
window and across from Ashley, and then he and Jimmy sat down too.
 
They were facing each other.
 
Even Jimmy couldn’t help but notice what a
captivating couple his parents made.

After
the waiter took their drink orders, Reno put on his reading glasses and studied
the menu.
 
He already felt like an old
man in this place overrun with people so young they were practically children,
but he didn’t care how he looked in specs.
 
He was too hungry to care.
 

Ashley
kept taking peeps at him, Trina noticed, as if she was either smitten with him,
or was plotting a way to get him to accept her as Jimmy’s woman.
 
Trina wanted to warn her.
 
Reno was nobody’s fool.
 
If she tried too hard he would view her as
some gold digger and would eat her up and spit her out.
 

But
then again, Trina thought slyly, if she was smitten with Reno and had some
misguided designs in that direction, then eating her up and spitting her out
was exactly what she expected him to do to her.
 
She therefore didn’t warn Ashley about a thing.
 
Trina, instead, sat back and observed.

“You
look great, Ma,” Jimmy said when it was obvious his father was more interested
in the menu right at the moment.

“Thank-you,”
Trina said with a smile.
 
“You and Ashley
look pretty spiffy yourselves.”

“Doesn’t
she?” Jimmy said as he looked lovingly at Ashley.
 

She
was pretty, Trina thought, with a slamming body and big breasts.
 
But unfortunately she wasn’t nearly as
innocent as Jimmy took her for.
 
Trina
tried to tell him when she met her a few weeks ago, but he wouldn’t
listen.
 
He knew she wasn’t perfect, he
kept saying, but Trina knew better.
 
That
boy was so over-the-hill infatuated with Ashley that perfection was exactly how
he viewed her.
 
But Trina was a firm
believer in letting people learn for themselves.
 
Jimmy was a grown man.
 
Young, yes, but grown.
 
He had to learn about females for himself.

“Don’t
you agree, Dad?”
 
Jimmy asked his
father.
 
He seemed to want to push his
father’s buttons a lot more lately, Trina was beginning to notice.
 
And she couldn’t understand what caused such
a change in him.

Reno looked
up from the menu he was perusing, and glanced over the rim of his glasses.
 
“Don’t I agree about what?”

“About
Ashley,” Jimmy said, who, he felt, was the guest of honor Reno was
ignoring.
 
“That she looks so pretty
tonight.”

Reno
looked at Ashley, from her face down to her breasts.
 
“Yeah, she’s cute,” he said.

“Cute?”
Jimmy said as if he was offended.
 
“Puppies are cute.
 
Ashley’s hot.”

Reno
removed his glasses as if he was about to give a Jimmy a little piece of his
mind, but Trina, under the table, touched his thigh.
 

With
her touch, Reno let it slide.
 
“How long
have you known my son?” he asked Ashley.

Ashley
lit up as if meeting his son was the highlight of her entire life.
 
“It’s been a good year ago,” she said.
 
“He and my brother were best friends, so he
used to come around a lot.”

“Come
around a lot to your house?”

“Yes,
sir.
 
Me and my brother came out here to
Vegas together, and rented us a house together.
 
He looks out for me, and I look out for him.”

“Good
for you,” Reno said nodding.
 
“Family is
very important.
 
Where do you work?”

Ashley
was ready for that one too.
 
“I’m in
college right now.”

“Oh,
yeah?
 
Maybe you can get that knucklehead
over there to go to college, too.”

“College
is for kids,” Jimmy said with a smile.
 
“I’m a businessman now.”

Reno
wanted to laugh.
 
Some businessman
, he wanted to say.
 
“What are you studying?” he asked Ashley, instead.

“Business
management actually.
 
I hope to own my
own company someday.”

“I
told her Ma was looking to do the same thing,” Jimmy said.
 
“So you can relate, can’t you, Ma?”

Reno
moved around slightly in his seat.
 
The
idea of Jimmy comparing this child to Trina!

But
Trina didn’t seem to mind.
 
“I certainly
can relate,” Trina said.
 
“It’s tough,
but know what you like and stick with it.”

“That’s
great advice,” Ashley said.
 
“Thank-you,
Mrs. Gabrini.”

And
it went on like that all night.
 
Ashley
was laying it on thick and Jimmy was drinking her Kool-Aid as if it was the
finest wine ever served.
 
To Ashley, her
pitch worked with Trina.
 
But she couldn’t
read Reno at all.

Trina
couldn’t read him either.
 
It wasn’t
until she was back in his Porsche and he was driving them home, did he finally
come out with it.

“I
don’t like her,” he said.

Trina
continued to look out at the night in front of them.
 
The convertible top of his car was down and
the night air breeze made her feel super relaxed.
 
She wasn’t exactly surprised by her husband’s
statement.
 
She wasn’t all that in love
with Ashley, either.
 
But Jimmy was.

“That’ll
break Jimmy’s heart,” she said.

“I
can’t help that.
 
She’s not for him.
 
Not her.”

Trina
looked at Reno.
 
“And why’s that?”

“She’s
a whore, come on,” Reno said as if it had been obvious from the start.
 
“She’s an over-teased, over-confident,
trash-barrel whore with the fakest breasts I’ve ever seen.”

“Oh,
so she’s a whore because she has breast implants?”

“Because
she’s a whore, Trina.
 
She’s a whore
because she’s a whore.
 
There’s a long
history of pole action in that girl’s past and a sugar daddy in her present.
 
You’d better believe it.
 
She’s looking to get a ring on that finger
from Jimmy, to secure her future, but that’s not happening.”