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

MORE INTERRACIAL
ROMANCE

FROM BESTSELLING
AUTHOR

MALLORY MONROE
:

THE PRESIDENT’S GIRLFRIEND

SERIES IN ORDER:

THE PRESIDENT’S
GIRLFRIEND

THE PRESIDENT’S
GIRLFRIEND 2:

HIS WOMEN AND HIS WIFE

DUTCH AND GINA:

A SCANDAL IS BORN

DUTCH AND GINA:

AFTER THE FALL

DUTCH AND GINA:

THE POWER OF LOVE

DUTCH AND GINA:

THE SINS OF THE FATHERS

DUTCH AND GINA:

WHAT HE DID FOR LOVE

THE MOB BOSS SERIES

IN ORDER:

ROMANCING THE MOB
BOSS

MOB BOSS 2:

THE HEART OF THE MATTER

MOB BOSS 3:

LOVE AND RETRIBUTION

MOB BOSS 4:

ROMANCING TRINA
GABRINI

A MOB BOSS
CHRISTMAS:

THE PREGNANCY

(Mob Boss 5)

THE GABRINI MEN
SERIES

IN ORDER:

ROMANCING TOMMY
GABRINI

ADDITIONAL
BESTSELLING

INTERRACIAL ROMANCE

FROM MALLORY
MONROE:

ROMANCING MO RYAN

ROMANCING HER
PROTECTOR

           
ROMANCING THE BULLDOG

    
IF YOU WANTED THE MOON

AND

INTERRACIAL ROMANCE

FROM

BESTSELLING AUTHOR

KATHERINE CACHITORIE
:

LOVERS AND TAKERS

LOVING HER SOUL
MATE

LOVING THE HEAD MAN

SOME CAME
DESPERATE:

A LOVE SAGA

ADDITIONAL
BESTSELLING

INTERRACIAL ROMANCE:

A SPECIAL
RELATIONSHIP

YVONNE THOMAS

AND

BACK TO HONOR:

A REGGIE REYNOLDS

ROMANTIC MYSTERY

JT WATSON

ROMANTIC FICTION

FROM

AWARD-WINNING

AND

BESTSELLING AUTHOR

TERESA MCCLAIN-WATSON:

DINO AND NIKKI:

AFTER REDEMPTION

AND

AFTER WHAT YOU DID

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PROLOGUE

Fourteen
Years Earlier

He cupped
his hand around another cold glass of beer and stared at the woman in the big
red hat.  He was in the Clover, a lounge inside the PaLargio Hotel and
Casino on the Vegas Strip, and was just about to pass the point of
one too many
when his curiosity got the
best of him.

“Hey,
Dirty,” he yelled to the busy bartender on the opposite end of the bar. 
“Dirty!  Get over here.”

Ritchie
Marcasi, better known as Dirty, looked at the customer and could not suppress
his irritation.
 
He would have told any
other drunk to take a hike for bugging him like that.  But because Bruno
Lucci was a drunk with the kind of connections that could get him fired, he
excused himself from another customer on the other end of the bar, and made his
way to Bruno.

“What’s
up, Brew?” Dirty asked.
 
He was young,
barely twenty-two, and spoke with a heavy Jersey accent.

Bruno
looked at Dirty.
 
He didn’t like his
cockiness.
 
“You took your pretty time
getting here.”

“What
are you talking?
 
I came as soon as you
called.”

“Who’s
the broad?” Bruno asked him.

“What
broad?”

“Over
there.”

There
had to be a hundred broads in the lounge, and Dirty wanted to tell him
so.  But he continued to look around anyway.
 
“Over where?” he asked as he looked.

“Over
there.”

“Over
where?”

“Over
there you dick! The old lady Reno’s talking to.  The one in the red
hat.
 
Who is she?”

Dirty
looked at the table on the far side of the room.  Reno Gabrini, the
handsome young general manager of the PaLargio, was having drinks with an older
woman. 

“That’s
Miss E,” Dirty said when he was able to finally see who Bruno was talking
about.  “That’s the owner.”

Bruno
looked at Dirty.  “The owner?  Get the fuck outta here!  I
thought Tony Tufarna owned the PaLargio.”

“Tony
don’t own shit.  He runs the place, yeah.
 
But between you and me and that glass of beer you’re drinking, Reno’s
doing most of the running.  Miss E’s Tony’s mother.”

“You
have got to be shitting me,” Bruno said with a laugh.  “Wait till I needle
Tony about this!  All that big talking he’s always doing every time we
hang out. 
 
All about his precious
Pa-Lar-gi-o.
 
And that’s how he pronounces it.
 
Real slow.
 
The
Pa-Lar-gi-o
don’t you
know.
 
And it’s not even his.
 
It’s his mama’s joint!”

“His
mama’s the one who hired Reno,” Dirty said.  “They’re pretty tight from
what I see whenever she comes to town.  But Tony, he don’t like it.
 
He thinks Reno’s trying to muscle in and
marry his mama so he can own this joint himself one day.
 
That’s how stupid he is.
 
Reno’s got all these beautiful women eating
out of his hands, what he want with that old broad?
 
But you can’t tell Tony nothing.”

Bruno
looked across the bar at Tony Tufarna.  Tony was a big, stocky guy in his
early thirties with a receding hairline already.
 
He was sitting at a table with two of the PaLargio’s
showgirls.
 
Although the girls were
running their mouths in what seemed to Bruno to be a mile a minute, Tony didn’t
appear to be listening to a word they had to say.
 
He was too busy staring daggers at Reno and
Miss E.

“Look
at Tone,” Bruno said with a smile, and Dirty looked too.  “If looks could
kill Reno would be dead.
 
And all this
time I thought that asshole owned this joint.  All this time I thought he
was the top dog.”

“He
is the top dog,” Dirty corrected Bruno.  “I told you he runs the place, he
just don’t own it.  At least not yet.”
 
Then Dirty glanced at his previous customer, who was getting up to
leave.  “Ah, shit,” he said angrily, upset with himself for forgetting the
customer.
 
That was why he left Bruno’s
side and hurried back before the customer, and his potential tip, got
away.
 

Bruno
drank from his glass of beer and stared, once again, at the woman in the red
hat.  He knew she was something special.
 
Not because he wanted her or anything like that, but he could tell she
was quality.
 
And she wasn’t bad looking
for an old broad either, he thought.  Not bad at all.

Reno
was certainly acting like he was smitten with her.  But Bruno was no
fool.  He knew that slick bastard Reno Gabrini.  The only thing Reno
was smitten with in that old lady was her power.  It was never about money
with Reno, it was never about love either.
 
But it was always about power.  Always.
 
The ruthless sonafabitch.

Bruno
didn’t like Reno.  He didn’t like when he came to town some six years
earlier as this hotshot kid the Dons around here treated like a king.  All
because he was Paulo Gabrini’s son and Paulo practically ran the East Coast
Mafia.  They all wanted to stay in good with Reno just in case he had
designs on running the West Coast.  And wise guys like Bruno took the
brunt of Reno’s popularity.  Wise guys like Bruno who were trying to move
up the chain of command, kept getting compared to Reno.  The kid hadn’t
done shit for the Families, other than to tell them to kiss his ass a time or
two, but they still kowtowed to the motherfucker like he was Paulo
himself.  And Bruno didn’t like it.  He didn’t like it one bit. 

That
was why, when Reno and Miss E finished their drinks and began to leave the
lounge together, Bruno left the bar.  He walked over to Tony Tufarna.
 
He smiled at how Tony was dripping with
contempt as he watched his mother leave with Reno on her arm.  She didn’t
look back to say goodbye to her own son.  She just left.  And Bruno
walked over, sat in the empty chair in front of Tony and the two showgirls, and
did what he did best in this life.
 
He
instigated.