Reno Gabrini: A Family Affair (23 page)

But the Van was coming too fast and already had the
advantage of surprise.
 
It clipped the
very back of Reno’s Porsche and caused the Porsche to careen wildly, spinning,
and then flip and flip and flip like a racing car, or a toy, and then land on
the side of the road on its four, now busted tires.
 
It was smoking, and mangled, but still
standing.

And the men in that SUV, Iceman Nelson, and his
henchman Copperton Pechetti, descended on that Porsche just as Reno Gabrini was
lifting his face out of the airbag.
 
His
mind and every ounce of his awareness was telling him to run, but his body
wouldn’t cooperate.
 
It was telling him
to sleep.
  
It was telling him to sit
still.
  
It was shutting down.

Debrosiac couldn’t stop pacing as Jimmy sat on his
living room sofa and watched him move.
 
Something was going down, but Jimmy didn’t know what.
 
His father, once again, kept him out of the
loop.
 
But it was something big.
 
He’d never seen Debrosiac, his father’s right
hand man, this antsy.

But then a cell phone rang.
 
It was Debrosiac’s.
 
He moved away from Jimmy to answer it.
 
That was strange to Jimmy too.
 
His father might have kept him out of the
loop, but what the fuck was Debrosiac doing?
 
If his father was calling to tell him that the coast was clear, or even
that there was trouble brewing, it was Debrosiac’s job to let Jimmy know.
 
But instead, he was acting as if the last
person who needed to know what was going on was Jimmy.
 
Keeping him out of the loop was one
thing.
 
Subterfuge, as Jimmy was
beginning to think Debrosiac was up to, was another thing.
 
And Reno always taught Jimmy to be wary of
strangeness.
 
If it smelled like a rat,
his father always told him, it was a rat.

Debrosiac ended his phone conversation and went to
the front door.
 
When he opened the door,
and two men walked in that Jimmy didn’t recognize as Reno’s, or even Uncle
Sal’s men, Jimmy knew it was a rat.

“Who are they supposed to be?” he asked.

“Security,” Debrosiac said.
 
“Don’t worry about it.”

Debrosiac closed the front door and walked further
over to huddle with the two men.
 
Jimmy
quickly stood up.
 
Debrosiac looked at
him.
 
“I’m going to check on the kids,”
Jimmy said, and headed out of the living room.
 
Debrosiac, to his relief, continued his clandestine conversation.

But as soon as Jimmy got out of Debrosiac’s eye
shot, he ran to the family room.
 
Dommi
and Sophie were sitting on the sofa watching some sitcom on Nick at Nite.
 
This was past their school night bedtime and
they were loving it.
 
But Jimmy ran to
Dommi.
 
He had to handle Debrosiac and
those two men.
 
He knew it was going to
be dangerous.
 
But he had to give Dom and
Sophie a fighting chance.
 
He had to rely
on Dommi.

“Get your sister,” he whispered to him frantically,
“and go through the garage door.
 
Run for
your life.
 
You hear me, Dommi?
 
Don’t trust anybody.
 
Run!”

Dom looked at Jimmy, saw the fear in his eyes, and
Dom didn’t ask questions.
 
He grabbed
Sophie by the hand, putting his finger to her lip to let her know to remain
silent, and took off running out of the side door that led into the
garage.
 
Only Dom ran toward the keyring
in the family room and grabbed the keys of Val’s more sensible car, her
Chrysler 200, a car with an automatic transmission compared to Jimmy’s
five-speed, and then headed out.
 

Jimmy hurried to a chest in the back of the family
room, unlocked it quickly, grabbed a gun, and then hurried back up front, the
gun at his side.

When Debrosiac turned and saw that Jimmy had
returned, he immediately pulled out his own gun.
 
But Jimmy was already locked and loaded and
he fired.
 
It was a rat.
 
He shot Debrosiac straight through the heart,
and then aimed his pistol at the other two.

But the other two were fast on the draw and faster
still on their feet.
 
They took cover as
Jimmy aimed and fired at them, and began to fire back.
 
Jimmy ducked behind the sofa, lifting his
head to fire as he was fired upon.
 
Because he knew the deal.
 
If he
didn’t take them out, they were going to take him out.
 
And dying alone like this, without even
knowing if his baby sister and baby brother were okay, wasn’t an option.
 
Jimmy fought for his life.

But he was outgunned.
 
Because, as one of the men continued to fire
at him, forcing him to fire back, the other man moved on his belly to the
backside of the sofa, behind Jimmy, and launched a sneak attack.
 
When Jimmy realized the second gunman was
behind him, he reacted swiftly.
 
He
turned onto his back and tried to take him out.
 
But it was already too late.
 
He
was hit once, and then twice.
 
By the
time all was said and done, Jimmy had taken four bullets.
 
And as the lights were going out, he thought
about his father.
 
And how his father was
right.
 
He didn’t stand a chance.

Dommi could hear the gunfire as he put his sister on
the passenger seat of Val’s car and he got in behind the wheel.
 
But instead of those horrific sounds cowering
him, it made him more determined to protect his sister.
 
He was worried sick about Jimmy, but he knew
if he failed, if he let fear and worry overtake him, Sophie would die.
 
Sophie was his responsibility.

And he took his responsibilities seriously.
 
He pressed the Start button in Val’s car, pressed
the garage button that lifted the garage door, and put the car in R and drove
out of the garage.
 
He clipped the side
mirror as he drove out, and he knew Val was going to kill him when she found
out, but he couldn’t worry about that either.
 
He had to get Sophie to safety.
 
He had to get Sophie to his mom and dad!

He swerved the steering wheel around, put the car in
D, and drove off.
 
Sophie was looking at
him with terror in her eyes.
 
Dommi was
driving?
 
She couldn’t believe it.
 
But it was true.
 
Her stupid brother was actually driving a
car.
 
And he was driving fast.
 
Sophie looked out of the window, as they
drove through the open gate.

But as soon as they drove through that gate, a Van
pulled up and blocked their path.
 
Mike
Rawls got out of that van, with a gun pointed directly at Dommi, and Dommi
didn’t hesitate.
 
He floored it.
 
He tried to drive over the van.
 
But Rawls shot one shot inside of that car,
breaking the windshield and barely missing Dommi’s head.
 
Dom looked at him with shock in his
eyes.
 
Who would shoot a child?

But Rawls wasn’t thinking about Dom’s age, or
Sophie’s.
 
He ordered Dom to unlock the
car door, and then he reached in and grabbed the keys.
 
“Little prick!” he said angrily, as he did.

Sal snatched the phone from Trina’s hand when Reno
wouldn’t respond.
 
“Reno?” he asked.
 
But just when he asked it, he heard the
crash.
 
It was so loud, even Sal had to
remove the phone from his ear.
 
And then
he heard flapping sounds, and more flapping sounds, as if something was going
up and crashing down, over and over and over.
 
And then nothing.
 
Just
static.
 
Sal looked at Trina.

“What is it?” she asked.
 
“What happened, Sal?”

Sal immediately pulled out his own cell phone,
keeping Trina’s on too, and phoned Jimmy.
 
It rang and it rang and then went to Voice Mail.
 
He phoned Debrosiac.
 
It went to Voice Mail too.

“You stay here,” he said to Trina as he headed
toward Reno’s office inside the penthouse.

“Tell me what’s going on?” Trina said, following
him.

“It sounded like an accident.”

“Reno?”

“Yes.
 
And
Jimmy isn’t answering his phone, and neither is Debrosiac.”

“God, no,” Trina said, pulling up GPS on her cell
phone.

“I’m going to see what’s going on,” Sal said,
pressing the button and exposing Reno’s arsenal of weapons.
 
“I’ll increase security on you.”

“Increase it on yourself,” Trina said.
 
“I’m going too.”
 
She began to reach for weapons of her own.

Sal grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back.
“Like hell, Tree!”

But Trina snatched away from him.
 
“This is my family you’re talking about.
 
I’m going too!”
 
And then she handed Sal her phone.
 
“This is where Reno’s car is located.”

Sal was stunned.
 
“How the hell do you know that?” he asked, taking the phone.

“I secretly put GPS on his ass.
 
Get men there now!” She began arming herself.

Sal was astonished, they kept tabs on their ladies,
not the other way around!
 
But he knew
time was everything and the longer it slipped away, the harder it was going to
be for them to find out anything.
 
He
called for his men to get to Reno’s location as quickly as they could, as he
grabbed weapons and then hurried out of the door.
 
But Trina was right behind him, with two of
Reno’s guns in her possession too.
 
Her
heart was hammering, but her children and her husband were at risk.
 
It was beyond mere feelings now.
 
It was a family thing now.

After shooting Jimmy four times, the two gunmen
looted his house, grabbing a garbage bag filled with whatever valuables they
could easily carry, and hurried out.

Sal received the call from his men just as he and
Trina were driving toward Jimmy’s house.

“We found the car,” one of the men said on Sal’s car
phone.

“Wrecked?” Sal asked.

“Totaled,” the man said.

Trina’s heart squeezed.
 
“What about Reno?
 
Is Reno there?”

“No, ma’am,” the man said. “We can’t find a trace of
Mr. G.”

Trina leaned her head back.
 
And began praying.

“Keep looking,” Sal said, and ended the call.
 
He was as anguished as Trina, but he knew he
had to stay strong.

By the time they neared Jimmy’s house, they could
see Val’s wrecked car outside of the gate. “What the hell?” Sal asked as he
drove past the car.
 
It was empty, the
windshield was shattered, and the door was wide open.
 
Where was the security he ordered Debrosiac
to provide?

But as soon as the two remaining gunmen were running
out of Jimmy’s house with their bag of loot, Sal’s Porsche was driving in.
 
The men was surprised, and so was Sal and
Trina, as the men pulled out their weapons and immediately began firing.

“Get down!” Sal yelled to Trina, Trina ducked down,
and Sal hit the gas.
 
He dodged bullets
as he accelerated toward the two men.
 
They tried to run away, stunned that he would drive so recklessly, and
they tried to dive out of the way.
 
But
it was too late.
 
Sal was too fast, and
reckless as hell.
 
He rammed into them
the way a bull rammed into a matador.
 
The car knocked both of them up, their guns and bag of goodies flying
down, as they landed on the front lawn.

Sal and Trina jumped out of Sal’s car with their
weapons drawn.
 
One of the men appeared
already dead, his head busted open.
 
The
second man was still alive, but moaning with a broken back.
 
He wasn’t going anywhere.

Trina ran into the house.
 
When she saw Debrosiac lying near the front
door, and saw that he was dead, her heart pounded even harder.
 
“
Jimmy
?”
she cried.
 
“
Dom
?
 
Sophie
?”

She heard the TV in the family room and began
running in that direction, but that was when she saw Jimmy behind the
sofa.
 
Her heart dropped.
 
She ran to him, fell beside him, and
frantically called 911.

After she cried for them to send an ambulance, she
began giving her son CPR.
 
She didn’t
even know if he was still alive, or where Dom and Sophie were, but she wasn’t
taking any chances.
 
She cried for Sal.

Sal ran into the house, his gun drawn.

“Jimmy’s been hit,” she cried.
 
“I don’t know where Dom and Sophie are.
 
Find Dom and Sophie, Sal!”

Sal was heartbroken when he saw Jimmy lying there,
it felt as if his own son was lying there, but he was a Gabrini.
 
They didn’t panic.
 
They did what had to be done.
 
He ran through that house like a madman
looking for the children.
 
He ran into
the family room, into the bedrooms, everywhere.
 
He found neither.
 
When he saw
Val’s wrecked car just outside the gate, he knew something bad had gone
down.
 
But he never dreamed it would be
this bad.

He ran back up front.
 
Trina, still applying CPR, looked up at him.

“Nothing,” he said.
 
“Did you call 911?”

“Yes!
 
Find my
children, Sal.” Trina continued to pump on Jimmy.
 
“Find my children!”

Sal ran outside.
 
The second gunman was barely alive.
 
But Sal put his gun into that man’s mouth.
 
“Where are they?” he asked.
 
“What the fuck did you do with those
children?”

But the man shook his head.
 
“I don’t know about any children,” he
said.
 
“I don’t know about. . . Help
me.
 
Don’t let me die like this!”

“What about Reno?” Sal asked.
 
“Where’s Reno?”
 
The longer he was asked questions, the more
hope a dying man usually felt.
 
It was a
false hope.
 
But when clinging to life
any kind of way they could, even false hope was hope.
 
“Where’s Reno Gabrini?” Sal asked again.

“They took him,” the man said.

Sal suddenly felt some hope too.
 
“Where?”

“Bridge.”

“What bridge, motherfucker?”

“To nowhere.”

Sal frowned.
 
“Where the fuck is that?”

“Off Palmer Road.
 
Near the Graze.”

Sal remembered.
 
The bridge that was too expensive to finish, on a backroad that nobody
traveled.

Sal ran back into the house, told Trina he had a
lead.
 
She was going to stay with Jimmy,
as he knew she would.
  
But she warned
him.
 
“Don’t bring your ass back without
them,” she said to Sal.

Sal took off.
 
That went without saying to him.
 
He phoned his men, told them where to meet him, shot that dying man
through the forehead to make sure his ass was dead, and then jumped into his
car.
 
No stones could be left unturned in
his line of work.
 
That was especially
true today, as all they seemed to be stumbling into were stones.

Sal in his Porsche, and a car load of his men
driving up behind him, were approaching the bridge to nowhere just after Sophie
and then Reno fell in.
 
Pechetti and
Rawls began shooting at him as they raced toward the van.
 
Iceman had already gotten away in the SUV.
 
But Sal and his men arrived and jumped out of
their cars.
 
Sal removed his shoes and
jumped into the river just as his men immediately took out Mike Rawls, who was
at the back of the closed van.
 
But
Pechetti and McCumberland, who were running toward the van as their getaway,
moved in front of the van after Rawls was shot down, and traded gunfire with
Sal’s men.
  
Sal’s men took cover behind
the van and a gunfight ensued.
 

But Sal was jumping in the river.
 
He was going to find Sophie, and Reno, if it
was the last thing he did on the face of this earth!

And he found them.
 
Reno had incredibly made it over to his daughter, even with bound hands
and feet, as he was swimming like a mermaid, but he was having trouble hoisting
her up.
 
Sal grabbed her, and then Reno,
and hoisted up both of them.

When they cleared the water and was able to suck in
air, Sal pulled them to terra ferma under the bridge.
 
Reno was fine, but Sophie had taken in too
much water.
 
Sal had to pump her.
 
Reno tried to help, but his hands were
tied.
 
When she came too, he and Reno
both sighed relief.

“What about Dommi?” Sal asked.

“I didn’t see him,” Reno said, still unable to
regulate his own breathing, still attempting to pull Sophie into his bound
hands.
 
“I didn’t see him!”

“Van,” Sophie said, as she looked at her daddy, and
at Uncle Sal.

Sal didn’t wait to ask more questions. There was no
time.
 
He, instead, left their side, left
her in her father’s hands, and made his way up the incline to the top of the
bridge where the gunfight was still hot and heavy.
 
He checked to make sure he was still
packing.
 
He was.
 
And he took off.

But Sal didn’t go up the front way.
 
He didn’t climb back up in friendly
territory.
 
He climbed up the backway, in
enemy territory.
 
Right behind Pechetti
and McCumberland as they battled it out, shot for shot, with Sal’s men.
 
But Sal didn’t hesitate.
 
He didn’t call them out, he didn’t try to see
if he was faster on the draw.
 
He
executed them.
 
He shot one, then the
second one, without batting an eye.
 
When
they kidnapped and then threw little Sophie into that water, they’d already
proven what kind of perverted fucks they were.
 
He didn’t need any more proof.

His men saw what he had done, and held their
fire.
 
It was over now as far as they
were concerned.
 
But it wasn’t over to
Sal.
 
Dommi was still missing.
 
Sophie had said van.
 
Sal hurried in that direction.

“What about Reno?” one of his men asked as he walked
past them.

“What about the little girl?” asked another
one.
 
They seemed as concerned as Sal
was.

“They’re okay,” Sal said.
 
“You and you, get beneath the bridge,” he
ordered.
 
“Shoot those chains off Reno,
and call 911.”

Two of his men hurried down to do as they were told.

But Sal went to the back of the van, and motioned
his remaining two men to take cover on the opposite side.
 
They did, with guns drawn.
 
And then Sal snatched open the back door of
the van.
 
It flew open, and Sal and his
men aimed.

Dommi was inside, hogged tied with tape over his
mouth.
 
Sal smiled.
 
Even the kidnappers got tired of him and his
mouth.
 
Sal removed the tape.

“Get Daddy and my baby sister,” Dommi urged.
 
“Get them now!
 
I’ll kick everybody’s ass if you let anything
bad happen to either one of them!”

Sal’s men laughed.
 
But Sal failed to see the humor.
 
He stood there, looking at Little Reno.
 
“Oh, yeah?” he asked Dommi.

Dommi’s heart dropped when he realized who he was
talking to.
 
“Everybody but you, Uncle
Sal,” he clarified.

But Sal still couldn’t enjoy the moment.
 
Jimmy was on his mind.
 
As he pulled out his cell phone to call
Trina, he knew Reno and Dommi had no clue about the full extent of what actually
went down.
 
And the fact that Iceman
Nelson got away was a twist of that knife too.
 
This shit wasn’t over by a long shot.