Reno Gabrini: A Family Affair (9 page)

To Jimmy’s great relief, his father did not return to
the office.
 
He knew he probably was
emotionally spent after that craziness with Dom, but he never thought he’d
leave at midday and never return.
 
And
although Reno’s staff didn’t leave until well after midnight, it was still far
earlier than Reno’s super-late, sometimes all-night work hours.
 
Which gave Jimmy enormous hope.
 
By the time the elevator doors opened on the
floor of his father’s suite of offices, it was just after one am.
 
Everybody had gone.

Jimmy’s heart was pounding nonetheless as he put in
the combination code and opened his father’s office door, quickly entering and
closing it back.
 
Then he walked over to
the side wall, pressed a button behind the bust of Beethoven that sat on a side
table, causing the wall to open and a safe to be revealed.

Jimmy had the combination, not because his father
had given it to him, but because he had seen his father open that safe a
hundred times and he memorized it.
 
And
when he opened the safe, and saw the cash his father kept inside, his heart
squeezed in anxiety.
 
Jimmy had never
stolen a dime from his father.
 
Not one
red cent!
 
He wasn’t raised to steal from
anybody.
 
Now he was about to steal two
hundred thousand dollars from the man he most loved, feared, and respected in
this whole world?
 
His hand was shaking,
when he opened his garbage bag, and reached in.

But after he filled the bag, closed it up, and was
about to close the door of the safe, he could hear somebody inputting the code
to open his father’s office door.
 
His
heart fell through his shoe.
 
If his
father caught him he was a dead man.
 
He
knew it.
  
And he held the evidence of
his crime right in his hands!
 
So he
dropped the bag in the area behind the wall, stepped out, and quickly pressed
the button behind the bust of Beethoven again.
 
The wall closed within a millisecond of the office door opening.
 
When he saw that it was Quinn, he was too
relieved to even realize how odd it was that she should be there too.

“Jimmy?” she asked, as if it was his presence in his
own father’s office that demanded explanation.
 
“What are you doing here?”

It was that accusatory look she gave him, as she
approached him, that woke him up.
 
He
knew Quinn.
 
He knew what kind of games
she played with people.
 
“You’re asking
the wrong question,” he said.
 
“What are
you
doing here is the question?”

She lifted a stack of papers in her hand.
 
“I am your father’s assistant.”

“One of them, yes,” Jimmy noted.
 
She was once his father’s senior executive
assistant.
 
But not anymore.
 

“I’m also the one he asked to get signatures on
these contracts,” she continued.
 
“I was
going to leave them on his desk.
 
Now
what’s your excuse?”

“My reasoning is none of your business,” Jimmy
responded.

Quinn was offended, but she smiled.
 
“Good for you, Jimmy Mack.
 
Getting all tough.”
 
Then she remembered the time she and Jimmy
Mack used to hook up, and how good he used to put it on her.
 
She looked down, between his legs.

“What are you waiting for?” he asked. “Put the
contracts on his desk and beat it.”

Quinn began walking toward the desk.
 
“You know,” she said as she walked, “there’s
no-one up here but you and me.”

Jimmy frowned.
 
“And?”

“And,” she said, as she walked around to the side of
the messy desk and placed the contracts on top of another stack of files.
 
Then she sat on the edge of the desk, facing
Jimmy, and reached beneath her skirt.
 
“We won’t be heard.”

Jimmy’s mouth began to water as she pulled down her
panties.

“You can do me as rough as you like,” she said, “and
nobody will ever hear.”

She slipped one leg of her panties off of her
stiletto shoe, and opened both legs wide.

“So come on, Jimmy Mack, you know you want it.”

Jimmy’s heart was pounding.
 
He wanted it alright.

“You can eat it,” she suggested, “if you’re afraid
to fuck it.”

 
He was
already in trouble.
 
He was already skating
on thin ice with everybody.
 
Hell, he was
about to steal two hundred grand from his own father because he was being
blackmailed for his messed up behavior!
 
What difference would a quick fuck make?
 
What difference would a little taste make?

Quinn smiled her best reptilian smile.
 
He went for it, as she knew he would.
 
He went to her, got down on his knees, and
was about to lick his ass off.
 
But he
smelled it.
 
And it was foul.
 
It was nothing like that fresh smell he had
grown accustomed to with Val.
 
And then
he thought about Val.
 
And their precious
baby.
 
And here he was about to betray
them both and throw his vows, his loyalty, his devotion to his family straight
into the ocean.
 
And for what?
 
A fuck with Quinn Chan?
 
A fuck with a woman he could hardly
stand?
 
And she was stank on top of
it?
 
He got off his knees.

“No thanks,” he said.
 
“Now beat it.”

Quinn was stunned by his reaction.
 
“What?” she asked.
 
“No?
 
Are you dumb?
 
No other man has
ever turned me down!”

“My father did, I’ll bet you that.”

He didn’t, because Quinn never had the nerve to go
there with Reno, but that was for her to know.
 
“Ha,” she said as she pulled back up her panties.
 
“That’s what
you
think.”

Jimmy stared at her when she said that.
 
He knew his father had a reputation around
Vegas as a ladies man, but he knew him too well. He would never cheat on Trina
with a woman who worked at the PaLargio.
 
Jimmy knew he would never hurt Trina that way.
 
He couldn’t say his father never cheated at
all.
 
There were too many rumors for him
to be that certain.
 
But he could say
without question that his father never cheated with Quinn.
 
“Quit lying,” he said to her.
 
“Just take your stank ass on out of my
father’s office.”

“Yeah, whatever, Jimmy,” Quinn said as she began
walking out.
 
“There was a time you used
to like it.
 
You couldn’t get enough of
it, in fact.
 
Wonder how Reno would feel
if he found out?”

“Same way he would feel if I told him what you just
said about him.
 
The cheating part?”

Quinn stopped and looked at Jimmy.
 
“You wouldn’t.”

“Oh, but I would.
 
He may be angry with me, but he’ll fire your ass.
 
So I think you need to cool it with the
telling.”

Quinn knew it too.
 
She smiled.
 
“I was just playing
anyway.
 
Me with your father?
 
No way.
 
I don’t mess with men I work with.”

“You don’t work
with
him, you work
for
him.
 
And everybody with half a brain knows you
sleep with anything moving.
 
Some of
which has already crawled up inside of you and died.
 
Just leave please.”

Quinn was embarrassed.
 
She hated some jumpstart like Jimmy to best
her at anything.
 
But she had to stay
focused.
 
He was going to get his.
 
She smiled anyway, and left.

When she was gone, Jimmy sighed relief.
 
But he knew Quinn.
 
He had to make sure.
 
He walked up to the door, and quickly opened
it.
 
Sure enough, Quinn was leaning
against it and trying to listen so hard that she nearly fell when the door
opened.
 
When she straightened up, Jimmy
watched her as she stood erect, got on the elevator, and left.

When she was completely gone, he hurried back into
the office, closing the door behind him.
 
Then he hurried back to Beethoven, pressed the button behind the bust
for the wall to slide open, and then grabbed his loot-filled garbage bag and
left.
 
He still had an apartment inside
the PaLargio, the one his father gave to him before he got married.
 
He would make his way there.
 
He would put the money in a briefcase, and,
later in the day, call that number.
 
The
meeting would be set in broad daylight, in a place of his choosing.
 
He’d call his Uncle Sal and see if he could
“borrow” a couple of his men.
 
Unlike his
father, he knew Sal would say yes without asking why.
 
He’d just tell him to be careful and then
give him not a couple, but four or five of his best men.
 
The blackmailer would get the money, but then
Sal’s men would follow him, beat him down into submission and dare him to try
to blackmail Jimmy again, and then give the money back to Jimmy.
 
And Jimmy would return it without his father
ever knowing it was missing.
 
Jimmy was a
man with a plan.

But the next morning, when his father checked his
security cameras, that plan, like Dommi’s plan before his, flew out of the
window too.

“Mommy?
 
Mommy?”

Trina looked at her high maintenance son.
 
They were in the dining room of the
Palargio’s penthouse, having breakfast.
 
Trina, Sophie, and Dom.
 
And Dom
was being Dom.
 
“What?” Trina asked.

“May I have another toast, please?”

“No, you may not.
 
Finish eating what you have.”

“But I don’t have any more toast.”

“I’m not playing with you, boy,” Trina warned
him.
 
“Finish your breakfast.”

“He’s got food and want more food,” Sophia said to
her mother.
 
“He’s greedy.”

“You’re greedy!” Dom shot back.

Trina shot a look at him.
 
“Don’t make me get out of this chair.
 
You hear me?”

Dom frowned.
 
“I’m sorry,” he said.
 
“But she
gets on my last nerve, Mommy.”

Trina couldn’t help but smile.
 
“What do you know about last nerves?
 
Just eat.”

Dommi smiled, too, when he saw his mother smile, and
began eating his breakfast more vigorously.
   

But when his father entered the dining room, fully
dressed in his pristine suit and tie, his energy slowed again.
 
Trina looked at him.
 
That wasn’t like Dommi.
 
He usually ran to his father whenever he came
down for breakfast.
 
Which was usually
long after the rest of them.

But Sophia ran to him.
 
“Daddy!” she said happily, as she jumped from
the table.
 

Reno was still drained from the day before, and was
barely awake, but he managed to lift her into his arms.
 
“Hello, Princess,” he said, as he began carrying
her to the table.

“Good morning, Daddy,” she said.
 
“You’re late for breakfast.”

Reno went over to Trina, and they kissed on the
lips.
 
As usual, he wanted to linger in
his kiss.
 
But he didn’t.
 
He sat down, with Sophia on his lap, at the
head of the table.

“I’ll get your plate,” Trina said as she got up and
headed for the kitchen.

Reno looked at Dom.
 
He was a little disappointed that his son didn’t run to greet him the
way he usually did.
 
“Good morning, Road
Runner,” he said.

“Beep, beep,” Sophia said.

“Plan on being fast and furious today too?”
 
Reno asked.
 
“Plan on stealing any more cars today?
 
Plan on cruising the Strip today?”