Reno's Gift (Mob Boss Series) (18 page)

And
Belle’s big blue eyes moved back to Reno’s.
 
She couldn’t take her eyes off of Reno.
 
She remembered how he used to fuck her so hard she could barely walk for
hours after he finished.
 
He gave her the
best she ever had.
 
Now he was within
inches of her again.
 
And she knew she
had to play this right.
 
Reno was a smart
man.
 
One false move and he would smell a
rat.
 
She therefore walked slowly and
with great dignity down those stairs.
 
She wasn’t about to rush this monumental moment.

“Oh,
there she is,” Connor said as he was the first to see her.
 
Reno and Trina looked up the staircase
too.
 

Trina
was startled when she saw her.
 
She was
the same woman who had visited the boutique and asked about Reno.
 
And she was here now?
 
Why?
 
Did she work for the mayor?
 
Was
she the mayor’s girlfriend?
 
Trina was
astounded by her presence.
 
She looked at
Reno.
 
Did he really know her as the
woman had suggested he did?
 
But Reno,
Trina noticed, didn’t look her way.
 
He
was too busy staring up those stairs.

Reno
was staring because he was floored when he saw Belle.
 
He suspected the mayor would have himself a
gorgeous piece of eye candy at the dinner party, but he had no idea the eye
candy would be Belle!
 
What the fuck was
going on here?
 
He’d licked the shit out
of this candy before.
 
Many times before.
 
And now the mayor was about to introduce her
to them as if she was some new pair of shoes he couldn’t wait to show off.
 
When Reno not only had worn those shoes
before, but had worn them out and discarded them.

“Belle,
darling,” Connor said as he took her by the hand and helped her walk down the
last stair.
 
“Let me introduce you to my
friends.”

Trina
wanted to smile.
 
She’d only just met the
mayor, yet they were already friends.
 
That was why, in a lot of ways, she hated politics.
 

“This
is Karena,” he said.

“Katrina,”
Katrina said, correcting the mayor.
 
She
extended her hand to Belle. “Nice to meet you, Belle.”
 
Trina was going to see if she would
acknowledge their earlier encounter.

“Nice
to meet you too,” Belle said, shaking Trina’s hand.
 
She did not.

“And
this is Dominic Gabrini,” the mayor said.
 
“But we call him Reno.”

Even
Belle had to smile at that.
 
She extended
her hand to Reno.
 
“Hello, Reno.
 
If I may call you that.”

Reno
shook her hand cautiously.
 
What in the
world was she playing at, he wondered.
 
“Nice to know you,” he said.
 

Trina
glanced at her husband.
 
It was obvious
that they had some kind of connection and that he recognized her, but he was
going along with the charade too.
 
That
disturbed her.

“Come
on, folks, let’s have a seat,” the mayor said as he escorted them into the
living area.
 
And they all sat around and
small-talked.
 

Trina,
however, spoke the least.
 
She was too
busy studying Belle.
 
Who was she, Trina
wondered, and why did she come into her store without acknowledging who she
was?
  
And the way she was making no
bones about staring at Reno, smiling at him, laughing uncommonly hard at his
lame jokes.
 
She was behaving like some
mean girl from high school, and was rubbing it in.

But
it wasn’t her behavior that concerned Trina.
 
Reno had a long trail of ex-girlfriends in Vegas who ran into him and
attempted to pretend she wasn’t by his side or had any connection to him
whatsoever.
 
But every single time Reno
would set them straight.
 
“This is my
wife Katrina,” was his usual line.
 
And
he’d include her in all conversation and make sure those skanks knew who they
were dealing with.

But
this skank wasn’t even acknowledged as a former skank of his.
 
He, in fact, was all but ignoring her as he
and the mayor and Belle talked politics and sports.
 
But after dinner, when the mayor pulled Trina
aside to show her some African art he had collected from his travels, as if she
would automatically be interested in such a collection, she was certain then
that something different was up.
 
Because
Belle and Reno went a room off from the living area, and closed the door.

As
soon as the door closed into the library where Belle had asked him to follow
her, Reno wanted to know what in the world was going on.

“I
know you’re surprised.”

“That
would be a fair conclusion,” he said.
 
“So what’s the deal?
 
Since when
have you been all tight with Connor Rigby?”

“Ah,
he’s nobody.
 
Barely a friend.
 
A lover, yes, but barely a friend.
 
He agreed to do me this favor.”

“What
favor?”

“Invite
you over so that I could meet with you in a place I knew would be out of
Bruno’s reach.”

Reno
frowned.
 
“Bruno Lucci?
 
What the fuck kind of reach would he have?”

“And
that’s exactly why I felt I had to come here personally.
 
You’re one of my oldest friends, Reno, and I
wanted to make sure you understood the danger.
 
Because you’re doing exactly what I knew you would do.”

“And
what is that?”

“You’re
underestimating him, Reno.
 
You’re
assuming the Bruno Lucci you put away a decade ago is the same Bruno Lucci
today.
 
But he’s not.
 
He created a syndicate in prison during that
decade, a syndicate of very loyal men, and now he has a long and powerful
reach.”

Reno
found this hard to believe.
 
He just
couldn’t imagine how Bruno Lucci could have transformed so much that he now had
a reach that could touch him.
 
Not that
weak, misogynist piece of shit.
 
But Reno
was no fool either.
 
In the murky world
he had to maneuver in, anything was always possible.
 
Always.

“So
what are you telling me, Belle?”

“I’m
telling you to watch your back.
 
Bruno
has designs on you.
 
When we talked in
Atlantic City, I told you he was making a little noise.
 
But now that noise is becoming music,
Reno.
 
Killer music.
 
The kind of tunes that can take you away from
here.
 
I don’t have the kind of
connections that knows the inner workings of his syndicate, but I have been
told that many Dons have signed on with him.
 
Many of them.
 
Some you wouldn’t
even expect to be in his corner.
 
But
they are.”

“Why?”
Reno asked.
 
“Because of their friendship
with the Dolph?”

“And
the fact that they believe your decision to call the cops on Brew led to the
Dolph’s heart attack, yes.
 
That has
something to do with it.
 
But it’s mainly
because they hate your guts and want a piece of you too.
 
They figure their hands can remain clean if
they let Bruno handle it.
 
Bruno Lucci is
no joke, Reno.”

“Ah,
come on, Belle,” Reno said.
 
“What could
that no-dick fucker do to me?”

Belle
hurried to Reno and placed her hand on the side of his face.
 
The sincerity in her eyes startled him.
 
“Don’t underestimate him, Reno.
 
You hear me?
 
He’s not the same man!
 
After that
castration, he changed.”

Reno
smiled.
 
“Oh, I’ll bet he did.”

But
Belle remained serious.
 
“He became
fearless, Reno.
 
He doesn’t care
anymore.
 
He’s said to have killed five
different men while he was incarcerated but had the kind of loyalty that nobody
would snitch on him.
 
He got away with it
five times.
 
All he need is one time to
get you, Reno.
 
And if that happens, I
don’t know what I’ll do.”

She
hesitated, still staring at him.
 
Then
she hugged him and placed her head on his shoulder.

Reno
was floored.
 
He pulled her into his
arms, but he didn’t know what to make of this emotional side of Belle.
 
He knew she still cared about him, just as he
still cared about her, but the idea that she would come all this way to Vegas
to warn him about some smalltime punk like Bruno was hard to fathom.
 
Could it be true and Bruno really was a high
roller now?
 
Or could it be a pack of
lies and Belle was up to no good?
 
But what
could she be up to, Reno wondered.
 
She
had more men than she could handle, so he didn’t see how it could be about
that.
 
But for Belle to be this
emotional, and this certain that he needed to watch his back, made it clear
that it was about something.

And
she was right.
 
He shouldn’t
underestimate Bruno.
 
And he wasn’t about
to.
 

But
he wasn’t about to underestimate her, either.

Later
that evening, after they said their goodbyes to the mayor and Belle Patrone,
they took a fast drive back to their temporary home in suburbia.
 
Reno stared straight ahead as he drove, as if
he was doing some heavy-duty thinking, but Trina kept looking at him.
 
She was amazed that he didn’t bring up his
encounter with Belle at all.
 
Not at
all.
 
And it angered her.
 
She wanted to tell him about his behind,
especially after he allowed the mayor to take her to see some African
collection she didn’t even care about, while he disappeared into some room with
beautiful Belle.
 
But she knew Reno would
only fight her fire with even more fire.
 
She, instead, decided to take a different course.

“She
seemed nice,” she said.

Reno
continued to stare ahead, and continued, it seemed to Trina, to be
distracted.
 
“She’s all right,” he said.

“All
right?
 
I think she’s a little more than
that.
 
She’s beautiful.
 
And she’s nice.”

“Yeah,
well, I don’t want you getting too cozy with her.”

Trina
looked at him.
 
“And why’s that?” she
asked him.

“Whatta
you mean ‘why’s that?’
 
Because I said
so,” he said and glared at her.
 
“That’s
why.”

But
Trina was shaking her head.
 
“Not good
enough, Reno.
 
Why is it that I can’t get
cozy, as you put it, with Belle?
 
Why
not?”

“Because
I know her and I want you to stay away from her.”

Trina
looked at him.
 
Finally they were getting
somewhere.
 
“You know her?”

Reno
hesitated.
 
“Yeah.”

“You
know her how?”

“Whatta
you mean how?
 
I know her.”

“What
I mean, Reno, is in what way do you know her?
 
Did she used to be your girlfriend?”

Reno
didn’t respond.

“Reno,
was she your girlfriend?”

“Girlfriend,
girlfriend,” Reno said with a hunch of his shoulder.
 
“What’s a girlfriend?
 
I fucked her.”

Trina’s
heart dropped.
 
She suspected that was the
type of relationship they had had, but it still hurt to hear.
 
“Once?” she asked him.

Reno
looked uncomfortable.
 

“More
than once?”

Reno
nodded.
 
“More than once,” he said and
glanced at her.
 
“A lot more.
 
We go way back.”