Trina still could not believe it. Dommi was a mob boss? Ever since he was a kid, she knew it would come to that. But when he left Mick and went into law enforcement, she thought it was surely out of his system. She thought his sudden need to want to talk to Reno had more to do with his breakup with Mariah again than with anything mob-related. And it had nothing to do with what she was going through either?
She still wasn’t convinced. She had to hear what this Lolo Arvanatti had to say before she would ever be convinced that her son being kidnapped at the same time she was being extorted was just a random coincidence. In her world, coincidences rarely ever happened.
Although she was praying, for Dommi’s sake, that it happened this time.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The three SUVs drove up to a boarded-up strip mall on the outskirts of Vegas. Reno, Trina, Sal and Robby got out of the middle SUV, while Kasi Arvanatti got out of the third SUV. Then she escorted them across the sidewalk to the last door. A guard from inside unlocked the door and they, along with Sal’s capos, were allowed passage in.
The guard locked the door back and they made their way down a small corridor that led to an inner office. Lolo Arvanatti, a big man in his seventies, was standing in the empty room with a cane for support, and the man Reno and Sal knew as the underboss for the Arvanatti syndicate was standing beside him with six of their capos standing behind them. Kasi moved over against the wall. By all accounts, she was her father’s consigliere. She stayed out of the fray.
Sal had eight capos with him in total, along with Robby Yale. Because the code of conduct made clear that whenever there was a meeting at the bosses level each boss was required to have the same amount of backup with them, Sal ordered two of his capos to wait outside. Then Reno, Trina, and Sal, along with Sal’s capos standing behind them, walked over and stood in front of Lolo and his crew.
“It’s been a long time Reno,” said Lolo. “How you doing, Sal? I didn’t know you were gonna bring your wife, Reno.”
But Reno wasn’t interested in niceties. “How the fuck you gonna let my son become the boss of your organization and not bother to tell me, Lolo?”
“What are you talking? He’s a grown man, Reno.”
“Don’t give me that shit. You recruited his ass. You took advantage of my name and recruited his ass.”
But Trina didn’t care how or why. She just wanted her son back. “Where is he?” she asked Lolo. “Do you know where he is?”
“We know who snatched him,” Lolo said. “And we know where to find him. But there’s a problem.”
“What’s the problem?” asked Sal.
“We don’t have the firepower to get in there.”
Reno frowned. “In where?”
Lolo stood erect as if he knew he was about to say something monumental. “Fort Knots,” he said.
Trina frowned. “Fort Knox? The place where they keep the money?”
“No, Tree, no,” said Sal. “Not k-n-o-x, but k-n-o-t-s. It’s a conglomerate of what they callmoney mobsters. Businessmen. Celebrities. People like that. They’re giants in the corporate or entertainment worlds, but they’re wimps in the mob world and need protection. They arenots. Hence the term FortKnots. A billion dollars gets you a gold pass in and the illuminati, whomever they are, will protect you from enemies foreign and domestic. It’s not a brick and mortal place. It’s unmatched firepower should one of their members need assistance. It fortifies them.”
“And you’re telling me,” Reno said to Lolo, “that Rats Scorvino is in Fort Knots?”
“That’s what I’m telling you.”
“And you’re telling me agotdamn lie,” said Reno. “How the hell that motherfucker gonna afford a billion-dollar entrance fee? He ain’t even as big as your small-ass organization.”
“I don’t know how he did it, but he did it. And that’s who has Dominic.”
“How do you know that for certain?” asked Sal. “Did they contact you?”
“They contacted me,” said Kasi, and everybody looked at her. “They told me they broke into his house in Mississippi, took out our two capos that live with him, and then they took him with them. The only reason we found out right away was that Dominic’s girlfriend was hiding at the residence when it all went down.”
His girlfriend, Reno thought. He had a woman that wasn’t Mariah? He had no idea about his own son’s life! He exhaled. This was too much!
Trina was beside herself with anguish too. “What are we going to do, Reno, if it’s not a physical location? Is it possible to just show up and snatch him back?”
“You go anywhere near the members of Fort Knots,” said Sal, “and they will have a dragnet on your ass. We may snatch him back, but not for long. You can consider yourself dead, and your whole family, if you even try it.”
Trina looked at Reno. Reno opened his now-well-worn suit coat, placed his hands on his hips, and let out a disgusted exhale.
“What are we gonna do, Reno?”
