“Whatmore? As if you give anything at all!”
“I forgotgotdammit!”
“Okay you forgot. But now you know. So let’s go.”
Reno leaned his head back. “You know I can’t leave right now.”
“Why not?”
“I’m monitoring a big steal, okay? Those motherfuckers--”
“I don’t even wanna hear it! Every time I turn around you declare you wanna do right by me, you’re gonna change, I don’t have to worry about going into the arms of another man because no man will ever do me better than you do me.”
“And that’s the truth!”
“That’s bullshit!” Trina yelled. “And I’m tired of, Reno.” She looked him dead in the eyes. “I’ve had it up to here, Reno!” She demonstrated whereherewas by lifting her hand so far above her head that she could feel the strain in her muscles. And then she walked out of the room, slamming the door behind her.
Reno hurried to the door and angrily opened it. It was his intention to grab Trina back into that room and tell her a thing or two. Who did she think she was talking to that way? But Security whispered in his ears. “They’re up to a million, Boss. Is it a go?”
Reno exhaled as he watched Trina hurry out of the casino. That work/play balance had eluded him all his life. It was more a work/work balance for him. Now it was catching up to him big time. But even then he knew Trina was all talk. She would never leave him.
But was she flirting with the idea by renewing contact with her ex-lover?
No, he decided. But was he deciding that because he needed to remain at the casino to handle those thieves, or because he truly believed that?
Either way, he knew he had to stay. “Do we know their calculations yet?” he asked Security as he headed back toward his perch.
“No sir,” Security responded.
“Then it’s a no-go,” said Reno. He tried to call Trina as he made his way back to his perch, but she didn’t answer him.
But that was on purpose. Trina was too angry to answer his call. But less than an hour later, after driving to the restaurant alone to meet up with Sal and Gemma for dinner, she would get a text from Von to meet her at the motel. The blackmailers, he said in his text, had contacted him again.
She hurriedly left a perplexed Sal and Gemma and arrived at that motel. Nearly three hours after meeting up with Von, and after they discussed over and over how she was going to respond to those blackmailers, all hell suddenly broke loose.
A truck would drive through the front of the motel room, tearing down the entire front wall.
Gunmen would hop out and shoot Von repeatedly, and then they would turn their weapons on Trina.
And that secret she tried with all she had to keep buried for the rest of her life, revealing it to no one in the family, not even Reno, would be exposed in spectacular fashion.
CHAPTER TWENTY
When Reno went upstairs at the penthouse and was told by Carmine and then by Sophia that Trina had not made it back from dinner with Sal and Gemma that night, he pulled up the GPS he had on her car and discovered that she was parked at Motel 8, a seedy motel on a rough side of town.
Shocked that his wife would be in that particular area, and at night, he hopped in his Porsche and sped in and out of lanes like the wild man he could be. But when he arrived at the motel and saw the yellow tape and all of the sirens still twirling on the various first responder vehicles, and then he saw the gaping hole through the front of the motel as if a Mack truck had driven straight through it, his heart dropped through his shoe. He couldn’t get out of his car fast enough. He was praying that it wasn’t Trina. Let it not be Trina. Let it all be some big mistake!
It wasn’t Trina at first. He saw a black man being rolled out on a gurney and put into one of the ambulances. When he hurried up to the tape, he could see it was Javon Douglas. Trina’s ex-lover. From the way they were rushing him into that ambulance and not hesitating to stabilize him, Reno knew he was in bad shape.
But he was still hopeful that somehow Trina wasn’t there. That seeing Javon was some kind of twisted coincidence.
But when he looked around and saw Trina’s Bentley, he knew it was no fluke. And as soon as he saw her vehicle, he then saw another gurney hurrying out of that badly damaged motel room. This time, a black woman was on the gurney. And that was when he knew it was Trina. His heart sank.
As soon as he saw Trina, he tore that yellow tape in two and began running toward her. But the cops tried to stop him. “That’s my wife,” he yelled angrily as two cops grabbed him. “That’s my wife!”
But they wouldn’t let him go. And he wasn’t about to stay away from her. That was why he violently tossed one of those young cops away from him, and then pushed the second one, as he tore away from them and ran to that gurney.
When both cops got up and tried to run after him again, the detective in charge on the scene hurriedly motioned for them to stand down. They may not have realized it, but that detective knew they had Katrina Gabrini on that gurney, and the man running to her side was none other than Reno Gabrini, the most powerful man in Vegas and the owner of the PaLargio Hotel and Casino on the Strip. He wasn’t taking any blowback from brass if they actually did their jobs and restrained Gabrini. He ordered those zealous cops tonotdo their jobs and let it be.
