But it was Reno who restrained himself when he saw the condition Trina was in. He stopped in his tracks when he saw her. She was hooked up to oxygen. There were tubes and drips. Blood was everywhere.
“Trina?” It was as if he couldn’t believe it.Is that you? he wanted to ask. But he knew it was her. He was looking right at her.
And those paramedics weren’t playing around. They rushed her into that ambulance and continued working feverishly on her. The detective in charge expected Reno to try and get inside of that ambulance with his wife, which he knew he couldn’t allow, but Reno didn’t even try it.
He just stood there as if he was in a state of disbelief. As if this couldn’t be his wife. As if he was in the middle of a deadly fever that he knew was going to break. And even when thedetective asked him a question, he was so feverish that he didn’t hear him.
“Sir?Mr. Gabrini?”
The detective had to touch Reno for Reno to realize he was standing beside him and talking to him. Reno looked at him.
“Did your wife have a security detail with her, sir?”
It was only then, when he mentioned her security detail, did Reno snap out of his stupor. “Security?” Then he remembered. Where were his guys? “Yes,” he said. “Matter of fact she did.”
“A team of four men, sir?”
How would that cop know how many? “That’s right. Why are you asking me that?”
“We found their car, with them inside, about two miles north of this motel. They were shot to death, all of them, and then driven to another location.”
That sounded like mob shit to Reno. But why would they be targeting Trina? Did it have something to do with Dommi’s kidnapping? Was Rats Scorvino involved like Lolo claimed? What the fuck was going on?
But it was Trina that Reno was focused on. “What happened to my wife?”
He asked with such an anguished look on his face that even the detective, who was convinced, without any solid proof, that those Gabrinis and Sinatras were more mob-related than they would ever claim to be, felt sorry for the guy. “A big, fortified Ram truck drove straight through that motel room where your wife and a male black were holed up. According to witnesses, there were at least three men in that truck, and they shot them both. Repeatedly,” he added. “And then they backed out and took off.”
“What do you mean by holed up?” Reno asked. Was that asshole implying that Trina was in that motel room having sex with Javon Douglas?
“According to the manager,” the detective said delicately, “this wasn’t the first time the couple stayed in that room at this motel, sir.”
Reno’s jaw tightened. He wanted to kick his ass right then and there because he knew that shit couldn’t be true. Trina wouldn’t do that to him. She wouldn’t!
But when he looked at Trina, and saw the condition she was in, he didn’t give two shits about that cop. Or even why Tree was in that motel room to begin with. He just wanted her to live. He just wanted her to be okay.
“We’re on our way to the hospital now, sir,” the paramedic said as he closed the back of the ambulance, leaving his partner inside still working feverishly on Trina, and then he hopped onto the front driver seat ready to go.
Reno ran to his Porsche even as the detective was asking him another question, hopped in, and took off behind that ambulance as if speed limits meant nothing to him either.
But he could hardly see in front of him for the tears.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
As Reno sat straight back in the private waiting room, with his face appearing zombie-like because he seemed so zoned out, Sal Gabrini was in a state of near-rage. On his phone and pacing the floor, he was chewing out his underboss for making half-ass moves he didn’t tell him to make. “I don’t give a flying fuck what they’re working on,” he yelled into the phone. “I don’t care where they’re located across this entire country. I want every single one of my men on this particular matter and nothing else. I want them pounding pavements. I want them working the phones. I want every single one of those usual suspect motherfuckers lined up and interrogated like we’re the fucking police! Do you hear me, Robby? No stones unturned. None!”
As Sal continued to scream his point to Robby Yale on the other end of that phone call, the door to the waiting room opened, prompting Reno and Sal to look in that direction. But it wasn’t the doctors coming in. Or even a nurse. It was Jimmy walking in with Sophia and Carmine at his side.
When they saw their father, Sophia and her baby brother ran to him. Both of them were crying. Both of them were terrified.
When Reno saw his two youngest children running to him, he opened his arms and grabbed them both, one on either side of him, and held them tightly. He knew the news of their mother’s shooting had devastated them. He knew what they were going through.
He looked at Jimmy. Though Jimmy was playing the role of big brother and doing all he could to keep it together for his younger siblings’ sakes, Reno could see the agony in his eyes. Jimmy was devastated as well.
Sal saw it too. “I’ll call you back,” he said to Robby and ended the call. And while Reno comforted Soph and Carmine, Sal went to Jimmy and hugged him. Which Reno appreciated. Because that was the hardest part for Reno: Knowing that his children had to go through this hellishness too. Jimmy wasn’t Trina’s biological son, but he loved his stepmother dearly. They were like best friends. Reno knew James was hurting just as badly as Sophia and Carmine were.
Although Jimmy was closer to Sal’s big brother Tommy now because he worked for Tommy, there was a time when Sal and Jimmy were thick as thieves. And they still remained close. As Sal held his nephew, he was fighting back tears just like Reno was. He couldn’t believe it when Reno called him. And when he heard it in more salacious details on CNN during his drive to the hospital, with them making a point of saying how Reno Gabrini’s wife was in some seedy motel room with another dude, and how they both were shot multiple times, it just made no sense.
And that damn hospital staff was lame too, if you asked Sal. They came in often enough with updates alright. But it was all the same: she’s still in surgery. That was all they said. That was all they knew. And that was the hardest part of all. The not knowing if she was going to pull through made a horrible situation that much worse.
