Page 21 of Trina Gabrini: Bring Him Back Home to Me

But Trina kept moving right along with him. “Reno? Reno?!”

“Daddy, what are you doing?” Sophia pleaded with him. “Where are you going?”

When Reno said nothing to his own daughter and was about to exit the penthouse, Trina grabbed him by the arm and turned him toward her again. But this time she was demanding an answer. “Tell me what’s happening, Reno? Now I mean it!”

Reno looked her dead in her eyes. “I want a divorce,” he said to her. “That’s what’s happening.”

Trina was so floored that her grip on him immediately loosened. There was an audible grasp from their children. Sal, who standing at the top of the stairs, could not believe it either.

But Reno couldn’t even look at any of them. His eyes stayed on Trina, the strongest person he’d ever known. He could see her crumbling before his very eyes.

Her beautiful face was a mask of anguish. “What are you talking about, Reno?” she asked him. “We haven’t discussed a divorce!”

“Yes we have. It’s all we discuss every single argument we have every single day. The word may not be used. But that’s what it is. You want out. I want out. I’m making it happen.”

It wasn’t a test. She saw it in his eyes. He meant every word. She was so hurt, and so scared, that she lashed right back at him. “Is there a woman involved?” she asked him pointblank.

He continued to stare in her eyes. And he was as direct as she was. “Isn’t it always?” he said to her as if he needed her to hate him. He needed her to put the blame all on him. Because that was where it belonged.

He stared at her. Wanted to stare at his children, too, but couldn’t. And then he left.

But a feeling came over Trina when he walked out that door that walloped her. It felt as if he was taking her heart with him. And she couldn’t bear it.

“Reno!” she cried out as she ran out of that penthouse behind him. The children ran behind them. Sal continued to stand at the top of the stairs. What they feared most was upon them. And he could hardly take it himself.

Out in the corridor, as Reno hurried to the penthouse elevator, nobody could take it. Especially Trina. “Reno, come back. What are you doing? Nobody wants a divorce. Reno? Reno? Reno, come back to me!”

Jimmy and Dom had to hold a hysterical Trina back as it was obvious Reno was not coming back.

Sophia was crying too. She couldn’t bear to see her mother in such agony. But Dom was angry. “Let him go, Ma. What are you doing? Don’t beg him. He wanna go, let him go!”

But Dom wasn’t as angry as Carmine. Because Carmine ran up to that elevator and began hitting his father so hard that it prevented Reno from pressing the elevator button. Reno had to lift his arms to prevent his son from breaking his jaw, that was the kind of punch Carmine was packing.

“Why do you keep hurting our mother?” he was crying and yelling at his father. “What kind of man are you? How could you do this to her? How could you do this to us?!”

Jimmy had to leave Trina in Dommi’s hands and hurry to pull Carmine off of their father. Reno didn’t fight back. He could have flattened Carmine and they all knew it. But he pressed the button, instead, and the elevator doors opened.

“How could you?” Carmine was still crying out as Jimmy held him back and as Reno stood on that elevator inwardly begging for the doors to close. “How could you?” he yelled at him again.

The security detail that was always present outside of the penthouse were in shock too. They’d never seen the family in this level of disrepair.

But the family didn’t care what they saw. And Trina didn’t care most of all. Dommi told her not to beg. But she was begging. “Reno, please don’t go,” she was crying out.

She used to be so big and bad. She used to insist she would leave Reno at the drop of a hat if he kept disappointing her. But now that he was leaving her, she couldn’t take it. “Reno, what are you doing?” She was falling to her knees with her two sons holding her up. “Reno? Reno? Reno?!”

But Reno stood there as if his mind was made up and there was nothing she could do about it, as the elevator doors closed him in, and kept her out.

“Renooooo!” Trina cried out on her knees. It was the kind of pain that ached to her soul.

What was he doing? How could this be? It was like a nightmare that she couldn’t wake up from. Her heart wasn’t broken. It was decimated. She’d never felt pain like this before. And it was so out of nowhere that it mystified her. And she couldn’t let it stand.

“Let me go!” she yelled at Dom, snatched away from him, and then got up and ran to that elevator. She pressed the button repeatedly, the doors eventually opened, and she hurried on.

Jimmy, terrified for Trina, gave Carmine to Dommi and hopped on that elevator with her.

Her other children tried to get on that elevator with her too, but Sal, whom they didn’t even realize had come back downstairs, stopped them. “Dominic, you, Sophia, and Carmine come inside. Jimmy’s got her.”

They wanted to defy Sal’s orders and be with their mother. But there were three men in the Gabrini family they knew they could never defy: Their father, their Uncle Tommy, and their Uncle Sal.