Page 32 of Trina Gabrini: Bring Him Back Home to Me

But it was the laughter of his two goons that was what Reno was after. Because as soon as they began to laugh, and before Lydia could set him straight, Reno had grabbed the gun of the man frisking him and shot his partner through the belly. The guy he’d just disarmed jumped on him, to retrieve his gun, and they both fell down onto the floor.

But even in their tussle, Reno held onto that gun, turned the goon onto his back, and then wrestled with him for control of that gun. Lydia hurried over to help her goon, but it was too late. Reno was too strong. He shot the gunman in his chest and threw him off of him.

That was when Lydia, realizing her scheme didn’t work, took off.

Reno got up to run after her, but the goon he’d just shot grabbed him by the leg and tripped him down. The gun in Reno’s hand flew out, and sailed halfway across the room. And then the other gunman, who wasn’t dead either, saw his opening and turned onto his back. He began firing at Reno.

He was misfiring because of his injury, but Reno was in a bad spot. He had to get to that gun.

But the man, whose gun it was, wasn’t allowing it. He held onto Reno’s leg even as Reno was fighting to break free, and even as Reno was being fired upon.

But there was only one answer for it. And Reno took it.

He mustered all the strength he had and hoisted the first gunman on top of him, and used him as a shield as he shimmied his body toward that gun.

As the one gunman was being shot up by the other gunman, Reno hurried for that errand gun.

But when Reno got to the gun and grabbed for it, the second gunman, who was too injured to stand, shot within a hair’s breath of Reno’s hand. Reno had to jerk his hand back, but quickly grabbed that gun with his second try and began shooting at the second gunman without skipping a beat. He unloaded on his attacker.

And Reno Gabrini didn’t miss.

He killed him in an overkill.

He emptied his chambers inside his attacker.

And then he dropped the gun and laid down. His heart was pounding instead of beating. Because he hated close calls. Because he knew he was no closer to getting the answers he needed than he had been before he met up with Lydia at that bar.

And the question still remained: How did Moose Vatelli find out about the other thing?

Why would he send Lydia to do his dirty work instead of doing it himself?

And what kind of ambush was this? Two men against Reno Gabrini? Moose would have known that would have been an unfair fight. Two men could never take Reno down.

The more he thought about it, the less it was sounding as if Moose had anything to do with this. And Lydia didn’t have the reach to be in charge.

But if not Moose, Reno wondered, then who?

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Lydia had taken off from that seedy hotel, but Reno had his tracking device on her. And that was what led him to the top floor of that abandoned warehouse across the street from that abandoned junkyard.

But Reno was as perplexed as he was exhausted as he sat at that window, with his rifle at his side, waiting for her to show her beautiful face.

This was all-consuming for him now. If Moose knew about that other thing, there was only one answer for it. Reno had to end it. He had to put an end to the Vatellis in his life if it was the last thing he did. And then, if the truth came out, he had to run and never look back.

He still remembered the way Jimmy and Dommi and Sophia and even Carmine looked at him when he said he wanted to divorce their mother. And the way Trina looked when he said that D word. Just her look alone broke his heart.

But when she found out the truth, she was going to be all for the D word and anything else that would destroy Reno forever. Getting rid of the Vatellis and everybody associated with them was the only chance he had. He had to take care of the Vatellis if he had any chance of getting his family back. And them leaving his family alone. They had to go.

And now the daughter, Moose Vatelli’s reason for living, was holed up in a shed in the middle of a junkyard. He didn’t follow her to her location. She would have easily scoped out a tail. He let the tracking device he had planted on her do that for him. Then he made his way to the location and set up across the street in another abandoned building.

Waiting for her to show her face.

And that was when he saw it.

“Movement,” he said excitedly as he jumped to his feet and looked out of his rifle scope. He didn’t know who all was in that shed with Lydia. He arrived after his tracker said she had arrived. But he was certain she wasn’t alone.

And she wasn’t. A group of what he counted were twelve armed men came out of the shed and began to split up. One group of six hurried toward the right side of the shed and hurried into the woods, while another group of six hurried toward the left side of the shed and hid in the woods. But as they were running into the woods, he saw one of them, the one he pegged to be the leader, look toward the long driveway that led to the junkyard. Reno didn’t know what he was looking at, but he knew something was happening.