Page 38 of Trina Gabrini: Bring Him Back Home to Me

Reno didn’t answer her question.

“That would be a yes,” she said, answering for him. And then tears appeared in her eyes.

“Oh Tree,” Reno said heartfelt as he reached out to her.

But Trina pushed him away from her. “Get away from me!” she cried out. “Who are you? Get away from me!”

Reno stood up. He could see the disgust all over her beautiful, anguished face. All because of him. It was because of him again.

He knew he should have left their home and never looked back. Any self-respecting man would have done so. But he was too tired to run any further. He was just too tired.

He went upstairs, took a shower, and then took himself to bed.

He got away from her.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

He got away from her. But not for long.

Trina’s heart was upstairs with Reno despite how repulsed she felt about what he had told her. And his lack of contrition! What was that about? That wasn’t the man she knew. She remembered that time when Reno left her for an entire year because he couldn’t save his son, but yet he’d cavalierly blow up a home that he knew contained innocent children? Trina couldn’t believe it. She just could not bring herself to believe it.

She slowly climbed the stairs to their bedroom. When she opened the double doors, Reno had already showered and was stretched out on their bed in a pair of shorts. Even from where Trina stood, his muscular body looked stretched and veined, as if the tension in his joints were so overworked that they couldn’t relax at all. Everything was tensed-up. And Reno wasn’t sleep. She doubted if he would be able to sleep for weeks. He was laying on his side, with his back to the entrance doors, seeming to stare at the wall.

Reno heard somebody enter, but he didn’t bother to turn and see who it was. His hope was that it was Trina. But he didn’t want to be let down.

It wasn’t until she walked slowly up to the bed and stood there staring down at him, and then she sat on the edge of the bed did he allow himself to turn around and look.

When he saw that it was Trina, he inwardly sighed relief. But that devastated look on her face let him know she still found him disgusting.

For several moments she just sat there. And then she looked at the man she still loved. And always would. No matter what.

But she had questions.

“Make it make sense to me, Reno. You wouldn’t do what you told me downstairs you did. I know you wouldn’t do that. Please make it make sense!”

She had a plea in her voice and in her huge eyes. She needed a different answer. But Reno didn’t have a different answer to give to her. And she had to understand that. “When I was still a kid, I was an enforcer in my old man’s syndicate. I was always a fighter, Tree. I could always bring the brawn. I even had to nearly kill my own father to get him up off of Jimmy’s mother. And I hated myself for all of that. Because I saw what I was becoming. What I could become if I stayed by my old man’s side. So I ran. And ended up in Vegas.”

He let out a harsh exhale. “I was still a kid when I took over the PaLargio. And when I say everybody was trying to take it from me, Tree, I mean everybody. Everywhere I turned, every single day in the beginning, somebody was cooking up yet another scheme to snatch it from me. But I was still that fighter. I was still that enforcer. And I fought back. I fought like hell. But I knew Moose Vatelli and his gang posed the biggest threat to me and mine. He could still back it up even after I had kicked his ass once before. And then I hear about his takeover scheme from my own informants inside his organization. What was I supposed to do? Sit back and see if his scheme worked? Was I supposed to sit back and let him take it from me? Fuck no! I fought back. I did it to him before he had a chance to do it to me.”

“But why didn’t you just gun him down?”

“Because he had heirs, Tree! He had sons. He had a daughter. He had daughters-in-laws. He had grandchildren that were going to grow up and want to avenge what happened to their parents. And they weren’t going to necessarily avenge it on me. But on my children and my children’s children. That’s how this shit works. Look at all I had to deal with down through the years over my father’s bullshit that threatened my entire family time and time again? None of them were innocent. If they were Vatellis, they weren’t innocent. Just like no Gabrini is innocent in my enemies’ eyes. That’s how this shit works.”

Reno let out another harsh exhale. Trina couldn’t help it. She touched his stomach as it moved in and out from his near-hyperventilating. He was crashing fast and she knew it. “It’s okay, Reno,” she found herself saying.

Tears were in Reno’s eyes. “I hate what I did, Tree. I hate that I was that hard back then. But I was fighting everybody and they hardened an already-hardened young man. The only thing that I protected was family. Everybody else was fair game. That’s how I was. That’s how I had to be.”

Then he tried to calm himself back down. Her touch helped. He looked at her. “But the answer is no,” he said to her.

Trina wondered if she had missed a part of the conversation. “No about what?”

“You asked me if I would do what I did all over again. The answer is no. I should do it to protect me and mine. But I wouldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it. And the fact that another mob family died because of my actions?” He shook his head. “The answer is no. I couldn’t do it all over again, no.”

Trina found herself falling apart too as they stared into each other’s eyes. She hated that it was true. She hated that he did what he had to do. But he did what he had to do. She understood that because she understood him. But that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. It pained her still.

But she understood him. “My poor Reno,” she said with raw emotion as she rubbed the side of his stubby face. And then she fell into his arms.

Reno was so relieved that she could bear to touch him again that he pulled her all the way up until she was laying on top of him. He held her as tightly as he could. He couldn’t let her go.