Page 4 of Trina Gabrini: Bring Him Back Home to Me

He looked disgustedly at his mob boss of a piece of shit father one more time, looked again at that girl who had the misfortune to be in the grips of a sadistic man like his old man, and then he left. God help him, but he couldn’t get out of there fast enough. He left his loyal cousins to do the dirty work.

CHAPTER ONE

PRESENT DAY

“Excuse me, ma’am. Ma’am?”

Didn’t she just tell that waiter she wasn’t ready to order yet? Why was he bothering her again? Katrina “Trina” Gabrini was already frustrated. She was supposed to meet up with Reno over an hour ago. She arrived on time. He still hadn’t arrived. Now some waiter was harassing her?

She looked over the top tip of her stylish reading glasses at the skinny young white boy standing at her table again. Although she was annoyed, she tried not to show it. “Yes?”

“I don’t mean to disturb you, but I have to say it.”

He waited as if he was expecting his customer to ask what it was he wanted to say, but Trina said nothing. And he continued talking. “The thing is,” he said, “you remind me so much of my baby sister that I just had to say something.”

That was a new one. How the hell could she remind him of his baby sister when he was a white boy who looked to be barely twenty-one years old while she was a black woman old enough to be his mother? And this girl she supposedly looked like was his baby sister? “I look like her, hun?”

“Just like her! It’s uncanny the resemblance. I thought you was her for a minute,” he said with a grin. “She got married and moved to Michigan and I miss her so much.”

But what Trina still couldn’t wrap her head around was the fact that he insisted she looked like his baby sister. Not his older sister. His baby sister. Which meant she was even younger than he was. She couldn’t help but smile. Did these silly women fall for lines like that these days?

Even though nobody would mistake Trina Gabrini for a silly woman on any day, she found herself removing her glasses and sitting them on top of her hair, as if she was taking his compliment to heart anyway. “How long has it been since you last saw her?”

“At her wedding a year ago. But Michigan is a long way from Vegas and we haven’t had any opportunities to get together. But it’s uncanny how much y’all look alike. I mean I would have declared it was her if I hadn’t heard your voice.”

Or saw my face, Trina thought to say. “How old is this baby sister of yours?” she said instead.

“She just turned twenty.”

“And you thought I was your twenty-year-old baby sister?”

“Oh yes ma’am, I sure did! You look just like her. She’s just as gorgeous as you are.”

Trina knew he was so full of shit that it had him compacted, but it still felt good. Being married to a man like Reno she had to grab a compliment wherever she could get one because his slick ass wasn’t giving any out. But unlike that slick-ass husband of hers, she didn’t believe in leading people on. “Thanks, kiddo. You might have just made my day,” she said with a smile. “But I’m very much a married lady.”

“Oh I already knew that,” he said with a smile of his own. “It’s hard to miss that big fat juicy diamond boulder on your finger.”

Trina laughed. “This lil’ ol’ thing,” she said as she fluttered her big diamond-clad finger in front of him. They both laughed.

“I stopped wearing it one day just because it’s so damn big, but my husband had a hissy fit to end all hissy fits and that was the end of that little defiance.”

“That’s not cool,” the young man said as Reno entered the fancy restaurant, saw Trina, and began walking to the table. “If you were my woman you wouldn’t have to prove it to the world.”

“Prove what to the world?” Trina asked just before she saw Reno walking up behind the young man.

“You wouldn’t have to prove that you belong to me. I wouldn’t care what the world thought. Just as long as I had you,” he said as he smiled again. “But for him to throw a fit like that, he must really love you. Or he’s really insecure. Or both,” the young man said with a laugh. “I’d put my money on both.”

Reno was offended. And did as he always did: He lashed out. “What money?” he asked. His voice had that hardboiled, stereotypical Jersey-Italian edge to it that startled the young man. He quickly turned around.

When he saw standing before him an average height, very muscular man in an obviously-expensive but badly-wrinkled suit, he immediately recognized him. “Mr. Gabrini?”

“Bingo,” Reno said. “Enjoying flirting with my old lady?”

“Your old lady?” Now the young man was terrified. He’d heard all his life about how Reno Gabrini’s casino, the largest in Vegas, was a hotbed for mob activity. And how he broke a man’s neck once just because he cheated his casino out of a few dollars at one of his blackjack tables. And how he beat down another guy so badly that he nearly died on the casino floor right there in front of everybody. And how those crooked cops that he also heard were on Reno’s payroll let him get away with it every time. Him and his cousin Sal Gabrini both. They were ruthless sons-of-bitches, he’d heard, who ruled Vegas like they owned the town. He knew all about those Gabrini boys. And here he was flirting with one of their wives? He was mortified. “I had no idea she was yours, sir. I had no idea!”

He spoke about Trina as if she was an object rather than a person. And Trina wasn’t having it. “Now that’s not entirely fair,” she said to the young flirt as she looked him dead in his baby-blues. “I told you in no uncertain terms that I was married. I told you that.”

“But you didn’t tell me you was married to no Reno Gabrini!” He said it so loud that patrons at nearby tables sniggered. “I would have never ever on my mama’s grave said a word to you had I known--”