Reno Gabrini - Mallory Monroe Page 0,1
daughter.”
Von couldn’t believe it. “You’re fucking kidding me, right?”
“I don’t kid,” Mustafa responded.
“Pop, Reno Gabrini is the most powerful man in Vegas. What are you talking? He’s Mick Sinatra’s nephew! He’s Sal Gabrini’s cousin! Shit, he’s Tommy Gabrini’s cousin! What I look like offing a Gabrini?”
“That’s not the assignment,” Mustafa said.
Not the assignment? Von frowned. “Then what you want from me?”
“I want you to do what you do,” Mustafa said.
Von hated when his old man wouldn’t get to the point. “Do you want me to take her out or not?”
“Yes. But not like you mean.” Mustafa looked at his son. “This ain’t no kill assignment.”
“Then what is it?”
“A courtship assignment.”
Von frowned. “Courtship? Me with her? What are you talking about? How old is this kid?”
“How old does she look?”
“Eighteen. Nineteen.”
“She’s eighteen.”
Von couldn’t believe it. “Come on now, Pop! Eighteen? Why would I want to date some immature eighteen-year-old?”
“Because that’s the assignment!” Mustafa was getting tired of the pushback he always got from his youngest child. “And she’s not immature. Not by a long shot. Besides, nobody’s asking your ass to marry her.”
“Stop telling me what you aren’t asking me to do. I need to know what it is you are asking me to do.”
“I don’t ask you to do shit,” his father fired back. “I’m telling you to make her fall in love with you the same way young girls have been falling in love with your black ass all your life. You show up, they swoon. She’ll do the same thing if you play it right. Then she’ll trust you. It don’t take much for young girls to trust.”
“You should know,” Von said under his breath, but his father heard him.
“Say it again, motherfucker, and I’ll knock you through that wall! You remember who you’re talking to!”
Von shook his head. He just wanted that man out of his place. “She falls for me and then what?” he asked impatiently.
It took a second for his father to recover, but he recovered. “Then she starts giving you intel without realizing she’s giving you shit.”
“What kind of intel?”
“It’s all in the packet. Read sometimes.”
“Okay, she gives me intel. And after I get what we need, then what?”
Mustafa frowned. “What do you mean then what? And then you kill her. What else you gonna do with her? You kill her ass. You do what you do.”
Von let out a harsh exhale as he took a slow drag on his cigarette again and stared at Sophia’s picture. She was half-Italian, given who her old man was, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at her. She looked all black to Von. And the idea that she would become a casualty of some shit her father apparently pulled was why he hated that life the most. The collateral damage. Like him.
“Get on it as soon as you can get in her face,” Mustafa said. “The good news is that she lives here in Vegas, too, so there won’t be any traveling issues. Bad news? Once Gabrini finds out you’re hanging around his daughter, he’ll have you checked out.”
“What will he find?” Von asked.
“He’ll find what we show the world, and nothing more than that. Even the Feds don’t know what we do. Reno’s ass will never know either. You know why? Because they always underestimate the black man. They wouldn’t dream of me being a big-time player in the underworld like they are. And we keep it that way. We are who they think we are. Even though we absolutely are not.”
But Von shook his head. “If he doesn’t know anything about you, Pop, how can he be your enemy?”
“Who said he was my enemy?” Mustafa asked. “Did I say he was my enemy? Stop putting words in my mouth. Just handle your business and keep your ass out of mine!”
Then Mustafa stood up. And for a brief moment father and son stared at each other as if they understood each other too perfectly. There stood Doctor Frankenstein. And Von was his monster. And both of them regretted that it had come to that.
Mustafa looked away first, and then began heading toward the exit. But when he got to the door, he turned around. And placed his hands in his pants pockets. “Going to the funeral, right?” he asked his son.
Von took another drag on his cigarette, and then looked down.
“I know it’s hard, Giovanni,” Mustafa said. “It’s hard for all of us. But the family expects you to be there front and center. Right