letting Sophia go. “She’s not a baby anymore, Reno,” Trina said. “Eighteen is a grown-ass woman nowadays. She’s no baby anymore.”
Reno couldn’t deny that reality. “Yeah, I know,” he said sadly, as the light changed and he pulled off again. “But she’s still my baby.”
Trina looked at Reno and could feel his pain too. But she knew their children better than Reno ever would. He saw them from the prism of their actions. She saw them from the prism of their hearts. They all had big, beautiful hearts and care and concern for people. But they also had gangster deep down inside of those hearts too. Just like their mom and dad.
“I’m just glad our actual baby is in Florida with my parents,” Trina said. “Because if Soph’s just like me as you said, I wouldn’t want her baby brother seeing her transformation.”
Reno glanced over at Tree. “What transformation?”
“When she goes from Sophia Gabrini, the brains of the family, to Sophia Gabrini, the party girl. To Sophia Gabrini, the gangster girl. Because that’s the route I took.” She looked at Reno. “Let’s pray she’s nothing like me.” Then Trina frowned, and looked back out of the window. “Although I know she is.”
Reno looked away, too, with anguish on his face. You raise them. You pray for them. You do all you can for them. But he knew Trina was right. There was no way they were ever going to escape a glaring problem: they had Reno, the original gangster, and Trina, his ride or die, as parents.
He pulled into the police station, with his security detail pulling in beside him, and he and Trina hurried out. Reno lifted his hand with a wave of a finger. His security chief, who rode shotgun on the front passenger seat of the backup vehicle, understood the signal. They were to hang tight and wait. They were there as a precaution, anyway, just in case that arrest proved more than meets the eye, as Trina suggested.
Trina’s suggestion appeared to be right on as soon as the couple made it inside the police station. Captain Blaine Povich, a man apparently new on the job because Reno had never heard of him before, was waiting at the information desk for them, and introduced himself. Then he escorted them to his office.
All they wanted was to see their daughter, but neither one of them said a word. They weren’t about to give that asshole a reason. They kept it shut and let him pretend he was the big man on campus. That he was in charge of them. That he was a far sight more than the pile of shit Reno took him for.
Inside his office, he closed the door and offered them a seat in front of his desk. When they sat down, he sat behind his desk and leaned forward. “We arrested your daughter,” he said.
Reno wanted to say, no shit, Sherlock, but Trina, knowing Reno too well, placed her hand on his wrist and he bit his tongue and kept it shut.
“She’s been a naughty girl,” the captain said as if he was talking about a young child. “You do realize that, don’t you?”
Trina found his phrasing offensive, too, but she needed to know where he was coming from. “Naughty how?” she asked him.
“She, an eighteen-year-old, was caught in a club drinking and partying with the big boys.”
Reno wanted to roll his eyes. Trina did too. “How many underage kids did you arrest?” she asked him.
“Just her,” he said.
“Just her, hun?” she asked the Captain.
“I know you people think this is a targeted arrest,” he said, “but it wasn’t.”
“But you’re telling us that she was the only one arrested, though, right?” Trina asked again. “That she was the only eighteen-year-old at that club who was drinking and partying, right?”
“She was the one we caught,” the captain said.
“Or wanted to catch,” said Trina.
The captain’s anger flared at Trina. “You got a lot of fucking mouth for a gotdamn waitress!” the captain spat out.
But Reno jumped from his chair with rage in his voice. “Don’t you dare talk to my wife that way!” he yelled as the captain jumped up, too, knocking his chair over, as he nervously moved back.
Trina had to get up in a hurry, too, just to hold Reno back from lunging over that desk. But Reno’s anger was already unleashed. “Who the fuck do you think you are?” he continued to yell at that captain, as Trina held him back. “Who the