of the house. Your mother, she’s a nag when she’s upset. I didn’t want to hear it. It’s enough that I have to be burying my son. Isn’t that enough? Why I wanna hear her mouth gabbing and gabbing all morning long?”
Von ran his hand over his face. His father was staring at him. “You’re coming, right?” his father asked him.
Von hated it. He hated everything about it. He hated that his brother died. He hated that his father’s favorite son died. He hated that he had to play the hypocrite and pretend that everything was alright between he and his brother when nothing was alright.
But for the family’s sake, Von always caved. “Yeah,” he said.
Mustafa nodded. “Good. Family sticks together, no matter what’s between them. Good.”
Then Mustafa leaned forward. “How did it go last night?”
“It went alright,” Von said.
“You met the girl?”
“I met her.”
“She fall for you?”
“It was a two second meeting, Pop.”
“Did she fall for you? You know what I’m talking about, boy, don’t play games with me.”
Von exhaled. “The potential’s there, yeah.”
Mustafa smiled. “I don’t know how you do it, but it never fails. You have these girls eating out of your hand and you don’t even take advantage of that. And if I had an eighteen-year-old black beauty that looked like Gabrini’s daughter? Ain’t no way I wasn’t hitting that the same night we met. But you don’t do that.”
Von didn’t say anything because he knew it wasn’t true. He did it. He did hit-and-runs all the time. And he had planned to do it that night. To offer to dance with her. To offer to drive her home safely afterwards. To nurse her wound and then make love to her. To get the ball rolling, in other words. But when he looked into Sophia eyes and saw such innocence there, and such sadness, he couldn’t do it. She was smitten with him, which accomplished the mission without overplaying his hand. But he dreamed about her last night. He, it seemed, was a little smitten with her too.
But he’d never tell that to his old man.
He stood up. “Anything else you wanted?” he asked his father.
“When are you going to see her again?”
“After the funeral.”
“Good. Keep the pressure on. I need her to fall hard for you fast and believe you’re her father confessor. I need her to spill all those Gabrini secrets of where they are and with who and when, and I need her to start spilling fast.”
“Yeah, I got you,” Von said.
“You’re a good kid, Giovanni. I raised you right.”
Von’s jaw tightened. Yeah, his old man raised him to be a killer and he figured that was good raising. That was how warped his old man’s thinking was. “See you later, Pop,” he said, and hurried away from there.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Reno was stretched out on the couch and Trina was on that same couch sipping coffee with Reno’s head on her lap. They were waiting while Sophia bathe the jail off of her and made it back downstairs.
Trina was rubbing Reno’s stomach with one of her hands as she sipped her coffee. But Reno, being his usual can never get enough of Trina’s touch Reno, moved her hand inside his pants, to his penis, and she began rubbing him there. He was sighing and moving as she rubbed him. Because Trina had the touch. Hands down. And she was giving him quite the touch until they heard Sophia coming downstairs. Trina removed her hand, and Reno sat up to hide his erection.
Both parents were staring at their daughter as she walked past them in her shorts and t-shirt, revealing just how small and, in her parents’ view, fragile she really was. She flopped down in the chair and began placing her thick, wavy, just-washed hair into a ponytail. When she finished, she looked at her parents.
“What were you thinking?” Trina asked her.
“I wasn’t,” Sophia admitted.
“Then why did you do it?” Reno asked, his face a mask of concern.
“It just seemed like it was going to be fun. Dana said it was a new club opening up and that all the kids from our high school would be there, so I figured what would be the harm?”
“What would be the harm in sneaking out without security when your mother thought you were in bed asleep?” Reno asked. “There’s no harm in that shit, right? There’s no harm in the fact that you’re Reno Gabrini’s daughter and every asshole fucker in this town would love to