CHAPTER SIX

“Ma, wait!”

They were in Reno’s casino as Trina looked down at her stepson’s hand on her arm, and then she looked at her stepson with that look that could chase vultures from a carcass. “Move your hand, Jimmy, and I mean it. I’m not playing with you now!”

“But Ma, let’s just talk about it first.”

“What’s the talk about? That bitch posting it Live. I saw that shit with my own two eyes. What I got to talk about?”

“But you know how they be lying on Pop all the time.”

“I saw it with my own two eyes, Jimmy. Ain’t nobody lying on his ass. Now let me go!” she said angrily as she snatched away from his grasp and began hurrying toward the casino’s exit.

Ma!” Jimmy yelled after her. “Ma, don’t do it!”

But trying to stop Trina Gabrini when her mind was made up was like trying to stop a train with bare hands. Because she was fed up and she wasn’t trying to hear it. All those years she had to put up with those rumors like they were a badge of honor that never felt honorable at all. All those years she had to pretend her ass didn’t hear shit, didn’t know shit, and didn’t see shit when even Stevie Wonder could see it. All those years ! She was going there alright. He went there - she was going too. Jimmy could forget trying to stop her.

“Dommi, call Uncle Sal,” Jimmy frantically ordered his younger stepbrother while he grabbed his suitcoat off of the back of the chair and began hurrying behind his stepmother. “Tell him Pop will be in a hospital or a body bag if Ma gets her hands on him. Tell him she’s not listening to me,” he added as he hurried away.

Dommi quickly pulled out his cell phone to make that call. “ Not that he don’t deserve it ,” he said to no one as he pressed his uncle’s icon on his phone. He’d heard those rumors, too, and he’d heard them all his life. A few of the girls at his school even claimed to have been with his father before. He knew it was a lie. They all admitted they wanted to be with him rather than they had actually been with him when Dommi confronted them at knifepoint. But it still stung.

When Sal Gabrini didn’t answer the phone, he left him a voice message. And his voice betrayed his anxiousness. He knew what kind of mad his mother could get. He knew what kind of damage she could do. “Uncle Sal, you gotta get over to The Rockston and get over there now. Mom’s gone berserk!” He said it with all urgency as he looked across his father’s massive casino as his brother was running to catch up with his mother. “Get there as soon as you get this message, Uncle Sal. Or Dad’s toast,” he added.

Two minutes later and that anxiousness still had not subsided. And he was phoning Uncle Sal again.