Read Online Reno Gabrini: For His Lover (The Mob Boss Series Book 14) by Mallory Monroe - Free Book Online

story she told Jimmy
about finding the rest of her portfolio.   And she hated lying like that.   But all of her life she’d done what everybody else wanted her to
do.   She was in real estate because that
was what her father wanted.   She got
married so young because that was what Jimmy wanted.   She had a baby, when she would have rather
had her career together first, because that was what all of her friends declared
was what married ladies did.   They had
babies.   They got that part of the
bargain out of the way first.   And she
moved to New Hampshire, New Hampshire of all places, because that was what her father-in-law wanted.   Jimmy needed the change, Reno believed.   She would be saving Jimmy from the fast life
if she relocated with him.
    But when the car drove up beside her rental car, which was
supposed to be her cue, she remained where she was.   She continued to sit quietly in her car, as
if she was still thinking about the decisions she’d made in this life.   As if she was totally ambivalent to the
decision she was about to make that would allow her to reverse course and
travel her own path.
    Kapper Cole, a tall black man with a muscular frame, sat in
the car that had driven up and waited.   He knew this was a hard decision for Val, and he didn’t want to rush
her.   But as she continued to just sit
there, as if she didn’t realize he had arrived, he almost blew his horn.   But that would only bring attention to them,
something neither one of them wanted.   So
he got out of his car, and got into hers.   Her door wasn’t even locked.   That
was how far gone she was.
    “What’s the matter, Val?” he asked her.
    Val didn’t look his way.   She continued to stare at the mall on the far end of the lot.
    “Valerie,” he said, “what’s wrong?”
    Val finally looked at him.   When she did, and saw his face, she smiled.   But the guilt was still there, and was eating
her alive.
    Kap was no kid.   He
was, in fact, nearly sixteen years her senior.   He knew exactly what she was going through.   He placed her hand in his.   “We don’t have to do it, if you don’t want
it.”
    “But I want it,” Val said.   “That’s what hurts.”
    Kap understood that too.   But he had no answers for her guilt.   But he did have an answer for her desires.   “We’ll try another day,” he said, patting her
hand.   Then he released her hand and
moved as if he was about to get out of her car.
    But Val panicked, as he knew she would.   “Wait,” she said anxiously.   He looked at her.   She looked at him.   Then she exhaled.   “I’m coming with you.”
    She grabbed her purse and got out of her car.   Kap got out too.   He walked her around to the passenger door of
his car, helped her in, and then got in under the wheel.   He looked at her.   He pretended to be the gentleman he was
not.   “Are you sure?” he asked her.
    Val nodded, and then smiled.   “I’m sure,” she said.
    He cranked up, like the son of a gun he was, and drove them
away.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

CHAPTER SEVEN

 
    Andre Jackson walked out of the diner with a cup of coffee in
his hand and made his way to the parked Corolla.   When he got in behind the wheel, he handed
the cup to Zell.   He was so nervous he
could feel the sweat trickling down behind his ears.   And they were only just beginning.   “Did he show yet?” he asked.
    “Not yet,” Zell Tufarna said as she took a long sip of the
warm brew.   She was a small white woman,
with short hair and a face made less attractive by her downturned mouth.   “I only wish I could see his hateful face
when it happens.”   She was on the
passenger seat, with binoculars on her lap, as she watched the fancy private
school from the diner’s parking lot across the street.   “His kid goes to this fancy school and I can
barely pay my rent.”  
    Then she looked at Andre.   He was a handsome black man who was only with her, she knew,