Barbecue at Reno Gabrini’s house in Vegas, and Reno’s wife Trina, along with their children, were playing soccer in the backyard with Destiny, Grace, and Gemma.   Grace also held TJ in her arms as she kicked the ball, Gemma held Lucky, and Trina held her baby in her arms.  They were having a ball.

“Dommi’s cheating!” Destiny declared, and ran to take the ball away from Reno’s son.  But Dommi picked up the ball and ran around the yard, loving the chase.  Trina, Grace, and Gemma were too busy laughing.

Sitting on the patio watching them were Sal, Tommy, and Reno.  Sal and Reno were seated in chairs.  Tommy was reclined on a lounger.  All three men were laughing.  “That damn Dommi,” Sal said.  “That boy is going to give us all heart attacks!”

Reno shook his head.  “Don’t remind me,” he said.  “I’ve been thinking about finding a deserted island and leaving him there for years now!”

They laughed.

Then Reno looked at Sal.  “I heard about Hawk,” he said.  “That was a damn shame what happened to that kid.”

“Yeah, it was shocking alright,” Sal admitted.

“What was Robby thinking?” Reno asked.  “I’m hearing he’s losing a step, Sal, and you may have to replace his ass.”

“Don’t believe what you hear,” Sal said.  “Robby Yale hasn’t lost any steps.  It was a stupid mistake.  I’ll replace the rest of those motherfuckers before I replace Robby.”

Tommy looked at his brother.  But that was Sal.  When they were little and the neighborhood kids would want to gang up on a black kid and beat him up, Sal would be the one holding the gang back and yelling for the black kid to run.  But as soon as he knew the black kid was out of harm’s way, he’d be right there with the rest of them spewing out racial slurs as if nothing never happened.  He was the same way with gays when he was younger.  But here he was, defending the shit out of Robby Yale.  It was no surprise to Tommy.

“He’s been with you a long time,” Tommy said.  “Everybody respects him as your underboss.”

“Damn right,” Sal said, nodding.

Reno laughed.  “So you admit it!” he said.

Sal frowned.  “Admit what?”

“That your ass is a mob boss!” said Reno.  “Only mob bosses need underbosses,” he added, “and you just admitted Robby is your underboss.”

“I didn’t admit shit,” Sal said, moving around in his seat.  “That was you and Tommy talking.”

Tommy laughed.  Reno shook his head.  “He must take us for fools, Tommy,” he said.

“Apparently,” Tommy said with a grin.

“In any event,” Reno said, “you guys are going to Rome.”

“Yup,” Sal said.  “We figure we’ll handle two birds with one stone.  We’ll see what this supposedly grandfather wants.  And we’ll handle Venetti.”

“Venetti?” Reno asked.  “I never heard of him.”

“Neither have we,” Tommy responded.  “But at least you heard of this grandfather.  This Cassius Gabrini.”

Reno nodded.  “Yeah, I heard of him.  My old man used to tell me about him.  They never cared for each other, was the main thing he told me.  Told me to stay away from his ass, too.  I had no idea where he lived or what he did or any shit like that, and didn’t try to find out either.”

“We couldn’t find out anything on him, either.”

“What about Uncle Mick?” Reno asked.  “He knows everybody.  You asked him?”

“I asked,” Tommy said.  “He said Venetti rings a bell, but not a big one.  And he’d never heard of Cassius Gabrini.”

“Which probably only means this grandfather of ours isn’t mob,” Reno said.  “But that’s all it may mean.”

“Right,” Sal said.

“But don’t worry about the children,” Reno said.  “They’re in good hands with me and Tree.  Just get your asses back here as soon as humanly possible.  I’m not keeping them for your asses to go on vacation.”

Tommy and Sal laughed.  They knew Reno would keep them even for that reason.  But they weren’t about to push it.

Reno’s butler opened the patio door.  The three men looked in that direction.  “Robby Yale is here, sir,” the butler said to his boss.

Reno nodded.  “Bring him back,” Reno said, and the butler went to do just that.

Sal looked at Reno.  Was it big news in the pipeline yet?  “What else you heard about Robby, Reno?” he asked.

“What else?” Reno asked.  “What do you mean what else?”

“What else you heard?  You heard me.  You claimed to hear a lot just a minute ago, now you’re clamming up on me?”

“I’m not clamming up on anybody!” Reno shot back.  “I just don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

Sal nodded.  At least that wasn’t a hot topic yet.  “You didn’t hear nothing else,” he said.  “Okay, good.  That’s all I’m saying.”

“Then say that, motherfucker,” Reno said.  But then he added: “Unless you’re talking about that gay shit?”

Sal looked at Reno.  “I can’t believe you!”

But Reno was genuinely dumbstruck.  “What are you talking?  What?”

“You heard about it?” Sal asked him.

“That gay shit?” Reno asked.  “Yeah, I heard about it.  So what?”

“What did you hear exactly?” Tommy asked.

“I heard Robby was gay.”

Sal looked at Reno.  “Who did you hear it from?” he asked.

“How should I remember?”  Then Reno thought about it since it meant so much to Sal.  “Uncle Mick might have mentioned it to me, I don’t know.”

Sal was mortified.  “Uncle Mick?” he asked.  “How the fuck would he know?”

“How the fuck do I know?” Reno fired back.  Tommy laughed and shook his head.  Those two!

But then Sal looked at Reno again.  “What did he say about it?” he asked.  “He had an opinion like he always does, I’m sure.”

“He just said something like you need to be prepared,” Reno said.

Sal frowned.  “Be prepared?  Prepared for what?”

“The aftermath.”

“What aftermath?” Sal asked.

“The blowback.  The talk.  What the fuck you think?  Your underboss is gay, Sal.  That ain’t no little thing.  Not in the underworld.  And I should know.  My old man was a mob boss too, when he was alive.  And his ass would have killed his underboss if he found out that shit.  But that was the old days.  The stupid old days.  But guess what?  Almost all the wise guys in the game now, came out of those old days.  They had fathers and uncles and brothers in the old game.  Those kind of fucked up attitudes are hard to get rid of.”

Sal had to agree with Reno on that.  “I know you’re right, Reno,” he said.

Reno smiled.  “Even though it pains you to say so, right?”

Sal smiled.  “Right.”

“But yeah, Uncle Mick mentioned it,” Reno went on, “but you don’t need to worry like that.  He seemed far more concerned about Robby fucking up and killing his own man in Chicago than he did about Robby’s sexual preferences.  In fact, he didn’t give a shit about that.  He just didn’t want him putting your life at risk too.”

Sal nodded, and felt better.  Mick Sinatra was a man’s man and every man knew it!  Nobody was going to question his masculinity.  And if Mick Sinatra had no problem with Robby’s lifestyle, Sal didn’t see how anybody else in the game could.

And even if they did have a problem, Sal thought, as Robby came out onto the patio, then it was going to have to be their problem.  Sal wasn’t giving up his best man, a man he loved and cared deeply about, because it made some wise guys uncomfortable.

“Robby Yale, what’s up?” Reno said happily when Robby entered their orbit.

Robby smiled.  He always respected Tommy Gabrini, but Tommy was generally aloof and serious all the time.  But he liked Reno Gabrini.  He liked his energy and excitement.  He liked the fact that he owned the PaLargio, by far the best hotel/casino on the Vegas Strip.  He liked the fact that of all the Gabrinis, he believed Reno was the most progressive.  It was a false belief, but Robby didn’t know that.  “How are you, Reno?  Long time, no see.”

“How you been?”

“I’ve been good, sir.”

But when Reno saw his oldest son, Jimmy Mack Gabrini, come out onto the patio just behind Robby, he felt some kind of way.  Although Jimmy, a good-looking biracial young man, was dating a woman now, he was once bi-curious and had admitted to a homosexual liaison once upon a time, a liaison that angered Reno.  An anger Reno couldn’t seem to help.  He was raised to have those prejudices too, but felt, over time, that he had overcome that.

But now, seeing Jimmy with Robby, unnerved him.  Not because of prejudice.  But because he wasn’t all that sure if Jimmy was strong enough to handle the blowback of being gay.  He was overprotective of his oldest son, and he knew it.

“Hey, Pop,” Jimmy said as he entered too.  “Hey, Uncle Sal.  What’s up, Uncle Tommy?”

Sal and Tommy were not Jimmy’s uncles, but his cousins, yet in the Gabrini/Sinatra world, men of great distinction were given the title of Uncle regardless of the actual relationship.

Jimmy was Tommy’s favorite cousin, and he smiled when he saw him.  He hired him, on Sal’s urging, to run the Vegas office of the Gabrini Corporation, and Jimmy was running it admirably.  But more than that: he just really had a great affection for Jimmy that made him want TJ to be just like him.  There was something intricately decent about Jimmy that Tommy, above anybody else, saw in spades.    “What wind blew you this way?” Tommy asked.

“The wind of the smell of barbecue on the grill,” Jimmy said with a grin.  “What the fuck else?”

All the men laughed, including Robby.  He even touched Jimmy on the arm and nodded his approval of the joke.  But that bothered Reno, too.  And when Reno was bothered, he turned vicious.  “I hear you fucked up in Chicago, Robby,” he said.

Robby’s heart sank.  Jimmy, who had heard about the mishap too, from Tommy, looked at his father.  “Pop!” he yelled.  “Why you got to be like that?”

“Be like what?” Reno asked.  “I’m only stating a fact.  Am I lying?  Did you or did you not fuck up in Chicago, Robby?”

Everybody looked at Robby.  But Robby wasn’t deterred.  Reno was right.  He wasn’t lying.  And besides, at least Reno was man enough to speak what the others, he was certain, were thinking.  “Yes, sir,” he said, “errors were made in Chicago.”

“That’s what they call them now?” Reno asked.  “Errors?  Just don’t fuck up again, alright?  There’s no room for errors in your line of work.  Not when a Gabrini is your boss.”

Robby nodded.  “Yes, sir,” he said.

Jimmy was surprised that neither Sal nor Tommy seemed bothered by Reno’s harsh admonishment of Robby.  Then he realized why.  Reno might have said it in a crude way, but it needed to be said.  Instead of Hawk going into that metal grinder, it could have been Uncle Sal.  And that error, even Jimmy knew, would have cost Robby his life.

“What you got for me, Robby?” Sal asked his underboss.

And just like that, Robby and everybody else had moved on.  “I just wanted to let you know that everything is in place.”

“How many?” Sal asked.

“Four cars at all times, with two additional out of sight.”

“What about our wives?” Tommy asked.

“Tight security on them as well,” Robby said, “although the suggestion is that they go nowhere alone until we can track down Venetti.”

“Don’t worry about that.  No read on Venetti yet?” Sal asked.

“Nothing, sir,” Robby responded.  “But that’ll change.”

“Have we even confirmed he’s in Rome?” Tommy asked.

“That much has been confirmed, yes, sir,” Robby said.  “But it’s a big place.  It’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack when that needle doesn’t want to be found.  But we’re working on it overtime, sir.”

Tommy nodded.  “Good,” he said.

“What about this grandfather, so-called?” Sal asked.  “Any additional read on him?”

“Only his name, sir,” Robby said, “and the fact that he owns a dry-cleaning business in Rome.  That’s all we’ve been able to discover.”

“No mob ties?” Tommy asked.

“In Rome, it’s tricky, sir.  Nobody cop to anything there.  Everybody’s mob-connected, and nobody’s mob-connected.  It’s hard to say.”

Tommy understood that, too.  Which only made this trip, and their job, that much harder.

“Jimmy!”  It was Dommi’s voice.  “Jimmy Mack’s here!”

Dommi saw that his big brother had arrived, and began running off of the soccer field toward him.  Sophie and Lucky began running too.  Destiny loved Jimmy as much as they did, but she absolutely abhorred the idea of running behind Dominic, whom she called Dominant behind his back.  For that reason, and that reason only, she decided to stay with the ladies.  That fact wasn’t lost on Tommy, who knew his daughter very well.  He laughed when he saw it.