“Yes,” Amelia said.
“Millie!”
“I’m not going down that road again,” Amelia said firmly. “If I let them back in my life that deeply, they’ll control it. That’s how it was before, that’s how it’ll be if I let that happen. I’m not letting that happen.”
Seb was staring at her. “Okay, I get it now. What’s Hammer done this time?”
“Hammer? I thought we were talking about my brothers.”
“Your mouth was talking about your brothers, but your heart was talking about Hammer.”
Amelia shook her head. It was still too raw for her to even talk about. She opened her laptop computer. “Get out of my office,” she said. “I’ve got work to do.”
Seb smiled. “One thing for sure,” he said as he stood up. “You’ll figure it out. You always do,” he added, and left her office.
But as soon as he left, Amelia closed her laptop again, leaned back, and rubbed her face with her hands, fighting back tears. Every man she’d ever known used her and abused her. Then she met that man, Hammer, the only man she ever truly loved. A man she so wanted to share the rest of her life with. A man who apparently didn’t share that goal.
“Ag!” she said angrily, leaned her head all the way back, and then hesitated. Because she thought of something. And she knew what she had to do. She had to go to the source. There was no way around it. She needed to talk to The Butcher.
CHAPTER TEN
Her Bentley drove behind the liquor store and parked alongside the Suburban. Lenny Buckner, a tall black man also known as Lenny the Butcher, got out of the Suburban and got into the backseat of Amelia’s ride. And he didn’t waste time. “Talk,” he said.
“And hello to you, too, Lenny,” said Amelia with a smile. Whenever her back was against the wall, she wasn’t above using every ounce of her feminine wiles to gain whatever advantage she could.
But Lenny wasn’t buying whatever she was trying to sell. “Where’s my cargo?” he asked her.
Amelia came clean too. “It managed to get itself lost,” she said.
“Shit happens. You know in this line of work shit like that happens. But you also know, as the middle man, you’re responsible if shit like that happens. So, if you don’t have my shipment, where’s my money? I’m getting one or the other.”
“You know I’m good for it, Lenny. Last month somebody pulled this shit on me too.”
“That’s your problem. That’s not my problem. Where’s my money, Millie?”
Amelia exhaled. “I’ll get it. You know that. But I need some time.”
“Bullshit,” Lenny said with a look of disgust on his face. “Mick Sinatra keeps four-and-a-half mill laying around in his sock drawer, so don’t even try that shit on me!”
“I’m not Mick Sinatra. I’m Amelia Sinatra, and I don’t have it like that.”
“But Hammer does,” Lenny said. “He owns a fucking mountain. And you’re his woman! Don’t pull that shit on me. Hammer won’t lift a finger to help nobody, but everybody knows he’ll walk through fire for you. So take that woe-is-me shit right back where you got it from. It ain’t working here.”
“I’ll get your money, Lenny. You know I’m good for it. But you’ve got to give me some time.”
Lenny exhaled. “You got people on it?”
“On what?” Amelia asked.
“On finding the cargo, what the fuck else you think I’m talking about?”
“Fuck you!” Amelia said angrily. “Don’t you talk to me like I’m one of those trash-barrel hoes you fuck around with.” She looked at him through the rearview mirror. “I’m not the one.”
“I forgot. We can’t talk to a Sinatra any kind of way. I’m supposed to be on pins and needles whenever I’m in the presence of a Sinatra. And especially the lady of the bunch. Oh, no, I can’t talk to you any kind of way or Big Bad Tommy Gabrini, or Big Bad Sal Gabrini, or Big Bad Reno Gabrini will be all over my ass. And if the Gabrinis aren’t enough, then Big Bad Big Daddy Charles Sinatra will be all over my ass. And I haven’t even mentioned the leader of that fucking pack! But hear me and hear me well: I don’t give a fuck about none of y’all!”
Amelia and Lenny shared a hard look. They respected each other. They used to work together when Amelia was one of his biggest drug suppliers before she renounced, with a hard push from her brothers and Hammer, that particular profession. But Lenny didn’t fear Amelia the way a lot of her customers did. And Amelia knew it.
“Almost all of them,” she said to Lenny.
Lenny frowned. “Almost all of what? What are you talking about?”
“You asked if I had anybody searching for your cargo. The answer is yes. I have almost all of my investigators on the case. They’ll turn up something.”
“They didn’t turn up shit last time one of your cargos went missing, but they’ll turn up mine? Yeah, right, Millie. Tell it to the bears because I’m not the one either.”
Amelia looked out of the window. What an idiot she was to think she could reason with a man whose nickname was The Butcher. But that was stupid Millie. Always doing stupid shit. Her life always in a downward spiral because of the shit she pulled. No wonder Hammer didn’t want her ass either.
She looked through the rearview mirror again. She was surprised to see Lenny staring at her. Which made her frown because of the way he was staring. She knew that look. “What?” she asked him.
Lenny smiled. “Give me an opportunity to find out why,” he said, “and I’ll see what I can do.”
Did she misjudge that look? But she had to be careful. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“Give me an opportunity to find out for myself why it is that a man like Hammer Reese likes fucking you, and I’ll see what I can do.”
She hadn’t misjudged a damn thing. And she was livid. “Fuck you!” she yelled.
“Yes, that’s what I want,” Lenny said and then laughed. But then his laughter ended, and he opened the door of her car.
He was about to get out, but then he paused. And looked at her. “I was just joking around, Millie,” he said.
“Sure you were,” Amelia said. She wasn’t buying it.
But Lenny continued to linger. Then he exhaled. “You got forty-eight hours,” he said, throwing her the thinnest of lifelines, and then he got out of her backseat and got into the backseat of his Suburban.
After the Suburban drove off, Amelia leaned her head back against the headrest. At least he gave her some time to get it together. But two days? What in the world could her guys turn up in two days? But at least she had some time to think the shit through. At least that!
She cranked up her Bentley and was about to pull off when she heard the backdoor open. Shocked, she turned quickly. Who it was shocked her more. “What are you doing here?” she asked him.
“You and Lenny the Butcher bosom buddies now?”
“What are you doing here?” she asked him again.
But Hammer was angry too. Because he knew what it meant. Amelia having some back alley meeting with Lenny the Butcher meant only one thing: she was back in the game. “Go home,” he said, opening her car door again, trying with all he had to control his inward rage.
“I can’t go home,” Amelia said. “I have to go to the office. I’ve got--”
“Take your ass home now!” Hammer said so angrily Amelia could feel the baritone in his voice as if it was her heartbeat. Hammer slammed her car door and walked back to the SUV behind her. He had a driver. He got on the passenger seat.
It was the first time she realized he had driven up, after the Suburban drove off, and parked behind her. Which meant, she knew, that he’d been spying on her the whole time but didn’t break his cover while Lenny was around. Lenny would have wanted to shoot it out, had Hammer shown up.
But one thing was for certain. The shit had already hit the fan. There was no point in hiding now.
She did as she was ordered and drove her ass home.
With Hammer’s SUV right behind her.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Amelia entered her home with Hammer still right behind her. In her living room, he sat in the chair across from the sofa while she went over to her full-sized bar and poured herself, and Hammer to calm his ass down, something to drink. When she walked over with two glasses and handed one to Hammer, he took it and slammed it down on her coffee table, with part of the liquor bouncing out. “Now talk,” he said.
“You’re going to clean up that mess,” she said.
“Talk Amelia,” Hammer said. “I don’t have all day.”
Amelia frowned. “Then don’t have it! I didn’t ask you to come here. I shouldn’t have let your sorry ass in my house anyway!”
She knew she was on the critical list and needed his help, but Hammer made her so angry sometimes!
Especially whenever he did things that made her feel like shit.
“Why did you come here?” she asked him. “And how did you know where I was?”
Hammer didn’t plan to come to Baltimore at all. He was supposed to be on his way to Wyoming, where he had Cordoba in hiding, to finalize the deal. He thought he’d made up his mind. If she wasn’t going to let him explain, or even believe what he had to say, then forget her, was how his mind felt about it.
But his heart felt differently. He saw the pain in Amelia’s eyes when she was leaving his house yesterday. He saw what his decision to obey that order did to her. And he remembered two days ago, and how hurt she was even then when he claimed they weren’t ready to commit to marriage.
And as he flew out of Canada earlier that morning, a fear gripped him. And he realized, in that second, that he was losing Amelia. He also realized, in that same moment, that he wasn’t going to lose Amelia.
That he didn’t want to lose her.
That he couldn’t lose her.
And he ordered his pilot to go to Baltimore.
He had ordered his driver to take him to her office when he saw her get in her Bentley and speed off. So he followed her. To that back alley. To that clandestine meeting she had with The Butcher.
Now he was leaning forward in her living room, and staring at her, the fire in his eyes undeniable.
Amelia certainly felt his fire. It was as if his beautiful blue eyes were laser beams he was staring so hard. And she couldn’t help it. She glanced down, at that package between his legs that always looked as if it was going to break through his zipper, and she wished they were in a place where they could go there, and he could reassure her, and she could tell him all of her hopes and fears. But they were nowhere near there. She wasn’t, and he wasn’t either because his anger toward her was so palpable that even his arms, so thick in muscle, looked as if they were all veins and were going to split the seams of his suit coat.
But the pitiful part of it all was that she couldn’t shake him. Because she wished, in that very moment, that those same big arms were around her, holding her, protecting her, and that penis between his legs was inside of her, comforting her. But that wasn’t going to happen ever again. No more all-night cries for her. She was done with Hammer and his bullshit.
And the way Hammer looked, she also realized, he appeared to be done with her too.
“Why were you meeting with Lenny Buckner?” Hammer asked her. He wanted answers and he wasn’t going to stop until he got them.
But that was why Amelia made certain he wouldn’t know what she was up to. She was slick with her business. That was why her name was never in the pipeline when his spies did their periodic check. Because she knew Hammer. She knew he told certain people to keep an eye out. If her name ever came up in that pipeline of criminal activity, they were to contact him personally. They never contacted him because she worked overtime keeping her name clear of intercepts.
Until Hammer intercepted her his own damn self.
“My business is still getting off the ground,” she said, as if he didn’t know it. “And a lot of times it’s a struggle. So, in order to make ends meet, I take on certain side jobs.”
“That’s what you tell yourself,” Hammer said. “You aren’t tell me that shit. You’re going to tell me the truth.”
Amelia’s anger rose and she stared at him. He always had that weird ability to see right through her bullshit. She hated that about him. And she wasn’t giving an inch. “I do side jobs,” she said again, “to make ends meet.” That was her story, and she was sticking to it.
“Cut the bullshit, Millie,” Hammer said. “Just knock it off. You do side jobs, alright, but making ends meet has nothing to do with it. You like the thrill of the chase. You’d do that shit for free. Now answer my question. Why were you meeting with Lenny Buckner?”
Trying to go toe to toe with Hammer was never going to work. She should have known that by now. And she gave in. She couldn’t fight him; he was just too strong and overpowering and he always wore her down. She didn’t know why she was always trying to fight him. “He purchased a boatload of weapons out of Denmark.”
“Keep going.”
“Whenever certain people need to get those weapons from the docks to their warehouse of choice, they call me.”
Hammer was surprised. “You? There was never any chatter about you in the pipeline.”
“That’s because I only work with people I previously had working relationships with,” Amelia said. “They know who my boyfriend is.” She frowned. “They know who my boyfriend was,” she corrected herself. “They knew to keep my name out of it, even to their people.”
“You transported Buckner’s cargo?” Hammer asked.
“That was the plan,” Amelia said. “But it came up missing. That’s my second transport in as many months that came up missing.”
That interested Hammer. “You lost his cargo last month too?”
“Not his cargo. But another client’s, yes.”
“What do you do when that happens?”
“I have to cover the shortfall.”
“The whole thing?”
“Every dime.”
“Did you find either one of those missing shipments?”
Amelia shook her head. “No.”
What kind of guarantees did she make to her clients, Hammer wondered with horror. “How much last month you had to cover?” he asked her.
“Just south of three million.”
Hammer was floored. “Three million? Millie! Are you insane?”
“I didn’t plan on losing any shipments, okay, Hammer? You act as if I planned that shit! It wasn’t as if the cargo was in my possession when it went missing.”
“Then why are you responsible for paying for it?” Hammer asked.
“Because I’m the mover. Once the cargo is paid for, I arrange transportation to the States, and then I arrange the pickup. Once the cargo is paid for, it becomes my responsibility until the purchaser receives it. That’s the contract.”
Hammer shook his head. Only crooks made contracts that fucked up. “And what about Lenny’s cargo?” Hammer asked. “How much did that set you back?”
Amelia exhaled a draining exhale. “Four-point-five million,” she said.
Hammer fell back in his chair, staring at her. He was shocked.
But Amelia could see him dripping with disapproval along with his shock. Before she met him, she used to be a damn good businesswoman. She ran her shit tight and right. But then she met Hammer the lawman, and she stopped going all-out. She started cutting corners to keep her illegal trade from him. Then she quit altogether to go legit like he wanted. When that didn’t work and it was a proven fact that she had criminal in her blood, he gave her that territory that was taken from a thug named Leo Tamberelli. And at first, he felt he had no choice but to go along with her illegal activities. But he had a change of heart and she agreed with him. She promised to sell it and get Sinatra Solutions, a fully legit business, off the ground. That was what she told him she was going to do. That wasn’t what she did. She tried to go that straight and narrow. She really tried with all she had. But her contacts were all
black market contacts. Her strengths were all black market too. And she went with her strength. But the thought of her going back on her word again, she knew, had to hurt Hammer.
But what did he expect? What did any of them expect? She was no damn girl scout. She came from a long line of mob bosses and murderers and thieves, and Hammer knew it. Hell, her deceased husband was one of the biggest mobsters around, excluding the Sinatras and Gabrinis, and she was forced to be with his ass when she was a teenager! She was no more straight than a curve was. She tried to be. She tried so many times on so many different levels. For JoJo’s sake if for no other reason. But she failed going legit.
“How do you expect to stay in business,” Hammer asked, “if all you’re doing is paying out for lost shipments?”
“I haven’t paid the last one yet,” Amelia said.
Hammer stared at her. “What do you mean?” he asked her.
“I haven’t paid Lenny yet.”
Hammer frowned. “Why the hell not?”
“Why? Because I don’t have it, Hammer, why do you think? I could barely cover last month’s shortfall. I’m running a business that still gives out more money than it takes in. You think I had four-and-a-half million dollars laying around somewhere?”
“Is that why you met with him?” Hammer asked. “To ask for more time?”
Amelia nodded. “Yes.”
“Did he give it to you?”
“Yes. Although he might have forgiven the whole debt if I would have fucked him,” she added, just to make Hammer a little jealous. She was a woman. She couldn’t help it!
And it worked. Hammer came back hard. “You aren’t fucking anybody but me,” he said firmly.
And they both stared at each other. And Hammer was scared. He realized he was scared out of his mind. Because it was true. His inability to commit fully to Amelia to protect his own heart, left that very heart vulnerable. Because she was for all intents and purposes, especially after yesterday, a free agent. She could fuck whomever she wanted to fuck and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. And he realized it in that instant. He could lose Amelia!
Amelia Sinatra: What Hammer Wants Page 6