“Hands up!” they yelled, pointing their guns.
“And you, Teddy, and you, Joey, get away from those guns.” It was the guy they all called Louie, a newly installed lieutenant. Then Louie yelled from the top of his lungs: “Now!”
Teddy and Joey backed away from the arsenal of checked weapons, with their hands in the air, and moved toward their father.
“And you, Boss, keep your hands where we can see them.”
Then his partner yelled: “Everybody against the wall, or I swear this will be the last air you breathe!”
Mick knew it would have had to be the end for all of them if this scheme was to work. They couldn’t leave anybody alive. Especially not Mick and his sons.
Mick began walking toward them.
Teddy and Joey were terrified for their father. “Dad?” Teddy said.
Joey even grabbed at Mick’s suit coat, to pull him back. But Mick kept walking.
“We said against the wall, Boss!” Louie yelled. “I’m not fucking with you!”
But when Mick didn’t stop his progression, Louie and his accomplice began to panic. “You heard me, man. Stop now or I’ll shoot!”
“Shoot motherfucker,” Mick said. “All of you clowns coming for me? Are you out of your fucking minds? You think I’ll go down that easily?”
Mick could see that Louie was losing his resolve. Because he was now a man with only one option. The nuclear option. He was going to be the man to take Mick the Tick down. He was so nervous he could piss.
And he used the nuclear option. Louie pulled the trigger and began firing away at Mick. Shot after shot after shot. Teddy and Joey ducked in shock, and the rest of the men in the room ducked in shock too. Until they realized Louie was firing like a big dog, but Mick wasn’t going down like one. Mick, in fact, was still advancing on Louie until he was in Louie’s face. And then he removed the gun from Louie’s hand.
Louie’s accomplice began firing his weapon at Mick, too, but he had no bullets either. So he tossed his gun and attempted to run. Teddy pulled out his own gun and fired once, hitting the coward in the back. His knees buckled, and then he fell.
“Guard the arsenal,” Teddy ordered Joey. “We don’t know who we can trust.”
Joey pulled out his weapon and hurried to the arsenal. He, Teddy, and Mick were the only ones in the syndicate who never had to check their weapons, and it was a good thing this go around, Joey thought. But he also wondered how his father knew the two turncoats didn’t have bullets.
But Mick wasn’t asking questions he already had an answer to. “Who hired you?” he asked Louie.
But Louie was defeated. He knew Mick’s ways. He knew he wasn’t about to get out of this alive. He had already given up.
“Who hired you?” Mick asked again.
When Louie still wouldn’t respond, and was, in fact, despondent, Mick took the butt of his gun and began to pistol-whip him. “Who hired you, motherfucker?” Mick asked angrily as he struck him repeatedly. “Who hired you?”
Louie was down on the floor, covering his now bloody head, but he still wouldn’t say. He wasn’t giving Mick an inch. And that angered Mick more than the plot itself. He trusted this motherfucker to join his organization, allowed him to move up the ranks, and this was how he repaid him?
Mick grabbed Louie by the catch of his shirt, lifted him up, and flung him against the wall. He beat him with his fists. He beat him until the white meat. Everybody in the room, who should have never had any doubt to begin with, saw the viciousness of Mick that day. He pulverized Louie.
And when Louie slid to the floor, Mick began kicking the life out of him. Teddy, almost as angry as his father because he was this fool’s supervisor, began kicking him too. They stomped and kicked and beat Louie until his face was unrecognizable. They stomped his ass to death.
And then they just stood there. Mick and Teddy and all of Mick’s men. Because they all knew this was a turning point. Mick had to take out his entire crew one time when they tried to pull this shit on him before. Now it was starting up again? Fuckers acting as if it was open season on Mick the Tick again? What the fuck, Mick wondered with a perplexity he wasn’t accustomed to experiencing, was going on?
“What’s happening, Pop?” the usually surefooted Teddy even asked Mick. He was even more perplexed than his father.
Mick looked at his son, and then looked at his men. After he had called for the meeting, on a gut-hunch Mick had arrived on site a little earlier, alone, and discovered the broken glass on the backside of the warehouse, and the guns beneath the chairs. He was the one who took out every bullet. And although the car behind the building had not yet arrived, he sensed that there would be an outside game, too. That was why he checked around. He might have lost a step or two since his days of youth, but that still meant he was a step ahead of everybody else.
Mick knew the threat was contained, and his remaining men would not have been a part of this dumbass plot. But he still was going to be overly cautious. After he discovered that the warehouse had been breached, he called in another crew to keep an eye on his crew. They were set up to observe his lieutenants, who each commanded a section of town, at their various posts. “Get your weapons,” he said to his lieutenants, “and go to your posts. You’ll get instructions from there. Lex, Crank,” he said to two men in the group, “hang back.”
“Yes, sir,” said Lex.
“Yes, sir,” Crank said.
The rest of the men began grabbing their guns and preparing to head out. Mick began heading out as well, with Teddy and Joey on his tail, and Lex and Crank behind them. “Contact Deuce,” Mick ordered. “Tell him to put the twins in the safe room until further notice.”
“Deuce? But Dad, that guy’s in his sixties now,” Joey said as if age was more than a number.
Mick gave him a hard look. “And he’s still the best motherfucking lieutenant I have.”
Joey walked a little slower. “Yes, sir,” he said.
“Take Lex with you,” Mick ordered Teddy, “and then you and Joey get to my office and bring your sister in.”
Teddy was surprised. “You think they’re after Glo?” he asked. Joey looked at him, too, alarmed. “You think this is about Gloria?”
Mick stopped walking and exhaled, looking at his sons. “It’s always about me,” he said. “But she’s my daughter. That makes it about her. Go get her,” Mick added, as they continued walking.
“What about Crank, Pop?” Joey asked. “You told him to hold back, too.”
“There’s a trio of dead bodies in a car behind this building,” Mick stated. “Get Crank to supervise a cleanup crew to take care of them, and the two punks we just took out.”
Teddy was surprised to hear about the bodies behind the building. But he knew that was just his father’s way. He wasn’t telling anybody everything. “And what about you?” he asked Mick. “You’re going to be the one to bring Roz in?”
Mick looked at Teddy as if he’d just asked the world’s dumbest question. “What do you think?” he asked, and hurried out of the door.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Gloria stood at the desk of the newest assistant at S.I., and showed her how to download vendor records on her computer. Gio Savarino still sat in one of the chairs against the wall, on Mick’s orders, and felt awkward as hell. Especially when the supervisor, that Blair Conyers, kept giving him displeasing peeps. Not that he cared. She was just a nosy-ass secretary as far as he could see. Why should he care what she thought? But he cared what Gloria thought. And from what he could tell, she didn’t think very much of him.
He crossed his legs. He wasn’t a great-looking man, and he knew it. He was big and bulky, socially awkward, and kind of dumb-looking if he were to tell the truth. He wasn’t dumb, but he knew he had that dumb-jock look going strong. But Gloria Sinatra, he thought, as he continued to watch her help that new hire, was a beautiful sight to behold. From the moment he laid eyes on her, he was smitten. She was a biracial bombshell in his eyes. But he�
�d already been warned off by the other guys in the syndicate. “Don’t even try it,” they warned him. “Mick the Tick’s daughter is off limits.” And Gio, despite how he might appear to people, wasn’t stupid. He kept his feelings to himself.
But when Gloria finished her tutorial with the new girl, and made her way, not back to her own desk, but over to Gio, his heart began to pound. He was about to rise to his feet, but she motioned for him to stay seated. And she sat beside him. She leaned forward and crossed her legs.
“Everything okay?” he asked her.
“Yeah, fine,” she said. “I was going to ask you the same thing.”
Gio looked at her. “Me?”
“You seem a little uncomfortable. Are you okay?”
Gio felt relieved. “Yeah, I’m good,” he said. “Thanks for asking. That old witch just keeps looking at me like I’m trash sitting up here. I’m not used to that.”
Gloria nodded. She and her brothers often called Blair Conyers Blair Witch. But that was their inside joke. “I know what you mean,” she said. “But, for some strange reason, my dad loves her to death.”
“That bitch? Really?”
Gloria smiled. “Really. I guess he figure she’s good at her job, or whatever.” Then she considered Gio. He was one of those big white guys with what Joey said was a face only a mother could love, and with what Teddy called prison-yard muscles. He wasn’t attractive; he couldn’t hold a candle to any man she’d ever dated. But there was something about Gio Savarino. Something warm and comforting and, as she saw it, and big, teddy-bearish. “How long have you been in the business?” she asked him.
“What, this business? I don’t work for Sinatra Industries.”
Gloria couldn’t believe he misunderstood her, but she didn’t call him out on it. “I mean, my father’s other business.”
“Oh!” Gio flushed. Why was he always getting it wrong? “Long time. It was all I knew how to do. My old man was, you know, in this line of work. His old man was in this line of work. My own mama told me I had to rely on my muscle because brains and beauty was no friend of mine. My nickname is Rocks because that’s what people say I have for brains.” He said this with a smile, a smile Gloria didn’t return because she found it more sad than funny. His smile left too. “It’s all I know how to do,” he said.
“Gloria,” Blair Conyers said, and both Gloria and Gio looked at her. Gio was waiting for Blair to say more, but Gloria wasn’t. She knew what she wanted. Gloria patted Gio’s hand with her own hand, and then made her way back to her desk. She got back to work.
Gio felt warm inside. He wanted to rub his hand where her hand had been, that was how warm he felt inside. But he dared not do it. She didn’t want a dufus like him, what was his problem? Beautiful girl like that.
But at least she was kind to him. That was more than he could say for all those other pretty girls he’d encountered in his life. At least she was nice. But that still didn’t mean she wanted him, he realized. And that was why, like always, he repressed that warm feeling and kept his look, his mindset, his entire being hard.
In the corridor outside of the suite of offices, the elevator doors opened and Teddy and Joey hurried off and made their way toward the suite.
“Who would have the balls to come after Dad?” Joey asked yet again as he worked hard to keep up with his big brother’s big strides. He was still reeling from that attempted hit. “Who would do that?”
“How should I know?” Teddy asked.
“You should know,” Joey responded. “Dad made you his heir-apparent. He made you his undisputed number two. You should know.”
Teddy glanced at his brother. He couldn’t disagree with Joey. Because he should know. But he didn’t. “You know how Dad is,” was all he could say in response to his brother’s truth.
But when they made it to the office door that led to the assistants’ workstations, both brothers forgot what they should have known, and focused on the task at hand. They’d already checked the perimeter. They didn’t see any indication of ambushes or anybody lying in wait, so they were fairly confident this would be a smooth transport. But it was their sister they had to transport, and the fact that their father wanted both of them to transport her meant their father felt something was going down. The added weight kept them antsy.
When the door to the suite opened, and Teddy and Joey entered, everybody looked up from their workstations. For the younger women, they all loved it when those handsome Sinatra brothers came around. For Blair, it was yet another distraction from those Sinatras. But for Gloria and Gio, it was a far different take.
“Dad sent us,” was all Teddy had to say, and Gio was rising and Gloria was grabbing her purse.
Any other time, Blair would have asked, “where do you think you’re going,” before Gloria could make it to the door. But Blair heard what Teddy had said. Mick had sent for her. Even Blair Witch knew better than to dispute her own boss. Gloria and her brothers, and with Gio bringing up the rear, hurried out of the office.
What was remarkable to Gio, but not at all to Teddy and Joey, was the fact that Gloria didn’t question why. She didn’t ask what was going on, or why did her father send for her. She just got on the elevator with the rest of them, made her way downstairs, and then, to Gio’s surprise, went unquestioningly around the backside of the lobby to the parking garage.
“Not out front?” Gio asked Teddy as they hurried.
“No,” Teddy responded. He respected Gio, not because he had a lot of experience working with him: he didn’t; but because his father respected him. “There are too many buildings and moving parts out front for us to feel confident that there’s no ambush in the works. Lex is waiting in the garage. We can control that scene better.”
Gio nodded. Made perfect sense to him.
And when they made it through the door and into the parking garage, where they saw Lex waiting patiently with the SUV, it seemed like the perfect plan. Until they heard a car backfire, prompting all of them to look, and then saw another car suddenly hit on the gas and approach them so fast the car was swerving and on the verge of losing control. Teddy pushed Gloria and Joey into the SUV, while he and Gio took out their guns and began firing.
But the car was coming too fast. It came straight for Teddy, causing him to jump onto the hood. Gio, acting quickly, was able to shoot the driver through the head in that split second as the car flew past him. But it was enough. Teddy jumped off of the car just as the car careened out of control for real this time, and crashed into the wall so violently that the driver and his passenger flew through the windshield, and slammed against the wall.
Teddy and Gio jumped into the SUV, and Lex sped away.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The elevator doors on the top floor of the Graham Agency slid open, and the Delivery Man, with a bouquet of red roses in his hand, made his way to the secretary’s desk. Teegan Salley, Roz’s secretary, smiled. “For me, I hope,” she said.
But the delivery man wasn’t even looking at her. He was looking at the two men that stood guard outside of Roz’s office door. He hadn’t expected that. He took care of her security detail outside. Both of those men were dead. Where the hell did these two come from? He’d heard that Sinatra loved the bitch, but two security details on one female? There wasn’t that much love in this world!
But apparently so, he realized, because that second detail he hadn’t counted on was right there, in his way. And he had to improvise.
He looked at Teegan with a grand smile. “If your name is Rosalind Sinatra,” he said, “they’re for you.”
The two guards glanced at each other. When one of them began to make his way toward the secretary’s desk, the delivery man knew he was about to be exposed. He took the bouquet of roses and threw them toward the guards, and then ran with all he had toward the door that led to the stairwell.
The two guards, realizing they had a hot one on their hands, began drawing their guns and running after the man. They flung open the stairwell
door the delivery man had escaped through, and ran through it, too, and down the stairwell.
But as soon as they began running down the stairs, they realized their error. Both of them stopped in their tracks. There was no way that guy would have disappeared that fast. They were just behind him. So they turned around, and looked behind themselves. When they saw the delivery man standing there, with his gun pointed directly at them, they had no time to react. He shot and killed them both.
But he shot them just as the stairwell door downstairs opened, and Mick the Tick, along with two of his men who had been secretly stationed in the downstairs lobby: security detail number three, hurried in. Mick already knew that two of his guys, security detail number two in a car that had been positioned in front of the Graham agency, had been killed. That was why he took the stairs.
When Mick looked upstairs, and saw that his men on security detail number one had been shot too, he began running up those stairs. The Delivery man, seeing him, knew he didn’t have a second to lose.
He ran back up to the stairwell entrance, back onto the top floor, and made a fast run for Roz’s office.
When the shots first rang out in the stairwell, Roz was sitting behind her desk eating a sandwich and strolling through emails. Mick had already phoned and ordered her to stay in lockdown, although he didn’t tell her why, and security around her was already beefed up. Two of his men were stationed outside of her office, and two were stationed in the lobby downstairs, and two were stationed outside. As far as she knew, everything was fine.
Until those shots rang out.
When she heard those shots, she knew everything wasn’t fine, and she had to find out why.
She jumped up, grabbed the loaded gun she kept in her side drawer, and hurried toward her closed office door just as the delivery man was running past Teegan’s desk and hurrying toward that same closed door. Teegan, who was calling Security because of those gunshots, backed up so fast when she saw the delivery man again that she fell over her chair.
Mick Sinatra: No Love. No Peace. (The Mick Sinatra Series Book 9) Page 10