Mick Sinatra: No Love. No Peace. (The Mick Sinatra Series Book 9)

by Mallory Monroe

  Mick and Hammer stood at the patio table as the two women made their way toward them. “So the other one is your ex?” Hammer asked.

  Mick stared at Bella, too. “Yes.”

  Hammer smiled. “You have very good taste,” he said. “Your wife, and now her. Very good.”

  Mick looked at Hammer. “Now I know your ass isn’t fooling with my sister any longer,” he said. “I know that shit’s over.”

  “Over?” Hammer asked. “I don’t know if it’s ever began.”

  “And it won’t if it means she’s number two.” Mick gave him a hard look. “She’s a Sinatra now. She cannot be anybody’s number two.”

  Hammer viewed Mick Sinatra as his equal: a hood he came to respect despite the different sides they were on. “Understood,” he said.

  “From what I have been consistently hearing,” Mick said, staring at Hammer, “is that Reggie Dell is your number one.” He needed to find out, for his sister’s sake. “That true?”

  Hammer wouldn’t respond, but Mick could see that flicker in his eyes at the mention of Reggie Dell’s name. Mick knew what that meant because he had that same flicker whenever someone mentioned Rosalind’s name.

  Then Mick nodded. “It’s true,” he said, and looked at the two ladies approaching them.

  “Who’s he?” Bella asked Mick as soon as they made it onto the terrace. She was giving Hammer an assessing look. It was obvious even to Mick that she liked what she saw.

  But Mick wasn’t there to answer her questions. He, instead, looked at Natalie. Her blonde hair looked almost orange, he thought, in the sunlight. “Why did you two-time Santo, Nat?” he asked her.

  Natalie stared at Mick. “Why did I what?”

  “Why did you two-time him?”

  “What are you talking about, Micky? You know I wouldn’t do any such thing to my husband.” Then she looked at Hammer. “And why did you bring this crooked-ass fucker here?”

  The fact that she quickly changed the subject, choosing to go after Hammer, only confirmed Mick’s suspicion. This bitch was guilty as sin. “Why did you do it?” he asked her. He stared at her.

  But Natalie jumped defensive. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I doubt if you know what you’re talking about! Santo’s men turned on him. That’s what happened. They killed him. And if you’re listening to Hammer Reese, stop listening. Hammer Reese don’t know shit about it! Santo was killed.”

  “He was killed, alright,” Mick said. “And you killed him.”

  “Me?” Natalie was shocked that he would say such a thing.

  “You snitched on him. That’s what got him killed.”

  “That is such a lie, Micky! Why would you lie like that? I would never snitch on anybody, let alone my own husband. I’m no fucking snitch!”

  Out of nowhere, Mick’s anger flared and he grabbed Natalie, flipped her onto the patio table, and put a knife to her throat nobody realized he had. Bella gasped when he pulled out that knife, and Mick’s men on guard hurried toward the scene for backup.

  But Mick had this well in hand. And he was no longer playing around. “Now you listen to me,” he said to Natalie as she tried to wiggle herself free from his grasp. “Tell me what went down between you and Arianna, and you’d better tell me now!”

  “What are you talking about?” Natalie asked. “I don’t know any Arianna! What are you going on about?”

  But when Mick pressed that knife into Natalie’s neck, creating an impression in her flesh, she stopped all wiggling, and looked into Mick’s eyes. And she knew, right then and there, that he was not fucking around with her. This man was not playing. She could die if she didn’t come clean.

  She also was smart enough to know that Mick would not have come, with a fucker like Hammer Reese by his side, if they didn’t know far more than she thought anybody ever would.

  “Talk,” Mick said to her, “or you never will again.”

  Bella was amazed by this, and was staring at Natalie’s neck. Surely Mick was just bluffing! She knew he was ruthless. She knew he could be the cruelest of men. But she never really saw him in action. Hearing about it, and seeing it for herself were two very different things. But she kept her eyes on that knife on Natalie’s neck.

  Hammer, however, kept his eyes on Mick the Tick. Mick would never know it, but he was a legend in Hammer’s eyes. The shit that man did to protect his own was astounding. And that was why Hammer admired Mick: he knew for a fact that Mick Sinatra never picked fights with any one. But any fucker that picked a fight with him was handled. And handled decisively. That was what he liked about Sinatra. There were no gray areas. This woman, this Natalie Vichy, didn’t stand a chance. Hammer already knew that.

  But Natalie didn’t know that. All she knew was that a knife was a sneeze away from ending her life, and she had to come clean. “I reached out to her.”

  “In prison?” Mick asked.

  “Yeah,” Natalie said.

  Hammer’s cellphone began to buzz. He pulled it out and moved away from the others to answer it, but he kept his eyes on Mick the Tick.

  Mick kept his eyes on Natalie. “Why would you reach out to her?” he asked.

  “Santo told me about it.”

  “About what?”

  “About how you paid him to set up your brother’s ex-wife. To set up Arianna Sinatra.” Natalie’s voice became whiny, as if she was crying, but no tears were shown in her eyes. “We were having so many problems then. Things weren’t going so great for his crew and he was in that crazy way he gets sometimes. You know how he gets, Micky.”

  “Don’t tell me what I know. Tell me what you did!”

  “Santo told me she had this lawyer who handled all of her transactions. Like I said we were having problems, and I needed some cash. So I reached out to her, through her lawyer. I told him to tell her that for the right amount of money, I’d tell her who set her up. She agreed. The lawyer paid me. And I told him.”

  “You told him what?” Mick asked.

  Natalie began to hesitate again. Mick pressed that knife deeper against her skin.

  “I told him that you paid my husband to implicate Arianna. I told him everything. But I thought she’d go after you, Micky. I never dreamed she’d go after Santo. He was just doing his job. I figured she’d understand that. But she didn’t.”

  “Why did you claim Santo’s men killed him?” Mick asked her.

  “Because they did!” she insisted. “Arianna, through her lawyer, hired Santo’s crew with nothing but Benjamins, and it was an easy hire because Santo was barely able to make payroll.”

  “That’s a fucking lie,” Mick said. “I paid him well for that job.”

  “And it was eaten up in gambling debts as soon as he got it in his hands. We had nothing, I tell you!”

  “Why did you mention Teddy Stefani to me?” Mick asked.

  “Because Higgs told me to. Arianna hired Higgs and told him to take me out as well as Santo. But Higgs decided to use me, instead. When you couldn’t find me, I was under his protection. He said I’ll live if I told you that Teddy Stefani was Santo’s Don. I would live, Higgs told me, if I told you that Teddy Stefani wanted you dead. I said how crazy is that? Teddy Stefani is dead himself. How fucked up is that? But Higgs said that’s what that crazy prison bitch wanted, so that’s what they would give her.”

  “But why Stefani?” Mick asked.

  “She wanted you chasing ghosts,” Natalie said. “Higgs told her he once worked for Stefani, and that one of your men had iced him, so she wanted you to feel as if you were being spooked. She called it her inside joke.”

  Mick’s jaw tightened at the thought that that bitch would be laughing at him.

  “Why did Higgs say Hammer Reese was behind this shit?” Mick asked, and Hammer looked at her, too.

  “To keep you guessing,” Natalie said. “Higgs was never going to tell you the truth. The truth, Santo always said, was a weapon you never gave to nobody.”

  Mick shook his head. A dumb sayi
ng in a long line of dumbass Santo sayings.

  But Natalie had Natalie on her mind. She looked Mick in the eyes again. “Now will you remove that knife, Micky?” she asked him. “I don’t want you to have an accident on my neck.”

  Mick did remove the knife, and he stood erect. Natalie felt as if she had been given a reprieve. But then Mick looked at Bella. “Go inside,” he said to her.

  Bella didn’t hesitate. Mick had never been this violent around her before, and she wasn’t about to stick around to see it now. She hurried inside.

  Mick looked at Hammer. “Your ass crooked as a curve,” he said to him, “but you still used to be Fed. I need you to go inside too.”

  Hammer smiled. “Plausible deniability?” he asked.

  Mick would have smiled, but he never did on a job. “Yeah,” he said.

  Hammer continued to stare at Mick the Tick as he went inside.

  Then Mick looked at Natalie with a stormy look in his chilling eyes. She knew that look too well.

  “We go back too far, Mick,” she pleaded. “For old times’ sake, we go back too far!”

  But old times didn’t mean shit to Mick. “Your decision to go to that bitch almost cost me everything. My children. My sister. My nephew. My wife! And you want me to think about old times?”

  Then he regained his composure. “You said I must avenge Santo’s death. You said I was the only one who could. You were right. But the vengeance begins with you.”

  She began to plead for her life; to get him to remember how it used to be, but Mick slit her throat as if he was strumming a violin. Her mouth and greed started this shit to fly. She started it, he finished it. He shut her up.

  After giving Bella the all-clear to leave the safe house, and reminding her not to mention to Gloria the fact that she had been detained to begin with, he and Hammer left the safe house, too. They got back into the SUV under heavy guard, and Mick leaned far back in his seat as if he wanted to fall through it. The SUV took off.

  Hammer was pleased to see that he, at least, didn’t take the fact that he had to be a part of such viciousness lightly. But that was always what he’d heard about Mick the Tick. If you leave him alone, he’d leave you alone. If you crossed him, he’d kill you. Simple, and complex, as that.

  “She’s out,” Hammer said to him.

  Mick looked at Hammer. “Arianna?”

  “Your brother’s ex-wife, yes. I had my people look into it. That’s what those phone calls were about. She was released a few days ago, just in time to finish what she started from prison.”

  “Motherfuck,” Mick said. “Where is she?”

  “Jericho, Maine,” Hammer said. “To be near her sons.”

  Mick frowned. “Why wasn’t my brother notified of her release?”

  “Why would he be?” Hammer asked. “Her incarceration had nothing to do with him.”

  Mick realized that was true, too. And he leaned his head back once again.

  “Where do you go from here?” Hammer asked.

  “Looks like me and my wife will be paying Jericho, and my brother, a visit,” he said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The Gulfstream G650, Mick’s luxurious private jet, had been in the air for two-plus hours of the seven-hour flight, a flight from Philly to Maine, and Mick and Roz had showered together, and were now in bed together.

  Roz snuggled closer against Mick. She was on her side, and he was on his back, and both were naked, exhausted, and ready for this nightmare to be over. After nearly thirty minutes of quiet rest, Mick turned onto his side, too, and put his arm around Roz. His hand rubbed her bare back, and moved further down until he was rubbing her bare ass.

  Roz smiled. Mick smiled too. “You like?” he asked.

  “Feels good,” Roz said. “This would have been a nice break from the hustle and bustle of Philly, if we were going for a different reason. A very different reason.”

  Mick knew it, too.

  “Why didn’t you call your brother,” she asked, “and let him know we’re coming?”

  “I don’t want to alarm him unnecessarily. It’ll be the middle of the night when we arrive there. Arianna still has to believe that we’re her target. My brother may be next on her shit list, but right now I need her focused on me. I’ll look out for Charles.”

  Roz smiled. “If Big Daddy was here, he’d say it’s the other way around.”

  Mick laughed. “He would say that, wouldn’t he?”

  But then Roz turned serious. “Were you close to her, Mick?”

  “Arianna?” he asked. “No. I never met the woman. I just knew about her through my surveillance work.”

  “I meant Natalie Vichy,” Roz said.

  A sad look appeared in Mick’s eyes. “We were never close. But we went way back. So yeah, it was unfortunate. But you can’t leave these fuckers alive, Rosalind. They’ll come back to bite you in the ass every time.” He squeezed her ass.

  Roz nodded. “I know that’s true. You taught me that, too.”

  “I learned the hard way,” Mick said. “But I learned.”

  Mick took her chin, and lifted it to his face. Her chocolate-brown eyes mesmerized him. “When I go to confront Arianna,” he said, “I need you to understand something.”

  Roz stared into his stark, green eyes. “What?”

  “I will not allow you to come with me.”

  Roz was surprised to hear it. “Then why did you bring me along if I can’t be there?”

  Mick stared at her. He hated to admit it, but he knew he had to. “I didn’t want to . . . I couldn’t . . ..” He paused. His look was serious, and cautious. “After what happened at your office,” he continued, “I couldn’t bear the thought of being in another state without you. For some crazy reason, I feel as if I’m the only one who can protect you properly. I don’t feel that way about anybody else. I know the twins and Gloria are in excellent hands with Ted and Joey. Nothing will happen to them; their brothers will see to that. And if they don’t, Deuce will. But I feel a different weight, a different responsibility, when it comes to you.”

  Roz studied him. She knew he was riddled with guilt about the dangerous situations she found herself in during the course of their marriage, but he rarely verbalized those feelings. They rarely talked about it. Maybe he’d open up to her this time? “But why, Mick?” she asked him, to see if he would. “Why do you feel such an extra weight when it comes to me?”

  Mick continued to rub her small butt and stare into her eyes. It was love, and he knew it. It was that can’t live without you; you hold the key to my heart kind of love he swore up and down he’d never have for anybody. But that was the kind of love he had for Rosalind.

  He turned onto his back again, and lifted her on top of him. Then he kissed her. And Roz knew what that meant. Once again, he was not going to tell her. Once again, he was going to show her, instead.

  He continued to kiss her, and rub her, as he held her in his arms. And when they stopped kissing, and his hands moved between her legs, massaging her clit and rubbing her folds, she laid her head on his shoulder.

  From the window in the plane’s bedroom, Roz could see the clouds. When she was a struggling actress in New York, and trying with all she had to break through the noise and rejection and disappointments, Mick came along. She turned him down. She never in a million years wanted a ladies’ man like him anywhere near her life. She’d had too many bedhopping boyfriends in the past, and she wasn’t going to settle like that.

  But she gave love a chance. She gave Mick a chance at bat. And other than a few hiccups, like his penchant for staying out all night when he needed to handle business, while not bothering to phone and let her know, he hit it out of the park.

  And he was about to do so again, in the bedroom sense, Roz thought, as he lifted her body again, and began sucking her breasts.

  Mick had a thing for Roz’s breasts. They were ample, but not super-big like some women he’d slept with in the past. But it wasn’t the size for him. It was t
he way sucking her made him feel. He always expanded when he sucked her: often to a point where he had to make a move.

  But he held back. He had a gift for slowing it down, too. Because he wanted more of her.

  And he got it when he moved her further up and his mouth moved down her sleek, dark body. He was kissing her as he made his way down, until she was hovering over his face and his mouth was between her legs, sucking the shit out of her.

  Roz held onto the headboard as his mouth made long love to her. She jerked her head back, with her long hair rolling down her back, and closed her eyes. Her breasts were still wet and inflamed from what his mouth did to them just moments before. Now it was her vagina’s time. Now her vagina was feeling the heat, too.

  Mick mouth-fucked Roz longer than usual. Because it wasn’t just about getting off. It was never just about that when he was with her. But it was even more than mere love, too. He needed to show her what he meant by that added weight he carried for her. He wanted to show her all about that can’t live without you, weak-kneed love that he’d never admit out loud, but needed her to know all the same.

  And when he moved Roz back down on top of his naked body, and entered her, she knew it as sure as she knew her name. No man could put it on her the way Mick put it on her without loving her in a very special way.

  And he wasn’t letting up. He was fucking her so hard she felt sparks of fire inside of her. He held her down, and gyrated in her pussy so long and so hard that Roz had not one, but two major orgasms in a row. And she was working on a third. . .

  Mick was cumming, too, in one, big wad shot that caused him to let out a grunt that they both knew every member of their flight crew had to have heard.

  But Mick didn’t give a fuck. He couldn’t control these kinds of feelings. He couldn’t pretend this was just another woman on top of him, and all he wanted from her was to get his rocks off. He wanted her heart, more than her body. He wanted her love, more than her sex. He wanted Rosalind above any other woman. And he had to let her know.

  When he finally had no liquid left to pour inside of Roz, his arms fell from around her and laid on the bed. He was too weak to even hold his wife.