Her Protector

by Mallory Monroe

him with such force that Mick’s knees buckled beneath him and his ass hit the deck. He took it

  on the chin and fell hard.

  When they all saw Mick fall, the room went still. All the warning yells stopped. All their

  movements, even Teddy’s, froze in place. Mick was down. The head of the Sinatra crime

  family, and their undisputed boss, was down by the hands of his own son. And they knew, to a

  person in that room, Mick wasn’t having it.

  Because everything had stopped and then, suddenly, rushed back up.

  Any other man would have been knocked out cold, but Mick was no ordinary joe. He was

  back on his feet so quickly that Teddy had just stood back up from launching his punch. And

  Mick was back up and coming for him with a blow a thunder punch of his own.

  And it came like a lightning bolt. And although Teddy wobbled his father for a second,

  Mick’s lick didn’t wobble Teddy. It didn’t buckle his knees. It knocked Teddy completely off his

  feet, over the chair Mick had once sat upon, and over again until he landed, on his back, on the

  cocktail table. It was such a loud thump that Roz and Nikki both feared Teddy’s back was

  broken.

  But Roz saw that look in Mick’s eyes, and Nikki thought about what Mick had done to his

  deceased son, and they both felt they had to protect Teddy. Teddy, they both felt, was out of

  his mind to raise his hand to Mick!

  “Mick, don’t!” Roz yelled desperately as she ran to Teddy’s aid. “You hit him. You got him

  back. Don’t kill him, Mick! Mick! Mick!”

  She knew her influence on her husband was next to nil when he was in that anger zone, but

  she also knew she had to give it all she had. And she did. But it wasn’t nearly enough. Mick

  pushed her aside. He was going to get to Teddy.

  Nikki hurried to Teddy’s aid, too, terrified that Mick would try to finish him off.

  And she was right. Mick was nowhere near finished with his son. Every man who had ever

  raised his fist to Mick Sinatra wasn’t a man still walking the face of this earth. He ran to Teddy,

  to remind him of just who he was truly dealing with, but Nikki stood up to him. She got in his

  path. Her heart was palpitating, but she stood her ground.

  But it was Joey and Gloria and Roz, too, who grabbed Nikki and pulled her aside. They knew

  their father, and Roz knew her husband. He was in another world. There was no stopping him

  now. They knew Teddy might stand a chance against him. He was almost as strong as Mick and

  just as tough. Nikki? Not a chance!

  As soon as they snatched Nikki out of Mick’s way, Mick was on Teddy again. Teddy was

  woozy. He’d never been hit that hard in his life before. But when he felt his father’s hands on

  his coat lapel, pulling him back up and into the fray, his survival instincts kicked in, and he woke

  up then.

  And the fight was joined. And it was a battle royal. Mick and Teddy fought like heavyweight

  champions. Knocking over furniture, fighting from one room to the next. Mick even threw

  Teddy into a glass chest that shattered on impact.

  Roz and Nikki were still following them. They were still begging them to stop it, to cut it

  out. Joey even tried to intervene! But nothing worked.

  Nikki even wondered if they should call the cops to break it up. But she knew that was a no-

  go from get-go. The only thing cops ever did in her life was make it worse.

  Although she was hard-pressed to see how that fight could have gone any worse. Because

  the longer the two men battled, the plainer it became to her. For Teddy’s part, it wasn’t a fight

  about that minor disrespect Mick had shown Nikki. It might have started that way. But not

  anymore. That fight was about years of disrespect. A lifetime of disrespect. It was about that

  little boy still in Teddy who used to wait for Mick to show up to take him to the ball game, but

  he never showed. For Teddy, it was all about settling scores.

  For Mick, it was much simpler than that. It wasn’t about settling anything. It was about

  reasserting what was already settled. Nobody, and especially not his own children, was ever

  going to raise a hand to him, and get away with it.

  Roz and Nikki knew it, too, and stopped trying to break it up. They stayed out of the way.

  There was no stopping two freight trains determined to collide.

  Especially when they realized Teddy was more than holding his own. He wasn’t beating

  Mick’s ass. Mick was beating Teddy’s ass. But Teddy was doing as well as anybody else had

  ever done with Mick. He was holding his own!

  Until he got Mick on the chin again, almost wobbling him again. That angered Mick in a way

  that caused him to take off the kid gloves. He loved Teddy, and because of that love he had

  been sparing Teddy his worse instincts. But he felt Teddy’s hit had gone too far. Teddy wasn’t

  sparing him. And his gloves came off.

  He slammed Teddy’s back against the wall in the mud room, grabbed him by his lapel, and

  began raining down blows on his son. He began beating the shit out of Teddy in a way Teddy

  had never been beaten before. It felt worse than being hit by a train. A train had nothing on

  Mick!

  But then something happened. Not the cries of the ladies in the house. Not the terror on

  Joey and Gloria’s faces. But Mick grabbed Teddy one more time, ready to sling his ass again,

  but something stopped him. Teddy’s gaze met Mick’s gaze, and it stopped Mick cold. No

  longer did he see a rival, an opponent, a misguided man who was way over his head. He saw

  his son. He saw the hurt and the pain in his eyes. The same hurt and pain he used to see in

  Teddy’s eyes when Teddy was a little kid, and Mick would visit him for a brief moment, and

  then take off for months, sometimes years again. He saw Teddy.

  He saw the child, although he’d never verbalize it to anyone, he respected the most. All

  Teddy did was stand up for his woman. A woman, Mick also believed, who deserved to be

  stood up for. Why the fuck, he wondered, was he emasculating his own child? What kind of

  fucked-up father was he?

  He released Teddy. He let him go. But he pointed at him with a warning. “I’ll fucking kill

  you,” he said to his son, “if you ever raise your fist to me again. Do I make myself clear?”

  Teddy stared at his father. His anger was only tempered by the pain he felt in every limb of

  his body. Teddy backed down from no man. But Mick had always been in a different category

  to Teddy. He backed down from Mick. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  Mick stared at him again. And regret filled his eyes. But he was not a man who trafficked in

  regret or it would have killed him long ago. He turned around, and left the room.

  Some forty minutes later, when Mick reemerged out of his office after sitting in the dark

  wishing to God he knew how to be a better man, he realized everybody had gone. Teddy, Nikki,

  Joey, and Gloria. All were gone. And Roz had gone with them.

  And truth hit him like a sledgehammer. Roz had sided with Teddy. Even Roz determined he

  had gone too far.

  If he lost Roz, the game was over.

  Because he knew he would be lost too.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  They sat around the dining room table at Teddy’s house. Everybody was there: except

  Mick. Nikki had made coffee, and they all were drinking some. Teddy was still battered, but he

  was otherwise o
kay.

  “I’m grateful the twins weren’t home,” Roz said. “Because I doubt seriously if they would

  have been able to stop their dad.”

  “What gets into him, Ma?” Joey asked. “Why does he always have to win?”

  Nikki looked at Joey. “You think that’s what that was about?” She was sitting beside

  Teddy. Roz loved how protective she was of Teddy.

  But Joey, and everybody else at the table, were confused by her question. “What else could

  it be about?” Gloria asked. “Dad has to always win.”

  “I don’t know him like you guys know him,” Nikki said, “but that’s not what I saw when they

  were fighting tonight.”

  Even Roz was interested. Sometimes a fresh pair of eyes could see what those too close

  couldn’t. “What did you see?” she asked Nikki.

  “I saw guilt,” Nikki said. “I saw guilt all over Mr. Sinatra.”

  “Guilt?” Joey asked. “What my Pops got to be guilty about? You don’t know what you’re

  talking about! What are we supposed to put you out as some expert on human behavior

  because you once managed a bar?”

  “That’s enough, Joey,” Roz said to him. “She knows more than your ass knows about human

  behavior. And she just might teach us something. Stop judging and learn to listen sometimes.”

  Joey didn’t like being corrected, but he knew his father would be raining blows down on

  him, too, if he disrespected Roz. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Sorry about that, Nikki.”

  “No problem,” Nikki said.

  “Go on, Nick,” said Roz.

  “It’s been my experience that when people are loaded down with guilt,” Nikki continued,

  “they tend to lash out at the people they feel the most-guilty about. Teddy’s his oldest living

  child. Mr. Sinatra was an absent father in his life.”

  “In all our lives,” Gloria corrected her.

  “But what I’m saying is that he’s felt guilty about the way he’s treated Teddy longer than

  any of you. In his mind, maybe, he feels he’s mistreated Teddy the longest. He feels the most

  guilt about Teddy, if that makes sense.”

  “It does,” Roz said. Nikki had her total attention because she felt the same way.

  “When Teddy knocked him down,” Nikki continued, “maybe Mr. Sinatra knew he deserved

  it, but he could never let a living soul know he does. Because that would mean everything

  wrong with Teddy would be his fault. That’s a heavy burden for anybody to carry. Deservedly

  or not.”

  Teddy was staring at Nikki. Her insights sometimes astounded him.

  Roz wasn’t astounded, because she’d reach a similar conclusion herself, but she was pleased

  that Nikki was confirming it. “I think you might be right,” she said.

  “I don’t know about all that,” Joey said. “She makes it sound as if Dad doesn’t love us.”

  Pitiful Joey, Roz thought. That was why she felt so attached to him. “Your father loves you,

  Joe,” she said. “He loves all of you. He’s even fond of you, too, Nikki, or I guarantee he would

  not have come to assist you that day.” Nikki had mentioned it, during a phone conversation, to

  Roz and Gloria both.

  But she had failed to mention it to Joey. “Who came to assist you?” he asked.

  “Dad,” Gloria said, answering for Nikki. “She was out of gas and he gave her a lift to work.”

  “You mean he got somebody to give her a lift,” Joey said.

  But Gloria nodded. “No, he gave her a lift. That’s why it was so amazing. I can’t even see

  Dad doing something like that for anybody except us. But he did it for Nikki.”

  Joey looked at Nikki, not with renewed respect the way everybody else in the family might

  have looked at her. He looked at Nikki with renewed envy. How was he ever going to get

  ahead in his father’s eyes when there was always somebody moving ahead of him?

  Car lights could be seen through the floor-to-ceiling windows in Teddy’s house, and Joey

  rose to see who it was. When he saw the Cadillac Escalade on the driveway, and Mick getting

  out, he looked at the crew. “It’s Dad,” he said.

  Teddy leaned back. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to face him this soon. But they all knew

  why he came. Roz had left with them. He came for Roz. They all looked at her.

  “We can go to another room,” Teddy said to her.

  But Roz shook her head. “In your own home? No way. He can say whatever he needs to

  say in front of everybody. He beat your ass in front of everybody. He had no problem doing

  that shit.” Roz was still hot about the fight.

  Teddy still wasn’t sure if he wanted to deal with it, but he motioned for Joey to let their

  father in.

  When Mick entered the home, and made his way into the dining room, everybody appeared

  on edge. Including Roz, who didn’t know what to expect either. But she did know that coming

  to Teddy’s house was a big step for Mick. It took a lot for a proud man like him to admit . . .

  what? What was he going to admit? Certainly not that he was wrong. Because, in his mind she

  was certain, he wasn’t. She really wasn’t sure why he came.

  But everybody else knew. He came because Roz had left with them. He came because Roz

  was there.

  They also noticed that Mick was carrying a satchel. A Gucci satchel at that, Nikki noticed. It

  was always designer this-or-that with the Sinatras. Did they own anything off-the-rack, she

  wondered?

  Mick, at first, seemed to lumber around the room aimlessly, as if he hadn’t been in Teddy’s

  place in a long while, and his eyes were seemingly all over the place. Then he walked over by

  Teddy and Nikki and stood between them. Both of them could feel his presence.

  “For the record,” Mick said, “my consigliere is not involved in any of this.”

  Teddy looked at him. “You tracked him down already?”

  “Yes.”

  Teddy nodded. “Okay.”

  But Joey wasn’t satisfied at all. Who was this person that they had such unparalleled faith in

  him? “But what if he’s lying, Pop?” Joey asked.

  Both Mick and Teddy looked at Joey. “Don’t be ridiculous,” Mick said.

  “But--”

  “But nothing! That’s the end of it. That’s all I’m going to say about it.”

  Joey shook his head. This advisor of his father’s was so mysterious even he didn’t know who

  he was. His father nor Teddy would even say his name! Who in the world was this guy?

  But Mick, true to his word, had already moved on. He reached toward Teddy so suddenly

  that Nikki almost jumped out of her skin with fright. Was he going to start that shit again?

  But he didn’t hit his son. He lifted Teddy’s chin with his hand, causing Teddy to have to look

  up at him. Everybody was staring at them.

  Mick studied the bruises on Teddy’s face. Nikki could see the regret in Mick’s big, green

  eyes, but she would be shocked if he acknowledged that regret.

  She wasn’t shocked. Mick didn’t address any regret. But he did address Teddy. “You’ll

  live,” he said to his son, then he released his chin.

  “Didn’t say I wouldn’t,” Teddy said to his father.

  Then Mick tossed the satchel onto the table in front of Teddy.

  Teddy, like everybody else in the room, was hopeful, but he wasn’t sure. “What’s this?” he

  asked.

  Mick, as was his way, didn’t respond. He continued walking around the table toward the<
br />
  other side. Teddy opened the satchel. When he saw that it was filled with cash, he rose to his

  feet. Joey stood up too.

  “Damn, Pop,” Joey said. “That’s a lot of dough.”

  Nikki was blown away too.

  Teddy looked at his father. “Is this the nine-and-a-half million?” he asked.

  “Four-and-a-half,” said Mick. “What the fuck I look like giving you a profit for fucking up?

  Pay your supplier. Your ass is gonna eat your share.”

  Teddy smiled. It was the first time Nikki saw him smile since before the fight. “Thanks,

  Pop,” he said.

  “Stop pulling that side shit,” Mick said as he stood behind Gloria and tapped her on the

  back. “That’s how you thank me.”

  Gloria knew exactly why her father was tapping her back. She gladly moved over a chair so

  that he could sit beside his wife.

  As Mick sat down beside Roz, Teddy closed back up the satchel. “I’ll be back,” he said

  gladly, and then took the satchel and headed upstairs. Teddy, Nikki knew, was meticulous that

  way. He was locking that sucker up, until he got it to his supplier.

  But she still couldn’t get over how major that gesture was. Mick Sinatra easily pulled

  together four-and-a-half million dollars and just handed it to Teddy. Just like that! They could

  say whatever they wanted about their father, but she knew better. That man, she was

  convinced, loved his family and would do anything for them. Even, as in Teddy’s case, when

  they messed up.

  Although Joey wasn’t so sure. “Would you do that for me, Pop?” he asked as he sat back

  down.

  Mick looked at him. “Why would you ask me a question like that?”

  “Because I wanna know. If I get in a fix like Teddy was in--”

  “Don’t get in one,” Mick warned.

  “I’m just sayin’ if I did. Would you give me that kind of dough to get me out of trouble?”

  Mick, at first, just stared at Joey. To Nikki it seemed like he always had to size up a person

  first. To see where their vulnerabilities were. To see if he even wanted to bother with

  answering them.

  He apparently felt it necessary to answer his younger son. “When your ass was in trouble

  with Sal Gabrini,” Mick said, “who do you think got you out of that trouble? You?”

  Sal Gabrini’s son had been kidnapped, and Joey had been implicated in the scheme. But