Everybody went still. Was he going to pull out a gun and kill Sal, at which case Reno and Tommy would have to pull out their guns and kill him? Or was he going to make peace? It was always hard to tell with Mick. Maybe that was why it took him so long to get out here. Maybe he called for this gathering to take out all of the Gabrinis. Reno knew Mick, and therefore knew that wasn’t the case. But Tommy didn’t know him like that, and neither did Sal. They weren’t too sure. They both were on guard, just in case.
“I want to apologize to you, Sal,” Mick said. “I was wrong.”
Everybody relaxed. But the idea of Mick Sinatra apologizing was worth the cost of admission, especially for his own children. You could still hear a pin drop, as everybody remained still and silent.
“I was wrong to assume there could never be that kind of choice to make,” Mick continued. “I thought no man could ever choose a woman over their own mother. It wasn’t right to me. It went against everything I believed in. I saw my father kill my mother. And I hated him for it. Because I knew what his selfish act did to our family. We were already dysfunctional, but he drove us over the cliff. My big brother Charles survived the crash, but even he wasn’t unscathed. Even he has scars that can’t be healed. But my sister Jacqueline, or Sprig as we called her, didn’t fare as well. I made it out alive, but that’s not living. And Sprig, well, Sprig didn’t make it out at all.”
Sal and Tommy exchanged a glance. Sprig had been their self-destructive mother. They knew exactly what Mick was talking about.
“She had too many demons,” Mick continued. “Charles did what he could for her. I didn’t do a damn thing. She was a grown woman. She had to make her own bed. That was how I viewed matters like that. Each man had to be for himself.”
He looked specifically at Sal. Gemma placed her hand on Sal’s hand. Mick was a charming man, a gorgeous man physically, but there was an unyielding hardness to him that concerned her.
“It was my guilt that drove my passion against you,” Mick said. “She was gone before I had a chance to make things right. And it was all because of you.”
Mick hesitated. Roz wanted to get up and go to him, to support him, but she knew Mick wouldn’t want that. Times like these, when he was owning up to his own mistakes, he preferred to stand alone. He loved her because she gave him that space. Later, when they were alone, he would lean on her. But that kind of vulnerability he would never display in public.
“You did what you had to do,” Mick finally said to Sal. “Sprig put you in that position, not the other way around. She made that bed, and she had to lie in it. You did what you had to do. I didn’t understand that until recently, when I thought about my wife, and my children. I would do the same thing for them. I get it.”
Teddy, Gloria, and Joey stared unblinkingly at their father. They knew he was trying to change. They knew he was trying to be the father to them he never was. It was going to be hard for him. Because he practiced what he preached. He made his bed hard too. Adrian alone showed him just how hard.
“I understood what you did,” Mick continued talking to Sal, “in ways I never thought I could ever understand. Before I met my wife, before I established a real relationship with my children, I wouldn’t have understood it.” Then Mick reached his outstretched hand over the table. “I find no fault in you,” he said.
Sal stood up and shook Mick’s hand. “You’re a general asshole,” Sal said with a half-cocked smile, “but I find no fault in you either.”
Everybody laughed and applauded. For the men, it felt like a load lifted. For the women, it felt like a cloud removed. Now there was nothing to separate the families. There was nothing to get in the way of having each other’s back. Like Roz and Mick earlier, they too were now one.
“Eat up,” Mick said. “I don’t give away free food too often!”
They laughed. And they all ate, drank, and were happy.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Happy was the way Gloria felt when she made it back to her apartment. It was later that night. After leaving her father’s home, she and her date, along with Jimmy Mack and Val and her cousins from Jericho, had partied for hours at a club whose name she couldn’t even recall. The music from the club, all hard rock, was still ringing in her ears. Coldplay, Iron Maiden, Twisted Sister. It had been one of those crazy, nothing-but-fun nights. And then he dropped her off.
But as soon as she unlocked and opened her door, the fun ended. She felt a hand grab her hand, pull her into the apartment as if she were a rag doll, and slammed the door shut. She wanted to scream, and would have, but her mouth was immediately covered. When she realized it was Marco, the man she had fallen for, the man her father had warned her to stay the hell away from, she became more angry than afraid.
But he didn’t give her a chance to voice her displeasure. He, instead, pulled her face up to his with an angry thrust, and put a knife to her throat. “I got your message,” he spat out at her. “Your coldblooded, coldhearted bitch.” Then he began mocking her voice. “’I’m a liar,’ you said. ‘I’m a cheat. You’re married, and I don’t mess with married men.’ Give me a fucking break! But you went on and on. You don’t want to see me again, you said. You don’t want to have anything more to do with me. How can I do that to my children, you said. You were so arrogant in that message. You were so full of your little spoiled self. And you thought that was all it took. You thought that would do the trick. You thought that was going to work. You thought wrong, you bitch!”
He tightened his grip on her body, a grip that caused her face to wince with pain. “I love you, Glori,” he declared. “I love you more than any woman I have ever loved before. And I’m not losing you. You hear me? I’m not losing you!”
He began to kiss her, harshly, on her lips. Gloria started to fight against it. She started to push against him and fight his advances. But she thought again. He was too tight and too harsh. Fighting him could get her killed. So she didn’t fight. She didn’t push back. She returned his kiss, his passion, even more passionately than he was giving it.
She could tell it startled him. He almost pulled back. But Gloria knew her worth. She knew what kind of effect she had on men when she did it right. So she did it right. For self-preservation, she began kissing Marco as dutifully as she kissed him when she was in love with him. She kissed him with a hunger she had never displayed before.
And it worked. Marco eased his grip on her and removed that knife from her throat. She reached her hand inside of his pants and began to fondle him as she kissed him. He became so relaxed that he leaned his head back and allowed her to kneel down and unzip his pants. This was the very reason why he wasn’t going to let her go. She knew how to do him unlike any other woman could. And she was about to do him again. He could not have hoped for a better outcome.
Until Gloria, certain that he was now totally relaxed and loose, grabbed that knife, stood up quickly, and placed it at his throat.
She thought that would do the trick. She thought she could point it at him and he would leave her condo and her life forever. But she wasn’t dealing with a rational man. She was dealing with a love sick man who, if he couldn’t have her, nobody else would. And instead of retreating and leaving, he pounced.
He grabbed for the knife and nearly succeeded. But Gloria had her father’s instincts. She knew it was kill or be killed time. And she wanted to live.
She stabbed Marco repeatedly. She stabbed him and stabbed him. But he kept coming back. She cried as she stabbed. She cried as the horror of what he forced her to do materialized in her soul and she wept.
But she lived.
She survived the slaughter.
And Marco, the man she once thought she loved, a federal agent no less, dropped at her feet like a stone dropped in the river.
Shaking, she hurried and found her cell phone, and nervously, fighting back panic, placed a call.
But it wasn’t to 911. Her instincts kicked in. It was to her father.
“Daddy,” she said when he finally answered.
“Please come.”
The door to the condo was barely opened by Gloria, and Mick, Reno, Sal and Roz had to squeeze their way through. But when they made their way inside, and saw the blood first and then the body, they understood her nervousness. Over the phone she told Mick what happened, but he didn’t tell anybody else. He just told them to come.
“Are you alright?” Roz asked urgently as she pulled her into her arms. Gloria wasn’t crying hysterically, but the look on her face, that look of innocence lost, was even more telling to Roz. “Oh, baby,” she said as she moved her away from the bloody scene.
As Roz walked Gloria over to the sofa, where they sat down, Mick, Sal, and Reno surveyed the situation. Mick opened his jacket, placed his hands on his hips, and stared at the corpse.
Gloria looked at her father. She knew he lived this kind of life. She knew he saw scenes like this all the time. How did he handle it, she wondered? How did he look at something that gruesome without falling apart? But his face said it all to her. He wasn’t horrified as she was. He wasn’t even terrified. He was anguished.
He looked at her. She expected him to ask her what happened. She expected him to ask her to site chapter and verse what led her to take a man’s life. But he didn’t even go there. “Have you told anyone else?” he asked her.
Gloria removed her black hair from her dark face and shook her head. “No, sir,” she said. Roz could feel her body trembling.
“Go change,” he said to her. “Take off the clothes you have on and leave them on the floor. You’re coming with us.”
“Coming with you?” Gloria asked, confused. “But he’s a federal agent, Dad! I’m going to prison forever when they find out. I killed him!”
“Hold on, baby,” Roz said, holding her again. She was falling apart at the seams. Roz looked at Mick.
Mick walked over to his daughter and sat on the other side of her. Sal and Reno looked on. “Listen to me,” he said.
Gloria looked at him. He towered over her even as he sat beside her. And even his presence didn’t ease her fear. The tears were flowing freely now. “I know you told me not to come home. I know you told me to stay at your house until Adrian was found. But I didn’t think his would happen.”
“Of course not, honey,” Roz said.
“He’s a federal agent,” Gloria said again.
“I know what he is,” Mick said.
“I’ll go to prison for life if they find out what I did.”
“Then they won’t find out,” he said. “You understand me? They won’t find out.”
Gloria stared at her father. At first, what he said to her made no sense to her. Then she realized who he was. “He was going to kill me. That was his knife I used. You think they’re going to believe me?”
Mick was frank. “No,” he said. “You’re my daughter. They won’t believe you.”
Gloria and Roz both looked at him. Gloria looked even more distressed. “Then how am I going to stay out of prison? I didn’t just kill him. He tried to kill me, I swear!”
Mick was unable to conceal his distress. He hated that it had to happen to his little girl. “Go change,” he said to her. When she still just sat there, lost and confused, he looked at Roz.
“Come on, babe,” Roz said, stood her up, and helped her to the room.
Mick stood back up and walked over to Reno and Sal. All three men stood there. Mick exhaled.
“What are you thinking?” Reno asked. “Out of town?”
“Yeah,” Mick said, glancing back at the body. “That’s what I’m thinking.”
“Maybe make it look like a suicide,” Sal said.
But Mick was shaking his head. “Too much chance of them finding her DNA.”
“What then?” Reno asked.
“Burn and bury,” Mick said. “That’s the only way.”
Reno and Sal looked at each other. That made sense to them too. “That’s the only way,” Sal agreed.
Mick ran his hand across his face.
“You hate that she had to experience this,” Reno said.
“I was hoping she wouldn’t see this side,” Mick said. “I was hoping.”
“Yeah,” Reno said, “I felt the same way when Jimmy Mack got a taste. It’s always bitter.”
“Nothing can be done about it now,” Mick said with resolve in his voice. “I’ll contact my men---”
Sal shook his head. “No, you won’t,” he said, and Mick looked at him. “Our men will handle this. You get your wife and your daughter and get the fuck out of here. You aren’t the only one who knows how to manage a crisis. Between the two of us, we’ve been doing this shit for fifty years.”
Mick actually managed to smile. And he considered Reno and Sal. He considered them because, for the first time in his entire life, he had back up that was actually his equal. He had family.
Saturday evening, after the Gabrinis had left town and all of the Sinatras, except Charles, had left too, Mick and Charles were alone on the backyard patio. Mick was drinking a glass of wine. It had been a wonderful get together, but a tough one too. Roz came out.
“How is she?” Mick asked expectantly.
Roz nodded. “She’s resting comfortably. It’s going to take some getting used to. She thinks it’s her fault because she didn’t come back here like you told her to. She went home instead.”
Mick’s cell phone began to ring. “It would have been avoided,” he said. “That’s the truth. But it’s not her fault.” Mick answered his phone.
“Can I get you anything to drink, Charles?” Roz asked.
“No, I’m good,” Charles said. “I don’t have the stomach for a lot of alcohol. But I see my brother does.”
Roz smiled. “And does he,” she said.
Mick ended the call. And stood up. “They’ve got him,” he said.
Charles stood up too. “Adrian?”
Mick nodded. “Adrian.”
Roz’s heart began to pound.
Charles began moving toward Mick. “I’m going with you,” he said.
If it had been anybody else, Mick would have objected. But he knew Charles could more than handle himself. If necessary, he knew Charles could handle him.
He kissed Roz, and they took off.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Mick and Charles arrived at the safe house. But as soon as they walked in, Mick knew something was off. Where were his men to greet him at the front door? Where were his men once they made it inside? He knew the routine when they wanted to set a trap. This felt like that kind of set up. And then, for no other reason than his own survival instinct kicking in, his heart began to pound.
“Back out,” he said to Charles. “Let’s get the fuck out of here!”
They ran back out of the front door they had walked into. But just as they cleared the threshold, an explosion rocked them and threw them off of their feet. When they looked up, at a distance from where they started, the house was a tinderbox of flames. The house was on fire.
“You okay?” Mick asked Charles as he got up.
“I’m okay,” Charles said, getting up too. “Who said they had Adrian? Who called it in to you?”
“Archie Bloom,” Mick said without hesitation. “My . . .” Then he realized what was going on.
“Your what, Mick?” Charles asked anxiously. “Your what?”
“My front gate security chief. I should have figured it out. What the fuck would he know about finding somebody? He guards my fucking house!”
“Your house?” Charles asked. “But your wife and children are at your house. Good Lord, Mick!”
And both men ran back to Mick’s Maserati, got in, and Mick sped off. They both were trying to phone Roz, or Teddy, or Gloria, or Joey. But all to no avail.
Because of the security breach, Mick and Charles did not enter the property from the front gate. They drove to the backstreet behind Mick’s estate to a smaller home. Not one of his men knew it, but Mick owned that home too.
“What is this?” Charles asked as Mick parked t
he car and they jumped out.
“An extension of my house,” Mick said, as they ran inside.
Once inside, Charles followed Mick as he ran down the narrow hallway of the empty house, to the bedroom in the back. Once in the back, Mick removed a rug, lifted a hatch, and they were suddenly hurrying down a set of stairs and then running in a tunnel underground. Charles was amazed on one hand, by the elaborateness of it all, but he wasn’t the least surprised on the other hand. A man like Mick had to have more than one way in, and more than one way out. This was that other way.
After going through another wall, where a code was needed for the wall to open, they ran a few more feet and came out in a never-used closet inside Mick’s main house. With their guns drawn, they unlocked the closet door and made their way down the corridor to the backstairs that led to the kitchen. When they entered the kitchen, and made their way toward the living room, they heard what Mick knew was Adrian’s voice.
“First I’m going to kill her,” Adrian was saying, “then all of you. Then our so-called Dad is going to see what it feels like. He’s going to finally pay us some attention.”
Mick knew he had to act and act quickly. But he had to have a layout of the people in the room. He leaned over, around the side archway that separated the dining room from the kitchen, and saw the layout. Adrian was near the window, with an arm around Roz’s neck, and a gun to her skull. His children, Teddy, Gloria, and Joey, were on their knees with their hands behind their heads. Archie Bloom was standing behind them, with a gun on them. This situation was beyond dire. Adrian, he knew, could pull that trigger at any moment, and Rosalind would be gone. Archie could pull his trigger, and his children could be gone. He had to divert Adrian.
Mick looked at Charles. “As soon as I step out, you step out too and aim your gun directly at Adrian. Regardless of what I’m doing, you keep your gun aimed at Adrian.”
Charles nodded. It felt odd taking orders from his younger brother, but he was no fool. He was in Mick’s tool house now. “Got it,” he said.
Mick Sinatra 3: His Lady, His Children, and Sal Page 15