She moved to close his wallet, and place it back in his pants pocket, but when she did she saw a folded paper sticking out with a very familiar name on it. But it was strange that Trevor would have that name on a piece of paper inside his wallet. Very strange!
Carly looked into the bathroom. Trevor was still in the shower bathing and the water was still going strong. Unable to resist, she pulled the paper out of his wallet and quickly unfurled it. And when she saw the names she was confused out of her mind:
Reno Gabrini.
Sal Gabrini.
Tommy Gabrini.
Mick Sinatra. Uncle Mick too?
Carly was astounded. Why would their names be on a sheet of paper in Trevor’s wallet? That made no sense!
But she didn’t allow her questions to overrule her own good sense. She kept reading. There were names of locations that she recognized. Reno Gabrini owned the PaLargio Hotel and Casino on the Vegas Strip. That was on the list. Her Uncle Tommy and Uncle Sal owned Diamante’s Restaurant in Seattle. That was on the list. Her Uncle Mick owned the luxurious Carson-Benning Hotel in New York City. That was listed too. And beneath the names of those familiar places were handwritten words like Best Target Spots, and Best Hiding Places, and then yet another list of various locations that Carly knew were near each one of her uncles’ businesses. But what was it about? And why would Trevor need this information? And what was meant by best target spots, and best hiding places?
Carly’s mind ran wild. If she didn’t know any better, she would conclude this was some kind of a hit list. That it was a list of the people that a gunman would need to carry out a hit of some sort. But that was crazy!
Then she thought again. Was Trevor an assassin? Had somebody hired Trevor to take out her family members? Was that the kind of work he did when he was always out of town on “other” business? Carly couldn’t keep up with her own scary thoughts. Her heart dropped through her feet.
She looked into the bathroom again. Trevor was still in the shower, still bathing, but she knew it was just a matter of moments before he would be done. He’d been in there too long already. But what could she do? If she took the paper, he might discover it before he left town and would confront her about it. Or worse! But she knew she had to record this information, and she had to record it fast!
She wanted to cry. She wanted to run somewhere and cry. Was their relationship a lie? Was he using her to get to her family? She wanted to break down right then and there. But she knew she couldn’t. Her uncles very survival might depend on her getting this information, and getting it now.
She hurried to her nightstand and grabbed her cellphone. But just as she did, the shower water suddenly shut off. She could have panicked, but she didn’t. She hurried back to the paper, pulled up her phone’s camera, and snapped a picture of the entire sheet of paper, front and back. As the shower door opened, she hurriedly folded back up the paper and stuffed it back into Trevor’s wallet, and then placed his wallet back into his pants. She turned quickly, and moved away from those pants just as he came out of the bathroom, drying himself with a towel.
She immediately grabbed her panties from the floor, as if she had been engaged in uninterrupted clothes gathering.
When she looked back up, he was looking her up and down. It should have unnerved her, given what she’d just discovered, but she knew she had to keep it together. He always gave her assessing looks, as if he was always sizing her up, and she had to remember that. She couldn’t overreact!
And her calm seemed to pay off. “I see you’re up,” he said, as he made his way toward the dresser she stood beside.
“Yeah,” she managed to say with a weak smile. She was upset with herself that her vagina, now trained to react to him, tingled when his naked body, with his thick, dangling dick, moved closer as he made his way to the dresser.
He leaned over and gave her a kiss on the lips. It took all she had not to wince. “Trying to clean up our mess?” he asked her.
“Trying to,” she said.
He smiled. “Good luck with that.” He pulled out a pair of briefs from one of the dresser drawers and began putting them on. He didn’t live with her, he had his own home in Boston, but he kept clothes at her house for the nights when he did stay over. “You going to the office today? I ask because I hope not. It’s Saturday. Get you some rest.”
“I was going to go in for a few hours, that’s all,” Carly said.
“Get you some rest,” Trevor said again, as if it were an order, and began putting on his pants.
She realized she could have placed his wallet in the wrong back pocket. She didn’t even think about that when she was putting it in his pocket! “I’m okay,” she said as conversationally as she could.
“You don’t look okay,” he responded, looking at her. “You look tired. You’ve been working too many hours, Carly. Stay home today and rest.”
He said it in a way that made clear to her it wasn’t a decision that was up for debate. She knew she wasn’t about to argue with him. “I’ll stay home,” she said, and smiled.
He looked into her eyes with a hard gaze. Did he see her fear? If he was a professional assassin, if he killed men for money, he’d know what fear looked like. But whatever he saw, he reacted lustfully.
He kissed her on the lips again. When it seemed to taste good to him, he placed his hand on the side of her face and began kissing her harder. Then he got that sense of urgency, as he usually did when he wanted to fuck her, and sat her on the dresser, opened her legs, and bent down between them. He lifted her thighs and began to eat her pussy with that rough edge that always made her want to cum. But right now, with all that she thought she knew, she wanted to scream.
But she knew she couldn’t scream. She had to play the part. She had to let Trevor, possibly a man with murderous intentions toward her family, or even toward her, suck her as if he was sucking the life out of her. And he made her vaginal juices flow. She was wet.
And when he stood up, and put that thick dick into her wetness, and rammed it in with a hard thrust, she became even more concerned. Did he know she’d seen that paper? Was he getting in a last fuck before he attempted to harm her too? Or was he just being Trevor, who always liked it rough?
She didn’t know. But for her life’s sake, she knew she had to play the part. And she did. She grabbed Trevor by the mouth and began kissing him as hard as he had kissed her. And they kissed as hard as he pounded into her. They kissed as hard as his dick broke in her, and hit every spot. And suddenly Carly didn’t believe it. Because she felt his heartbeat. Because she felt love in his every gyration. He wasn’t going to harm her. He couldn’t! She felt it in her bones.
But she was still too overwrought to cum. There was no way this man, who never failed to make her cum, was going to be able to pull that off today. Not after that paper she saw. Not after those names she saw.
But he came. He came with a hard release, and she feigned her own cum. She wasn’t sure if he believed her act, because at one point, as his every muscle strained out and he poured inside of her, he opened his eyes and looked at her. His look chilled her. But then he closed his eyes again, and fully experienced his cum.
But she still didn’t exhale. She continued to be on high alert after he came, and after they showered together, and after he was fully dressed and ready to go. She didn’t exhale even as she walked him downstairs, to the front door, and kissed him goodbye. She didn’t exhale until the limousine carrying him to his plane, so that he could head back to God knows where, was clean out of sight.
But even when she did exhale, she didn’t waste another second. She dressed quickly, throwing on a pair of pants and a shirt without bothering to put on a bra or panties, and then grabbed her phone, her shoes to put on in the car, and grabbed her keys. And she took off. She had to get to Jericho, Maine, to Big Daddy’s house, which was about a two-hour drive away. And she had to get there as fast as her courage, and her SUV, could take her.
CHAPTER NINE
The Jaguar sped down the streets, turning corners with a zip, until it was in the historic district of Jericho. But that didn’t mean Charles slowed down. He didn’t. He kept zipping it, around corner after corner, until he was on Elm Street, and was looking for that one particular home.
“Dad, you need to slow down so I can read the numbers,” Tony complained.
“I’m reading them,” Charles said.
“But slow down anyway. How about that? This is, after all, a residential area.”
“Jenay was still in a residential area when they tried to kill her. This fucker didn’t care about that area. I don’t give a fuck about this one.”
Tony looked at his father. He was not the kind of man who was riled easily, but Jenay’s accident had riled him. It shook him to his core. Even after they had taken Jenay home, and Brent rushed over to stay with her, with Donald and Ashley there too, he still could see the terror in his father’s eyes. Jenay could have left this earth today. His beloved wife could have been taken from him just like that. And the idea of that stark reality cut Charles short. Tony had not seen his father this unhinged, this enraged, in a long time.
He reached out and placed his hand on Charles’s hand. “Thank God she lived,” he said. “Let’s thank God she got out of that horrific accident alive.”
Charles exhaled. And nodded. Tony was right, and he was thankful. But he was angry as hell too.
The house was near the end of the street. It was a well-kept cape cod with a narrow driveway. Charles slung his Jaguar onto the driveway and stopped behind the Honda Accord parked there.
Charles and Tony got out of the car and made their way toward the front door. Tony hurried beside his father, to help calm him down.
“We need answers, Dad,” he said when he made it by his side. Charles was walking fast. Tony had trouble keeping up. “We need to know who drove those trucks, and why did they target Ma. We need answers, not bloodshed.”
But Charles didn’t even hear Tony. He was singularly focused on Miller Franklin. He used to tell his kid brother Mick to take it easy on people, to not be so vengeful. But now he understood why Mick fought so hard. These bastards came for his wife. His wife! And if Miller was behind it, Charles was coming for him.
But when he banged on the front door, and Miller finally opened the door, looking surprised, the script flipped. Tony saw Miller’s face, and saw the glib way he seemed to be responding to their presence, and he lost it.
It was Tony, not Charles, who grabbed Miller by the catch of his shirt and slammed his back so hard against the wall in the foyer that Miller could feel it crack.
“You tried that shit on my mother,” Tony said to Miller with more anger than Charles had ever seen within him. “On my mother?”
“What are you talking about?” Miller asked, looking perplexed. “What shit I tried? All I did was go to her house. She’s my sister-in-law. What’s the crime in that?”
Charles glanced around. “Who else is home?” he asked Miller.
“What is this about?” Miller angrily asked him. “And this motherfucker better take his hands off me!”
Tony gripped tighter. His green eyes were hard as glass. “Make me,” he said.
“Who else is home?” Charles asked again.
“Nobody, alright?” Miller was more peeved than anything. “Now are we going to talk about this like men, or like thugs?” he asked, as he looked at Tony.
Those words did manage to calm Tony back down. Him a thug? That was not him at all! But Jenay’s accident had him shook up too. And if this guy was the reason, if this guy hired those punks to drive those trucks into her, he wanted blood. He hated that he felt that way, but he did. “I’m nobody’s thug,” he said, and released Miller Franklin.
“But I am,” Charles said as he grabbed Miller by the catch of his shirt, and slammed his back, once again, against the wall. “Especially when it comes to my family. Now you talk to me, Miller. You tell me why did you come to Jericho, and why did you order that hit on Jenay?”
The look on Miller’s face changed from a perplexed look to downright confusion. “Ordered what hit?” he asked. “What are you talking about? Somebody harmed Jenay? I didn’t order any hit on Jenay, what are you talking about?”
“So you’re going to play dumb now?” Charles asked him. “You’re going to tell us you don’t know shit about shit, is that what we can expect now?”
“I’m telling you I don’t know shit about no hit, that’s what I’m telling you! I came to town because I come every year this time. I have a time share in this house and have had it for nearly three years!”
“This isn’t a big town,” Charles said. “You would have heard of Jenay Sinatra.”
“Yeah, I heard of the Sinatras. But I didn’t know Jenay was a Sinatra. I didn’t know Jenay had moved to Maine. I hadn’t seen her since she divorced my brother! She didn’t even show up for his funeral. And when the authorities called me about the adoption, they never told me Jenay’s last name. They only said my former sister-in-law wanted to adopt her former stepchildren. So I don’t know what you want me to say. The only reason I found out she lived in Jericho was when my daughter told me she wanted to have her reception at this beautiful Inn she was always going on about. So I decided to check it out. I was stunned when I saw Jenay. And this hit you’re talking about is like a foreign language to me. What hit? Is she okay?”
Tony looked at his father. Charles was a good judge of character, he thought. As a psychologist, Tony thought of Charles as one of the best judge of characters he’d ever known. And Charles didn’t look convinced yet. His eyes stared hard at Miller.
“If you are involved, in any way, with what happened to my wife today,” Charles said, “you will regret it. Charles Sinatra will be gone. Big Daddy will come out. You don’t want Big Daddy coming out.”
Tony stared at his father. He’d never known him to so much as mention, let alone embrace, that moniker he hated. But Mick Sinatra, one of the most ruthless mob bosses in America, was his kid brother. They were raised in the same household. Mick didn’t get his badass ways from thin air.
But Tony also knew his father had a moral core that did not allow him to go the way of Uncle Mick and the Gabrinis. But mess with his family . . .then it became a different story.
Charles released Miller. Stared at him again. And then he and Tony left.
CHAPTER TEN
“Order!” Mayor Cruikshank took the gavel and pounded the table. “Order in the room!”
The City Hall gathering room was only half-filled when the moderator called the meeting to order. The other business leaders in town, all of whom fully supported the mayor’s efforts to bust up what they considered to be a Sinatra monopoly, were thrilled. They were all up front ready to cast their votes and get on with their lives. But Big Daddy’s allies, which consisted mainly of his employees, were not.
“Big Daddy has a right to be here and vote,” Pearl Pegg, one of Charles’s property agents, stood and said. “He’s the one this whole thing is about!”
“Then he should be here,” hollered a business leader and Cruikshank ally. “We don’t have time to be waiting on him! That’s the problem with this town. Everybody act like they have to bow down to Charles Sinatra. Well I bow down to no man, least of which that shyster! Who does he think he is?”
“This meeting was scheduled for twelve o’clock,” Pearl shot back. “It’s not even eleven yet and y’all already calling for a vote. How is that fair?”
“Didn’t I say order in this room?” The mayor hit the gavel again. “Everybody settle themselves down!”
Pearl didn’t like it, but she sat back down. The mayor directed his comments at her. “We wanted him to be here, Pearl,” the mayor said. “Don’t you think we want him here? But in case you haven’t heard, Mrs. Sinatra had a very unfortunate accident this morning and there’s no way he’s leaving his wife’s side. But that’s his loss. Not ours. We called the meeting early because he’s the on
e who insisted on this twelve o’ clock time anyway. We wanted it sooner all along. So we called it sooner. It’s not our fault he can’t be here.”
But Cruikshank had barely finished his words when the door to the gathering hall opened, and Charles Sinatra, flanked by Jenay, his oldest son Brent, and Tony walked in. Pearl smiled. Cruikshank and his cronies were stunned.
It was still amazing to Charles, too, that Jenay walked away from such a horrific accident, but she did. Charles was still shaken, even more so than Jenay, as he held her hand tight, but she was determined to attend. They needed every vote they could get, including hers, and she wasn’t about to let that accident cause her husband to lose all he fought so hard to build.
The meeting was being called by Mayor Cruikshank as he sought to invoke what amounted to eminent domain on a number of Charles’s properties. The governmental body responsible had shifted, by referendum, out of the city council’s hands and placed into the hands of the city’s oversight review board. The mayor’s reasoning was all about community development and road improvements, but everybody knew it was a chance for the newly elected mayor to have a power grab away from Charles, and to himself. The board members consisted of all of the town’s political and business leaders, which meant Charles and Jenay, as business owners, and their oldest son Brent, as the former police chief, all were members of the board. Brent resigned shortly after Cruikshank was sworn in, and he and his wife both now worked for Charles, but they resigned strategically. Because it was after the election when they left, Brent’s oversight review board voting privileges, as per the city charter, could not be revoked until the next election. Tony Sinatra, as the town’s psychologist and radio host, was also a voting member.
After the Sinatras took their places near the front of the room, Cruikshank, still stunned, cleared his throat. “I see you folks made it,” he said. “We heard about your unfortunate incident, Jenay. We didn’t expect to see you here.”
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