Mick moved to grab Roz from their grasp, but Teddy pulled him back.
“I’ll get you out of this, babe,” Mick said to Roz as the officers escorted her toward the front door.
“I know you will, Mick,” Roz said back.
“Don’t say shit to them. Not one word. I’ll be there.”
“Okay,” Roz said, as she fought back tears. She was in trouble. That was never pleasant. But what she hated more was the agony she knew Mick was going through. He already had to worry about Gloria. Now he had to take care of her situation too. It wasn’t fair!
Mick followed her to the door, with Teddy right beside her. He followed her outside, and up to the patrol car. He kept his eyes on her as they drove her away. Roz turned around in the backseat of the patrol car, and stared at her husband. Mick’s heart pounded.
He hurried back inside. “Call my attorney,” he said to Teddy as he walked.
“Which one?” Teddy asked.
“All of them,” Mick said.
When Mick returned in the house, Bella was complaining. “This is about our daughter,” she said to Mick, as Teddy pulled out his cell phone and made the calls. “This is about our child, not her! Why didn’t you tell me about that tape? If it wasn’t for Joey telling me, I would have never known. And that bitch would have been getting away with murder right under your nose!”
Mick walked up to Bella, completely in her personal space. He looked her dead in the eye. “Did you set this up?” he asked her.
“Set what up?”
“Gloria’s disappearance?”
“No, I didn’t set it up! What are you talking about? You need to ask that question to your wife.”
“Did you get Devin Terranz to harm my daughter? Did you get somebody else to kidnap her?”
Bella was shocked. “I did no such thing! That is not true! How could you say that?”
Mick stared at her. He knew Bella. He knew when she was telling the truth. He knew when she was lying. Right now, his instincts told him she was telling the truth. But he wasn’t taking any chances. He called for his men to get her and her flunkies, and take them across town to a safe house.
“A safe house?” Bella asked. “You can’t hold me against my will!”
“They’re holding my wife against her will. I’m holding you.”
“But it’s not true, Mick! It’s not true!”
“That tape wasn’t true, either. But what difference did that make to you?”
Bella stared at Mick. She realized at that moment just how much he truly loved Roz. But when Mick’s men came to take her out, she fought against it. “Let me go!” she screamed. “Let me go!”
“You heard Pop,” Teddy said to Bella, holding his hand against the phone’s speaker. “Shut the fuck up and get the hell out!”
Joey couldn’t believe Teddy. “How can you take his side?” he asked him. “She was looking out for our sister. She did nothing wrong. What about Gloria, though?”
“Pop is doing everything he can to find Gloria,” Teddy shot back. “Roz had nothing to do with it, Joey! She loves us. Somebody’s setting her up. Can’t you see that?”
“All I can see is Gloria is gone, and she said with her own mouth who would be responsible. I believe what I saw, not what you think!”
Mick walked up to Bella as she continued to fight his men. “Belle?” Mick asked. Bella looked at him. “You can go peacefully, or they can carry you out. But you’re getting out of here.”
Belle knew Mick, and what he was capable of. “You bastard,” she said heartfelt. But she gave up the struggle. And his men took her and her two assistants away.
Then Mick looked at Joey, and began removing his belt. “Come with me,” he said.
“Come with you where?” Joey asked.
Mick, stunned by his son’s defiance, grabbed him by his oversized shirt and dragged him along. Then he threw him into his study, slamming the door behind them.
Teddy was worried for Joey, but the attorney was still on the line. “You have a list of all of dad’s attorneys, right?” he asked into his cell phone. “I’m asking because I want you to phone them and tell them Dad wants their asses downtown too. That’s right. All of them. He wants his wife out and he wants her out now. That’s right. And you know how he can get when he wants it now.”
Then Teddy heard a hard whip that made him wince. “We’ll talk later. Just get your ass to the station!”
He ended the call and hurried over to the closed door of his father’s study. And all he heard was more hitting. But it was when there was no more sounds, except the sound of silence, that worried Teddy the most. He almost opened the door himself, just to make sure his father hadn’t gone too far. But then the door flew open and his father, putting back on his belt, began heading out.
“You stay with the twins,” Mick ordered Teddy. “I’ll be back. With Rosalind.”
“I’ll go with you, Pop,” Teddy said.
“You do what I said. I have to handle this.” And Mick hurried out the front door.
But within seconds, Joey came out of the study too. He had been badly beaten, Teddy could see that, and his heart went out to his kid brother. He even reached out his hand to help him, but Joey slapped it away. And he hurried out behind his father.
Mick was just about to get into his Maserati when Joey ran up to him. Joey turned him around as if he was going to fight him. Mick’s guards were about to charge toward them, but Mick held up a hand, signaling for them to stand down. But Joey looked murderous to them. They didn’t advance forward, but they completely didn’t stand down.
Joey was breathing heavily, was fighting tears and emotional, as well as physical, pain. But when he saw his father’s face, and stared into his father’s eyes, his heart melted into even more pain. Mick wanted to reach out to him. He knew Joey wanted his affection. But he couldn’t condone what he did. “You had no right giving that tape to Bella,” he said to his son. “You put Rosalind at risk. I cannot abide that.”
“It’s always about her.” Then Joey pressed against his chest. “What about me, motherfucker! What about me? I’m your son! I’m the one you was never there for! Fuck her! What about me?”
Then he swung at his father, to hit him, but Mick’s muscular arm blocked the blow. And Mick felt his heart break a little. It reminded him of his oldest son Adrian. Adrian tried to kill Mick, and then Mick’s wife. Now Joey was turning against him too? “Go back in the house,” he ordered. “We’ll talk when I get back.”
“I have nothing to say to you,” Joey said bitterly. “I hope that bitch rots in hell and I hope you do too!” Then he stared at his father. “I’ll put you there one of these days. You fucked with me for the last time. I’ll put you there myself!”
Then Joey began heading toward the exit gates, in defiance of his father’s orders to remain at the compound. The guards thought to follow him, but Mick knew his relationship with Joey had just reverted backwards, and trying to handle him right now was futile. “Let him go,” he said to his guards.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“I don’t think she’s the one,” Joe Strasberg said to the mayor as they reclined in the den and reviewed a stack of applications. His inauguration was soon to come, but he needed to put key personnel in place. “You need a diplomat to handle the council. Not a novice like her.”
Mayor Granville Wallace looked at another application. “What about her?”
Strasberg looked at the application. “Another no. Too strident.”
“Now look,” Granville said irascibly, “we’ve got to choose somebody.”
“Does it have to be a woman?”
“Yes!” the mayor insisted. “It has to be a woman. I promised to have the most diverse administration ever, and I aim to keep that promise.”
“I have promises to keep too,” a voice said behind them, and both men, startled, turned quickly. When they saw Mick Sinatra was entering the den, their hearts pounded. And they both stood up.
“What is
the meaning of this?” Granville asked. He immediately looked at the surveillance monitor, but his security detail were standing around outside as if nothing was going on. “How did you get in here?”
“Get out at once,” Strasberg demanded, “or I’ll have your thuggish ass arrested and arrested this very night!”
“I have business with the mayor,” Mick said.
“Didn’t I tell you to leave? Or am I going to have to make you leave?” Then Strasberg, forgetting who he was dealing with, pulled out a gun as if he was going to prove to Mick he meant what he said. But as soon as Strasberg reached for his gun, Mick reached for his own weapon, with silencer already attached, and shot the gun out of Strasberg’s hand. Then he shot Strasberg dead.
The mayor was terrified. “You killed him? You killed him?”
“The same is going to befall you,” Mick said, “if you don’t get my wife released from police custody, all charges dropped, immediately.”
“Your wife? What are you talking about?”
But Mick was in no mood for explanations. He grabbed the mayor, slammed the side of his head onto the side tabletop, causing immediately ear damage, and aimed the gun at his skull. “Does it look like I’m fucking with you?” he yelled. “Does it look like I’m here to reason with you?”
“No!” the mayor said nervously. “But I can’t do what you’re asking. I don’t even know what you’re talking about!”
Mick was in his face now, and the nose of his gun was inside the mayor’s ear. “I’m talking about you, phoning whoever the fuck you have to phone, to get my wife released.”
“But my people are not in place yet. I haven’t even announced who the new police chief will be---”
“You’re going to announce that too. You will honor your deal with me. But right now, I don’t give a shit about that. Right now, this is not about your promise to me for rigging that election for you. This is about my promise to you. This is about my promise to motherfucking kill you if you do not have my wife released from the custody of your police department, with all charges dropped. Dial. Get it done. Now.”
The mayor already saw what this man was capable of. He was not going to risk a second demonstration. Besides, that suspicion he had about Mick’s weakness just proved true. He was willing to risk his own life to protect his wife. His weakness. Mayor Granville Wallace knew Mick had the upper hand tonight. That gun in his ear proved that. But he would gain the upper hand later. He would exploit Mick’s weakness to gain his own advantage. This was not over by a longshot.
But Mick had the upper hand tonight and, within the hour, Rosalind Sinatra was released from police custody. All charges dropped.
Rosalind stepped out of the shower cleansed from all of that jail dirt. She felt rejuvenated. There was still a long road ahead for them, and Gloria’s situation wasn’t getting any clearer, but at least she and Mick were together again.
Mick was lying across the bed, on his back, when Roz came out of the bathroom. He smiled when he saw her. One of the few smiles she’d seen on his face since Gloria’s disappearance.
She went over to him, as he pulled her naked body on top of his. They laid there, stomach to stomach, and Roz removed a strand of his dark hair out of his face. The strain on his face was as obvious to her as the cleft in his chin. He was a long way from alright. “You’re going to find her, Mick,” she said.
“I know.”
“What happened with the lead? Who was it? What did you find out?”
“It was Marco Terranz’s brother.”
“Terranz? The ATF agent? The guy Gloria had to kill to save her own life?”
Mick nodded. “His brother, yes. He admitted beating her up.”
“Oh, no. At her condo?”
“He claim it was on some backroad he can’t remember or identify. But he said it was all set up by some attractive woman with a name like Beverly. Or Bev, he said. He couldn’t remember her name exactly.”
But Roz was intrigued. She lifted her head. “Bev? Like Belle? Could he have meant Bella Caine?”
Mick nodded. “He could, yeah. That’s what I figured.”
“So did you ask her about it? Where’s Bella anyway?”
“My people have her. They will keep her until I’m persuaded she’s not involved. My gut says she’s not, and she says she’s not, but I can’t take any chances. Until I find out what’s going on, she stays under wraps. Besides,” he said, his hand rubbing the side of Roz’s face, “she’s the one who called the cops on you. She got you arrested. That cannot go unpunished.”
“But Mick,” Roz said, “she’s worried about her daughter. She’s worried about herself, I feel you on that, but she’s worried about her daughter too. Don’t be too harsh.”
“I have no middle ground,” Mick admitted. “She knows that.”
Roz knew it too. “So you’ve detained her the way the cops detained me?”
“I don’t know what else to do.” Mick’s voice sounded frustrated. “I have no leads. My people have no leads. There are no leads! If Belle knows anything at all, she’ll talk. She hates a lack of control. She’ll talk.”
Roz stared at him. And then exhaled. “I heard Joey left,” she said.
Mick nodded. “Yeah. I beat his ass and he left.”
“You beat him?”
“Hell yeah, I beat his ass. He gave that woman that tape to implicate you. He started this shit rolling down that hill. What was I supposed to do? He knows me. And if he didn’t, he does now.”
“But you guys were moving forward. Now it’s all falling apart. I hate that, Mick. I know how that must hurt you.”
And it did. It hurt him to his core. “But he has to look out for family.”
“He thought he was looking out for Gloria,” Roz said.
“He was undermining you more than he was looking out for Gloria. Joey is no fool. He knows you had nothing to do with that child’s disappearance. He knows it. This was his payback time. That’s what this entire situation feels like to me. Some kind of payback. There’s nothing else. There are no more leads to exhaust. And every lead leads back full circle.”
“But why would Bella allow somebody to beat up her own child? That doesn’t make sense.”
Mick shook his head. “I don’t know. Gloria and Belle have always had a good relationship, but they weren’t close. Belle was always out of town, or out of the country, and she never had that much time for Gloria.”
“Neither did you,” Roz said honestly.
Mick nodded. “Neither one of us have been the world’s best parents. Gloria didn’t get the best of either one of us.”
Roz placed her hands on the side of his face. “At least you’re working on it,” she said.
“I need to work harder,” he admitted. Then he stared into her eyes. “I’m just glad to have you back home where you belong. You didn’t deserve what happened to you. I’m glad you’re back.”
“I’m glad to be back, to be honest. Being locked up can be a scary thing. And try not to worry yourself crazy, Mick. Gloria will be back too. Gloria will be home soon too.”
“But those fucking cops are involved now too. They dropped the charges against you, but they couldn’t overlook the carnage they found at her condo. So they’re looking into it. They’ve turned back over the tape, declaring it was illegally obtained and they therefore had no business viewing it, but they know something terrible happened.”
But Roz was amazed on one point. “How in the world did you get them to return that tape?”
Mick didn’t brag. His methods were too harsh, too final, for him to ever brag. “They didn’t want to have to deal with the newly reelected mayor, and the mayor didn’t want to have to deal with me.”
Roz was no fool. She knew her sudden release cost somebody something. “I heard his campaign manager was found dead at the mayor’s mansion,” she said. “They said it was a self-inflicted wound. They said the cops are ruling it a suicide.”
Mick looked at Roz. “I have to d
o what I have to do, Roz. I’ll take out any motherfucker who stands in my way, to protect my family.”
Roz smiled. Mick placed a finger in one of her dimples, pleased that she could still smile after her ordeal. “I love you,” he said. “And I love how you look. You know that?”
“I look okay. I’ve never thought of looks as my strong suit. Besides,” she said, “Bella Caine can run circles around my looks. You know that too, right?”
“I know it,” Mick replied honestly. “But she can’t run circles around you.”
Roz smiled again what Mick considered to be her gorgeous, dimpled smile. “And to think you thought I was going to give you up for William? Get real!”
“You know what else she can’t run circles around?”
“What?”
“This ass,” Mick said, as he began rubbing it. “This tight, beautiful ass that I need to fuck right now. And I need to fuck it badly.”
Roz’s look turned serious too. It had been a trying day, and the main thing, Gloria, was still unresolved. They both needed the release. “Then what are you waiting for?” she asked.
Mick didn’t wait a moment longer. He pushed her head down closer, to where her lips touched his lips, and began kissing her passionately. Her naked body against his naked body only heightened the feeling, and he wrapped her in his arms.
They kissed for a long time. Mick loved the taste of her so much he couldn’t stop kissing her. He was groaning in her mouth, as he kissed her, and she was returning his affection. She knew fear about Gloria’s whereabouts, and about Roz’s own brief incarceration, was driving his emotional release, but his love was driving it more. And she latched onto that, and held on, and allowed him to do what they both needed him to do.
He moved his hand down her body as he kissed her, cupping and squeezing her ass, and then fingering her vagina. He fingered her, and flicked her clitoris, until she was wet and ready.
He was still kissing her, his need, his hunger, was still drinking her up. Then he guided his fully aroused penis inside of her. Deep down. And that was when Roz took over.
Mick Sinatra 4: If You Don't Know Me by Now Page 16