Jacqueline first looked at Duke. When she saw that he was grinning, only then did she look at her mother and began grinning too.
Roz laughed. “Yes, you are,” she said to her daughter. “Yes, you are!”
“She’s like that all day long,” said Doris Hearn, the nanny on duty, who stood beside Roz as they both leaned over the crib. “She won’t sneeze unless he sneezes first. She’ll get her walking papers from him.”
“I just pray they stay tight like that. I’m certainly going to do everything in my power to ensure it. Their father will too.”
Doris grinned. When Roz looked at her, and she realized Roz was offended, she quickly changed her expression. “I am so sorry, ma’am,” she said. “I thought you were joking.”
Roz responded in her soft, what in the world are you talking about voice. “Why would I have joked about a thing like that?”
Any other employer, and Doris wouldn’t bother to explain herself for fear of reprisal. But she respected Roz full force. Roz encouraged her to speak her mind. But she wasn’t crazy. She still sought permission first. “If I may speak plainly, ma’am?”
“You may.”
“He doesn’t strike me as the sort of person who would view closeness as a virtue. It seems as if he would view it as a weakness.”
“I know what you mean,” Roz said with a smile, relaxing the nanny. “But Mr. Sinatra isn’t a caricature. He’s a good father who loves his children. Never forget that.”
Doris nodded. “I won’t, ma’am,” she said. “And I sincerely apologize.”
“No need,” Roz said. “You have a right to your opinion.” Then Roz stood erect. “And I’d better stop playing with these babies and get myself ready for work.”
“Do you want me to alert Andre concerning breakfast?” Doris asked. Andre was one of the estate chefs.
“You’d better not,” Roz said, tightening the belt around her bathrobe. “I don’t even know if my husband is out of bed yet, and I’ve only just showered myself. I need to get dressed, and that could take a minute. Put him on standby, in case my husband wants something substantial, but also let him know we’ll more than likely skip breakfast today.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Doris said, and Roz left the nursery, and made her way upstairs.
In the master bedroom, Mick was out of the shower and drying off. By the time Roz made it upstairs, he was standing at his dresser drawer pulling out a pair of boxer’s.
“So you’re up,” she said, glancing down the length of his massive body, as she made her way toward their room-sized walk-in closet.
“Up and showered and ready to go,” Mick said. “How’s my children?”
“They’re my children too.”
“A technicality.”
Roz laughed. “They’re happy,” she said.
Mick felt warmth in his heart. “That’s wonderful to hear,” he said, and put on his boxer shorts.
Roz looked at him askance as she untied her robe. “Since when have you started wearing boxer’s?”
“I’ve worn them many times before.”
“No, you haven’t,” Roz said.
Mick smiled. “Okay, I haven’t. But I bought a pack.”
“Why?”
“Looks like the older I get,” Mick responded, “the more room this big-ass dick of mine need.”
Roz smiled and removed her robe. “You mean the older you get, the bigger that big-ass ass of yours get. That’s what needs more room.”
Mick laughed. “That too,” he admitted.
But when he headed into their closet also, to grab his suit and tie for the day, and saw his wife in her silk red panties and bra, that big dick began to take notice. And instead of heading on his side of the closet, toward his massive array of suits, he headed to her side, where she had just pulled down the dress she had planned to wear for the day.
“What’s your schedule like today,” she asked as she grabbed her dress and turned to the opposite side of the closet, where she thought he was standing. When she realized he was, instead, coming toward her, she wondered what he was doing. He had to get dressed for work too. But when she glanced down, and saw his erected dick butting against the inside seam of his boxer’s, she smiled. “Damn,” she said. “I almost got away.”
Mick moved behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and slipping down her panties. “Do you want to get away?” he asked in a husky voice.
“Not exactly,” she responded as he rubbed his hard, fabric-enclosed penis against her bare ass. She leaned back against him.
“Not exactly isn’t the answer I was looking for,” Mick responded, as he lifted her bra over her already taut breasts and began fondling them. “Now I ask you again,” he said, as he took one hand and slipped his penis out of his boxer’s and pressed it against her. “Do you want to get away?”
Roz closed her eyes. “No,” she said, her voice almost as husky as his.
“Good,” he said, as he lifted her onto the closet’s center island, onto her stomach, and opened her legs. He knelt down and began kissing her ass, and then moved his tongue inside of her.
Roz groaned as he licked and sucked her. Time became a nonissue as he took his pretty time and gave her his brand of mouth-fuck she loved experiencing. He was stressed. Whenever he was stressed, he took his already masterful lovemaking to an entirely different level. And he was there already. He was licking her in spots she didn’t think a tongue could reach, and he was sucking her in places she didn’t think were sensitive, but were damn sensitive.
But when he went down further, and began eating her like he was starved for her, and it felt so sensual to her that she squirted out juice all over his mouth, she knew she wasn’t going to hold on much longer.
And neither was Mick. When she saturated him with her vaginal juices, he knew he had to enter her now or he was going to saturate that floor with his own release.
He stood up and entered her. And he didn’t hold back. Roz’s body was sliding up and down along that center island as he fucked her with long, hard strokes that were unrelenting. He slid his dick across every spot his tongue had hit, and all the other spots his tongue couldn’t penetrate. But he penetrated every one.
And he didn’t stand on his laurels. He wasn’t simply willing to give it to her. He wanted to put it on her. He wanted to mark her again just as surely as he was declaring that her pussy was his property, and he wished some fool would try to ever claim it as his own. She was his. And he wanted her to remember that.
She remembered it every time Mick fucked her, but this was a different level of remembrance. She was groaning and moaning and holding onto the edge of the island as his strokes increased and her body’s intensity increased right along with it. He fucked her with so much love and passion that his every stroke felt like a branding. Like a body blow. And because there was a hint of pain in their pleasure, it prolonged their passion.
Mick felt great love for Roz to the roots of his hair. And he couldn’t stop fucking her. He showed it in his strokes. He demonstrated it in the way his cock expanded inside of her and kept hitting every ridge she needed him to hit. He fucked her long and hard. He fucked the shit out of her.
But even as Mick put it on her in that way she loved, he still felt she was giving better than she was getting. Because she was putting it on him too. He was filled with emotion as he made love to his woman. He had never loved like this before and it was as terrifying to his heart as it was electrifying to his body. He squeezed her ass, and lifted her upper body and squeezed her titties, as he fucked her.
And when the feelings became unbearable, and Roz’s orgasm came like a tidal wave around his cock, he released inside of her. He arched his back and strained his muscles and poured into her. The things he had to do in this life were downright horrific. And he handled his business with dispassionate fierceness. But when he was here, with Roz, and was pouring himself deep inside of her, he knew a different world. A world where love and vulnerability weren’t bad wor
ds. Where he could expose himself in his actions and his words and not fear reprisals. Where the love of a good woman was more than enough for him.
He stayed inside of her for several minutes after the climax. It was as if neither one of them wanted to be the first to make a move. Because their coupling felt that wonderful. But time, as usual, was not their friend. There were never enough hours in the day or they would rest and give it another round. But that master called time harkened them to make a move.
Mick began slowly pulling out of her. Although he was well spent, he was still big enough for her to feel the vacantness as soon as he was completely out. And her overexerted pussy that had expanded wide to accommodate her husband, drew back up like a suction cup, and returned to its tight state: just the way Mick loved it.
He even kissed it before he left it alone.
And then they got in a hurry, because time was an even greater enemy now. Roz showered first, because Mick had to take a phone call from his office, and then Mick hopped in the shower as she was getting out. And when he attempted to pull her back in, as if he wanted to go another round, she looked at him as if he was crazy.
“Psyche!” he said with a childish grin. Roz laughed too, thrilled to see a stern, unrelentingly serious man like Mick so happy, and left him to it.
But as Roz put on her clothes and then sat at her dressing table applying her makeup and preparing her hair, she kept taking glances at Mick through the mirror in front of her. He had showered quickly, gotten out, and was now dressing too.
Teddy had phoned her late yesterday and told her about his outburst with Rizzo, and how concerned he was about it. “I’d never seen him like this, Roz,” he’d said. Then he wanted to tell her what Mick already told her: that he had to take out several of his own lieutenants.
“Your father has been through a very traumatic event,” she reminded Teddy. “Two assassination attempts on his life, and with his babies right there during one of those attempts. That’s a wound that takes time to heal. But please don’t worry. He’ll be okay.”
But as Teddy kept prodding her to ask why he felt that way, as if he seemed determined to tell her all of Mick’s business, she refused to take the bait. She was not getting into any alliances with any of Mick’s children behind Mick’s back. She wanted Teddy to know where her allegiance was without question, and where his needed to be. “Your father tells me what he wants me to know,” she said to him bluntly. “He would not appreciate your calling and telling me his business.”
“I wasn’t going to tell his business,” Teddy shot back. “I’m just worried about him. I thought you would want to know. I thought you would want to know what he’s up to.”
Mick told Roz more than even Teddy realized, and what he didn’t tell she certainly wasn’t going to allow somebody else to tell. Her trust in Mick had to be absolute. Teddy had to understand that. “I appreciate the heads up, Ted,” she said to the young man who was closer to her age than not. “But your loyalty can’t be to me. It has to be to your father. You have to have his back no matter what. Even if it means you don’t have mine.”
In Roz’s eyes, Mick was always on the firing line. Everybody was gunning for him. If even his son, his heir apparent, wasn’t completely onboard with him, or questioned his actions, he was going to be at an even greater risk of harm. She and Teddy were the only ones strong enough to protect Mick. And Teddy had to understand that. “Take care of your father out there,” Roz said to him. “That’s the best thing you can do for me.”
There was a hesitation, but she knew Teddy, being Teddy, understood. “I will, Roz,” he said, and they ended the call.
But she would be inhuman if what Teddy told her didn’t affect her. That was why she was staring at Mick now. That was why she was keeping an eye on him for signs of too much stress. “What’s your schedule looking like today?” she asked him.
“A couple meetings in my office this morning,” Mick responded. “A quick trip to New York. And more meetings late this evening.”
Mick owned many properties around New York, including a hotel, and it wasn’t unusual for him to hop his private jet for a thirty-minute trip to the Big Apple to handle business, and then make a quick return to Philly. But she wondered if that “quick trip” had something to do with Hank Zigston.
“Teddy will be in charge of your security detail while I’m away,” Mick said.
“How are they working out?” Roz asked. “Teddy and Joey?”
Mick had just slipped on his pants, and was ripping a fresh t-shirt from out of the package. He stopped momentarily. Roz could tell she had struck a nerve. “They’re coming along,” he said.
“Just not as fast as you would like?” she asked.
“Not nearly,” he responded. “And I can’t figure out why. Teddy has everything it takes to be good. To be the best in my opinion. But he has too much of a heart.”
Roz stared at Mick through her dressing table mirror. “Usually a man with a heart is a good thing,” she said.
“Yes, it is,” he said. “But a man with too much heart in the world he is now a part of, is not a good thing. It’s a terrible thing. As the head of the Sinatra family, it would be a deadly fault.”
Roz felt her own heart squeeze. “And Joey?”
“Joey’s still a mama’s boy,” Mick said dismissively. “He still has to get out from under Cathleen’s apron before he can take flight. I didn’t raise him. She raised him. And now I have to clean up the mess I made. For both of my boys.”
Mick continued to dress, and Roz continued to watch him. All three of his grown children were coming to the house for a meeting tomorrow night, along with their mothers. Teddy’s mother, who asked for the meeting, didn’t say what it was about, and Roz had no real suspicions. But whatever the meeting was about, one agenda item had to be a complete and final airing of this guilt trip Mick was still on. Roz didn’t feel he could bear it anymore. His children had to take that burden away from him. Gloria and Teddy were trying, but even they sometimes lapsed back into the blame game too. It had to end. Roz knew she more than likely would be the bad guy for even bringing it up, but she could handle it. If it was going to help Mick continue to stand upright, given all he had to deal with, she was willing to take the fall.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Hugo Lebronski and Blanche Brown stepped out of his car and stumbled their way to his front door. It was eleven-thirty in the morning, but they had been drinking at the bar, and then at various parties around town, since two last nights. Now they both were tipsy and sleepy. Especially Hugo, who wanted nothing more than to forget the hell that was his life, and get some rest.
With some effort, he unlocked his door and they entered his home. It was a big home in Long Island. A beautiful home. A home that was once filled with a wife and four children. They left him and his drinking, womanizing, gambling years ago. Too many vices for one family to bear. House-wise or vice-wise, he never bothered to downsize.
He kissed Blanche hard as soon as they crossed the threshold, and then he closed and locked his front door. Nothing like good liquor to get him in the mood. Her too, now that she’d been with Hugo a few months.
But she had her pride. “Not here,” she said. “The floor is too cold.”
“I can heat you up, baby,” Hugo said, falling against her.
“Not here, Hugh,” she said again, pushing him away. “I won’t enjoy it like this!”
Hugo didn’t give a fuck how she would enjoy it, but he was too tired to argue with her. He, instead, put his arm around her waist, for support rather than affection, and they stumbled their way to the light switch. His curtains were almost always drawn, which meant his house was almost always imbued with darkness. Overcast even at midday. But opening a curtain would take too much effort. He turned on the light instead.
As soon as he did, and his dark house was illuminated, he and his woman both realized they were not alone. At first they both were startled. Blanche even screamed one of those half sec
ond scare screams. But when they managed to see who it was in the home, who it was that was sitting so calmly on the middle cushion of the sofa, they were no longer startled. They were downright terrified. Because they both knew Mick Sinatra. Because they both knew a man like him wasn’t in that home, on that couch, for the hell of it.
With fear came the need to shield the truth. Ignorance set in, even when it wasn’t necessary. “Micky?” Hugo asked. “Micky Sinatra? That you?”
Mick didn’t respond to such idiocy. He and Hugo went back nearly a decade. They knew each other too well.
Hugo knew it too. When his heart slowed down from its excessive beating, he calmed down too. He hadn’t seen Mick in a long time. There was no reason for him to be in his home. Hugo wanted to believe that it wasn’t a kill call after all. That it wasn’t what it felt like it was.
“How are you, Micky?” Blanche decided to try. “It’s been a long time.”
When Mick didn’t respond to Blanche either, Hugo knew he meant business. “So what’s up?” Hugo asked. “Need me to do a job? I heard those fools tried to take you out. But you took them out instead. Which anybody with half a brain would have expected.”
Hugo and Blanche made it their business to remain by the wall near the front door, just in case they needed a quick getaway. Especially since Mick wasn’t responding. “I would ask how in hell did you get in my house,” Hugo continued, “but I figure the same way I get into where I need to get into.” Hugo smiled at that. Blanche smiled too, to break the ice. Mick remained cold.
“So what’s going on, Mick?” Hugo asked again.
Mick uncrossed his legs. That move alone caused Hugo’s heart to slam against his chest and Blanche to suddenly inhale. Mick was supposedly this cool businessman as respectable as they came. But everybody in their world knew better. Everybody in their world knew Mick Sinatra was a killer.
Hugo tried again. “So what can I help you with, Mick? Let’s cut the melodrama. You need me for a job? Is that it?”
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