Bobby Sinatra: In All the Wrong Places (The Rags to Romance Series Book 1)

by Mallory Monroe

  That’s a lie and he know it. I took Gerard with me, and he’s a black guy. And all that time I was with that gang, I wasn’t going around killing anybody. I wasn’t waving guns and getting into beefs with rival gangs. He knows that too.

  But then he pulls out a piece like he don’t know shit. As soon as I see it, and see that he’s aiming it at me, I don’t do like Ty did and blow through the intersection, giving him an easy, right in front of his face target. I turn the corner at that red light, and take off.

  It’s a long, narrow, one-way road leading to I don’t know where, but I’m flooring it. I look through my rearview, and it’s no surprise to me that Dance and whoever’s driving that car is flooring it too. He wants to take me out. All because I didn’t use my connections, as he called them, to get him out of shit he got his own self into.

  But we’re flying down this street, and I’ve got a pretty good lead, so I’m feeling good about myself. I should shake his ass in no time.

  But then Dance decides to start shooting. He’s a good shot – he’s always been a good shot. But he’s mostly missing because I’m swerving and swerving to avoid a straight-up hit. I nearly lose control of my car a couple times with all of the swerving. But this ain’t my first rodeo. I know what I’m doing.

  Problem is: Dance knows what he’s doing too. Like I said, he’s a good shot. And eventually he connects. Not on me, but on one of the tires of my car. Blows it the fuck out. And now I’m in trouble because I swerve and end up on two tires and can’t control that shit like I had been controlling it. I fight like hell, and steer and hold on, but it’s not working. Until it works.

  I land back on all four wheels, or at least the three still inflated, and regain control. But I’m not sitting around believing I can outrun the bastard now. Not with one blown tire under my belt. So I’m bent down, trying to drive and at the same time reaching for my own piece: the loaded one I took out of my Mercedes and put under the seat of this rental car. You can take the boy out of the street, but you can’t take the street out of the boy.

  But I’m feeling for my piece and feeling for it. But I’m feeling nothing. It may have slid back. One of my fucking valets at my condo might have taken it when I drove this rental car home to change clothes. Anything is possible!

  And as I’m still feeling for my gun, to at least help neutralize this shit, Dance takes out another one of my tires, and I’m in real trouble now because I’m swerving all over the fucking place. And not by design either. I’m trying to drive straight! But two tires out, and at the speeds I’m going, is deadly.

  Before I realize anything at all, my car’s lost traction, one sides lifts up, and then the whole thing’s airborne and lands down in a rollover, only it keeps rolling over and over and over. I’m wearing a seatbelt, or my ass would have been a human projectile. But I can feel the bumps of the street with every flip my car’s making, and I’m worried about where it’s gonna land.

  Fortunately, it lands upright, on all four tires, although two of the four are deflated. I look through the cracked rearview mirror and I see Dance and the driver jumping out of their car and running for mine, their guns at their side. I press the gas, but my car won’t go. The engine’s dead as a motherfuck. I try to open the door, but it won’t open from the inside. It’s jammed.

  And now my ass is panicking like a bitch, because I know if I don’t find that gun, I’m dead. My hand’s feeling beneath the seat. I’m looking in the glove compartment. I look through the rearview again, and they’re within striking distance already. I’m a sitting duck. No way is Dance gonna miss me this close up!

  And that’s when I see it. Wedged between the seat and the passenger side door. All of that flipping my car did probably landed it there. But I don’t care how it got there. I’m just grateful it’s there.

  I’m looking through the rearview again as I’m grabbing it, and Dance is running from behind my car to beside my car. He’s right at my car door. He’s right at my window, aiming his gun, and about to pull the trigger.

  But seeing his ugly mug is not going to be the last thing I see on the face of this earth. I grab that gun and like the fucking Matrix I’m firing it as I’m turning. I’m on my back on the floor of my car now, firing shot after shot after shot. And Dance is taking every bullet. He’s standing there jerking left, jerking right, every time a bullet hits him until bullets are just bouncing off his ass, and it’s like he’s dead on his feet. But then his eyes look at me, as if he never in a million years thought that my ugly mug would be the last thing he saw on this earth either. And then he falls.

  But the dude driving his car is still out there, and he’s got a gun drawn too. He backed away when he saw me ambush Dance, but he’s now firing shots at me from the back driver side window, shattering it. But unlike Dance, he’s a lousy shot. He’s missing everything he’s firing at, even that close. But like Dance, I’m a good shot too. I take him out easily. But I’m my father’s son, and my Uncle Mick’s nephew. I keep shooting. I make sure that fucker isn’t just wounded, but he’s dead too.

  When I’m certain it’s over, I climb out of the shattered window, and get out of the car. And then, with my heart still pounding and my nerves this close to hysterical, I pull out my cell phone, dropping it twice, and call 911.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  It’s my first day at work and Donald Sinatra, the GM, is showing me the ropes. He’s mainly standing behind the desk telling me about my timesheet since there’s no clocks to punch and that’s all I’ve ever been used to. I’ve never had to manually fill out a timesheet in my life. So, I stand there, and listen carefully.

  And then the boss arrives: Mrs. Jenay Sinatra. The lady who hired me.

  “Good morning, ladies.” She’s speaking to me and another lady named Margo, who’s been working behind the front desk, too, and is supposed to be my mentor. She’s younger than me, and doesn’t seem interested in telling me much, but I don’t care. I’ll figure it out. Besides, the GM’s nice. I can always go to him if she drops the ball. Because I’m so thrilled to have this job, nobody’s messing this up for me.

  “Good morning,” I say to her. “And thanks again for giving me this chance.”

  She smiles. She’s nice like that. “Oh, you’re so welcome, dear.”

  “And to get the morning shift? I really appreciate that.”

  “You can thank Bobby for all of that,” the GM says.

  “Bobby?” I ask. “Who’s Bobby?”

  “Never mind that,” Mrs. Sinatra says to me. “Leave it out, Donald,” she says to her GM/stepson, like he just said something wrong.

  Then she’s pulling out her cell phone, because it’s ringing. I look at Margo, to see if she can tell me something about who this Bobby might be, but she’s a totally different person when Mrs. Sinatra’s around. She’s all meek and mild around her, like she doesn’t want to make waves. She doesn’t even look in my direction.

  “He what?” That’s Mrs. Sinatra on her cell phone, and she looks really scared.

  “What is it?” Donald’s asking her.

  “It’s Bobby,” she says. “He was involved in a drive-by shooting.”

  “What? Is he okay?”

  “Is he okay?” she’s asking whoever’s on that phone. And then she’s nodding. She looks at Donald. “He’s okay,” she says to him, but he still doesn’t relax. And when Mrs. Sinatra head to her office, he follows her. And closes the door behind them.

  I look at Margo and ask her again. “Who’s Bobby?” I ask her.

  “Bobby Sinatra. Her stepson. Donnie’s brother.”

  “Oh.” But I’m confused. “But why would Donald say I can think his brother for getting me this job?”

  “How should I know?” That’s the real Margo. Attitude out of this world. But then she’s pulling out her own cell phone. “I’ve got to spread the news,” she says. “Bobby Sinatra was in a drive-by shooting. Wow.” She’s texting somebody. “Our very own mayor was involved in a drive-by shooting!”
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  Now I’m floored. Did she just say our mayor? Did she just say Bobby Sinatra is the mayor of this town? Is that what she just said?

  I don’t even try to ask her. She’s doing her thing, and she’ll only get nasty if I ask her anything. I pull out my own phone. It’s no iPhone like hers, or Mrs. Sinatra’s. It’s a cheap, prepaid phone I bought from Walmart. But I can still Google on it. And I ask Google who is the mayor of Jericho, Maine. As Margo walks away from me, still texting, I ask Google that question.

  “The mayor of Jericho, Maine,” the Google lady responds, “is Robert Sinatra.”

  Bobby.

  And he was in a drive-by shooting?

  That good man?

  The man that helped me out when I needed help the most?

  The man who apparently put in a good word for me and got me this job?

  I tell you my heart feels like it’s going to beat out of my chest. I was thinking about him all last night. I was thinking about him just this morning! He had a hard-on when I stood up to leave yesterday, like I was turning him on. I remember how I liked that. He probably just wants my body, like every man I’ve ever known has only wanted, but I still liked that attention. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know why. I usually hate that kind of attention.

  But I liked that he was showing me some. And who knows? Maybe it’s because I hadn’t gotten any attention from any man in so long. Maybe that’s all there is to it.

  But that didn’t mean I was going to go along with his desires. I wasn’t. I didn’t give him the time of day yesterday for a reason. I didn’t come all this way to Jericho to let some man use me again, I don’t care who that man is.

  Then why is my heart aching over this news about this man like he’s my man?

  Why am I praying that he’s alright?

  Why do I feel sorry that I didn’t show more interest in him yesterday, when he showed interest in me?

  “Are you deaf?”

  I jump. It’s Margo. She had apparently finished her texting and was asking me a question. And she’s pissed.

  “What is it again?” I ask her.

  “I said, and I’m not going to repeat myself, that you need to put that phone away, and get to work.”

  That bitch has some nerve. She was just texting herself. But I don’t sweat it. I’m the newbie. She can pull rank on me all day long. I can take it.

  I’m not thinking about her ass anyway.

  I’m thinking about Bobby.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  After nearly six hours of interrogations at the Boston PD, I’m finally allowed to leave. Their city cameras backed up exactly what I said: I was ambushed. I had no choice but to defend myself.

  But as soon as I step out, I see a limo across the street. When the back-window rolls down, I know it’s waiting for me. I can’t see who it is, but I know how my family operates. I didn’t call them. I didn’t tell them shit about what went down in Boston. But I still cross the street anyway, to see if I’m right.

  When the door opens, I know I am. I get inside. The limo takes off.

  Not only is my father sitting inside, but my Uncle Mick is sitting there too. And they’re sitting side by side, like two mafia bosses. Although it’s not true in my father’s case. He’s not Mafia. In the case of my uncle, though, in the case of Mick Sinatra, the man known as the boss of all bosses in the mob world, it fits like a glove. He’s the man who got me and Gerard out of Boston eleven years ago in the first place. Now he’s getting me out of town again. It’s like he knows every move I make!

  I sit beside my father. “How did you guys find out?” I ask them, although I’m mainly asking Uncle Mick.

  But then he surprises me. “Your father called me,” he says.

  I look at Pop. I’m kind of ashamed that a moral man like him is being dragged into a situation like this, but there it is. I didn’t want that shit either. And he’s the one who knew about it? “Did the cops call you?” I ask him. He does a lot of business in Boston. Maybe somebody on the force knew him.

  But my question offends him. He’s frowning and shit. “Why the fuck would some cop call me? Why would you ask me something like that? No, they didn’t call me.” He’s upset by all of this. Less so by the fact that I asked him if he found out through cops, and even the fact that I was detained by the police. He figured I could talk my way out of anything. But he’s mad because I almost got my ass killed. Knowing my old man, and knowing how he feels about me, that’s what’s driving his anger.

  “Who told you?” I ask him.

  “Trevor,” he says. “Trevor Reese, the CIA guy? Carly’s Trevor? Remember him? He has connections on the force. Somebody called him and said Carly’s brother is being questioned about a double homicide. He called me. When I found out what Trev was talking about, and before I had a heart attack, I called your uncle.”

  “And here we are,” my uncle says. “Again.” And he’s looking at me like I do this shit every week. But that’s him. He doesn’t like that I’m back in trouble. He thought I was on the straight and narrow. And I am. But somebody forgot to tell Dance.

  “You let your hair grow longer,” he says to me.

  It catches me off guard. “Yeah,” I say.

  He nods, but doesn’t say anything more about it. I don’t know if that’s a kind of ploy he uses or not, but it does make me uneasy.

  “What the hell happened?” Pop asks.

  “I was minding my own business, heading out of town to make it back home, when two guys rolled up on me.”

  “What two guys?”

  “Two guys, Pop.”

  “And you didn’t know’em?”

  I glance at Uncle Mick. His ass just staring at me. “I knew’em,” I say to my father. But that doesn’t make him feel any better. It makes him feel worse. He lets out a long, frustrated sigh. He’s pissed.

  “Who were they?” he asks me. “Were they from your drug dealing days?”

  He knows some of the shit I used to get into, but nowhere near how deep I was in. My Uncle Mick found out how deep. And then he got my ass out of there.

  I remembered the day I found out he knew. I was still working for Moby, and it was the day Dance shot Tyrell. We were nervous and running scared that whole day, because they took out one of our own, which means the cops would be sniffing around, and I didn’t let them ice the lady who ran from the car. Which means a potential witness got away. The plan was to break up and everybody lay low until the heat was off. Moby was going to close the club for a spell. Me and Gerard were going back home to Jericho for our cooling off period. It was all set.

  But that same night, Dance and Max got into it with a rival gang, and along with Moby, our boss, started shooting up some club in the woods. Four members of the rival gang were killed. I wasn’t even there at the time of the shooting, but I know our asses were hot as hell to the Boston PD. There was already rumors that they were looking for Dance in connection to Tyrell’s shooting earlier that day, and now he had another shooting on his hands?

  I rushed to my Boston apartment when I heard about the gang shooting, knowing we were all going to be hauled in and questioned over that. I tell Gerard to pack up his shit at his pad too. We were going home tonight instead of tomorrow like we had planned.

  But as soon as I walk into my crib, there’s Uncle Mick standing there, right in my living room, and he’s wearing his long, white coat, and his black turtleneck and black pants, like he’s suited up for battle, and he knocks the shit out of me. I fell over furniture he hit me so hard.

  “What are you doing?” I’m asking him after I got my ass back up.

  “Did you do it?” he asked me.

  “Did I do what? What are you talking about?”

  “Did you shoot that baby?”

  I remember how shocked I was. “Shoot what baby?” I ask him. Then I remembered that the woman who ran from Ty’s Beamer had a baby. “They shot her baby? They shot the baby?”

  I must have looked stunned as hell because my uncle bel
ieved me.

  “How do you know about it?” I asked him.

  Back then, I could ask him all kinds of questions. And I always did. But he never answered any. “What do you plan to do?” he asked me.

  “Lay low.”

  “Where?”

  “Me and Gerard are going home. To Jericho.”

  But that only pissed him off more. He slapped me again. “You aren’t taking that shit to Jericho,” he said. “Are you insane? Get your stuff and let’s go.”

  “Go? Where?”

  He didn’t say. He was taking me with him, until the shit blew over, but he didn’t tell me where.

  “What about Gerard?” I asked him. He knew Gerard was my best friend from home. He knew he was in this mess because of me.

  “Where’s Rod now?” Uncle Mick asked.

  “At his place.”

  “We’ll pick him up on the way out. Let’s go!”

  And me and Gerard stayed at Uncle Mick’s house in Philadelphia for nearly three months. Then we went back home to Jericho, and never returned to anything remotely like that life we led in Boston. While we were in Philly, Moby and Dance and everybody involved in that club shooting had been arrested. They also charged Dance with Tyrell’s murder, and they said he’s the one who shot that baby.

  Now I’m in this limousine with Pop and Uncle Mick, and Pop’s repeating his question because I’m spaced out thinking about how I came so close to being knee-deep in that craziness all those years ago. How I could have been implicated if my uncle hadn’t threatened to kill their asses if one of those motherfuckers so much as mentioned my name or Gerard’s. “You heard me, Robert,” Pop’s saying. “Were those two guys from your drug-dealing days?”

  I can’t lie to him. Especially not with Uncle Mick sitting right there staring at me, daring me to try it. “Yes, sir.”

  Pop hates hearing it. “What, Robert, you back into that shit again?”

  “No! I hadn’t seen those guys in over a decade, Pop.”

  “Then why did they suddenly roll up on you?”