BIG DADDY SINATRA 3
THE BEST OF MY LOVE
(The Sinatras of Jericho County series)
By
MALLORY MONROE
Copyright©2014 Mallory Monroe
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This novel is a work of fiction. All characters are fictitious. Any similarities to anyone living or dead are completely accidental. The specific mention of known places or venues are not meant to be exact replicas of those places, but are purposely embellished or imagined for the story’s sake.
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INTERRACIAL ROMANCE SERIES
BY BESTSELLING AUTHOR
MALLORY MONROE:
THE SINATRAS OF JERICHO COUNTY
SERIES IN ORDER:
BIG DADDY SINATRA
THERE WAS A RUTHLESS MAN
BOOK ONE
BIG DADDY SINATRA 2
IF I CAN’T HAVE YOU
BOOK TWO
THE PRESIDENT’S GIRLFRIEND
SERIES IN ORDER:
THE PRESIDENT’S GIRLFRIEND
THE PRESIDENT’S GIRLFRIEND 2:
HIS WOMEN AND HIS WIFE
DUTCH AND GINA:
A SCANDAL IS BORN
DUTCH AND GINA:
AFTER THE FALL
DUTCH AND GINA:
THE POWER OF LOVE
DUTCH AND GINA:
THE SINS OF THE FATHERS
DUTCH AND GINA:
WHAT HE DID FOR LOVE
FOR THE LOVE OF GINA
BOOK EIGHT
THE MOB BOSS SERIES
IN ORDER:
ROMANCING THE MOB BOSS
MOB BOSS 2:
THE HEART OF THE MATTER
MOB BOSS 3:
LOVE AND RETRIBUTION
MOB BOSS 4:
ROMANCING TRINA GABRINI
A MOB BOSS CHRISTMAS:
THE PREGNANCY
(Mob Boss 5)
MOB BOSS 6:
THE HEART OF RENO GABRINI
RENO’S GIFT
BOOK 7
RENO GABRINI:
A MAN IN FULL
BOOK 8
RENO AND TRINA:
GETTING BACK TO LOVE
BOOK 9
RENO AND SON:
DON’T MESS WITH JIM
BOOK 10
MOB BOSS ELEVEN
THE WRONG ONE
BOOK 11
THE GABRINI MEN SERIES
IN ORDER:
ROMANCING TOMMY GABRINI
ROMANCING SAL GABRINI
TOMMY GABRINI 2:
A PLACE IN HIS HEART
SAL GABRINI 2:
A WOMAN’S TOUCH
TOMMY GABRINI 3:
GRACE UNDER FIRE
SAL GABRINI 3:
HARD LOVE
SAL GABRINI 4:
I’LL TAKE YOU THERE
TOMMY GABRINI 4:
DAPPER TOM BEGIN AGAIN
ADDITIONAL BESTSELLING
INTERRACIAL ROMANCE
FROM MALLORY MONROE:
DANIEL’S GIRL (ROMANCING AN OLDER MAN)
ROMANCING MO RYAN
ROMANCING HER PROTECTOR
ROMANCING THE BULLDOG
INTERRACIAL ROMANCE
FROM
BESTSELLING AUTHOR
KATHERINE CACHITORIE:
LOVERS AND TAKERS
LOVING HER SOUL MATE
LOVING THE HEAD MAN
SOME CAME DESPERATE:
A LOVE SAGA
ADDITIONAL BESTSELLING
INTERRACIAL ROMANCE:
A SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP
YVONNE THOMAS
AND
BACK TO HONOR:
A REGGIE REYNOLDS
ROMANTIC MYSTERY
JT WATSON
ROMANTIC FICTION
FROM
AWARD-WINNING
AND
BESTSELLING AUTHOR
TERESA MCCLAIN-WATSON:
DINO AND NIKKI:
AFTER REDEMPTION
AND
AFTER WHAT YOU DID
COMING SOON:
BRENT SINATRA
BOOK ONE
SAL AND GEMMA:
BOOK FIVE
TOMMY AND LIZ:
YOU GIVE GOOD LOVE
Visit
www.mallorymonroebooks.com
for updates and more information on her titles.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
EPILOGUE
PROLOGUE
March 15, 1974
“Charles?”
“Um?”
“Charles?”
“What?”
“Charles!”
Young Charles Sinatra finally opened his big green eyes. And he frowned because his two siblings, Jacqueline, called Sprig, and Michello, called Mick, surrounded his bed. He closed his eyes again.
“Charles!” Mick said as he shook him again.
Charles reopened his eyes, his irritation even more pronounced. “Quit shaking me! What do you want?”
“Make him stop.”
Charles realized tears were in his baby brother’s eyes. “Make who stop?”
“That man. He’s beating on Mommy. Make him stop!”
Charles had no clue what Mick was talking about, but without hesitation he tossed the bedding aside, revealing his snow-white pajamas, and got up. “Where is she?” He hurried out of his bedroom door, and toward the stairs.
Sprig and Mick ran behind him. “The basement,” Sprig said.
Charles glanced back at her. “The basement?” What in the world would their mother be doing in the basement, and at this time of night? But what would Sprig know? Whereas Mick was six years younger than Charles’s thirteen years, but acted older, Sprig was four years older than Charles, but looked and behaved as if she was far younger. Charles knew it was up to him.
But that didn’t mean he was not scared. He was. He didn’t know what he was about to encounter. But he hurried down the stairs anyway. “Where’s Dad?” he asked. “Did he come home tonight?”
“He came home,” Sprig said, hurrying down the stairs behind her brothers. “But he was drunk as usual. He tried to come into my room, claiming he wanted to talk, but I locked the door the way you told me to.”
�
��Who cares about that?” Mick asked angrily. “We need to help Mommy!”
“Did you try to wake Dad?” Charles asked as he and his siblings raced down the stairs and through the living room.
“We tried,” Sprig responded. “After Mick woke me and told me somebody was beating on Mommy, we tried to tell him what was going on, but he pushed us away. You know how he is. So we came to you.”
Charles moved even faster, with his siblings running behind him just to keep up. They weren’t frightened now. They were certain he’d put a stop to it. After Dad, it was young Charles who had the authority in their home.
They heard slapping sounds and screams as soon as they approached the door that led down to the basement. As soon as Charles heard those sounds, he immediately knew what was really going on. He looked at Sprig, shocked that she didn’t.
“What are you looking at me for?” Sprig asked. “This is my first time hearing it too. When Micky woke me up, I didn’t come down here. I tried to wake up Dad like I told you. I didn’t come down here!”
Charles exhaled and looked at his siblings. Both were small for their ages, and they both stared their frightened eyes up at him as if he was some kind of superhero. He was not. He was as scared as they were. But because he was big and muscular for his age, and they were pretty useless in times like these, he knew he had to play the part. “You guys wait here,” he said. And he pointed his finger. “And that means you too, Mick.”
Then he opened the door and made his way down the dark basement stairs. His father always went barhopping on Friday nights and almost never came home until the next day, and sometimes not for several days. Based on the sounds Charles was hearing, he was certain his mother had assumed this Friday night would be no different. But the fact that she was not being beaten the way Mick had assumed, didn’t make Charles feel any better. Because he knew what was really going on.
When he made it to the bottom stair, he peeped around the extended wall. And that was when he saw them. The man was not beating on his mother, as he had already suspected, but was fucking her. So loud the bed was bouncing on its legs. His mother was naked on her stomach. The man was naked pounding into her ass. They were filled with lust, not rage. But when Charles saw it, when he saw the extent of their nerve, he was filled only with rage.
His rage overruled his good sense and he ran up to the bed, grabbed the man with every ounce of strength he had, and flung him off his mother. The man hit against the wall with a loud thump, and tried to get back up, but Charles jumped down on him, beating him in his face. He had the element of surprise on his side, youth and the element of rage in his veins, and he was unstoppable.
He heard his mother screaming and begging him to stop. He heard her get out of bed and then he felt her soft hand pulling on his shoulder, trying to stop him, but he could not stop. He even heard footsteps running down the stairs, and he knew they were undoubtedly Sprig and Mick disobeying him the way they usually did, but he didn’t even look their way. He was in a zone all his own and he was going to make this man feel his disgust. This motherfucker was bad enough to come here and do something like this right under his father’s nose, then he was bad enough to take a licking. And Charles gave him one. A beat down unlike any he’d ever given any human being before.
But when the man was able to regain his bearings, and realized it was some big kid that was attacking him, he attempted to begin his own beat-down. And he almost succeeded. He almost flipped the script on Charles, put him on his back, and gain the advantage.
But then Charles felt a stronger hand, not his mother’s soft, inconsequential one, and it lifted him off of the man as if he were a feather and tossed him across the room. Charles hit against the wall, but didn’t delay. He was about to jump back up and fight that intruder too. Until he realized it was no intruder, but his father: Salvatore Luciano Sinatra, the man everybody called Luke.
His father had a pump action shotgun. And was pointing it, not at Charles, but at the man who had just moments before been on top of the world on top of his mother. Charles felt relieved. His father would put the fear of God in that no account, disrespectful man. And his father did. But he didn’t bother to beat him down the way Charles had expected. Luke Sinatra was not interested in beating anybody senseless the way his son had wasted his energy trying to do. Luke pumped his shotgun, fired it, and put a bullet hole in the man’s chest the side of a ping pong ball, and was done with him.
Charles fell back against the wall in horror when his father shot that man. His mother screamed and shook in horror as she stood there, a sheet covering her naked body, when his father shot that man. And Sprig and Mick, who had come down despite Charles’s warning, screamed and cried in horror too. They had gone hunting through the backwoods of Maine with their father countless times. They knew he never missed.
But they never saw him kill a man before.
But just as the children were coming to the realization that seeing something like this would turn their world upside down, Luke aimed that shotgun at his unfaithful wife and put bullet after bullet after bullet through her chest too, still shooting her even though she was undoubtedly dead, in unmistakable payback for what she’d done.
Their mother had fallen back onto the same bed she had just minutes before been having the time of her life upon, and she was riddled with bullet holes. But instead of screaming and crying the way they did when their father shot the man, the children went mute when he shot their mother. They were too stunned to scream or cry or to even breathe. Their mother was lifeless on the bed, and their world not only upside down, but inside out. Their mother was all they had. She was no prize, but she loved them completely and compared to their father she was a saint. They knew, even then, that their lives would never be the same again.
Their father stared at their mother. The man he had shot was dead too, but he didn’t give that man a second glance. But he stared at his wife as his children stared at him. They didn’t know what he was capable of. He was a drunkard. They knew that. He was a liar and a thief-they knew that too. But they didn’t know this man. They didn’t know him at all.
Luke felt tears began to stain his eyes as he stared at his dead wife. He loved that gorgeous woman. But instead of asking why did he have to kill her, he kept asking himself why did she have to betray him. Why did she make him do what he’d just done! It was all her fault!
Then he looked at Charles. Of all of his children, Charles was the only one he really gave a damn about. He was the only one he never wanted to judge him. “They got what they deserved,” he said to his stunned shitless thirteen-year-old son. “There’s not a jury in this county that’ll convict me. They got what they deserved.”
Then Luke lifted that still smoking shotgun toward Charles. Charles pushed back further against the wall as if he could push through it, and Sprig and Mick placed hands on each other in unbridled shock. But their father was not about to shoot Charles. He was just warning him. “If a woman plays you for a fool,” he warned his son, “you get rid of her. You hear me boy? I don’t care who she is. Get rid of the bitch!”
And then Luke Sinatra looked one more time at his lifeless, still beautiful bitch of a wife, and then he tossed the gun on the bed beside her and headed for the stairs. Sprig and Mick, horrified, quickly moved away from the stairs, away from their now stranger of a father, and ran to Charles. They sat on either side of their brother, and held onto him. But their father turned out to be of no threat to them. He was gone.
And Charles finally exhaled. He didn’t realize he was not breathing until he exhaled. He looked at his mother again. And that man on the floor. And his mother again. She did something terrible. She was unfaithful to their father the way his father had been unfaithful to her their entire marriage. But she didn’t deserve this. Not even her lover deserved this! And Charles felt some kind of way about that. He felt as if it was so wrong, and so depraved on every level that he couldn’t just sit there and let it stand. She was their mother, the backbo
ne of their family. She was all they had. He could not let it stand!
So he stood up.
He went over to the bed, grabbed that shotgun, and hurried across the basement and up to the main floor. His siblings looked at their mother, looked at the dead man and all of the blood everywhere, and in their anguish and fear they ran behind Charles in a burst of self-preservation.
The front door was wide open, where their father had already gone before, and Charles hurried out of that door too. His father was walking toward his truck, to make a run for it even though he said he was convinced no jury in Jericho County was going to convict him. But like the snake he was, Charles thought, he was running anyway.
Luke would have never dreamed he would be tracked down just outside of his own front door. And tracked down by his own son. He was just about to open the door to his truck, and get away forever if he could, when Charles hurried behind him and pointed that shotgun as if he aimed to use it. Charles began moving slowly toward his father. Sprig and Mick ran outside behind him, but they stayed back as Charles moved forward. Even this scene, of Charles pointing a gun at their father, was otherworldly to them.
It was even more surreal to Luke. He was stunned by this display. He looked at his son with puzzlement, anger, and bitterness in his big, bloodshot eyes. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked him.
“You killed her,” Charles said. His heart was pounding so hard he could hear it as loudly as he could hear drums against his ear.
Big Daddy Sinatra 3: The Best of My Love (The Sinatras of Jericho County) Page 1
