“What kind of evidence is she collecting?” Tony asked. “Evidence against Granddad, or evidence against the crooked prosecutor?”
“She’s looking at evidence,” Brent said. “That’s all I know.”
This was unbelievable to everybody at the table. They all knew how Charles was. They all knew how bitterly he still despised his old man. Now the old man might be back among them? Free to live his life right here in Jericho if he so chose? It was startling news to digest.
It was so startling that Charles couldn’t bear it. He tossed his napkin onto the table, stood up, and headed out of the dining hall. Jenay immediately tossed her napkin on the table too, stood up, and followed him. Donald was about to stand and follow them, but Tony pulled him back down.
“I don’t think, little brother,” Tony said, “that Jenay needs anybody’s help. She’s got it.”
“But Dad may need my help.”
“She’s got it,” Brent echoed Tony, and it was his firm voice, and chilling gaze, that made Donald sit back down.
CHAPTER FIVE
For nearly an hour, they sat on the balcony off from the upstairs master bedroom and watched the dark, serene river beyond their backyard. They were on the lounger, stretched out and lying beside each other. Charles’s arm was around Jenay’s waist and her head was on his shoulder. Charles had already placed his hand inside her panties, and was rubbing her clit with achingly slow strokes. Her body was turned toward him, looking at him.
She didn’t speak, nor did she make any suggestions. She was going to follow his lead. If his massaging meant he wanted sex, she would give it to him. If all he wanted right now were to feel on her, she would let him feel away. If eventually he wanted to talk, she was going to let him guide the conversation. She was there for him.
And, just as she suspected, he really wanted to talk. He continued to rub her clit, but she knew what he was feeling right now went far deeper than lust. And the first words out of his mouth proved it.
“My father killed my mother,” he said.
Jenay was stunned by the revelation. Not because she didn’t know that fact, but because he had never verbalized that fact. It was the first time he had ever said those words out loud in the entire time she’d known him. Just before they were married, he handed her a stack of articles he kept about what happened the night his father killed his mother, and she read every single one. It was sad, tragic, gripping stuff. But he never would discuss it with her. She assumed he couldn’t, so she didn’t pursue it. That was why tonight, to hear him say those words, were remarkable.
“He killed your mother,” she finally replied. “And you saw him kill her.”
A kind of grim look appeared on Charles’s handsome face. And he nodded. “I saw it. Sprig saw it. Our kid brother Mick saw it. We were three kids. Yeah, Sprig was the oldest, but she was so immature you might as well have said she was the youngest.”
Sprig married Benny Gabrini, a Seattle police chief, had two sons, but then abruptly left her family, including her sons, and returned to Jericho. Her youngest son, Salvatore Luciano Gabrini, whom she named after her father, tried countless times to reconcile with her, but she would have nothing to do with him. She wanted out and she stayed out, eventually becoming Jericho’s resident lush, where she was more drunk than sober, and Charles was her benefactor. Their relationship, to say the least, was strained. But Jenay knew Charles loved his sister. And felt a heightened sense of responsibility for her. “You think what happened affected Sprig the most, don’t you?” Jenay asked him.
“It affected all of us,” he said, “but yeah. I think Sprig never got straight after that night. Not that she was all that straight to begin with. And Mick, he turned to crime. In and out of prison. Living in Philly around all of those gangsters all the time. When he was still young, and had that glimmer of hope, I was always tracking him down, begging him to get his act together, but he was not interested. He chose the killers and the thieves over me. People just like Dad. Those were the people he identified with.”
There was a long pause, and Jenay could see that sadness in Charles’s eyes. She knew Mick’s decision to turn to crime, to be like their father, was a betrayal to Charles.
“Now,” Charles continued, “they say he’s some kind of crime boss in Philly, but I don’t know what he is.” His look turned hard. “And I don’t care. Just because your old man was a murderer and a thief doesn’t mean you have to become one. So I have no sympathy for Mick or Sprig or any of their crazy-ass choices. I’m the one who went down in that basement and escalated it by fighting with my mother’s lover. I’m the one who had to pull a gun on my own father and had to shoot at him to keep him from fleeing. I’m the one who had to testify at his trial so that they didn’t have to. If anybody should be fucked up, it’s me.” Then he frowned and looked anguished, as if he had just had a revelation. His hand gave her clit a painful squeeze, in his anguish.
When Jenay began rubbing his thick hair, his hand relaxed again.
“If anybody should be fucked up,” he said again, “it’s me.”
“Some people around here,” Jenay said, “would say you are fucked up.”
Charles actually smiled. And then he looked at his wife, his smile already gone. “What do you say?” he asked.
Jenay thought about it. He studied her, as if he was depending on her answer. But she didn’t have any untruthful soothing words for him. “You’re fucked up,” she said. “I’m fucked up. The world is fucked up.” Then she turned serious, and continued to rub and stare at his hair. “But we keep it moving. We keep it real.” She looked into his eyes. “And we learn from our mistakes.”
Pain pierced Charles’s eyes. “I couldn’t let him go,” he said.
Jenay frowned. “Damn right.” And it was only then did she realize that her husband was weighed down by the guilt of turning on his own father.
“He had to pay for what he did,” Charles continued. “Sprig said I shouldn’t have done it. She said Ma was unfaithful and she therefore deserved what she got.”
Jenay was surprised. “Sprig said that?”
“She said that,” Charles responded. “And a lot of people in town, at that time, were saying it too. The only person who stood by me was Mick.” That anguished look returned to Charles’s face. “Then he turned on me too.”
“He changed his mind about your father?”
“Hell no. He hates him more than I do. But he started committing crimes and doing whatever he was big enough to do. He became just like our father. That was worse.”
Jenay understood that. She nodded her head. “Yeah, it was,” she agreed.
“He can never see the light of day, Jenay,” Charles said. “I don’t care what the governor is planning to do, I don’t care what that special prosecutor is trying to claim. Salvatore Luciano Sinatra, Luke Sinatra, can never see the light of day. He gave my mother a death sentence for doing what he had been doing their entire marriage. He’s got to pay with his life too. A life sentence for her death sentence. I’m not going to have it any other way.”
Then he looked at Jenay, seeking her understanding. He got it. “You always do the right thing in the end, Charles,” she said.
And it was that simple response of agreement that caused Charles to exhale, and release that old burden, that shame, that responsibility that threatened to overtake him all over again.
Jenay knew he had released the burden when he laid his head back and began rubbing her clit again. And she could feel the change in his strokes. He usually wanted sex from her because she turned him on and he had to have it, but sometimes he needed to fuck her simply to relieve stress. It was not about her. And she knew it. This, she also knew, was one of those times.
She was getting wet, as he rubbed her, and his dick was getting aroused. He looked at her with that lustful, but chilling look that made clear that she was to do what he told her to do without question. He pulled his now-wet digits out of her panties. “Go lock the door,” he said
to her.
And Jenay, married to this man for nearly a decade and still in love with him as if they were still newlyweds, didn’t question it. She got up, walked off the balcony, and hurried to lock their bedroom door.
By the time she returned, Charles had unzipped and pulled his pants down to his ankles, along with his briefs, and was stroking his big, fully-aroused penis.
Jenay removed her heels, pulled down and removed her pants and panties, and then got back on the lounger, facing Charles and straddling him. He stopped stroking himself, pulled her closer, and began tongue-kissing her passionately. Jenay knew this was not supposed to be about her, but even in Charles’s stress fucks, he knew how to make it about her. And the way he was kissing her, with so much gumption and authority, made her body began moving as if she was already riding him. His dick remained outside of her vagina, but her movements had the lips of her pussy stroking his shaft.
Charles loved it. She knew exactly how to do him. He used to have so many women, and he used to think he was living the life, but that was before this woman entered his life. Now all of those women were like playthings to him. Good for that moment, but they didn’t have that lasting power. Jenay, if he were to ever admit it, had all the power now.
And she used it beautifully. Her folds was stroking his shaft as they kissed, heightening his arousal. When they stopped kissing and her head dropped down, he laid his own head further back, knowing what was about to come.
It came. Jenay put her mouth on his dick and began to give him the kind of head dreams were made of. She never began haphazardly. Like now, she always began at his most sensitive points, getting him to that state of serene, not-quite-desperate-but-on-the-verge of arousal, and then she took him in full. His entire body clenched when she began mouth-fucking him. And Jenay didn’t play. She was going down hard. He thought, while fucking her, he would still be thinking about his father, and that terrible time all those years ago, but Jenay knew how to do it. She made certain, by her masterful skill alone, that he thought about nothing, or nobody else, but her.
It was not always that way. There had been times, on long, boring business trips, when beautiful women would literally throw themselves at his feet. And he was tempted. Sometimes gravely tempted. But he would think about his wife, and how much he loved this woman, and the sex she knew how to give to him, and all temptations would pass. He was not interested. Why would he be? He was the man who had Jenay.
And Jenay had him exactly where she wanted him, he thought, as she continued to go down on him. His hips would lift up and down, giving her more access, as she mouth-fucked him, until that on-the-verge feeling moved higher to that nearly-there feeling. He took her by her small shoulders when that point arrived, and pulled her body back up to where they were once again face-to-face. She knew what to do, and he expected her to do it.
She did it. She took his now stiff dick that was oozing with pre-cum already and guided it into her now wet pussy, so that he could saturate her with his love. Both of them shook at the impact of his entry and he took it one step further: lifting her blouse and her bra and sucking and squeezing her breasts. Jenay rode him hard, and he sucked her hard. It was that two-prone approach, where she was getting it from both ends, that caused her to wrap her arms around him and enjoy every second of the ride. This fuck was not supposed to be about her at all, but Charles’s love, even in his despair, even as he was fucking her in that hard, undeniable release of stress way, made certain that it was.
His hips were lifting, his ass was squeezing, and he was pushing into her deeper and deeper. And she knew how to pace herself. Every time her pussy came down on his shaft, she made sure she allowed him to dictate how far down. First, it was a couple inches, giving his dickhead that sensuality that primed the pump. And then he held onto her small ass and moved her down further and further, giving her more of himself until her ass was slapping against his balls and they were in a full throttled, no-holes-barred fuck.
He continued to suck her breasts, and she continued to hold onto him, as he fucked her with uncompromising ferocity. His stress was strong and he was matching that strength with his skill. A lesser woman would not have been able to take it, and Charles knew that. But this was Jenay. She was riding hard. She was gritting her pearl-white teeth, her hair was bouncing along her beautiful forehead, and every inch of her gorgeous face screamed joy, not pain. She was enjoying this almost as much as he was. And that joyful look of hers, that determined look she gave, allowed him do her the way he needed to do her. Her look of acceptance alone allowed him to go all-out in an almost mad, manic, on-the-edge-of-uncontrollability fuck.
He fucked her with jarring force. He fucked her with unrelenting force. He couldn’t stop doing her. And after so many thrusts, and after so many moments of near-cum, they came. First him, and then her. And he kept fucking her. He poured and thrashed. He thrashed and poured. It was such a powerful fuck that the lounger was bouncing.
Even downstairs, in the dining hall, where the master bedroom’s balcony was not even directly above it, their children could hear the vibrating sounds of something beating against the upstairs floor. They were all adults. They knew what they were hearing.
But even so, they, at first, looked at each other as if they weren’t sure if they wanted to hear such sounds. But Tony, as usual, summed it up.
“See,” he said to Donnie. “Brent was right as usual. You didn’t need to go and see about Daddy. Jenay takes care of Dad.”
Robert, Ashley, and even Donald laughed. Brent smiled, but his heart wasn’t in it. Because he knew his father better than any of them. Jenay was giving him what he needed right now, and that would go a long way, but there was no panacea here. The man their father preferred to think of as dead was soon to show his face in a court of law right here in Jericho. And he might even be released on the spot. Brent was not at all sure if his father was going to be able to handle that. He was not even sure if he could handle that. This was no laughing matter to Brent.
CHAPTER SIX
Mark Stravinsky stared at that paper again. He stared at those DNA results as if this was news to him. Denise Donahue was terrified. She never knew how he was going to react. Six years ago, she had lied and told him that he was the father of her unborn son. Now their son, Marcus Stravinsky, Junior, was very much born and looked very much nothing like her blonde-haired, blue-eyed husband.
Although they never spoke a word of it to each other or anybody else, both of them knew who the real father was. Denise knew the father of her son was Brent Sinatra, the only decent man she had ever been with, and Mark knew it too. When he went to Jericho six years ago to get his woman back, Brent was the prick who kicked his ass just for fucking his own woman. Because in Mark’s eyes she was his woman and was going to be his woman for the rest of his life. They had broken up six years ago, he had left her when her nagging about his cheating became too much, but she was still his.
She lied about the baby. She declared up and down that she was pregnant with his child. And he married her. After he married her, the baby came. He knew right away that their greened-eyed, black haired baby boy was no son of his. No way. But they were married now. And his political aspirations could not allow do-overs. A divorced politician in Boston was no politician at all. Just a tired old political also-ran. Divorce, and any talk of paternity, was not to be discussed.
He looked at his gorgeous, African-American wife. Denise looked at her nice-looking white husband. Ever since the birth of Marcus, everything about their relationship changed. The woman Mark used to love despite his cheating, was now the woman he loved and despised. The man Denise used to love with all her heart, was now the man she despised for the way he treated their son. But she had ambitions too. And her ambitions trumped everything else. Because Mark was super-rich, and if all went well, he was going to be super-powerful too. She had cast her lot with him, and intended to maintain the considerable privilege of being his wife. No matter how he treated their son. No matter wha
t his inner circle were mumbling about their son’s paternity. No matter what that DNA test, the test he now held in his hands, had concluded.
“What does it say?” Denise asked, as if she didn’t already know.
Mark continued to stare at the results. They were in their master bedroom suite. He was dressed in a white tux and she was dressed in a white gown. They were about to attend a fundraiser Mark was sponsoring in honor of the governor of Massachusetts, and where it would be announced that Mark would run as his lieutenant.
But the governor’s people had wanted a DNA test to ensure that there were no skeletons coming out of anybody’s closets when the campaign kicked off, and Mark had eagerly agreed.
“What does it say?” Denise asked again.
Mark looked at her. He was unable to conceal his bitterness even after all these years. “What do you think it says?” he asked, and tossed the results in her face.
She caught the paper and looked at it. With ninety-nine-point-ninety-nine percent certainty, Mark, according to the results, was the father of their son. Denise nearly dropped the page. She was dumbstruck. She looked at her husband with astonishment in her eyes.
“What’s wrong, dear?” Mark asked sarcastically. “You look like you don’t believe your own lying eyes.”
“But . . .” Denise couldn’t finish her thought.
“But what?” Mark asked. “The results are rigged? The results can’t possibly be right? I’m not the father of our son?” An angry look appeared in his deep, blue eyes. “Yeah, you’re right. On all counts.”
Then he walked up to her. She stepped back. He walked up closer and grabbed her by the chin. “You think I’m a fool? You think I didn’t know the father of my son was that bastard Brent Sinatra in that backwater country-ass town? You thought I didn’t realize you had betrayed me when he wanted to beat my ass just for fucking yours? What kind of fool do you think I am? After that boy was born, I didn’t need a DNA test to tell me the truth. That boy is the spitting image of his father, I already knew the truth!”
Big Daddy Sinatra 3: The Best of My Love (The Sinatras of Jericho County) Page 7
