Mick Sinatra: Love and Shadows

by Mallory Monroe

  Amelia exhaled. “Shoot to kill,” she said, “when you see Alessio. Like his father before him, he fancies bulletproof vests. Don’t forget that.”

  Mick never did. “What else?” he asked.

  “Take enough men,” Amelia said. “There’s a small, very effective army on that estate.”

  That was obvious, too. “What else?” Mick asked.

  “Take his ass out,” Amelia said, looking Mick dead in the eyes. “What else?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The convoy of SUVs drove onto the extremely remote Valtone property from both sides of the five-hundred-acre ranch. Three SUVs, Mick’s group, entered from the west end. The first SUV contained ten of Mick’s sharpest shooters. They were the front men. The second SUV contained Teddy and another truck-load of well-armed men. And the third SUV, carrying Mick along with Charles, contained another half-dozen of his men. On the other side of the property, on the east side, was another three-SUV convoy entering from that far end. And every man was ready and fully loaded for bear.

  But the bear was elusive this time, Mick thought, as their west end convoy drove slowly onto the grounds. He expected resistance by now. He expected his men to have been met by a hail of bullets this far in. But there were no men, and no resistance. Mick’s men began to relax. Maybe this fucker, this Alessio Valtone, wasn’t the mastermind his stepmother had made him out to be.

  But when the men began talking, and relaxing, even in his vehicle, Mick snatched the walkie talkie and addressed all of his men. “Don’t think this shit is going to be this easy,” he said. “It’s not. It only means the resistance is going to be more saturated. Be prepared. Stay on guard. Beyond these next series of corners, we’ll probably take incoming on a big-ass scale. Be ready.”

  Teddy answered for all of the other SUVs. “Yes, sir!” he said.

  But as they drove further and further onto the property, one thing began to ring clear. It was in shambles. The lawn hadn’t been mowed in months. The buildings, mainly guest houses, were dilapidated and vacant. But when they turned yet another corner, expecting more of the same, the three-SUV convoy in Mick’s entourage stopped in their tracks. Before them, laid out in the cold morning chill, were the dead bodies of Valtone’s men, all over the lawn like after-party trash.

  “What the fuck?” Charles asked, nearly rising in his seat.

  “Damn, Pop,” Teddy said over the walkie talkie. “Looks like somebody beat us to the punch.”

  Mick grabbed his walkie talkie. “How’s the scene on the far end?” he asked the convoy on the opposite end of the acreage.

  “Dead bodies, Boss,” Deuce McCurry, who led the second convoy, announced. “We’re counting at least fifty.”

  Charles looked back at Mick. “What do you think?” he asked him.

  But Mick wasn’t telling what he thought. Mainly because he thought too many things. This could be a set up. Maybe these men weren’t even dead. What the fuck was going on here?

  “What do we do, Boss?” Deuce asked him.

  “I say we keep it moving,” Teddy said over the walkie talkie, “but stay on guard.”

  “Keep moving, Boss?” Deuce asked Mick over the walkie talkie.

  “Just wait,” Mick ordered. Then he began getting out of his SUV.

  “What are you doing, Mick?” Charles asked him.

  But Mick had absolute authority on any run, and didn’t even consider answering anybody’s questions. Not even his big brother’s. With his shotgun drawn, he kicked one of the men to ensure he was dead. He was. All of the other discarded bodies around him appeared dead, too. But then Mick noticed something crazy. Something so far beyond what he would have expected that it nearly blew his mind. He knew something was wrong when they kept turning corner after corner on the large estate and no resistance came. But he never dreamed this was what was wrong.

  He hurried back into his SUV. “Turn around,” he ordered his driver, and he was hysterical about it. And then got on the walkie talkie. “Abort this bitch!” he yelled to all of the drivers. “Turn around and get out now!”

  “What’s wrong, Pop?” Teddy asked anxiously over the walkie talkie as his driver, along with the drivers of all of the SUVs, began turning around hurriedly and heading back out. “Valtone’s men weren’t dead?”

  “They’re dead,” Mick responded over the walkie talkie. “But they aren’t Valtone’s men. They’re my men!”

  Charles was floored. “Your men?” he asked. “From the docks?”

  But as soon as he asked it, the battle was finally joined. The dead bodies of Mick’s men were tossed aside, and Valtone’s men, with their weapons drawn, suddenly appeared. And they were firing away at the convoys. Men who had been in lying down positions inside the various vacant, dilapidated buildings, hidden away, suddenly appeared too, and were barraging them with bullets as well.

  Mick and his men ducked and started firing back, but it was an ambush of epic proportions. The sound of bullets ricocheting off of medal were as loud as bombs blasting, and the windows of every SUV in Mick’s convoys were shattered to pieces. They felt like sitting ducks, and woefully unprepared as the incoming far outweighed the outgoing. Mick thought he had an army that could match anything Valtone threw his way. And he did. But Valtone had position. Valtone’s men had perfect shields of dead bodies and dilapidated buildings. All Mick and his men had were the SUVs they sat in.

  And Valtone’s men had something else. They had the element of surprise. As if they had been given a beforehand warning of exactly where Mick’s men would enter the property, and where they should be positioned for attack. It was as if, Mick thought as he fired back with shotguns in both hands, they were waiting on their asses.

  And then the unthinkable happened. A rocket-propelled grenade was fired and it hit the first SUV in Mick’s convoy, lifting it up into a ball of fire, with the men inside right along with it. Mick’s heart dropped through his shoes. “Get out!” he yelled into the walkie talkie. “Get out of the SUVs now! Get out!”

  And he and Charles and all of the men in all of their SUVs got out too, and hid behind their trucks. But Mick knew it wasn’t a sustainable position. He knew, as they fired away, that more RPGs would be hurled. He saw where the first one came from, the last dilapidated building they passed, the one that was now within eyeshot of them. And he made a decision. To save his men, not to mention his own son and brother, he had to sacrifice himself.

  “Focus on the dead men,” he ordered into the walkie talkie. “Focus on the dead men!”

  As his men did as they were told, and turned their firepower on the men who were firing at them with the dead bodies as their shields, Mick ran up to the SUV and jumped into the driver’s seat.

  When Teddy saw it, his eyes stretched wide. “What are you doing, Pop?” he yelled with terror in his voice. “What are you doing?”

  But Mick got behind the wheel, drove the car in reverse, and then started heading straight for the dilapidated building with the RPGs. He knew one would be coming his way. And he saw it. He saw a gunman rise from his stooped position with a bomb in his hand, and lean back ready to hurl his bomb.

  Mick floored it, then. He sped so fast toward that man in that dilapidated building that it almost felt as if he was going faster than the speed of light. And then the bomb left the man’s hand just as Mick jumped from the SUV, and the SUV plowed into the building. The man, the truck, and the building went up in a fireball of a mushroom cloud.

  But Mick didn’t jump from the SUV, roll away from the fire, and stop there. He got up, pulled grenade after grenade from inside his white coat, and began pulling pins and tossing them inside the dilapidated buildings. Valtone’s men were all focused on the fire in the last building, while Mick was coming in from the backside, with the element of surprise now on his side, and was putting fire in their own buildings. He was tossing grenades and dodging bullets. One building at a time. He was turning the shit on its head. And despite the odds, he was winning!

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sp; But his men weren’t faring as well. The incoming was brutal. Some men had retreated back into their SUVs, but they were picked off one by one by the snipers who were still shooting with the dead men as their shields.

  When Teddy realized what was happening, he yelled, “Stay outside!” to their men. And when one of his men was shot as soon as he attempted to climb back into the SUV, Teddy hurried over and grabbed him before he could get hit again. But in reaching for his man, Teddy was hit. Not once, but twice. And the man he had sought to save, though wounded himself, grabbed onto Teddy and cried out. “Big Daddy!” he cried.

  When he heard his name, and looked in that direction, Charles’s heart dropped. “Teddy!” he cried, and raced to his nephew’s aid, dodging bullet after bullet as he did.

  By the time Mick had blown up the last of the gunmen in the dilapidated buildings, erasing at least the threat of mass casualties with just one hurl, and was shooting his way back onto the battlefield, Charles had Teddy on the ground and using his own body, and own gun, as his human shield.

  When Mick saw that his son was down, and so many of his men, he felt as if his world was about to crash in around him. He ran to their aid. He saw that Teddy was losing blood fast, and he knew he had to get to work. He grabbed Charles by his coat lapel. “I’ll provide the cover,” he said. “Get him in the SUV and get him out of here.”

  “What about you?” Charles asked. The idea of leaving his kid brother on this kind of horrific battlefield terrified him.

  But Mick wasn’t terrified. “What about me? I’m the baddest motherfucker in this fight. You think they’re gonna beat me?” He then pulled another grenade from inside his white coat, tossed it toward the gunfire nearest to the SUV, creating a small explosion.

  “Go!” he yelled to his brother as Charles hurriedly got Teddy and his wounded companion inside the SUV.

  As Mick fired, when the smoke began to clear, at the remnants of the gunmen in that vicinity, Charles got behind the wheel of the SUV and drove it off of the Valtone property, and out of harm’s way.

  “Put pressure on that wound,” he yelled to the man Teddy had tried to save. “Don’t let him bleed out!”

  But there was no response. When Charles looked through the rearview mirror, he saw that the man Teddy had saved, had already died. He saw that Teddy, with his wounds, was close behind. He floored that SUV, driving like a madman, and calling into Roz to have the doctors ready. It had already been decided, before they even left the Sinatra estate, that all wounded would be transported back to the estate. The doctors and nurse staff would be waiting. With all of the carnage occurring at the docks, Trevor Reese had already privately warned Mick that he and his men were on the FBI’s shit list. If any of his men were to show up bullet-ridden at any hospital, they had orders to take them into custody without fail. They couldn’t take the chance.

  But back on the battlefield, all Mick could do was take chance after chance. And it paid off. He and his remaining men took all the incoming their adversaries had to give, and fought valiantly. They neutralized the threat, and then they eliminated it altogether. Mick got on the horn to Deuce’s crew on the other side of the property. “Talk to me,” he said anxiously.

  “We took casualties,” Deuce finally responded, “but they took more. It’s over on this end. What about you? What the fuck was all of those bombs going off?” Deuce’s side only had straight up shooters. No firebombs. No dilapidated buildings. But they did have dead bodies for their adversaries to hide behind.

  “It’s contained now,” Mick said. “Get the wounded out of here.”

  “Yes, sir. Are we going inside?”

  Mick looked at the main house in the distance. He knew he had too many men down to risk it. His own son was down, in fact, but he couldn’t even begin to dwell on that.

  “No,” Mick said. “Get the wounded out of here.”

  Inside the main house, Alessio Valtone knew his men had been victorious. He knew it because his plan was too ingenious. Ambush Mick Sinatra? It was the joy of his life! Mick’s men wouldn’t dare come near him, he thought. Not after what they had to face.

  And he was right. Mick’s men didn’t dare come near him.

  But Mick dared.

  As Alessio sat by the phone and awaited updates from his generals on the field, Mick made his way toward the house at an angle that led him to the back of the home. He knew he had to shoot his way inside. But he also knew, if he had the true element of surprise, there wasn’t a man on the face of this earth that could stop him. He pulled a different gun from his white coat when he saw the first line of defense: two guards. This gun had a silencer on its tip and Mick was able to lean his body against the side wall, wait until all was still, and then turn suddenly and take both men out before any other guards knew they were hit.

  Then he took out his big guns, and finished off the rest of the crew.

  He knew they were only there as a just in case the impossible happened and Mick’s men made it all the way to the big house. But the impossible did happen. And Mick stepped over the men, and entered the big house.

  Alessio was getting fidgety as the calls weren’t coming in, but he assumed they weren’t coming because of the amount of men Mick had undoubtedly brought to the battle. These things would take time. He was sitting on a five-hundred-acre ranch literally in the middle of nowhere. He had time.

  But when the door to his study opened, and, to his shock, Mick the Tick walked in, in that big, white coat he loved to wear, his heart rammed against his chest. He pressed the panic button and rose to his feet quickly. He wasn’t even armed, that was how confident he had been. Mick had counted on it.

  “No need to press any panic buttons,” he said to the short young man. “Nobody’s coming to your rescue today.” Mick kept advancing toward him, his white coat flaring around him even in the enclosed study.

  Alessio began to back up. “What do you want?” he asked him.

  Mick kept advancing toward him. “I want you, Alessio Valtone. You are Alessio, right?”

  “What did I do?” Alessio asked. “I did nothing wrong.”

  Mick was so disgusted by this little man, and so angry that his own son was now in mortal danger because of this little shit of a man, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a knife, and threw it at Alessio. He threw it the way a magician threw knives at his trick subject. And Mick was just as precise as a magician. He hit his target, and sliced off part of one of Alessio’s ears. The knife landed in the wall of the study.

  Alessio cried out in pain and grabbed the space that had once held part of his ear. He backed up until his back was against the wall, as blood began to ooze out.

  And Mick was upon him. “Now cut the crap,” he said, “and tell me why.”

  But Alessio was already cowering. “It wasn’t me,” he said. “I was only following orders. It wasn’t me.”

  He was full of shit, and Mick knew it. But he heard him out. “Who was it?” he asked.

  “It was Amelia,” he said. “She said you owed her. She set this whole thing up, Mick. She set it up. This is all her doing!”

  Mick grabbed the knife out of the wall. “Tell me the truth,” he said, “or you die.”

  Then Alessio stared at him. “You hate it, don’t you? You hate that she’s not the sister you’ve been hoping for. She wasn’t the stepmother I’d been hoping for, either. She was as much a bitch as my father was a bastard.” Tears came to his eyes. “But at least my father loved me.”

  Mick could tell Alessio wore a bulletproof vest, as Amelia said he would, although he was overconfident about his chances.

  “Either you set this whole thing up to avenge your father’s death, or Amelia set this whole thing up to avenge me. Which is it, prick?”

  Alessio smiled. “Who knows?” he asked as if life was a riddle, and then spit in Mick’s face.

  Mick didn’t hesitate then. The line had been crossed before he even got there. Now it wasn’t even a blur. He slit Alessio’s throat.
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  But he couldn’t hesitate. Amelia was under heavy guard at the estate, and would be dealt with later. But right now his mind, his soul, his entire body was focused on his son. He had to make sure Teddy was alright.

  As the last of his men piled into the last SUV, Mick hurried back down the hill to the battlefield, and piled in with them. “How many wounded do we have?” he asked as he got in.

  “How many wounded survived?” one of his men asked. “Just one. As far as we can tell. And that’s including Deuce’s crew, too.”

  Mick was floored. “Only one?”

  “Yes, sir,” the man said. “Your son is the only wounded man still alive.”

  At least he hoped he was alive, the man inwardly thought, but dared not say.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The front double doors to the Sinatra home flew open, and Teddy’s unconscious body was carried in by Charles and three other men who’d been guarding the grounds. Gloria screamed when she saw her brother’s injuries, Roz pulled her back, and Joey, who had been in the guest house with Amelia, ran over to help. His heart grew faint, too, when he saw the extent of his big brother’s wounds, but he did all he could to hold it together. He moved the man away who was holding his brother’s head, and held it himself.

  The doctor on site quickly ran to Teddy, took one look, and made the order. “Take him to the table now,” he said. “We’ve got to operate!”

  Charles, Joey, and the men hurried with Teddy into the makeshift operating room. It wasn’t ideal. The hospital would have been ideal. But Big Daddy daughter’s boyfriend, Trevor Reese, had given them the heads up. Mick made the call. No matter who was injured, he ordered, or how severe, hospitals were out. They couldn’t risk certain incarceration.

  There were two doctors on staff at the Sinatra estate, and five nurses. All men and women on Mick’s payroll. They were the best. Mick didn’t hire or pay the kind of money he put out for anything less. But Roz still was worried.