But Mick could tell something was bothering Teddy too. And he knew it for damn sure wasn’t about how many bodies they buried. “You told me what’s Joey’s problem,” Mick said. “What’s yours?”
Teddy was always amazed at how perceptive his father was, and how easily he could read people. He had no idea what he based it on, but it was always something obvious only to him. Teddy couldn’t read his father, not ever, but he knew him well enough to know that bullshitting him never worked. So he never tried. “Why them,” he asked, “and not me?”
Mick stared at Teddy. Through the silence, Teddy kept talking. “When you went down, I dropped the ball too. I didn’t think to secure the family first. I let the cops handle their security, which I now know was a major league screw up. It cost Danny and Ang and the rest of them their lives. But you didn’t come down on me at all. Why? Why didn’t it cost me?”
“It cost you,” Mick said.
Teddy was puzzled. “But . . . you haven’t said two words to me about it. How did it cost me?”
“It made me realize you aren’t as far along as I thought you were. It set you back greatly. It cost you. Believe me.”
Mick and Teddy exchanged a look that caused Teddy’s heart to sank. More than anything in this world, he wanted his father to be proud of him, and to trust and believe in him. The fact that Mick was disappointed in him, and was second guessing his abilities, cut like a knife. “But the fact remains,” Teddy said bravely, “I’m alive and they aren’t. Why?”
Mick didn’t hesitate. “Because you’re my son,” he said. “I had to take one out before. I still have nightmares about that decision. I’m not taking out another one unless I absolutely have to.”
“You mean like when you had no choice but to take out Adrian?”
A sad look crossed Mick’s face. He never wanted to even think about that day. But Adrian was going to kill Rosalind. He left him no choice. “Yes,” he said. “Like that.”
His office door opened, and Blair Conyers peered inside. “Sorry to disturb you, sir,” she said, “but your wife is on the news. And it’s not good news.”
Teddy quickly grabbed the remote off of the coffee table in front of him, and pressed the button. They all looked at the overhead television screen as he quickly flipped channels to the local noontime news. A reporter was talking in front of the Graham Agency, as a big group of people were walking out of the lobby doors.
“It has to be unprecedented,” the reporter said into the microphone. “Client after client walked out on the owner, Rosalind Graham-Sinatra. And their reason?”
The reporter then turned to one of those clients, one he had apparently asked to be on standby. “This good lady here, Janet Snodgrass, is one of Mrs. Sinatra’s clients. Or should I say was one of her clients?” the reporter asked.
“Was,” Janet said. “She’s no longer my agent. Thank goodness.”
Teddy looked at Mick. Mick was staring at the television screen.
“Tell our viewers,” the reporter said, “the reason for this mass exit. Why are so many clients of the Graham Talent Agency walking out like this? Aren’t they under contract? Why are you guys so fed up?”
“Because we have careers we have to look out for,” Janet said bluntly. “It’s about our livelihoods. We don’t want to be declared guilty by association and lose our ability to earn a living.”
“But tell our viewers what is the association? What are you afraid of?”
“Roz Graham, or Mrs. Graham-Sinatra as you call her, is married to a man that many people believe is in the Mafia. That he’s some kind of gangster.”
“You are referring to Mick Sinatra,” the reporter said, “the owner of Sinatra Industries here in Philly?”
“That’s correct.”
“You didn’t know he was Mrs. Graham-Sinatra’s husband?”
“I knew her husband owned Sinatra Industries, yes, sir. But I thought he was just a regular old CEO. I had no idea he had all of these mob ties they started talking about after that attempt on his life. We don’t want to be caught up in any of that. We don’t want to have anything to do with that. Directors will not want to hire us if they think we have those kind of ties. That’s why you’re seeing this mass walk out. We wanted out, and she let us out.”
The interview continued, but Mick wasn’t listening. He stood up and began leaving.
Teddy was surprised. “Dad, where are you going?”
“I’ll be back,” Mick said.
“But, Dad, what do I tell the guys? Do I tell them what happened, or do I wait until the meeting? Dad?”
But Mick, but Dad, was gone.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Roz answered her ringing cellphone as soon as Mick walked into her office. She motioned him in, and he closed the door and headed for her desk.
“Nell, hey,” Roz said into the phone, “thanks for returning my call. It’s about Jade. Yes, I got the message. That’s why I’m calling. I’m very concerned. Well, because it makes no sense. They said Jade was no longer needed in your play. But I know that can’t be right.”
Nell apparently was explaining himself, and Roz was listening. But she remained unsatisfied. “But she won that role on her merits, Nell. Yes, I know what they said. They said the decision had nothing to do with her skillset, but then I ask them to be more specific, and they can’t be. They simply declared her unsuitable all of a sudden. What’s that? What changed?”
Mick could see the stress all over Roz’s pretty face. And he didn’t like it. Who were these fuckers upsetting her like this?
Roz leaned back, her hand pressed against her forehead as if she was trying to forestall an oncoming headache. “I know it’s your production. It was your production when you selected her and signed her up. She needs that job, Nell. She’s needs that break. She’s looking forward to it.”
Another long answer from him that caused Roz to lean her head back and close her eyes. Mick stared at her intensely. She worked so hard to build this company. He stayed out of her way, because this was her lane. But if that news report was accurate, her clients were leaving in droves and some shithead of a director was giving her fits too. All because she was married to him. All because of him.
Roz opened her eyes, as if she could sense Mick’s own anguish. “What is the real reason, Nell?” she asked. “Is it because of me?”
Is it because of my husband, Mick wanted her to ask.
“Well is it?” Roz asked again. “Okay, right. Yeah, right. She’s unsuitable. That’s your lie and you’re sticking to it. But it’s wrong, Nell, and you know it. Jade worked her ass off for that role. You can’t just snatch it away because she decided to stay with my agency. You can’t do that! Nell? Nell?”
Then Roz looked at her cellphone and ended the call too. Mick was stunned that anybody would have the temerity to hang up in his wife’s face. Did they realize who she was? That she was his wife? That she was his?
But Roz was used to it. She’d been getting hang-ups all week long. Nell was just the biggest one yet. She looked at Mick. “Hey,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“You, or at least the Graham Agency, was on the news.”
Roz shook her head. “Don’t remind me,” she said. “I worked like a dog to build up this company, and they’re trying to tear it all down in one day.”
But it wasn’t the words she said, but the look in her eyes that touched Mick. She looked tired. Not physically, but emotionally. Her first week back at work, after nursing him back to health and staying by his side during his entire ordeal, was nothing like what she had expected. Mick walked over to her. She rose to her feet, and he pulled her into his arms.
“I’m okay,” she said as he held her. She loved how he smelled. She loved how his arms felt around her. But the thought of all of her clients consorting to leave her, and how only a handful remained, still stunned her. And the truth of it caused her to break. Roz, who rarely ever cried, broke down and cried.
Mick’s heart pound
ed when he realized she was crying. And he could barely take it. He lifted her up and held her in his arms as she sobbed. His heart felt like lead. He felt her pain. But he didn’t talk. He didn’t try to comfort her with empty platitudes. He didn’t make her any promises. He just let her have her cry.
And when she finally eased up and then stopped, he sat her back on her own two feet and placed his hand beneath her chin. He lifted her face to his. He loved this face. More than he could ever verbalize.
He didn’t give her words of encouragement, the way most men would have done, but Roz knew Mick wasn’t that kind of man. If a situation was bad, it was bad. He wasn’t going to pretend otherwise. It was bad. But she wanted to make clear it wasn’t his fault. “What that former client of mine said on the news, about their decision to leave being all about the fact that I’m married to you, is hogwash,” she said. “Because if they were still struggling the way they were when I first started representing them, they would still be here. But they all have jobs now.”
“Jobs that your hard work got for them,” Mick added.
“Damn right about that,” Roz agreed. “But because they’re working now, they figure they got this. They figure they don’t need me anymore. They don’t have to pay me any percentage anymore. Oh, yeah. I know those heifers. It’s not about you. Don’t believe that. You were just the convenient excuse.”
“However,” Mick said, determined to keep it real between them, “the fact that you are married to me does not help, yes?”
“I don’t know about helping them,” Roz said, “but it for sure as hell helps me.”
Mick smiled. “No apologies?”
“None,” Roz said firmly. “I’m not apologizing for who I married. They don’t like it, fuck’em. They don’t have to sleep with you. Most of them may want to sleep with you. And given your past, where you weren’t exactly a choirboy, many of them may already have.”
Mick grinned. This was his Rosalind. This was why he broke his vow to never marry and married her. He loved her strength, and her determination. He loved her refusal to be ashamed of him.
“Go freshen up,” he said to her.
Roz smiled. “Are you trying to say I look bad?”
“You look pretty bad,” Mick admitted. Roz pushed him, causing him to almost lose his balance.
He smiled. “It’s not about looking bad,” he said. “I don’t want any of those fuckers to ever see you sad. I want to take you to lunch.”
“But Mick. You don’t have time to take me anywhere. You don’t have time to even be here.”
“I make time,” Mick said. He wanted to add for you, but he felt that would be too revealing.
Roz wasn’t hungry. Not even a little bit. But she knew she needed to get away from the office, even if for a little bit. Mick always seemed to have the right prescription for whatever ailed her at any given time. Which, she suspected, given Mick, that sex was also going to be a part of that cure. The part she perhaps was most looking forward to. “I’ll freshen up,” she said, and headed for the adjacent bathroom within her office.
When she went into the bathroom, Mick walked behind her desk, swiped open her cellphone, and went to her phone log. When he saw the last number that called her, he pulled out his own cellphone, pressed his camera, and took a picture of that director’s telephone number. Then he put his phone away.
When Roz came back out, looking cheerier, Mick smiled.
Roz noticed his approval. “Better?” she asked.
“Better,” he said.
And they left her office, arm in arm.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Not entirely to her surprise, lunch wasn’t their first stop. Mick drove his Escalade straight to a motel that was right near Roz’s office. Not because they were motel kind of people. They weren’t. But their home was much too far away, as were any other properties the two of them owned. And Mick, always in tune with Roz’s needs, felt it couldn’t wait. He felt Roz needed a stress reliever and she needed it now. And after what transpired earlier between he and his former friends, men he once trusted, Mick needed that relief just as badly as Roz. In his view, worse.
And within minutes of Mick paying for and then them entering the room, they were at it.
It was all in the rhythm that Roz loved the most. It was the way Mick wrapped her tightly in his big arms, got into his groove, and fucked her exactly where she needed to be fucked. It was in the middle of the day. They both had issues they had to deal with that went well beyond an ordinary work day. But instead, they were naked and sprawled on a bed, Roz on the bottom, and Mick on top doing what he knew how to do better than any man she had ever known.
“We’re going to be soo late getting back to work,” Roz said in a husky voice, as her entire body reacted to his masterful lovemaking.
“Who gives a shit?” His voice was even huskier. “We own the companies.” He kissed her, and did it with such force that she wrapped her arms around him and attempted to return his passion. And as he kissed her, he moved inside of her like a thirsty man finding water. Everywhere he moved he wanted more and more, and he was lapping it up.
He was deep inside of her, and going deeper still, as the feelings kept him on the edge of cum the entire time. All he could think about was how much he loved doing her, and being with her, and having her as his own. He held her tighter, reasserting his possessiveness, as his gyrations increased still more.
Word on the street was that he wasn’t half the man he used to be. Word on the street was that he had been spooked by the assassination attempt and how deep it ran, and Mick the Tick was ready to give it all up. One month ago they tried to take him out. One month ago he was on his dying bed. But he wasn’t dead yet. He was coming back. And he was beginning his comeback with Roz. He was fucking the shit out of her. The bed was shaking, the springs were squeaking, as he gave her all he had. He wasn’t holding back, not even the slightest bit. He was stroking and stroking and putting it on her hard. He was leaving it all inside of Roz.
Roz felt his power too. She felt it so completely that all she could do was wrap her arms around him even tighter and feel her orgasm slow burn and slow burn until she was on fire and could not contain the flames. He pumped and pumped and she felt the heat with every fiber of her being. She came hard, and then he came harder. They both strained and grunted and Mick kept pounding as he poured. Until he poured out.
And then, when neither one of them had anything left to give, Mick moved his weight off of her, pulled her against him, and they just laid there. In each other’s arms. Wishing this past month had not happened, nor even the trauma of this day, but knowing that it did. And that Mick had to do something about it.
Roz lifted up and placed her hands on the sides of his tanned face. His big green eyes, even his sleepy eye, were wide open. She could see his remorse.
“Your first day back at work,” she said.
He placed his hand on the side of her pretty brown face, as her big, expressive eyes showed their strain too. “Yours too,” he said.
But Roz was as in tune to Mick’s needs as he was to hers. “What happened today?” she asked him.
Mick looked at her. Sometimes he felt as if she could read his mind. “What do you mean?”
“You were relieving my stress, and I appreciate that,” she responded with a smile. “You succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.”
Mick smiled too.
“But you were relieving your stress too. It was that kind of fuck. So tell me what happened.”
Mick exhaled. He used to keep everything inside. He didn’t share his innermost thoughts, or even his actions, with anyone. Until Roz came along. Now he felt he needed to share with her, to be healthy for her. “I had to take out several of my underbosses,” he said. “The ones on duty the day of the ambush.”
Roz was shocked. “Danny and Angelo too?”
Mick nodded. The strain was in his eyes. “Yup.”
“But why, Mick? You think they had something to do with what
happened?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t go there because I thought they were involved in that ambush. I went there because they dropped the ball when they should have been on the ball. I was paying their asses to be prepared to handle days like that. I trusted them.”
Roz could hear the pain in his voice. She comforted him. She rubbed his arm.
“I didn’t go there to take them out,” Mick continued. “But they came ready to take me out. Maybe it was self-defense in their eyes. Maybe they couldn’t read my mood and was going to be ready just in case. I didn’t go there to end their lives. But they were ready to end mine.”
“Oh, Mick,” Roz said, placing her hand on the side of his face. “You’ve been through too much!”
“And I still have a long way to go. It’s getting crazy out there, Roz. Men are doubting me now. They actually believe in their heart of hearts that I’m vulnerable now.”
“But why would they believe that? You survived. Those assassination attempts failed. You’re stronger, not weaker. A lesser man would not have made it through that hell you went through.”
Mick pulled Roz closer against his body. Her faith in him made him even stronger. And her strength made her his best and only adviser. “You’re speaking the truth,” he said, causing Roz to smile. Humility was not in her man’s DNA. “But that’s not what’s happening out there,” he continued. “Why else would my own men, who knew me best, would come for me like that? How could they think for a second that they could draw weapons on me and get away with that shit? They believe that ambush did something to me. Weakened me somehow. They think I’ve lost it, Roz.”
Roz shook her head. It angered her as much as it enraged Mick. “They are pure fools if they believe that crap,” she said. “You’ve lost it? You? They’d better get the fuck out of here! When you were on your dying bed, you were still the baddest man in this town. You still towered over every one of them. But if they believe that nonsense,” she added, “if they actually believe that fairy dust their sniffing, how can you turn it around?”
Mick Sinatra: Now Will You Weep Page 5
