BIG DADDY SINATRA 2: IF I CAN'T HAVE YOU, Book 2

by Mallory Monroe

  Will didn’t respond. But Charles had no patience anymore. His patience was over. He lifted Will’s entire desk, with papers flying wildly, and knocked it completely over. Will jumped up stunned.

  “Why did you pay Joffee to fire my son?” Charles asked him.

  Will’s heart was hammering now. He knew he was cornered. “Hold on. None of this was my idea, Charles.”

  “Tell me what you know.”

  “I paid him, but it wasn’t my doing. I was told to pay Joffee to fire Brent so that he wouldn’t be privy to the investigation.”

  Charles frowned. “What investigation?”

  “The bombing,” Will said.

  Charles was amazed. “The bombing? The bombing of my wife’s car?”

  Will nodded. “Yeah. They wanted Brent out of the equation.”

  “But why now, after four months? The investigation was winding down, not heating back up.”

  “But more was going down,” Will said. “And they didn’t want Brent snooping around. Joffee would keep it quiet. All they had to do was pay him. But Brent would nose around. They got lucky this first time. They didn’t want to take that chance this second time around.”

  “Another bombing?” Charles asked, his heart pounding. “They’re planning another bombing?”

  “No. Nothing like that.”

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t know,” Will said, “but not a bombing. I did that, and they didn’t ask me to do it again.”

  Charles frowned. “You did it? You planted that bomb in my wife’s car? Are you telling me you planted that bomb?”

  “It was crazy,” Will said. “But they knew what I had done. They said they would tell what I did.”

  “What are you talking about?” Charles asked. “What did you do?”

  “That tenant. You remember? The girl they found in that house on Beaver Street. The girl we rented that house too?”

  It was nearly six years ago, but Charles remembered it. “She was raped and stabbed to death. Of course I remember it. But what about it?” Then his eyes stretched. “You killed that girl?”

  Will stared at his friend, and his heart was beating out of his chest. “They saw me running from the house. They saw me. But they never went to the cops. I had to steal from you. I sold properties for a hundred dollars mark-up, more than you had authorized, and was blackmailed into giving up that money. And I gave it up. It added up to thousands of dollars each and every month. But they kept silent. They never went to the police.”

  Will paused. Charles had to hear it all, so he remained silent too. “Then they found out that I had been in the army,” Will continued, “and they found out that I had worked around explosives. They told me I had to plant the bomb. They told me I had to detonate it. So I did it. To save my own hide from prison. I was on Harvey Street that day. But nobody paid me any attention. I was the one who called you. It was all a part of the plan. It was all in the plan. They told me what to do every step of the way.”

  “Who, Will?” Charles asked that one crucial question. “Who are they?”

  Will started shaking his head. “I didn’t mean to kill that girl,” he cried. “I was just gonna rape her, and then deny it. But she fought so hard. She fought so hard!”

  “Who are they, Will?” Charles asked again. He wasn’t thinking about that tenant right now. He was thinking about this new plot Will mentioned. He had to stop this new scheme! “Who are they?” he asked.

  But Will was still thinking about that girl. “She was so pretty,” he said, and Charles had had enough.

  “You asshole!” Charles said and began to charge him. “Who made you plant that bomb in my wife’s car? Who?”

  But Will took off. He ran down the side hall and through the office backdoor. Charles was right behind him, running too. But Will was running for his life and catching him was not going to be easy.

  But Charles ran as hard as he could run. They almost fell through the back door they were running so hard. They ran across the back lot, over a fence, down another alley, and then onto a busy street. Charles was closing in fast. He nearly caught Will at the fence, but Will managed to snatch away and keep running. Charles ran after him. They were running so hard that neither one of them saw that SUV. But Will was first onto that street, and although the SUV swerved as hard as it could, it ultimately hit him. Charles was able to stop in time. But not before Will was knocked into the air, and then dropped onto the hood of the SUV, and then onto the street.

  Charles ran up to Will. People were beginning to gather. The driver of the vehicle was hurrying out of his truck too. But Charles needed answers. That bastard couldn’t die until Charles got his answer.

  He held Will in his arms. He cradled that man as if he had never betrayed him. “Tell me who they are, Will? Tell me who they are?”

  Will was barely hanging on. Tears were falling from his eyes.

  But Charles had no sympathy. “Tell me, Will,” he said. “Who are they?”

  “I call her “they” because she acts like an army.”

  “Who? Who do you call they?”

  “Mary,” Will said through his pain. “Your secretary. Mary Stalworth.”

  Charles couldn’t believe it. He dropped Will like a hot potato. Mary? His Mary? It was one thing for Will to betray him. But Mary? Will had to be lying.

  He lifted him up again, to get it straight. “Why would Mary betray me?” he asked him. “Why?”

  But Will was caught up in his own horror. And then, just like that, he was dead. Charles’s friend of twenty years was dead. He betrayed him and died.

  Charles stood up.

  And then he thought about Jenay. After church she said she was going to go to the Inn to check on her weekend staff, but first she was going over to Mary’s house to look at more fabrics.

  She was going to Mary’s house.

  “Oh my God!” Charles said aloud and took off running. He pulled out his cell phone and was calling Brent, as he ran.

  They sat on her pastel-colored living room couch and looked at a pile of fabrics. Jenay was impressed with this batch of samples. They were more in line with what she had in mind for the Inn’s lobby.

  “Let me get the others,” Mary said as she stood up. “They’re not as elegant, but I think they can be peppered around the room to give it that downhome feel too.”

  Jenay leaned back, and looked around. “I think this is my first time in your house, Mary,” she said. “It’s lovely. I see why you have a knack for interior design.”

  “Why thank-you,” Mary said. “Stand up please, and look around,” she said. “Have the run of the place. Lord knows I do.”

  Jenay smiled and began looking around in the living room while Mary headed into the kitchen area. Jenay went down into the hall, when she saw such attractive artwork on the walls, and she couldn’t help but wonder where did Mary get the money to have such expensive tastes.

  But then, out of her periphery, she saw something startling. It was in the bedroom at the end of the hall. The door was wide open and Jenay could see the wall. And on that wall, in big living color, was a gorgeous photo of Charles. A photo blown up so big that it covered the entire wall. Jenay couldn’t believe it.

  “What in the world,” she said in almost a whisper as she made her way toward that bedroom. She pushed the door all the way open and looked at the image. It was beautiful. She even knew that particular picture of Charles. He was seated behind his desk, in a sports coat and a black turtleneck sweater, and he had actually, for a change, smiled for the camera. It was a gorgeous picture. But because it covered an entire wall, because it was in his secretary’s home, because it was a picture of her husband, it was also the creepiest thing Jenay had ever seen.

  And suddenly she felt unsafe. Suddenly she felt as if a woman who would have this kind of image on her bedroom wall couldn’t possibly be stable. Something was wrong. She didn’t know to what extent. But she knew she had to get out of there.

  She immediately
turned and hurried back into the living room. She grabbed her purse and was about to make it for the front door.

  “Leaving without saying goodbye?” Mary asked.

  Startled, Jenay turned to the sound. And there was Mary, with gun in hand, pointing it directly at Jenay. “Which is fine,” Mary added. “Don’t say goodbye. But you aren’t leaving.”

  Jenay began thinking. She didn’t have time to panic, she had to think. This woman was obvious nuts. The gun proved that. This woman was obviously obsessed with Charles. That Mount Rushmore type photograph proved that. She had to get her to talk. She had to get her to talk about Charles.

  “You love him too?” Jenay asked.

  “Of course I love him!” Mary responded. “That’s a stupid question. I’ve been with him all these years, how could I not love him? How could he not love me? We love each other. Everybody knows that.”

  “What do you love about him?” Jenay asked. What could she pick up and throw, she was thinking. She was so close to that front door. What could she grab to knock that bitch down long enough so she could get away?

  “I love everything about him, why are you asking stupid questions? Oh, that’s right. Because you’re stupid.” Then Mary smiled, but it was a cold, bitter smile. “And he married you. You.” She pointed the gun again, as if her patience with Jenay was over.

  “But why are you doing this?” Jenay asked quickly. “Charles trusts you.”

  “He trusts me with everything. I was embezzling funds for years right under his nose, and had Will Horton cheating some of the tenants too. At least the ones who rented the smaller properties Charles never paid any attention to. He had too many to worry about, and all Will had to do was get them to sign the first contract, and then the second one. Our contract. Where they had to pay extra or get out. And all of that money was enriching my coffers. All of that money was being collected so that one day I could get exactly what I wanted. Charles. Because you’re right. He trusted me. He trusted me with his life. And he was right to trust me with his life. I love him and would never hurt him. But then he trusted me with his wife. That was a big mistake. I hate her. I hate everything about her.”

  She was coming closer now. She was showing a side of her Jenay had never seen before now. “I could have married that man,” Mary kept talking. “One day, he was going to see the light. But then you came along. So I took that money I saved and hired Will Horton to put an end to it. Will used to be military you know. He knew a lot about explosives. So I decided to use explosives. And the police never even questioned him. Or me either. That was the beauty of it. And I own Will Horton. I know things about him that would make you blush. But it failed. You and that baby had the luck of the Irish. The black Irish, that is.”

  She smiled at this. But then she turned reptilian again. “He failed. But I won’t.” She was aimed and was ready to fire.

  Instead of bracing herself, instead of curling up into some ball, Jenay grabbed the vase off of the side table and threw it at Mary. Mary sidestepped and avoided it completely, but it gave Jenay enough leverage to tackle Mary and attempt to take away that gun.

  They struggled and they struggled. They fell over the sofa, and was on the floor struggling. Until the gun was in both their hands. But Mary was bigger than Jenay and was getting the upper hand. Jenay saw the barrel of that gun pointing directly at her eyes. And she prayed. She fought and held on and prayed almost as intensely as she prayed for Bonita to be all right when that car exploded in a mushroom of smoke and fire. And she fought. She wasn’t going down without a fight.

  Outside, Charles’s Jaguar swerved into the driveway. Brent, who had been closer to Mary’s house when he got the call, still didn’t make it there faster than his father. He arrived just behind Charles. And Donald, who Brent had phoned after his father phoned him because he knew Donald was even closer, arrived just behind Brent. All three men jumped out. All three men ran for the front door.

  They heard the gunfire before they could make it to the front porch. But when they heard that gunfire, they pushed the limits of their abilities and ran even faster.

  Charles knocked the door down on his first try, and all three men ran in. But what they found startled them.

  The gun had been kicked away from both ladies. No-one had been shot. But one of the ladies, Mary, had been so badly beaten that she looked as if she had been shot. Jenay, on the other hand, looked flustered, but otherwise okay.

  “Damn, Ma,” Donald said with a smile. “You don’t be playing, do you?”

  Charles ran to Jenay and pulled her into his arms. “Thank God you’re alive,” he said. “Thank God!”

  Jenay agreed. “I’m alive,” she said. “I’m alive.”

  But it was, once again, a matter of inches.

  EPILOGUE

  The social worker sat behind her desk and took another look at the Sinatras. She was amazed that every last one of them showed up. The parents: Charles and Jenay. The handsome sons: Brent, Tony, Robert and Donald. And even the baby girl Bonita was there, sitting on her daddy’s knee. They all showed up. It was refreshing. It made her even more hopeful that this might actually work.

  “They’re bringing them down now,” the social worker said.

  “Good,” Jenay responded. She was more nervous than anybody else.

  “But I have to ask again,” the social worker said as she looked from Charles to Jenay. “Are you absolutely positive you want to take this on? The last thing we want is for the girls to think they have a home, only to be returned back to us.”

  “That would be the last thing we want too,” Charles made clear. “We talked this over as a family and we agreed that if this is what Jenay wants, this is what we all want.”

  “And I want it very much,” Jenay said. “Those girls have been through so much.”

  “Too much,” the social worker agreed. “Their mother was killed, and there are allegations that their father had a hand in it. Then their father was killed in a shootout with police. This has been a very trying time.”

  More than she realized, Jenay thought. From Will Horton confessing to planting that bomb and then getting killed by that car, to Mary Stalworth getting arrested, to Joffee getting fired, it had been the most challenging time of their lives. The only silver lining was that Brent was reinstated as a policeman, and the girls, Carly and Ash, were placed into Jenay’s custody. That was a major silver lining.

  “What I don’t understand,” Donald said, “is why wouldn’t any of their relatives step up? If something were to happen to one of my future children, I can’t imagine my Dad not stepping in and raising my child for me. Or my stepmom or my brothers stepping in.”

  “But they have to be appropriate placements,” the social worker said. “It’s not enough that they’re related. At least not here in Richmond. They have to be able to properly care for those children. Both of the girls’ parents had relatives who either had major criminal records and were therefore not qualified to care for the children, or they had relatives who were more than qualified, but refused the offer. They didn’t want the responsibility. So again,” she said, looking at Jenay and Charles, “I ask you before those girls walk through that door: are you absolutely positive that you want to take on this responsibility?”

  Jenay looked at Charles. “We’re positive,” he said for all of them.

  And in less than three minutes, the door opened, and Carly and Ashley Franklin walked into their lives.

  Jenay stood up and they ran to her. They threw their arms around her in an incredibly emotional embrace. Even more emotional than the last time they met. When asked, after Quince’s death, who did they want to live with, the girls immediately said Jenay. No one else but Jenay. But they also warned that she probably didn’t want them.

  Yet when the Richmond authorities phoned Jenay, she begged to take the girls.

  Now they were in her arms and crying like two little children. Even Donald, who was now on his meds and was less moody than he’d ever been, w
as shedding a tear. Life wasn’t great for Brent, not after that fiasco with Denise, but even he felt happy for the girls. Jenay would take great care of them. And the one thing his dad was great at, he thought, was raising children. Those girls had nothing to worry about.

  “We know about the court order,” Ashley said to Jenay. “The social workers told us it was true. We know you didn’t come see about us for all those years because our Dad wouldn’t let you.”

  “And then he moved us to Richmond,” Carly added, “and you had no idea where we were. We know it now, Jenay. We’re sorry.”

  But Jenay threw her arms around them again. “There’s nothing, and I mean nothing to be sorry about.” She was just thrilled to have them back again, safe and sound.

  Little Carly looked at Charles through her tears. “We’ll be good,” she said. “We promise.”

  And that did it for Charles. Carly’s sweet, tender eyes did him in. Now he had tears in his own eyes. Every one of his sons, when they saw that a girl could reduce their father to tears, were stunned.

  Charles stood up and placed his arm around Carly and Ash too. And since Nita was in his other arm, she was hugging them too. “We’ll be good to you,” he said back to them. “We promise.”

  And Bonita started grinning and eating her thumb. The Sinatra boys laughed and wondered what in the world was life going to be like with not just two females to deal with, which was already a handful, but four.

  But since their father didn’t seem to mind, they didn’t either.

  And Jenay was simply happy. This was going to be good. She could feel it in her bones.

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