Roz was sleepy and tired, and felt comfortable enough to lay her head on his shoulder. When he wrapped his arm around her, supporting the fact that she was resting against him, she ended up falling asleep.
Mick closed his eyes too, but not from sleepiness or even weariness. He was burdened by a duty he didn’t want to perform. This wonderful lady sleeping so peacefully against him could very well become the love of his life. He knew it just as surely as he knew his own face. She could become his saving grace. But the flip side was the problem. Because not only would he get her, but she would have to get him. And given his lifestyle, given all the shit he was tied up in, he could become her undoing.
He slouched down in his seat and continued to hold her. He continued to feel the fragility of her body against his. When they were making love, she said she felt safe with him. Safe, she said. As if she knew he could protect her. And he could. He could protect her against any bad man out there. But it would be like a band aid on a gunshot wound. Because the truth was what was paining Mick. Because he was the problem. He was the bad man. Who was going to protect her from him?
Only he could do that.
And by the time Deuce McCurry stopped the limousine at the curb in front of Roz’s apartment building, Mick had resigned himself to do just that.
Deuce opened the door for them and Roz and Mick made their way across the sidewalk and up to her apartment. When they got to her apartment, and she unlocked it, she looked at him. It wasn’t lost on her that his mood had changed considerably.
“Want to come in?” she asked him.
“Thank you, but no. I’ve got a meeting.”
Him and his late night meetings! “Get you some rest, though, Mick. You can’t work all the time.”
And she was so kind! This was hard enough, why did she have to be so kind? “I won’t,” he said. “Thank you.”
“Well, good night,” she said, and gave him a hug.
He held her too, with his eyes squeezed shut. Because he knew what time it was.
When they stopped hugging, he looked her dead in her expressive eyes. “Good bye, Rosalind,” he said.
Roz stared at him. Why didn’t he just say goodnight? Why did he have to say goodbye? Was it because he was leaving her again? The only reason they were together at all tonight anyway wasn’t because of any move he made. “See you next time,” she said, trying him.
He didn’t respond. His silence spoke volumes.
“Will there be a next time, Mick?” she asked him pointblank.
Mick wanted to appease her. He wanted to appease himself. But she deserved better than that. “No,” he said truthfully, looking her dead in her eyes. “There will not be a next time.”
Rosalind’s heart dropped. She actually felt a sudden pain in her gut. Why would she feel this way? She barely knew this man! Why was he affecting her so? “Okay,” she said, holding up better than he expected. “Take care of yourself.”
“You too,” Mick said, holding up better than she expected.
And then she didn’t delay. She entered her home quickly, and just as quickly closed the door.
She leaned against it, as the tears began to roll. It hurt her deeply. She was shocked how deeply it hurt. And it wasn’t because she was mourning the reality of any wonderful relationship. She was mourning the prospect of one. She felt, when she was with Mick tonight, that something could actually become of this. They seemed good together. He seemed to so enjoy her company.
But that old discomfort called reality slapped her in the face again. That man didn’t want her! He had his pick of the litter! She was his pick last night, and by the way he wouldn’t even return her calls he planned to keep it for that one night only. But she went to his hotel tonight, which made him her pick for tonight. But it never was going to work that way. Her father always told her that if the man was riding in the wagon and the woman was the one pushing it, the weight of that kind of relationship would ultimately break it down. It wasn’t even a fortnight, and it had already broken down. But the pain of the promise, of the hope she should not have even had, was still there.
Mick made his way down the stairs of her apartment building, out of the front door, and into the limousine whose door Deuce held open. And as he sat in the backseat of his own limousine, his eyes were bright with unshed tears. The best thing that ever happened to him was up those stairs, only a few feet away, but they were a lifetime apart.
Deuce got in behind the wheel and looked at Mick through the rearview. He saw the pain in Mick’s eyes. He had made a decision. Deuce feared it was the wrong decision. “Where to, boss?” he asked over the open intercom.
Mick just sat there. Every selfish bone in his body wanted to race back up those stairs and claim that woman as his own, her happiness be damned! He wished there was another way. He wished there was a middle ground. Because he felt so out to sea. Love was not his lane. Romance was not something he invested a lick of time in cultivating. Now it was catching up with him. Now he met a woman more than worth it, but he lacked every skill imaginable to understand how to reach her without hurting her.
Then he blurted out four words. “I don’t deserve her,” he said heartfelt, not even realizing he had said it aloud.
Deuce heard those words as he looked at his longtime employer. He knew he would be taking an awful risk if he spoke up, but he cared too much for Mick to remain silent. Roz was right for him. He knew it the first night he saw her. “That’s not for you to say, sir,” he said to Mick.
Mick, amazed that he had been heard, looked at Deuce.
Deuce’s heart fell through his shoe. But he didn’t back down. “She’s an intelligent woman,” he continued. “Nobody knows what’s best for her better than she does. It’s up to her to decide if you deserve her.”
Mick could have easily dismissed Deuce’s unsolicited advice as nothing more than a man stepping into waters he had no business stepping into. Deuce didn’t walk in his shoes. He didn’t understand what he was going through.
But Deuce was much older than Mick and he had wisdom behind those years. He was right. Mick knew he was right. Rosalind was no sheltered violet. She was a strong, independent woman. She should be respected enough to make up her own mind.
But then Deuce, when he could have stepped completely out of bounds and Mick could have fired his ass on the spot, actually provided the icing on the cake.
“Sometimes the worse pride of all,” Deuce said to his boss as if he was Roz’s advocate, “is the pride of selflessness. The pride of deciding for somebody else what they should be allowed to decide for themselves.”
Deuce waited for the outburst. Mick respected him, he knew. But he respected him as his chauffeur, not his therapist.
But Mick didn’t lash out. He was too busy contemplating the wonderfully terrifying possibilities. He was actually giving Deuce’s words considerable thought. Just thinking about being with Rosalind was selfish. In the end it would be very selfish. But Deuce was right. Deciding for somebody else was selfish too. Especially somebody like Rosalind.
When Mick suddenly got out of the car, made his way across the sidewalk and back into the apartment building, Deuce actually exhaled and leaned his head back in relief. “Thank you, Jesus,” he said. “That man could have killed me!”
But Mick didn’t have a murderous thought on his mind as he climbed those stairs to the second floor. Rosalind was on his mind. It was going to be a long journey. A long, hard struggle he knew. And it could all backfire all kinds of ways and devastate both of them. But it could work. It could actually work! The chances of it working were slim, but it was a chance, if she was willing, that he was willing to take.
He knocked on her door. It didn’t take her long to open it, as if she was still standing by it.
When he saw that she had been crying, despite the fact that she had attempted to wipe her tears away, made him more convinced he was doing it the right way.
Roz, too, saw the pain in his eyes. And now she was worried
. “What’s wrong?” she asked him.
“I want you to come to Philadelphia.”
Roz considered him. “Where you live?”
Mick couldn’t believe it either. “Yes,” he said.
“Why?”
He stared at her with so much feeling in his eyes that he thought she was going to cry again. “So you can see what you’re getting yourself into.” Then he added: “Before we’re in too deep.”
Roz understood exactly what he meant. His life wasn’t going to be all peaches and cream. There were baggage there. “When did you want me to come?”
Mick had to think about that. “I’ll be out of the country next week. What about the week after next?”
Roz kind of felt relieved. That would give her a chance to decompress, to get herself together. “That sounds good, Mick,” she said.
It was Mick’s time to soar. He smiled. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll see you next week.”
He moved over and kissed her on the lips. But because it was Rosalind’s lips, and Rosalind’s body he was now holding in his arms, he did not stop with a kiss. He backed her back into her apartment, closed the door, and took her right there on her living room floor. He didn’t fuck her, he ate her. He ate her until she came. And while she was still pulsating, while she was still cumming, he sheath his dick and entered her.
And he fucked her long and hard. He fucked her until she was cumming again. He fucked her until he came. And he whispered in her ears. “I’m going to get tested. Because the next time I make love to you,” he said, as he continued to push into her, “I will be fucking you raw. Skin to skin. Flesh to flesh. You hear me?”
Roz loved the way he spoke to her. She loved his voice of command. “I hear you loud and clear,” she said, and then leaned her head back further, and lifted her legs even higher, as she immersed her pulsating pussy deep into the forceful throbs of Mick’s powerful dick. And it was on. They were ready for the next chapter in a relationship that they knew was about to go viral. They were just getting started.
CHAPTER TEN
Two Weeks Later
Paul Ricci and Silvio Fontaine entered the city-block sized lobby of Sinatra Industries like two businessmen on a mission. As soon as the security guard saw them, he hurried to their side and escorted them to the elevators.
“To the top,” he ordered the operator, and the operator, who knew the two men himself and didn’t have to be told where to take them, closed the elevator doors and pressed the button that would take them to the very top.
On the top floor, Mick Sinatra sat back in his executive chair and listened. He was seated behind his desk with his suit coat off, revealing a light blue dress shirt with very chic and elegant matching suspenders on top of biceps as big as watermelons, while Leo Barone, his security chief, stood beside him, his own beefy arms folded. Three businessmen in three-piece suits sat in front of his desk. Begging for help. They owned Orinott, a major tech firm in Philadelphia, but it was bleeding money bad. They needed Mick’s capital, and know-how, to turn their business around.
“We can see those prosperous days return,” the white-haired majority owner said, “if you agree to partner with us. You won’t have to lift a finger. We’ll do all the work. We just need your know-how.”
“Now that’s bullshit,” Leo said without hesitation, surprising the men with his language.
“Excuse me, sir?” the majority owner asked. “We don’t understand.”
“You don’t understand bullshit? That’s bullshit too.”
“It is not that at all,” another one of the owners insisted. Then he looked at Mick. “We truly want your know-how, sir.”
“You do?” Mick asked.
“Why yes. We don’t understand why you would even question it.”
“Maybe it’s because I’m not a fucking idiot,” Mick replied.
All three men were stunned. “But we really do want your know-how,” their leader said.
“Again he says it,” Mick complained to a smiling Leo. Then Mick looked at the owners. “Let’s stop kidding ourselves, guys. You don’t want my know-how. You want my money. And you wouldn’t want that if anybody else would give it to you.”
The majority owner moved to the edge of his chair. This hope, their last hope, was slipping away. “We are very much interested in partnering with you, sir. This would be a win-win situation for both of our companies. We don’t understand the hostility.”
“You don’t? Well let me break it down for you,” Mick offered, his eyes as cold as ice. “When you were in those prosperous days you mentioned earlier, when you were riding high in this town, my people went to you. You would make a fine addition to my tech division, they said to you. And you know what you said to them?” Mick could tell the owner remembered exactly what he told them, but he also knew he wasn’t man enough to own it now.
“No,” the owner said. “I don’t remember that conversation at all.”
“Funny how I remember it perfectly,” Mick said firmly and waited for the owner to ask what the conversation entailed. He was betting he wouldn’t bother. He won that bet.
“Regardless of what happened back then,” the majority owner said, “we would be honored to partner with you now. Let’s not look back. Let’s move forward. We would be honored to partner with you going forward.”
“You would be honored to partner with a sleazy, lowlife gangster who wasn’t worthy to be in the same room as you? Because that’s what you said before. Now you’re honored to have me on your team?” Mick smiled. “That’s what I call progress.”
The three owners smiled too, hoping that Mick understood.
“It was business, that’s all,” the majority owner felt comfortable enough to point out. “When you’re doing well, you don’t see the big picture as much. You understand. You’re a successful businessman. You know how it is.”
“Get the fuck out of my office,” Mick said, his eyes cold again. “That’s how it is.”
The hearts of the three desperate businessmen sank. But Mick was heartless. “Nobody goes from sleazy to honorable in a span of a few years,” he said to them. “No man can be so despicable that you would refuse to have him in the same room with you, and then want to partner with that same man because it suits you now. You had it right the first time. I’m a sleazy bastard who doesn’t deserve to be in your presence. So get the fuck out of mine.”
The businessmen were livid. Each one of them wanted to tell that wop gangster what he could do with himself. Who did he think he was? Because he wore a suit, and had money, didn’t make him respectable like them! They wanted to tell Mick off.
But they didn’t say another word. They’d heard horror stories about Mick the Tick. If they weren’t so desperate, if everybody else hadn’t turned them down, they would have never went anywhere near him. But desperation was a pride breaker. And they came anyway. Now they regretted it. Now they were rising and actually thanking him for his time, to avoid any retribution.
After they left, Mick tossed the proposal they had placed in front of him into his trash bin. “Arrogant fuckers,” he said. “Treat me like a piece of shit, now they want my help.”
“That’s how they are,” Leo said. “Even in their heyday, when Sinatra Industries could swallow them up like a bear swallowing a fly, they still considered themselves better. That’s how they are. They think you need their respectability.”
“I need it,” Mick admitted. “It would have been a nice acquisition. But no man will piss on my head and expect me to call it rain. If I was a sleazy motherfucker three years ago, I’m a sleazy motherfucker today.”
“But nine will get you ten they still think they’re better.”
“They are better,” Mick said with a sad note of resignation in his voice. “They never had to do what I had to do in this life. They are better. But that’s not the point.”
A look of regret flashed in Mick’s eyes. He wished his life was unencumbered too. He wished to God he had no blood on his hands. “T
hat’s not the point,” he said again.
Then his desk intercom buzzed. Leo pressed the button. “What is it, Nan?”
“Mr. Ricci and Mr. Fontaine wish to see the boss.”
Leo looked at Mick. “What the hell are both of them doing here?”
Mick was wondering the same thing. Paul Ricci and Silvio Fontaine were two of his operatives. Mick ran two empires. Sinatra Industries and all of its subsidiaries were completely legit. But his other enterprises: the gambling houses, the gun running, the nightclubs and bars, all had their dirty side. He was getting out of every one of his illegitimate businesses, but it wasn’t a simple proposition. Getting out was always harder than getting in. There were major gangsters who had a piece of his businesses and knew they would all collapse without him. It was a syndicate of them who relied heavily on Mick. They didn’t want him out. They were just thugs. They knew next to nothing about running businesses. They would run it in the ground without Mick. They were holding on to him as if he were their lifeline. And Mick was loyal to those men. They stood by him when he was scratching and clawing for crumbs. Just because he had his, just because he was a major player on the legitimate world stage, didn’t mean he could leave them in the dust. He was getting out, but it was going to be tricky.
And then there were the skeletons in his closet that could come alive at any moment and threaten to take the whole thing down. The hits he had to order back in the day. The system corruption he had to feed. The enemies who were afraid to take him out, but occasionally tried to anyway. Paul and Silvio, and all the men Mick had working with them, were responsible for keeping his past in his past. Paul and Silvio were Mick’s ghostbusters. Which meant, by the fact that they were there at all, that a ghost had escaped again. “Bring them in,” he ordered.
Mick Sinatra: For Once In My Life Page 12
