Mick Sinatra: For Once In My Life

by Mallory Monroe

  She had planned to dress casually, in jeans and a blouse, until she saw that Mick was going to wear a suit. She reversed course quickly and was now dressed in a form-fitting white dress and heels, with her hair in that half up-do with curls down her back look that Mick found sexy. And when she saw how formal the children were dressed, all in their Sunday best, she was pleased by her own choice.

  But that didn’t make this night any easier. She took a deep breath, gathered up her courage and tamped down her nerves, and walked across the room to where they were sitting. “Hello everyone,” she said with a grand smile as she approached.

  They all stood up, even the daughter and the ten-year-old, as she approached.

  “Good evening,” the young man who looked to be the oldest said.

  “I’m Roz Graham. A friend of your father’s. He sends his apologies, but he had to field a phone call. He should be down soon.”

  They all nodded their understanding.

  “Perhaps you can introduce yourselves so that I can have some names to go with your beautiful faces.”

  They all smiled. Their smiles along made Roz feel better.

  What none of them knew was that Mick was also present. He was at the top of the stairs, on the second floor landing, looking down at his children and his lady. His long eyelashes seemed to stand guard over his expressive eyes, shielding them, as he stared down. He held onto the railing, and stood like a man either in full control, or on the verge of losing it, as he watched.

  “I’m Adrian Sinatra,” the oldest said. “And this is my brother Teddy.”

  Teddy extended his hand. He was the one who was the spitting image of Mick, even down to the cleft chin, and seemed the most sociable. “Nice to meet you, Roz,” he said as they shook.

  “How are you?” Roz asked.

  “I’m excellent!”

  Roz smiled. “Now that’s how you say it,” she said, and the children laughed. She could tell it was nervous laughter, but they laughed.

  “You have very pretty dimples, ma’am,” Teddy said.

  “And a charmer too,” Roz added, with her dimpled smile. “Okay!”

  Teddy and his siblings laughed.

  And then suddenly Roz remembered Mick saying one of his sons was named after Teddy Stefani, one of his associates. “Your father has an associate named Teddy,” she said. “Were you named after him?”

  “Teddy Stefani,” Ted said with a nod. “Yes, ma’am. Dad named me after him.”

  “So are you and Teddy close?”

  “No ma’am. Dad doesn’t take us around his associates.”

  Roz could feel the pain in his voice.

  Then Adrian turned to his sister. “And this is our sister Gloria Sinatra,” he said, and Roz and Gloria shook hands too.

  “Very nice to meet you, ma’am,” Gloria said with a beautiful smile.

  Roz saw a lot of Mick in this one too, but she also saw what had to be a very beautiful mother in her.

  “Very nice to meet you,” Roz said. Then she looked down at the youngest one. “And who is the little one right here? Shane, I’ll bet.”

  He was standing in front of Gloria. Gloria had her hands on his shoulder. “This is Shane,” she said. “Our baby brother.”

  “He’s not our biological brother,” Adrian pointed out. “But Dad supports him. So we treat him as if he’s one of us. Dad considers him his son.”

  Roz knelt down to Shane. Of all five children, he seemed the saddest to her. “Nice to meet you, Shane,” she said, extending her hand.

  But Shane didn’t shake it. He, in fact, turned away from her and buried his face against Gloria.

  “He’s shy,” Gloria said, and Roz smiled too and stood up. But she knew better than that. Shyness was one thing. Sadness was something else.

  Mick watched intensely as Roz turned to the final child: the teenager. She extended her hand. “Hi, I’m Roz,” she said.

  “Hi, I’m not,” he said with bite in his voice.

  Roz removed her extended hand, but she didn’t let him remove her smile.

  “Just tell the lady your name, Joey,” Teddy said. “Don’t be such a prick!”

  “Fuck you, Teddy. I’ll be whatever I wanna be. You don’t tell me what to do!”

  Another distressed child. Didn’t Mick realize what condition these children were in? “Anyway, everybody sit back down,” she insisted, and they all did. “Do you want something to drink before dinner?”

  “Dad’s butler already offered,” Teddy said. “We’re fine.”

  Teddy didn’t appear to be the oldest, but he was definitely the leader. Mick through and through, she thought, as she sat down on the second sofa in the living room. “I’m glad all of you could make it on such short notice.”

  “Are you kidding?” Adrian asked. “We’re just happy Dad invited us at all. We would have dropped everything and came even if his secretary called us with a two minute notice.”

  Roz didn’t understand. “His secretary?”

  “Yeah,” Adrian said. “She’s the one who calls us whenever Dad wants to see us.”

  Roz found that extraordinary. Mick didn’t call them himself? She knew he was busy, but these were his children! “I see,” she said.

  “It’s been so long since we got the call,” Ted said, “that we were shocked when it came.”

  “It’s been that long?” Roz asked.

  They all nodded their heads.

  “How long?”

  Teddy, Adrian, and Gloria looked at each other. “Two years?” Gloria looked at her brothers for confirmation.

  Teddy nodded. “Yeah, I think you’re right, Glo. It’s been about that. It’s been about two years since we got together like this.”

  Roz was astounded. So astounded that Mick finally gave up his perch upstairs and began heading down. When he arrived, and his children saw him coming, they all stood quickly. And nervously, Roz noticed.

  “Well hello everybody!” Mick spoke jovially as he came toward his children. He had a smile on his face that Roz had never seen before. Not that it was completely void of warmth and affection, but it was certainly lacking something.

  They all literally got in line, as they waited to be hugged by Mick. And Mick hugged each one, from his two oldest sons, to his daughter whom he also kissed, to the two younger ones. Although those two didn’t want to have anything to do with Roz, they seemed thrilled to be hugged by Mick. In fact, Roz noticed something remarkable. All five of Mick’s children kept their hands on him, even after their hug, as if they wanted just a touch of him. They continued to surround him as if they were surrounding a prized possession.

  And even after he lifted little Shane into his arms and told them to have a seat, they all followed him as if they were attached to him. He sat in the middle of the sofa, with Shane on his lap, but to Roz’s shock all of his other children also piled onto that same couch. Gloria sat on one side of Mick, Joey sat on the other side of Mick, and Teddy and Adrian rode shotgun on the ends. Seemingly starved for their father’s attention. It was as beautiful to Roz as it was tragic.

  To the untrained eye, Mick would appear as if he was completely comfortable with his five children. He was asking them how they were doing, they were all telling him how great they were doing, and it seemed picture perfect. But Roz had a trained eye on Mick. And she saw the stress and strain. She even saw the pain. It was as if they were six people on a couch, pretending to be a family.

  And even during dinner, as they all gathered around the table, they all told wonderful stories about how wonderful their lives were, but it seemed too Brady Bunch to Roz. They were all either in college, or working, and they all were doing incredibly well. Even little Shane said he couldn’t be better. But it seemed rehearsed. It seemed as if the older ones knew, and the younger ones were instructed by their mothers, to never upset Daddy.

  And by night’s end, when they all said their goodbyes, and even Shane and Joey, in front of Mick, smiled at Roz and hugged her neck, she wondered if
Mick saw the truth. Because he was still smiling as each one left him. He was still smiling as they boarded their respective limousines and went back to the undoubtedly wealthy world Mick had set them up in. He admitted he was a great financial supporter. But it was the emotional support, he said, that needed work.

  Now they were all driving away. And Mick was smiling as he watched them leave. And Roz was certain he didn’t get it. She was certain he was completely content to see this charade through to the bitter end. It was a shame. But it was a shame too many years in the making for her to do anything about.

  Until she turned to walk away from the door. Mick pulled her back, and placed his hands around her waist. Only it wasn’t his usual sensual moves. It wasn’t even sexy. Because Mick, to her shock, was on the verge of tears. Any other man would have already been crying, that was how deeply hurt he seemed, but Mick was not any other man. He was on the verge, but he did not go over. But even the fact that he was that close was remarkable.

  Roz waited for him to talk to her. Maybe he got it after all, she thought. But it would be several seconds before Mick could find his voice. And when he did, he spoke with pure anguish in it. “I never saw it before I met you,” he said to her.

  Roz stared at him. She understood what he meant, but she needed him to verbalize it. “You never saw what?” she asked him.

  “The pain in my children’s eyes.” Mick looked into Roz’s eyes. His sleepy eye seemed wide awake at this very moment.

  “Pain?” she asked him.

  “Pain,” he said. “We used to gather around, and laugh, and talk about a lot of nothing. Then they would go back to their lives, I would go back to mine, and they would rest in the comfort of knowing that their sugar daddy was going to continue to plow them with sugar. That they were still in my good graces.”

  “But you didn’t see that tonight?”

  “I saw it,” Mick said. “But I realized I was seeing what I wanted to see. I thought about you, and how you never went along with anybody’s bullshit. So I decided not to go along with theirs either. I heard their happy words, and I saw their happy smiles, but I looked into their eyes. And there was no happiness there. There was no joy there. All I saw was pain. Some bitterness. But lots of pain.”

  Tears finally welled up in Mick’s eyes. It was a sight to behold for Roz. “They’re strangers to me, Rosalind,” Mick said. “I have allowed my children, my flesh and blood, to become strangers to me.”

  Roz wanted to pull him into her arms and comfort him, but this was beyond comfort now. He didn’t need to be comfortable. She saw their pain too. She saw that anguish in their eyes. Mick needed to understand his part in that pain.

  “What are you going to do about it?” she asked him.

  Mick stood there, like a man alone, and then he looked at her. “Change it,” he said. “Don’t ask me how. I don’t know how. But it’s got to change.”

  It was the best answer, Roz thought, he could have given. She was proud of him for not pretending that the answer was easy and fast. She would not have believed him if he would have went that way. But he didn’t go that way. He settled on the truth. She pulled him into her arms. He had a tall order ahead of him. They had a tall order. But Mick was right. It had to change.

  Four days later, when Roz was back in New York teaching at the actor’s studio, and Mick had just arrived back in Philly after a business trip to Florida, nobody would see this change coming. Young Shane, his mother, and her entire household were murdered, two of Mick’s operatives were murdered along with more than a dozen of his men, and Mick was rushing back to his private jet to get to Roz. Before his enemies could.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “That’s not stage presence, Alice,” Roz said to one of her students as the others looked on. “You have to play big. You have to play to the back of the room, not the front row. Everything has to be over-exaggerated.”

  “Everything?” the unconvinced budding actress asked.

  “Everything,” Roz responded with even more vigor. “Your voice, your walk, the way you sashay your hips. You’ve got to bring it, or they won’t be bringing you back.”

  “But what about auditions, Miss G?” Terrance asked. “Those directors don’t want you to overact, do they?”

  “No. And that’s not what I’m talking about now,” Roz pointed out. “Never oversell. But you have to remember that everything looks small on stage. It is the actors who bring the big. It is the actors who stretch the limits of the environment so that you aren’t just looking at little people moving around on a stage, but individuals moving around. The audience can’t just see a guy. They have to see Terrance. The audience can’t just see a girl. They have to see Alice. It’s stagecraft. It’s knowing what you’re doing. It’s not getting caught up in the glitz and glamour of being on stage, and running to Twitter to tell all about your experience. It’s about living that experience on that stage at that moment in time. Because if all the audience sees is a boy and girl moving around on stage, you have lost them. They have to see Terrance. And Alice.”

  Roz turned to her remaining students. But before she could instruct them too, or entertain more questions, the doors of the studio flew open and five men, five gunmen, came rushing in.

  The students let out screams of horror.

  “Shut the fuck up!” the men began yelling at the students, and Roz, certain that whatever was going on was all about Mick, quieted the students too.

  Then she looked at the gunmen. They were ready to strike. She knew it. But she belonged to Mick, which made her valuable. She knew that too. They were not going to hit her. Those were not their orders.

  That was why, when they pointed those guns at her students, and were about to kill them all to get rid of any witnesses, she moved in front of the students. The students, smartly, moved behind her.

  “You don’t want them,” she deployed.

  “Get out of the way,” one of the gunmen yelled.

  “Don’t you do it, Miss G,” Terrance said, who ended up directly behind her.

  But Roz wasn’t about to anyway. “I’m the one you want,” she said to the men. “I’m his girlfriend.”

  “Get out of the way,” another gunman screamed, pulling her by the arm.

  But Terrance was pulling her back. “Don’t you do it, Miss G,” he said again. “Stay right where you are.”

  But the gunman managed to pull Roz away. Roz knew she had to think fast. “The cameras already have you on tape,” she said, and the men immediately began looking around. “Killing them will only make your escape that much more unlikely. Cameras are everywhere! If you murder all these innocent people, the entire police department will be after you. You won’t stand a chance!”

  She was pointing at what was actually stage lighting in the ceilings, but could easily go for high tech cameras. “There’s one there, and there, and there,” she said.

  Terrance, figuring out what she was doing, started pointing too. “And there, and there,” he said. “And there’s cameras in the walls y’all can’t even see!”

  “Let’s go!” the gunman at the door yelled again. “Get the package and let’s go!”

  The men, panicking now too, grabbed Roz and took off. When they ran out of the door with her, Terrance ran and locked the door.

  “Call the police!” he yelled to his fellow students. “Call the fire department! Call the ambulamps!”

  The students were all calling on their cell phones until he said that last word. “Ambulamps?” Alice asked him. “What the hell is an ambulamps?”

  “Just call,” Terrance said. “Lord have mercy just call for Miss G’s sake!”

  But Miss G knew she was in trouble when the gunmen ran her down the stairs of the studio, and she saw a pile of dead bodies. There had to be nine or ten men. Mick’s invisible men no doubt. But completely visible, and outmatched, by these five.

  She also knew she was in trouble because they were going to take her to a second location. She knew she had to
do something. She knew she had to think fast. But when they arrived at the exit door, they waited. They didn’t go anywhere.

  One man had an earpiece as if he was waiting to get the word. Finally the word came because he said okay, and then motioned to the other men. They then moved into a one line procession, with Roz in front, and hurried out of the building.

  A limousine was just driving up as they hurried out, and Mick and Leo jumped out. Roz realized at that very moment that it wasn’t about taking her to a second location. It was about using her as a human shield so that they could gun down Mick.

  “Mick!” she screamed as soon as she realized what was happening. She wasn’t screaming to warn him. She was screaming to spook her captors just enough for her to tear away from them, and for Mick to have a clear shot.

  It worked. To Mick’s great delight, Roz did exactly what he needed her to do. Because now he was ready to play ball. He came out of that limo with two guns, and both were blazing as he hurried toward Roz’s two captors. Roz was terrified, but she didn’t try to make a run for it. That would have been too risky. She would have been giving one of the three men a license to gun her down. So she fell to the ground and stayed down, covering her head.

  Mick was firing on all cylinders as he made his way toward the gunmen, with his white coat flaring out, and the gunmen were trying to return fire. But they were being picked off with precision, one after the other one. Leo took one out, Mick took three out, and then both men started firing as another group of men jumped out of a parked car, the getaway car, firing too.

  That group was shot down as quickly as they exposed themselves, but Mick and Leo spared the final man. They needed an inside man.

  Mick pointed his weapon as he hurried toward the last man standing. “Drop it now!” Mick ordered. He was terrified that the gunman would still try to take Roz out. He kept his eyes trained on him. But thankfully, Mick thought, the fool knew he was a dead man anyway. He dropped his weapon.