Monk Paletti: Taming Ashley Sinatra

by Mallory Monroe

  Raymond let out a harsh exhale. Monk could be a bastard when he wanted to be, and highly disrespectful. “We got a meeting.”

  “With who?”

  “With who? With you. Whatta you mean with who? With Sammy the Ox. He’s willing to meet.”

  Monk was glad to hear it. “When?”

  “Thursday night,” Raymond said. “On account of he’s out of town right now. But he’ll be back Thursday and he’s willing to have a meeting. You, me, and him.”

  “Why he wanna meet now? Did he turn you down before the skating rink shooting?”

  “No, he didn’t turn me down.”

  “But why would he set up a meeting and then send the hounds out?”

  “What you keep going on about that for?” Raymond asked. “He didn’t set up a meeting before that.

  Monk couldn’t believe it. “You mean to tell me you didn’t try to set it up immediately when I told you to set it up? His underboss had been iced, and you didn’t think to set up a meeting, Pop?!”

  “The Don wanted me to wait,” Raymond said. “It wasn’t my doing. The Don said we didn’t want to look like we were weak, and he said I should wait.”

  “But who’s in charge, Pop? You or the old man? The Don ain’t in charge no more.”

  “Don’t you talk to me like I don’t know that! I’m the boss. You’re the one who better not forget it!”

  Then Raymond tried to regain his composure. “Just be ready Thursday night. Eight pm. At the diner. And don’t forget the old man’s dinner party Monday. We’ll talk about DeGarno then.”

  Then Raymond gave Ashley another assessing look. “Don’t like Italian girls all of a sudden?” he asked Monk. Monk ignored him, and then he got back into his Town Car. His driver closed the door, got back into the car, too, and took off.

  “And that, my dear,” Monk said as they watched his father leave, “is Raymond Paletti. The head of the Bonaducci crime family. My old man.”

  Then he exhaled and placed his arm around Ashley’s waist. “Let’s go inside,” he said, looking around, as they made their way to the entrance.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Monk filled the tub with water and bath oil and told Ashley it was ready. Ashley, naked, entered the bathroom where Monk was sitting on the side of the tub, his fingers raking through the suds to make sure the water was hot, but not too hot. But when he looked up and saw her, and his eyes moved over the length of her, he got up, walked over to her, and pulled her into his arms. “You’re going to be alright,” he said, trying hard not to get a hard on.

  “I’m doing okay,” she said.

  “But you’re still shaking. I can feel your body shaking.”

  “I’m still jittery, yes.”

  “You’ll be okay,” he said, kissed her on the forehead, and then helped her in the tub.

  Ashley was smiling. When he looked down, where she was looking, he saw where he had tented his jeans. So much for not getting aroused, he thought, and then he snorted. “I’ll be downstairs,” he said, and walked out of the bathroom.

  Ashley leaned back and relaxed as she sat in that tub. And so many thoughts whirled through her head. Was this the kind of life she was going to be leading if she stayed with Monk? Was this what her aunts Roz and Trina and Grace and Gemma meant when they talked about how the good days outweighed the bad days, but Lord have mercy when those bad days come? Was this the life she was getting herself into? Did she even know what she was getting herself into?

  And the noise downstairs didn’t help her jitters either. She could hear Monk downstairs on the telephone, screaming about how his guys should have seen it coming, and why was he paying their asses if they weren’t going to do their jobs. It was too much!

  Ashley leaned further down into the tub, nearly covering her face, as if she could hide from the reality she was now facing. She wished to God she had never suggested they went skating. She wished to God they would have stayed their behinds home, like Monk wanted, and watched those eighty-year-old Holocaust survivors. At least that horror had already happened. At least they survived it.

  The problem, as Ashley saw it, was that she wasn’t at all sure if she could survive much more of this kind of lifestyle.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Later that night, as they laid in bed together, Ashley on her side, Monk on his back with his arm around Ashley, it dawned on her. “Your father,” she said.

  “What about him?” Monk asked.

  “They call him Rain Man instead of Raymond.” She looked up at him. “Don’t they?”

  Monk was startled that she would know about his old man’s nickname. “How would you know about that?”

  “I just remembered that I overheard my Uncle Mick talking to my Daddy one night. He said Teddy nearly killed Rain Man’s son. My Dad asked who the heck was Rain Man. And Uncle Mick said Raymond. He said his last name, too, but I don’t remember that part. I just remembered wondering why would they call him Rain Man instead of Raymond. I wondered if it was like that movie where this really slow guy, a guy who could barely tie his shoes, but he knew all those math computations from off of the top of his head. Like a genius. Like some kind of Rain Man. Is that your Dad? Is that who they were talking about?”

  Monk nodded. “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “But why would they call him that? Your daddy a math whiz?”

  “Fuck no,” Monk said. “He barely knows what two-plus-two is. You met his ass. He knows his way around women more than around any book, or math computation, anywhere in the universe.” Then a sad look came over Monk’s face. “He’s just slow. Or, at least, that’s how other bosses see him. That’s why they call him Rain Man. He makes bad decisions.”

  Ashley smiled. “You mean like me?”

  “No,” Monk said decisively. “I absolutely do not mean like you! His decisions kill people and destroy lives. Your bad decisions usually just destroy you.”

  Ashley knew that to be true. “But what about the son my uncle said Teddy nearly killed. Was that you?”

  Monk shook his head. “No. Teddy and me, we got each other’s backs. It was my piece of shit brother Mikey they were talking about. Teddy threw his ass over the third floor landing.”

  Ashley was shocked. She knew her cousin was gangster, but damn. “Really?” she asked.

  “Don’t worry. He deserved it. Teddy should have killed his ass. But he didn’t because of me. And Pop too. You just don’t do that to a boss’s kid.”

  Ashley shook her head. She’d never understand the mob code if she lived to be a hundred. Big Daddy wasn’t into that lifestyle the way the rest of her family was, and he made sure his kids stayed out of it too. And other than Bobby, who dabbled in it big time but turned his life around, they stayed out of it. Now here she was falling, and falling hard, for a mobster. He wasn’t a boss yet, but it was obvious, given who his old man was, that he was one day going to be.

  “Get some sleep,” Monk said. “It’s been a long day.”

  Ashley nodded her head. “No lie,” she said, and laid her head on his chest.

  But early that next morning, they were awakened by a sound.

  What nobody knew was that Monk didn’t have a fence around his property, but he had his house, grounds, and the entire street he owned rigged with invisible alarms that notified him whenever somebody had breached his territory. When that alarm sounded early that next morning, as he laid there with Ashley, they both woke up. Monk removed his arm from Ashley, grabbed his cellphone, and pulled up the screen.

  “What was that sound?” Ashley asked as she stretched.

  Monk didn’t respond, but he did see an SUV on his street, heading toward his house. He threw the covers off of his naked body, picked up the jeans he wore last night from off the floor, and began putting them on.

  Ashley sat up, her naked breasts revealed. “What is it, Monk?”

  “Nothing I can’t handle,” he said as he hurried over to his nightstand and pulled out a loaded gun. “You stay up here,�
� he ordered her, and with that gun at his side he took off down the stairs.

  Ashley wasn’t about to just sit there like a sitting duck. She threw the covers off of her body and hurried to the bedroom window. When she saw a big, tank-looking Cadillac Escalade pull up onto Monk’s driveway, her already anguished heart immediately soared. She immediately felt better. Nobody ever came to visit Monk, let him tell it, so it had to be about her. And she only knew one person and one person only who always drove those big Cadillacs. And that was her Uncle Mick.

  She hurried around the bed, grabbed Monk’s jersey off of the floor and threw it over her body, a jersey that barely covered her ass cheeks, and hurried downstairs too.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Monk opened his front door and stepped out onto the porch, his gun at his side. But he placed his gun on the side table in his foyer when he saw that not only Ashley’s father, Big Daddy Charles Sinatra, had stepped out of that SUV, but that Big Daddy’s brother, the notorious Mick Sinatra, had stepped out too. And both men were buttoning their suit coats and looking around at his less-than-stellar looking home, as they made their way toward the porch.

  But seeing those two powerful men at his home made him more alarmed than had it been strangers on his driveway. He knew how to handle strangers.

  By the time Ashley had run down the stairs and was just coming out onto the porch, too, her father and uncle were walking up the steps.

  But Monk was upset. “I thought I told you to stay upstairs, Ashley,” he said to her.

  But she didn’t hear him. She was too excited to see her family. “Daddy! Uncle Mick!” she yelled in that unbridled, unfiltered way she had about her, and ran down those steps to greet them. Big Daddy hurried to her, too, and lifted her into his arms.

  Although Monk felt like he was two-feet tall the way she ran to them as if they were her rescuers, he understood it. She had suffered a great fright at that skating rink. She needed the familiar around her. Monk was still too new.

  Big Daddy was embracing his daughter with the warmest of embraces, but he abruptly pulled back to get a look at her. “Are you alright, sweetheart?” he asked her, his deep green eyes dripping with concern.

  “Yes, sir,” Ashley said. “What are you doing here? And you, too, Uncle Mick?”

  But Mick was looking around. The exterior of the home was well-lit, but it still looked spooky around there. “Let’s get inside,” he said in that all-business all-the-time way he always came across to Ashley.

  Big Daddy pulled her back into his arms and walked with her toward the entrance. But he was just as stunned by the view as Mick was. Through Teddy, he’d known Monk for years, and Mick knew Monk’s father for years. But both men could not believe the disrepair and utter lack of care for the home Monk lived in. Big Daddy had been there before. He didn’t remember it looking that bad. He remembered a security gate was up, guards with machine guns were guarding the place. Now there wasn’t even a gate up anymore, and not a guard in sight.

  And when they made it up to Monk, Big Daddy, being Big Daddy, let him have it.

  “How are you, Big Daddy,” Monk said to him.

  “What’s your problem, Monk?” he asked Monk. “Why you let your house go like this? You don’t believe in paint all of a sudden?”

  Ashley looked at Monk. Normally, she would have laughed at her father’s boldness. But she could tell Monk was embarrassed. His home was uninviting by design, but that theory fell apart when two men he actually respected were at his front door. Ashley extricated herself from her father, and placed her hand in Monk’s hand. Monk, inwardly pleased that she didn’t let him stand alone against two of the most powerful men in America, stepped aside, and allowed her father and uncle to walk on in.

  When they got inside, Big Daddy felt slightly better. “This is more like it,” he said, looking around at the beautiful, well-maintained interior of the home. “This is what I expect from a man like you,” he said to Monk.

  Monk closed and locked the door. He’d only known Ashley a short time, and already he had reversed a lifelong course and had, not just her, but now two more people inside his home. He thought it would give him heart palpitations to have to deal with such an intrusion. But it didn’t. With Ashley at his side, it felt almost normal. “Would you care for something to drink?” he asked the two men.

  Both declined, and they all made their way into the living room and sat down. Monk sat in the high-back chair, and Ashley sat on the arm of his chair. Mick and Big Daddy sat on the sofa, with Mick leaned back, his legs crossed. Big Daddy was leaned forward.

  And he didn’t hesitate to find out just what was going on between Monk and his daughter. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming here, to Monk’s house of all places, Ashley?” he asked her. “Why did I have to find out from Mick that my own daughter was in New fucking Jersey and involved in a gotdamn shooting?”

  “I wasn’t involved in any shooting,” Ashley said.

  “Oh yeah?” Big Daddy responded. “That’s what your Uncle Mick said. Are you telling me he’s wrong? He wouldn’t have called me on a maybe you were involved in a shooting if he wasn’t certain your ass was involved in a shooting.”

  “But how would Uncle Mick know anything about it?” Ashley asked. Then she realized what she was asking. Her uncle, somehow, some way, always seemed to know before anybody else when somebody in the family was caught up in any kind of trouble. “Never mind,” she said.

  “What happened at that skating rink?” Mick asked Monk.

  “I had to take out a shooter,” Monk answered his question.

  “Why?” Big Daddy asked. “What was the shooting about? You?”

  Monk nodded. “In a roundabout way, but yes, sir,” he said.

  “But they didn’t target you. Did they?” Mick asked.

  Monk knew that was the point of their visit. “No, sir. Ashley was the target,” he said frankly.

  “But thanks to Monk he missed me,” said Ashley, still feeling the sting of that episode. “Unfortunately he hit this lady that was skating near me. But she’s going to be okay.”

  “Who was the shooter?” Mick asked Monk.

  Monk exhaled. “One of Sammy’s guys,” he said. “At least he used to be. I’m hearing he’s no longer with that organization, but that’s how they do sometimes.”

  “What do you mean?” Ashley asked him.

  “To keep the heat off the family after a botched incident, they’ll claim the shooter was fired a month ago or something like that. That’s how it’s done. Especially if the shooter dies.”

  “Which Sammy?” Mick asked Monk. “Sammy the Ox?”

  Monk nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “Who’s Sammy the Ox?” Big Daddy asked, looking at Mick.

  “A boss,” Mick said.

  “Ah, fuck,” said Big Daddy, rising to his feet. “That’s what I figured. Mob shit. Now my daughter’s involved in mob shit? And she was almost killed by some assassin’s bullet? Hell no! Ashley,” he ordered, “go put on some clothes and get your things. You’re coming with me.”

  The way Big Daddy described what almost happened to her spooked her again. An assassin? That man was an assassin? She couldn’t help it. It scared her.

  But she wasn’t moving fast enough for Big Daddy. “Why are you still sitting there?” he yelled at Ashley, moving toward her, and she quickly got on her feet. One thing was for certain: if Big Daddy said frog, everybody in the family knew to jump. “Go get your things and get them now!” he ordered. But Ashley was already hurrying toward the stairs.

  Monk didn’t know what to make of her hurrying out of his living room. He didn’t know if he should beg her to stay, or just let her leave. He knew leaving would be best for her. He was certain she had a sense of safety at Big Daddy’s house. It was one reason, in his view, she was still living with her father.

  But her staying would be best for him, because he truly didn’t want her to go. She made him feel as if life was worth every second o
f living just by being with her. But their relationship was brand spanking new. How could he ask her to trust him above her own family when he was the one she was with when she was nearly shot? He’d already failed the safety test. He’d already failed her, he thought sadly as he watched her walk up those stairs, a heaviness cloaking her just as much as it was cloaking him.

  Mick saw that heaviness on them both. Big Daddy was too angry to see anything but his own rage. He had a fixed frown on his face as he turned that rage toward Monk. “Why would you do something like this to me, Monk?” he asked him.

  Monk was stumped by the question. “Do something like what to you, sir?”

  “Have I not been anything but kind to you whenever Teddy brought you around my family?” Big Daddy asked.

  But Monk was still confused. “I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t agree with your lifestyle. I’ve never made a secret about that fact. Hell, I don’t agree with my own brother’s lifestyle, or all those other mob guys in my family. And you knew that. Didn’t you?”

  Monk was still puzzled, but he nodded. “Yes, sir, I knew it.”

  “Then why in hell did you think you could hook up with my child and not incur my wrath?”

  Now Monk was frowning. “Whatta you talking about? I wasn’t trying to do anything to you or anybody else. And I wasn’t looking to hook up with anybody when I came to your house for dinner. I didn’t hook up with her. We hooked up with each other. Pardon my French, but that shit ain’t got nothing to do with you!”

  “Watch your mouth, Frankie,” Mick said to Monk. “That’s my brother you’re talking to.”

  Monk knew he was out of line, but he resented people always trying to make him out to be the bad guy. He wasn’t trying to hurt Ashley by bringing her into his life. That was the furthest thing from his mind!

  But he also knew, by bringing her into his life, that was exactly what he was doing.