Page 20 of Nikki Sinatra: For Her Lover

Teddy flew through the gate and parked Roz’s Bentley around his horseshoe driveway. He hurried inside.

Marco, who had seen him drive up from the front window, was waiting in the foyer for him. “What are you doing with Grandma’s car? Where’s my car, Pop?”

“Where’s Kimmie?”

“She’s sleep. Where’s my car?”

“Where’s Nikki?”

“She’s upstairs. But where’s my car, Daddy?”

Teddy stopped walking and looked at his son. “I’ll have to buy you another one.”

Marco was floored. “Pop you didn’t! You wrecked it?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“Are you alright?”

“I’m fine. Nobody was hurt.”

“Pop you didn’t!”

“I said I’ll get your ass a brand new one now shut the fuck up!”

But Marco noticed something odd. “Why’s the side of your face so red like that? Are you sure you aren’t injured?”

Teddy didn’t want to be reminded of Mick kicking his ass, so he hurried on up the stairs.

But when Marco realized he would no longer see the car he grew to love, his heart sank again. “Pop you didn’t!” he yelled after him one more time.

But Teddy had bigger fish to fry than his child waxing nostalgic about some car.

He made it upstairs and into their master bedroom. Nikki was seated up in bed, under covers with her reading glasses on, as she reviewed personnel files on her iPad.

Teddy closed and locked the door and made his way up to her.

“The baby still sleep?” she asked him.

“Marco said she was, yes.”

But Nikki could see the urgency in his movements. “What’s wrong?”

“No more bullshit, Nikki.” He sat on the edge of the bed. “I want to know everything there is to know about this Juda Gavin character and why he was iced tonight by a small army of men?”

Nikki was shocked. She removed her glasses. “Juda’s dead?”

“Yes! Now tell me who is he to you and why would an army show up to take him out?”

Nikki didn’t expect to have to go there this soon. “How did you know about Juda?”

“Answer my motherfucking question, Nikki, I’m not playing with you!” Teddy was screaming at her. “Who is he?”

“He used to work for this guy I knew,” Nikki said quickly. “Then he saw me in Jersey, asked if we could meet up, and we did. But he’s dead ?” She was still shocked.

“Why would somebody want to kill him? And I want the whole story. So give it to me and give it to me now.”

Nikki was looking upward and her eyes were weary. “It’s a long story.”

“They always are. Now tell it.”

Nikki closed her eyes. Then she closed her iPad and sat it on the nightstand. But she talked. Finally, Teddy thought, she talked.

“I was eighteen,” she said. “I met a guy. Emilio Cabrera. And I fell hard for him. Real hard. He was twenty-seven and yes he was a bad boy. I thought all he was selling was a little weed and so I convinced myself that it was no biggie. I didn’t smoke weed, but I knew a lot of people who did, so I figured it was no big deal.

Until I found out real quick that that wasn’t all he was selling. ”

Teddy continued to listen, but his heart was squeezing. Drugs? A gangbanger? He’d been there himself. This wasn’t going to end well, no way.

“When I found out opioids were his main product, and he was getting those drugs from various cartels, I was already in too deep.”

“Too deep drugging? You were hooked on opioids?”

“I wish. It might have turned out differently had I been some dopehead. But I’m talking about love.

I was too deeply in love. At least I thought I was.

I was young and dumb and thought Emilio was my heartbeat when he really was my problem.

But nobody could tell me anything bad about that boy back then. ”

Nikki paused as if she still wished she could have been the woman she was now when she was that stupid kid. “So I started making runs for him.”

This was where it was getting dicey to Teddy. “Drug runs?”

Nikki nodded.

“Neighbor to neighbor? City to city? Or across state lines?”

Nikki knew there was a big difference between the three.

And she wished it was that simple. “He tried to get me to be a runner for months, but I wouldn’t do it.

And I was firm in my refusal. Until he started talking about us getting married and having a baby and shit like that.

Oh yeah. He knew how to push my buttons because that was all I ever wanted.

And he knew it. But he said before we could get married, he had to move major product and then retire from the business altogether. ”

Teddy shook his head. That was how the drug boys kept the girls. Always dangling that one big score and then they’ll retire promise. A promise that never was going to come true.

“So I knew I had to help him,” Nikki continued, “because that was a dream of mine too. For Mill to get out of the drug trade. So I started taking packages to the drug boys on the corners. That’s how it started. And then I started making runs across state lines.”

Teddy frowned. “What kind of motherfucker would have his girl doing that? Didn’t you realize if you got caught it would have been a federal offense and you could have gotten life in prison for interstate commerce violations on top of that shit you were moving?”

“Of course I didn’t know, Teddy damn! Not like that.

I knew there were consequences, but I was eighteen years old and not nearly as worldly as you think I was.

I went from my father’s house to my mother’s house and then to Emilio’s mother’s house.

We were staying with his mother. I was sheltered.

What I knew about interstate commerce laws and violations?

I mean, I heard of it. And I knew I could get serious time.

But I figured Mill wouldn’t let me do it if he knew I could get caught. ”

Teddy knew he had to contain his fiery temper or she would shut down. “Go on.”

He was saying go on, but Nikki knew he really didn’t want to hear it. And that was the nothing part. But she also knew she had to get it off her chest, and get it off her chest to Teddy, or she was going to explode. “Then, after I was successful doing that, he asked me to make one more run.”

Teddy was staring at her. On a good day he was stern-looking. On a day like this day he looked downright enraged. As if he knew what was coming next.

“He asked me to be a drug mule to pick up product from Thailand,” she said and immediately looked at Teddy.

Teddy was so outdone that he stood up quickly and began to move around the room. He knew something horrible was bothering Nikki, but he would have never dreamed it was something like this!

Nikki a drug mule? Smart, sensible Nikki?

It seemed impossible. But as he placed his hands in his pockets to keep himself from busting a hole in their bedroom wall, he knew it was true.

That was why she couldn’t just come out and tell him.

It was true. She was a kid at the time, he had to keep reminding himself.

He stood at the side of their bed. “Go on,” he said.

“Are you alright?”

“What difference does it make if I’m alright? No I’m not alright. Keep talking!”

He didn’t mean to be so hard on her, but he was so worried about what this meant for her right now that he could hardly think straight. An army of men showed up at Juda’s trailer. Could the cartel be after her? He was terrified for her.

Nikki knew it too. She could see the terror in his eyes.

She kept talking. “While I was in Thailand ready to return with the opioids tucked away in my luggage, their airport security came straight towards me as if they’d been tipped off.

But it wasn’t me they were eyeing. I thought it was and my heart was hammering.

But it was the guy behind me. And Emilio claimed the drugs were in some contraption inside my luggage that made it impossible to detect on x-ray or any other machines they used in airports, and he was right.

I got through airport security in Thailand and in the United States, too, without detection at all. ”

Teddy continued to stare at her. She spoke as if that was all to the story when he knew it couldn’t be.

He sat down on the bed beside her. “What aren’t you telling me?” he asked her.

That was when her eyes glassed over. This was the meat of the matter now.

“After I was safe back in the U.S. and was heading for the exit at the airport, I saw that the police had their drug-sniffing dogs waiting for everybody to go through the exit points. That’s when it got real.

I thought I was in the clear, only to find out I was just at the beginning of my troubles. ”

Teddy placed his hand across her body and on the side of her hip as if he wasn’t just bracing her, but bracing himself for what was to come next.

And the most distressed look Teddy had ever seen on Nikki appeared on her face.

“So I panicked,” she said. “And it was like I woke up. I knew if my black ass got caught I was going away to prison for the rest of my life, I just knew it. It was one thing to drop off packages to local drug dealers. It was another thing altogether to fly to a foreign country to pick up drugs and bring them into America. I knew it was over for me.”

“How did you panic?”

“I went into the restroom, and when I saw that nobody was in there I put the bag that had the drugs in it in the bottom of the big garbage can. I figured maybe Emilio could send somebody to go pick it up later, when the cop dogs weren’t hanging around anymore. And so I left.”

Teddy leaned his head back. He knew what was coming next. He crossed his legs.

“Emilio was waiting for me in the parking lot and when I told him what I had to do, oh man.” Teddy could see that she looked sad and scared. “He went ballistic. It was the first time he laid a hand on me ever, and he knocked me so hard that my face slammed against the passenger door window.”

Teddy’s entire face was enraged.

“But I fought back,” Nikki said. “And when I slapped him for slapping me, he stopped hitting me.”