Page 23 of Nikki Sinatra: For Her Lover

It felt as if they were about to become meat on the grill of Mick Sinatra.

They already felt that way, but it became self-evident when Mick’s butler escorted them, not to the family room, but straight to his office.

As if they were employees. Which they were.

He was their boss. There was no doubt about it that Mick Sinatra still ran the Sinatra Crime Syndicate and Teddy and Nikki were still his subordinates.

That wasn’t the original plan. Mick was supposed to step back and stay back and let Teddy run the entire outfit with Nikki as his number two.

Period. They knew the world would still have Mick in charge.

That would always be the case. But they always thought, logistically, they would run the show.

They ran the men. But Mick ran the show.

They arrived with Kimmie in Teddy’s arms. But just like every single time they come over to Mick and Roz’s with their daughter, Jackie took immediate possession of her little niece and took her out back with Duke and a few of their friends who slept over last night.

But when the butler escorted them into Mick’s office, they knew it was going to be worse than they had thought.

Because going straight to Mick’s office felt too much like going to the principal’s office and Nikki’s heart was hammering.

And after last night, after all that Nikki had told to him, Teddy’s heart was hammering too.

They sat quietly on the sofa in the huge home office, side by side, and it were moments like this that made Teddy regret with bitter regret that he had ever involved Nikki in the family business.

Pop could be an uncompromisingly harsh man.

And he was beginning to be as hard on Nikki as he was on Teddy, which caused more than a few near-fistfights between father and son.

They needed to find Emilio. They needed to find out if he still had more men in his arsenal and if those cartel boys were involved. They didn’t need that drama today.

He looked at Nikki. He could see she was as concerned as he was. When he placed his hand on her hand to comfort her, he could feel her trembles.

“I got you,” he said, squeezing her hand. “You know that, right?”

Nikki looked at Teddy. She hated adding to his burdens.

He was already the hardest-working man she’d ever known.

He already looked drain and tired even though they had just come off a three-month vacation a couple months ago.

But that was the nature of their business.

They were back in the grind again. And that grind was grinding them up again.

And now her new mess wasn’t helping her husband’s state of distress at all.

“You haven’t told me how you feel about what I said last night,” she said to him. “You told me how you felt about me, but not how you were feeling about it.”

Teddy stared at her. He wasn’t going to lie to her. “That’s because I don’t know how I feel about it.”

She wanted to plead her case. She wanted to declare she was only eighteen and didn’t know shit.

But she couldn’t do it. Because she was a willing participant in that craziness.

Her actions, not anybody else’s, directly led to those children getting killed.

How could she or Teddy or anybody else defend that?

But Teddy had a different take on it all. “It wasn’t about what you did, Nikki,” he said to her. “It’s about what you didn’t do. Just like I said last night, as soon as you saw that Emilio person in this town, you should have run to me and told me all about it. But you didn’t do that.”

“You can see why I didn’t go running to you after I told you the whole story though.”

Teddy frowned. “Hell no I can’t see why.

You’re in trouble you come to me. Period!

You don’t keep that shit bottled inside or hire a hit man.

You come to me. And I’ll handle it. Since you seem to have forgotten, I’m your husband.

It’s my job to protect you. That’s what upsets me more than anything else.

What you did when you were some snotnose kid?

Give me a break. I did worse. Who am I to condemn you? ”

“Children didn’t die because of what you did.”

A look of regret appeared in Teddy’s eyes. “That’s what you think.”

Nikki looked at him curiously. But then the double doors to the office opened and Mick and Roz walked in.

When they saw that Mick wasn’t fully dressed in a suit and tie and ready for work, but was casually dressed in slacks and a pullover shirt, while Roz wore shorts and a t-shirt, they immediately knew that the delay in their coming downstairs was because they’d been upstairs doing what they do.

Roz didn’t know it, but she was always the dead giveaway.

She always walked with a different, less deliberate gait afterwards.

It never failed. Teddy and Nikki used to look at each other and smile.

They knew what that meant. But this day, after all that transpired last night, they didn’t even bother to look at each other, let alone smile.

Teddy and Nikki stood up and gave Roz a hug as they came over to the sofa, while Mick sat down in one of the chairs in front of the sofa.

Roz sat down beside him. Teddy and Nikki sat back down after Roz had been seated.

Another giveaway? Roz sat slightly sideways, as if her ass had been pounded on mercilessly and was sore.

Nikki used to envy how often Mick put it on Roz early in her marriage to Teddy, but after she settled in as the underboss and worked beside him, she understood.

They both had too much on their plates to go as many rounds as they would have liked.

It was the work. The unrelenting work that being the head of an organization as vast as the Sinatra syndicate required of them.

But once everybody were seated and had settled down, Teddy and Nikki focused exclusively on Mick.

And Mick didn’t hesitate to get to the point. “Why were you at that trailer last night?”

Teddy had expected him to ask about Roz’s presence there first, and cuss him out again because of it, but he knew better than to ever try to predict where his father was going with anything. “I followed Nikki there.”

“What was Nikki’s ass doing there?”

“A friend of mine was staying there,” Nikki answered before Teddy could.

“That same man I saw you with at that restaurant?”

Nikki nodded. “Yes sir.”

What man ? What restaurant ? Teddy didn’t know anything about neither.

“What were you doing at his house when it was damn-near midnight?” Mick asked Nikki.

“He text me and told me he needed to see me.”

“So you just dropped everything and went on your own without notifying Ted?”

Nikki realized her blunder after Teddy admonished her over that very same point. “Yes sir.”

“They killed my men, and almost killed my wife because of your ass,” Mick said bluntly to Nikki. “You want to get me furious with your ass, pull that shit again.”

But Nikki was floored. “What do you mean they killed . . . Our men were involved?”

Mick frowned. “You’re the underboss of my organization and your ass didn’t know you took three casualties last night?”

Nikki was astounded. She looked at her husband. “Teddy? We lost three men last night?”

Teddy ran his hands through his already messy hair. Mick knew Teddy was still working too hard despite Nikki taking some of the load off of him. He wish he could retire both of them from all of it too.

“I tracked my car to Juda’s house. I got in an accident with Marco’s Bugatti—”

“An accident? You were in an accident last night?”

“You should have seen that car. It was totaled,” Roz said.

“Ma was driving by and saw me talking with the cops. She gave me a ride to Juda’s trailer.

While we were inside trying to find out why you were at his house, a small army of assassins showed up.

One group ambushed Ma’s security detail, with both sides taking out each other, while another group came inside and ambushed Juda.

There was a gunfight, but I was able to take out most of them.

Pop showed up right on time and took out the last gunman. ”

“But you said Roz was . . .” Nikki caught herself.

They were to never refer to Roz as just Roz in front of Mick.

She was either Ma or Mrs. Sinatra, but never just Roz.

It was like them calling him Mick, rather than Pop or Dad or Boss or Sir.

That was how Mick was. He demanded respect.

He demanded that his wife be respected. But when Mick wasn’t around, Roz preferred they just call her Roz.

But outside of his presence, they still didn’t just call him Mick.

And besides, Nikki caught herself because Mick was present. “I meant, I thought I heard you say that Mrs. Sinatra was nearly killed last night too.”

“Yes that’s what I said. My wife,” he began to say and then his anger rose.

“My wife,” he said again more forcefully, “was in a gunfight in that hellhole neighborhood last night. My wife! Because of you and Teddy’s dumbasses, she was at risk.

Now what is going on and if either one of you lie to me I’ll knock both of you through that wall. ”

Neither one of them doubted it as Nikki looked at Teddy.

She wanted a way out, a way to stop her heart from pounding out of her chest, but Teddy wasn’t going to give it to her.

If she was going to live up to the title of underboss, it was high time she acted like it.

This was on her. He would protect her if Mick tried anything physical, but she was going to tell her own story her own way.

Nikki looked at her in-laws as both of them, even Roz, seemed to expect to hear a horror story. But Nikki knew it was even worse than that.

She let out an audible exhale, and told her story.