Page 5 of Nikki Sinatra: For Her Lover

Nikki had been so sufficiently spooked by the man she saw in that bar that she left her friends in the dust and ran out of that bar so fast that she didn’t think she still had that kind of speed in her.

She ran across that parking lot to her Porsche sportscar, hopped in, and burned rubber getting away from there.

Her heart was still pounding. The palm of her hands and her forehead were beading with sweat.

“This can’t be happening,” she kept saying out loud as she sped faster and faster along the streets of Philadelphia.

“This can’t be happening!” She kept looking through her rearview mirror as she drove.

She kept looking back. She was determined to get away before he could tail her.

But before she could even turn off the main drag, she looked in her rearview again and saw a dark-orange Maserati swerve onto the highway and start speeding up to her.

She couldn’t make out the driver because he was too far away, but that car was going too fast for it not to be him.

And when it sped up behind her Porsche and she could see the driver because the top of his Masi was down, she knew it was no mirage. It was no mistake. It was him.

It was him!

But Nikki was a survivor to her soul and her natural instincts took over.

Her shoe laid on the gas pedal and floored her car.

Those same instincts that were so pronounced that the boss of all mob bosses Mick Sinatra agreed to let her, a woman, be his son’s number two in his syndicate, kicked her into win- at-all-costs mode.

She had to get out of this alive. Her panic subsided and adrenalin took over.

He was still on her tail as if they were one car bumper to bumper, but she kept on flying.

He wanted a race, she was going to give him one.

She turned a corner so fast that she nearly lost control.

But she turned it faster than he could. And she floored it again.

Those two fast cars sped along those front streets and side streets as if they were toy cars on a toy track. They weaved in and out of traffic and sped along lonely roads and was in and out of traffic again as Nikki refused to be caught and the driver of that Maserati refused to give in.

But as she turned down one of those sideroads and approached a train track with the lights already flashing and those red-and-white railroad crossing gates already down, which made clear that a train was entering that intersection, Nikki knew that if she was going to get by and lose him, she had to fly across those tracks and pray that oncoming train didn’t hit her.

She wanted to do it. Lord knows she wanted to do it.

But another trait Mick loved about her were her instincts.

She had good sense and was a smart, practical girl, but her instincts were legendary.

She thought about her baby. And her husband.

And the what if she didn’t clear that track in time.

She knew Mick Sinatra would take that chance in a heartbeat.

But she wasn’t Mick Sinatra. She slammed on brakes.

With trembling hands she grabbed her Glock out of her glove compartment.

When she looked back up she realized, as the train sped past at lightning speed and she was at the tip of the tracks, that she would not have made it had she tried.

And when that small Porshe sped up beside her and slammed on brakes too, Nikki knew she had to face her demon.

She had to face what she had been avoiding facing for over a decade.

She didn’t want to do it, but she knew she had to do it.

She slowly looked over at him. She thought she had forgotten that pie face that was still so deceptively innocent-looking.

Those huge dark eyes that seemed to have stars in them.

That bronze skin that had many assuming him to be African-American until he opened his mouth.

She thought she had buried that face with those memories that would have buried her had she kept them in her head.

Now she was face to face with him again. And her heart was hammering.

“We need to talk, Nikki!” he yelled out over the loud roar of the passing train. “We need to talk!”

“I’ll kill you, motherfucker, if you don’t leave me the hell alone!” Nikki screamed back at him. “There’s nothing to talk about!”

“We gotta talk, Nikki!”

Nikki pointed her Glock at him. She wanted to take him out right then and there but she didn’t know how many there were.

Was he alone or did his crew come too? Would her shot start a war?

“Your ass better stay away from me and I mean it!” Nikki yelled out just as the caboose of that train flew past and Nikki dropped that gun on the seat and floored it again, flew across those now empty tracks, and took off.

But that Maserati took off right behind her. She knew that between her Porsche and that Maserati, he might just be in the faster car. Which put her at a disadvantage. Which meant her skill more so than her speed would have to be the winning factor.

To prove his speed, the Maserati sped up right beside Nikki’s Porsche, as if he wanted to urge her to pull over and talk. Talk her ass. She knew better than that. Her car might not have been faster on paper, but it could be in the right hands. It was in the right hands.

That was why, as soon as he pulled beside her, she swerved her car and clipped his car, causing the Porshe to spin out.

Nikki kept going, still flooring it, and still looking through her rearview to make sure he didn’t stop spinning and decide to continue the pursuit.

He flipped several times, but landed on his tires.

When he landed he seemed to decide to go back the way he had come rather than to push his luck again and continue the pursuit, she exhaled a sigh of relief.

But when she looked away from her mirror at the road in front of her, she realized she had steered across the line and was within inches of running into another car on the opposite side of the road.

She swerved wildly to avoid the head on collision and was speeding across the side of the road.

Her momentum caused her to lose traction and fly straight into a waterless ditch that trapped her car front and back.

Her airbag deployed, knocking her against her seat. But she was okay.

And as testimony to Nikki’s ironclad nerves, that wreck didn’t bother her at all.

Because her mind was back on her pursuer.

Her mind was back on racking her brain over how she was going to handle this mess.

Because she knew, unlike the pursuit, he wasn’t going to drop it.

He wasn’t going to let it go. He didn’t track her down all the way to Philadelphia just to change his mind. He never changed his mind.

All she could think about, as she heard sirens in the distance, was what in the world was Teddy going to think of her if he found out?

It could crush him if he found out. It would forever change how he saw her as a wife and as his underboss.

She doubted if she would still have either of those roles if Teddy found out.

And Mick Sinatra? Her ultimate boss? He was going to kick her ass, and probably kill her too, if he found out.

Her job, she knew as sure as she knew her name, was to never let that happen.