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If falling to pieces had a particular look, it was all over Sal’s face .

That was what everybody thought as they piled into the large private waiting room at the hospital.

Reno and Trina were there. Tommy and Grace and their children had flown in from Seattle and were there.

Family patriarch Charles “Big Daddy” Sinatra, along with Jenay and his second-oldest son Tony Sinatra, were there.

Amelia Sinatra, along with her husband, former CIA Director Hammer Reese, were there.

Sal’s father, who had returned to Italy to live, had also flown in with his girlfriend.

Lucky’s entire football and baseball teams, along with the coaches, were there. Most of the younger people in the family, from Sophia Gabrini and Madison Gabrini to Bonita Sinatra and Destiny Sinatra were all there too.

Reno’s son Dommi Gabrini was also there.

Reno’s oldest son Jimmy Gabrini was in the back of the waiting room supervising the younger family members and the team members alike as they huddled together remembering what they all loved about Lucky.

Carmine Gabrini, Reno’s youngest son and Lucky’s closest friend, found it almost ghoulish the way they were talking about his best friend and cousin as if he was dead already.

He went up front and sat with the older family members.

They were sad too. No doubt about that. But at least they were silent.

Robby Yale was also there, as his wound was fortunately deemed superficial. All he needed was a hand wrap and he was released. His main concern, now, was his boss and Lucky.

Curtis, Robby’s partner, was also there, sitting beside him, although he knew some in that room didn’t approve of their lifestyle.

But Curtis was Gemma’s office manager and was deeply concerned about her, and also about Lucky’s welfare.

Nobody was keeping him away when he found out Robby had been shot too, he didn’t care what they thought of him or his more flamboyant personality as compared to the more subdued, more manly Robby.

He flaunted it in their faces, people often said of Curtis.

But he didn’t feel he was flaunting anything.

He was just being himself. But for Robby’s sake, and knowing how backwards they were in that underworld he operated in, he kept it low key around the mobsters.

Everybody else, those who couldn’t make it or were told to shelter in place until further notice, were blowing up Tony Sinatra’s phone seeking updates.

Tony, because of his background as a clinical psychologist, had been appointed the family spokesperson.

He handled the media. He handled the phone calls.

He handled it all. Lucky’s shooting was hitting everybody especially hard.

But nobody harder than Sal, Gemma, and Marie.

Marie kept getting up and walking around, and then sitting back down beside her parents.

She would wipe tears from her eyes occasionally and then pop back up again.

She was getting so unnerving that Trina took her out of the waiting room.

She took her on a walk, with Security by their side, along the long corridors.

She knew how close Marie was to her baby brother and how scared she was for him.

But her already devastated parents didn’t need to see her fears. They had enough fear of their own.

Gemma was clutching her baby girl and rocking, her large eyes closed as if she couldn’t accept it. As if she was still coming to grips with what happened to her child.

And Sal.

Everybody was concerned about Sal.

His face looked so anguished, so broken , that they wondered if they should ask the doctor to give him a sedative.

He was beyond devastation. He was falling to pieces right before their very eyes.

That was why his big brother Tommy and the bane of his existence but ultimately his best friend Reno hemmed him in: they sat on either side of him and wouldn’t let him out of their sights. Trina and Grace hemmed in Gemma.

“How could I do that to him?” Sal kept asking himself in an almost mumbling tone. “ How could I do that to him ?”

They let him mumble. He needed to let some of that pressure out.

And neither man rebuked him either, or told him it wasn’t his fault.

Because it was his fault. He could have easily dropped Lucky off somewhere.

But he took him to a meeting with a mob guy?

That was unheard of. And everybody in that front waiting room knew it.

And they waited. And waited. Five hours became six hours became seven hours. And they continued to wait. Nobody was leaving until they got the news.

Whenever the door to the waiting room opened, everybody looked up, hoping it was the surgeons. But this time when the door opened, just like all those times, it wasn’t who they were praying to see. It was Mick Sinatra.

The young men on the football and baseball teams near the back of the waiting room began elbowing each other when Mick walked in.

They didn’t know that much about the Gabrini and Sinatra clans writ large, only that they were all related, but they all had heard of Mick the Tick, as in ticking time bomb, as in a man with a horrific temper if you crossed him.

Every single time his name was on the news, usually related to his business empire, the reporters would always refer to him as reputed mob boss Mick Sinatra or reputed boss of all bosses Mick “The Tick” Sinatra .

Which meant, in the minds of those young men, that yell yeah Lucky’s uncle was a mobster, and hell yeah it was cool by them!

But not their coaches. They all stiffened up.

If Lucky didn’t have superior natural born talent on the football field and baseball diamond alike, and if he wasn’t such a natural born leader that catapulted him to team captain in both sports, they wouldn’t have their young players anywhere near that family.

Lucky’s own father was also a reputed mob boss, considered the second most powerful boss, after Mick Sinatra, in the entire world.

And there were other shady members of that family up and down the line too.

The only member that seemed fully legit was Big Daddy Sinatra because he kept his four oldest children, his sons, away from that life.

But that didn’t mean he was snow clean either.

When Mick walked in, he didn’t give those jocks any notice.

Nor any of the other family members. His entire focus was on Sal and Gemma.

He knew how they felt. He felt the same way when his son Joey was killed.

And his son Adrian, although both of their situations were gravely different.

But the earth had separated beneath him too.

But Mick, being Mick, didn’t go over to the pair and offer his condolences or any of that normal shit. There was nothing normal about Mick the Tick. He, instead, went over to a side wall and leaned his back against it as he pressed the sole of his cordovan leather shoe against the wall too.

Young Carmine, whom Mick actually admired not just for his intellect (which was superior to anybody’s in the family), but for his toughness too, was the only one who spoke to him.

Mick grunted back to Carmine, which even Carmine knew was as good as he could expect to get from a particularly cold person like his Uncle Mick.

But when the family was in crisis, he knew they all relied on Mick to not just be there, but to help lead the charge.

Big Daddy, Mick’s older brother, was the only one to approach him.

After the gawking of Mick was over by the jocks in the back of the room, Big Daddy stood beside Mick and turned his back to everybody else, which meant his face was turned to Mick’s.

“Where’s Rosalyn?” Big Daddy, who raised Mick because of their highly dysfunctional parents, was speaking in a low voice.

“She’s in London at the Palladium. She’s got a show tonight. Teddy’s on his way there to escort her back to the states after her show.”

Big Daddy was surprised. “You think that’s necessary?”

“No. I think it’s contained to Sal’s bullshit. But I want her back just in case.”

Big Daddy nodded. He could understand that.

When Roz first came into Mick’s life, Mick had more women and baby mamas than Big Daddy could ever try to count.

But somehow Roz and her tough as nails, don’t take no bullshit personality, won his heart.

She changed him for the better. That was why, whenever Big Daddy heard Stevie Wonder singing For Once in My Life , a song he considered to be Mick and Roz’s theme song, he thought fondly about those two.

Mick was so hard, and often so uncompromisingly so, even when he was a hardnosed kid, it was the only sentimental thought he ever had of his brother.

“What do you make of what happened?” he asked him.

Mick looked at his older brother. He was aging, but he was still great looking. And still the only human being alive Mick would never raise a hand to. “The part where Sal fucked up,” Mick asked, “or the ambush?”

“Both,” Big Daddy said.

“I don’t know what possessed him to take Lucky on a run like that.”

“Reno said it was with Danny Testa, so he figured shit would be okay.”

“He figured wrong,” said Mick. “Sal knows anything can go sideways at any time when you’re meeting with mob. What was he thinking?”

Big Daddy ran his hand over his face. “He’s beating himself up enough, poor guy. We don’t need to do it too.” Then he looked at Mick. “Found out why Danny would do this to Sal?”

“Why? No. But I got eyes on him.”

This was news to Big Daddy. “You know where he is?”

Mick didn’t answer that. It was obvious he did or he would not have said what he said.

“Where is he?”

“He’s scared. He’s moving around. His whole organization is scared.”

“Their asses should be,” said Big Daddy. “Why haven’t you pulled him in?”