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“No cheating,” Duke said. “And that goes for you too, Ma.”

“Just blow the whistle boy and stop telling grown folks what to do.” Roz was most anxious of all, given her competitiveness, as she, Mick, and Jackie were at the frontend of the pool waiting to swim to the backend of the pool in a race that was supposed to settle once and for all who was the fastest of them all.

They were at Mick’s vacation home on the French Riviera, a home Roz nor the kids knew he even owned until he flew them there a week ago. Only to find out he’d owned it for decades.

Roz tried to get upset about it, but once she saw the place she couldn’t even front. It was too spectacular to her.

With breathtaking views and with the infinity pool overlooking the French Alps in a view so picturesque that it bordered on incredible, it was spectacular to the twins as well as Duke and Jackie posted over a thousand pics on their widely-followed social media accounts. They had become influencers, an actual lucrative job, although their parents found it ludicrous and made clear, influencers or not, they were going to college. Since their mother had drilled that very fact into them since they were babies, both were looking forward to college, and to the next phase of their lives.

“On your march,” Duke said.

“I don’t know why we’re doing this,” Jackie said with a grin. “Everybody knows Daddy’s going to win.”

“I don’t know that,” Roz said defiantly, “and you don’t either. Just do your best.”

“Get set,” said Duke.

They all had their arms outstretched: ready to swim.

Then Duke blew the whistle and his father, mother, and twin sister were off.

At first it seemed as if Roz was right, as she and Jackie took a decisive early lead. But Duke knew that was just his father’s way. He was lulling them into a false sense of victory, and then he’d shove in the dagger.

And sure enough, midway in the massive, Olympic-size pool, Mick began swimming harder and harder until he easily overtook his wife and daughter and touched the backend of the pool’s wall with seconds to spare. Jackie came in second. Roz brought up the rear.

“He cheated,” Roz proclaimed.

“Cheated my ass,” a jubilant Mick said. “Your old ass just slow!”

He was much older than Roz, but she let that slide. They were having fun. That was all that mattered to her.

But after she and Mick got out of the pool, dried off, put on their bathrobes, and relaxed in side-by-side loungers as Mick’s butler served them wine and cheese and then left, a moroseness overcame both of them.

“They’re growing up so fast,” Roz said as they watched Duke and Jackie race each other, with Jackie winning every time and Duke insisting if she only raced him one more time he’d win. “Before you know it they’ll be gone far away and we’ll be empty nesters.”

“Duke’s not going that far. He’s too much like me.”

Roz looked at Mick. “You’re talking about the corporate you, right? Not the gangster you.”

Mick didn’t respond.

“Mick?”

“It can’t be helped, Roz. It’s not something you can turn on or off. He’s got too much of me in him and not enough of you. That’s just the truth. He’s just like me. He’ll try to do his own thing, but he’ll stick around to stay around me.”

“Like Teddy did,” Roz said.

A look of regret crossed Mick’s often unreadable eyes. “Yep, like Teddy,” he said.

“What about Jackie? She kisses the ground you walk on. My money’s on her sticking around.”

But Mick was shaking his head. “Not Jacqueline. She’s going to take the world by storm. She’s going places. She’s more like you. She’ll be back though. She’ll end up running the corporate side of our empire someday. But Duke,” Mick said, shaking his head. “He’s too much like me.”

Roz found it to be a stinging indictment against Duke. Who would want to be like a man with the weight of the most powerful syndicate in the world on his shoulders? And on top of that, a man who heads a corporation in the top one percent of corporations in the world? Who would want all that responsibility? Roz certainly didn’t want it for her only biological son. But she knew, deep down, Mick was calling it exactly right. Duke was his father through and through. “Is that why you allowed him to carry your name?”

Duke’s real name was Michello Sinatra, Junior, an honor Mick didn’t give to his deceased oldest son Adrian, nor to Teddy, his second oldest, or even to his deceased son Joey. But he gave that honor to the son he had with Rosalyn. A fact that Roz knew stung Teddy to this day.

But Mick, being Mick, didn’t answer that question. And then his phone was ringing and that was that.

Mick had a special ringtone for Teddy and Nikki, so he knew it had to be one of them. He answered the phone. “Yeah?”

It was Teddy. “We’ve got problems, Pop.”

Mick didn’t like the plural-ness of it. He waited for Teddy to continue.

“There’s been an explosion.”

Mick frowned. “What did they hit?”

Roz looked at Mick.

“The Panther.”

Mick frowned. The Panther was his largest cargo ship. “Any fatalities?”

“Thirty-three so far and counting.”

“Damn,” said Mick. “Where was it hit? Was it still in Brazil?”

There was a pause on Teddy’s end, which Mick knew meant he wasn’t telling him the full story. “Where was it, Theodore?”

“It was still dockside. All the ships have been dockside all week.”

Mick leaned up, his face a mask of anger. “What the fuck are you talking about? What do you mean all of my ships have been docked all week?”

Roz knew it was big by Mick’s reaction alone. “What happened?” she asked him.

But he was singularly focused on that phone call. “The Panther should have been in Brazil packing up my most expensive shit. And you mean to tell me it never left the port?”

“We’d been getting threats all week, Pop. And I’m not talking willy nilly stuff. Serious threats. I made the call to put them in a holding pattern until we could investigate.”

“And your ass didn’t think to let me know about this? You’ve got me over here vacationing while I’m losing twenty million dollars a day?!”

Mick spoke so loud that Duke and Jackie heard him and stopped their cavorting in the pool and watched their father.

But Teddy, on the other end, was offended. “I told you we’ve been hit, and that we have casualties, and all you’re worried about is money? Fuck you!” Teddy yelled out over the phone.

Mick was so enraged that had they been face to face it would have been a fight to the death. “You, Nikki, at my house ten tonight,” Mick said, and angrily ended the call.

Mick sat there momentarily, attempting to recompose himself, and Roz didn’t interfere. Teddy had said the F word so loud to his father that Roz heard it even though Mick’s phone wasn’t on Speaker. Nobody but Roz spoke to Mick that way. And even she knew when not to speak to Mick that way. Him enraged that he was losing twenty million dollars a day for multiple days would have been one of those times.

Mick got up. “Let’s go,” he said to Roz and the twins.

“Go where?” Duke asked.

“Home,” Mick said without turning around as he began heading toward the main house.

Jackie was upset. “But Daddy, we just got here!”

“We haven’t had a vacation in years,” Duke argued too.

“What if we wanna stay and you can go?” Jackie asked.

When Mick stopped, turned around, and began hurrying back toward them, his anger unleashed again, Roz stood up as the barrier between him and their children. “What did you just say?” Mick asked his daughter.

Duke nudged Jackie not to speak, but Jackie wasn’t built that way. “I said why don’t you go back to Philly and let us stay a little longer.”

Roz could see the regret come over Mick’s eyes. But the rage was still there too. “There is no world where I’m going to leave my wife and my children in a foreign country without me with them. I said let’s go!”

And this time, they both knew the drill. “Yes sir,” Duke said.

“Yes sir,” said Jackie.

Mick hated interrupting their first family vacation in such a long time, but when duty called a Sinatra had to answer. They were Sinatras. They knew better. He turned back around and headed to the house.

Jackie and Duke looked at each other, and both of them were upset, but they knew their father did not play, not even a little bit, when he gave an order. And if their mother wasn’t objecting, and she was the only one that could, they knew their feelings didn’t mean a thing. They got out of the pool.