Big Daddy Sinatra 3: The Best of My Love (The Sinatras of Jericho County) (8 page)

Charles’s
heart dropped through his shoe.
 
“Are you
kidding me?
 
Is this some kind of a sick
joke?”

“I
couldn’t believe it either, Pop.”

Jenay
was floored too.
 
“When is this
second-look hearing supposed to take place?” she asked.

“It
hasn’t been announced yet.
 
She’s
collecting evidence right now.
 
Once
she’s ready the judge will put it on the docket.”

“What
kind of evidence is she collecting?” Tony asked.
 
“Evidence against Granddad, or evidence
against the crooked prosecutor?”

“She’s
looking at evidence,” Brent said.
 
“That’s all I know.”

This
was unbelievable to everybody at the table.
 
They all knew how Charles was.
 
They all knew how bitterly he still despised his old man.
 
Now the old man might be back among
them?
 
Free to live his life right here
in Jericho if he so chose?
 
It was
startling news to digest.

It
was so startling that Charles couldn’t bear it.
 
He tossed his napkin onto the table, stood up, and headed out of the
dining hall.
 
Jenay immediately tossed
her napkin on the table too, stood up, and followed him.
 
Donald was about to stand and follow them,
but Tony pulled him back down.

“I
don’t think, little brother,” Tony said, “that Jenay needs anybody’s help.
 
She’s got it.”

“But
Dad may need my help.”

“She’s
got it,” Brent echoed Tony, and it was his firm voice, and chilling gaze, that made
Donald sit back down.
 

For
nearly an hour, they sat on the balcony off from the upstairs master bedroom
and watched the dark, serene river beyond their backyard.
 
They were on the lounger, stretched out and lying
beside each other.
 
Charles’s arm was
around Jenay’s waist and her head was on his shoulder.
 
Charles had already placed his hand inside
her panties, and was rubbing her clit with achingly slow strokes.
 
Her body was turned toward him, looking at
him.

She
didn’t speak, nor did she make any suggestions.
 
She was going to follow his lead.
 
If his massaging meant he wanted sex, she would give it to him.
 
If all he wanted right now were to feel on
her, she would let him feel away.
 
If
eventually he wanted to talk, she was going to let him guide the
conversation.
 
She was there for
him.
 

And,
just as she suspected, he really wanted to talk.
 
He continued to rub her clit, but she knew
what he was feeling right now went far deeper than lust.
 
And the first words out of his mouth proved
it.
 

“My
father killed my mother,” he said.

Jenay
was stunned by the revelation.
 
Not
because she didn’t know that fact, but because
 
he had never verbalized that fact.
 
It was the first time he had ever said those words out loud in the
entire time she’d known him.
 
Just before
they were married, he handed her a stack of articles he kept about what
happened the night his father killed his mother, and she read every single one.
 
It was sad, tragic, gripping stuff.
 
But he never would discuss it with her.
 
She assumed he couldn’t, so she didn’t pursue
it.
 
That was why tonight, to hear him
say those words, were remarkable.
 

“He
killed your mother,” she finally replied.
 
“And you saw him kill her.”

A
kind of grim look appeared on Charles’s handsome face.
 
And he nodded.
 
“I saw it.
 
Sprig saw it.
 
Our kid brother
Mick saw it.
 
We were three kids.
 
Yeah, Sprig was the oldest, but she was so
immature you might as well have said she was the youngest.”

Sprig
married Benny Gabrini, a Seattle police chief, had two sons, but then abruptly
left her family, including her sons, and returned to Jericho.
 
Her youngest son, Salvatore Luciano Gabrini,
whom she named after her father, tried countless times to reconcile with her,
but she would have nothing to do with him.
 
She wanted out and she stayed out, eventually becoming Jericho’s
resident lush, where she was more drunk than sober, and Charles was her
benefactor.
 
Their relationship, to say
the least, was strained.
 
But Jenay knew
Charles loved his sister.
 
And felt a
heightened sense of responsibility for her.
 
“You think what happened affected Sprig the most, don’t you?” Jenay
asked him.

“It
affected all of us,” he said, “but yeah.
 
I think Sprig never got straight after that night.
 
Not that she was all that straight to begin
with.
 
And Mick, he turned to crime.
 
In and out of prison.
 
Living in Philly around all of those gangsters
all the time.
  
When he was still young,
and had that glimmer of hope, I was always tracking him down, begging him to
get his act together, but he was not interested.
 
He chose the killers and the thieves over
me.
 
People just like Dad.
 
Those were the people he identified with.”

There
was a long pause, and Jenay could see that sadness in Charles’s eyes.
 
She knew Mick’s decision to turn to crime, to
be like their father, was a betrayal to Charles.
 

“Now,”
Charles continued, “they say he’s some kind of crime boss in Philly, but I
don’t know what he is.”
 
His look turned
hard.
 
“And I don’t care.
 
Just because your old man was a murderer and
a thief doesn’t mean you have to become one.
 
So I have no sympathy for Mick or Sprig or any of their crazy-ass
choices.
 
I’m the one who went down in that
basement and escalated it by fighting with my mother’s lover.
 
I’m the one who had to pull a gun on my own
father and had to shoot at him to keep him from fleeing.
 
I’m the one who had to testify at his trial
so that they didn’t have to.
 
If anybody
should be fucked up, it’s me.”
 
Then he
frowned and looked anguished, as if he had just had a revelation.
 
His hand gave her clit a painful squeeze, in
his anguish.

When
Jenay began rubbing his thick hair, his hand relaxed again.
 

“If
anybody should be fucked up,” he said again, “it’s me.”

“Some
people around here,” Jenay said, “would say you are fucked up.”

Charles
actually smiled.
 
And then he looked at
his wife, his smile already gone.
 
“What
do you say?” he asked.

Jenay
thought about it.
 
He studied her, as if
he was depending on her answer.
 
But she
didn’t have any untruthful soothing words for him.
 
“You’re fucked up,” she said.
 
“I’m fucked up.
 
The world is fucked up.”
 
Then she turned serious, and continued to rub
and stare at his hair.
 
“But we keep it
moving.
 
We keep it real.”
 
She looked into his eyes. “And we learn from
our mistakes.”

Pain
pierced Charles’s eyes.
 
“I couldn’t let
him go,” he said.

Jenay
frowned.
 
“Damn right.”
 
And it was only then did she realize that her
husband was weighed down by the guilt of turning on his own father.
 

“He
had to pay for what he did,” Charles continued.
 
“Sprig said I shouldn’t have done it.
 
She said Ma was unfaithful and she therefore deserved what she got.”

Jenay
was surprised.
 
“Sprig said that?”

“She
said that,” Charles responded.
 
“And a
lot of people in town, at that time, were saying it too.
 
The only person who stood by me was
Mick.”
 
That anguished look returned to
Charles’s face.
 
“Then he turned on me
too.”

“He
changed his mind about your father?”

“Hell
no.
 
He hates him more than I do.
 
But he started committing crimes and doing
whatever he was big enough to do.
 
He
became just like our father.
 
That was
worse.”

Jenay
understood that.
 
She nodded her
head.
 
“Yeah, it was,” she agreed.

“He
can never see the light of day, Jenay,” Charles said.
 
“I don’t care what the governor is planning
to do, I don’t care what that special prosecutor is trying to claim.
 
Salvatore Luciano Sinatra, Luke Sinatra, can
never see the light of day.
 
He gave my
mother a death sentence for doing what he had been doing their entire
marriage.
 
He’s got to pay with his life
too.
 
A life sentence for her death
sentence.
 
I’m not going to have it any
other way.”

Then
he looked at Jenay, seeking her understanding.
 
He got it.
 
“You always do the
right thing in the end, Charles,” she said.
 

And
it was that simple response of agreement that caused Charles to exhale, and
release that old burden, that shame, that responsibility that threatened to
overtake him all over again.

Jenay
knew he had released the burden when he laid his head back and began rubbing
her clit again.
 
And she could feel the
change in his strokes.
 
He usually wanted
sex from her because she turned him on and he had to have it, but sometimes he
needed to fuck her simply to relieve stress.
 
It was not about her.
 
And she
knew it.
 
This, she also knew, was one of
those times.

She
was getting wet, as he rubbed her, and his dick was getting aroused.
 
He looked at her with that lustful, but
chilling look that made clear that she was to do what he told her to do without
question.
 
He pulled his now-wet digits
out of her panties.
 
“Go lock the door,”
he said to her.

And
Jenay, married to this man for nearly a decade and still in love with him as if
they were still newlyweds, didn’t question it.
 
She got up, walked off the balcony, and hurried to lock their bedroom
door.

By
the time she returned, Charles had unzipped and pulled his pants down to his
ankles, along with his briefs, and was stroking his big, fully-aroused penis.

Jenay
removed her heels, pulled down and removed her pants and panties, and then got
back on the lounger, facing Charles and straddling him. He stopped stroking
himself, pulled her closer, and began tongue-kissing her passionately.
 
Jenay knew this was not supposed to be about
her, but even in Charles’s stress fucks, he knew how to make it about her.
 
And the way he was kissing her, with so much
gumption and authority, made her body began moving as if she was already riding
him.
 
His dick remained outside of her
vagina, but her movements had the lips of her pussy stroking his shaft.

Charles
loved it.
 
She knew exactly how to do
him.
 
He used to have so many women, and
he used to think he was living the life, but that was before this woman entered
his life.
 
Now all of those women were
like playthings to him.
 
Good for that
moment, but they didn’t have that lasting power.
 
Jenay, if he were to ever admit it, had all
the power now.

And
she used it beautifully.
 
Her folds was
stroking his shaft as they kissed, heightening his arousal.
 
When they stopped kissing and her head
dropped down, he laid his own head further back, knowing what was about to
come.

It
came.
 
Jenay put her mouth on his dick
and began to give him the kind of head dreams were made of.
 
She never began haphazardly.
 
Like now, she always began at his most
sensitive points, getting him to that state of serene,
not-quite-desperate-but-on-the-verge of arousal, and then she took him in
full.
 
His entire body clenched when she
began mouth-fucking him.
 
And Jenay
didn’t play.
 
She was going down
hard.
 
He thought, while fucking her, he
would still be thinking about his father, and that terrible time all those
years ago, but Jenay knew how to do it.
 
She made certain, by her masterful skill alone, that he thought about
nothing, or nobody else, but her.
 

It
was not always that way.
 
There had been
times, on long, boring business trips, when beautiful women would literally
throw themselves at his feet.
 
And he was
tempted.
 
Sometimes gravely tempted.
 
But he would think about his wife, and how much
he loved this woman, and the sex she knew how to give to him, and all
temptations would pass.
 
He was not
interested.
 
Why would he be?
 
He was the man who had Jenay.

And
Jenay had him exactly where she wanted him, he thought, as she continued to go
down on him.
 
His hips would lift up and
down, giving her more access, as she mouth-fucked him, until that on-the-verge
feeling moved higher to that nearly-there feeling.
 
He took her by her small shoulders when that
point arrived, and pulled her body back up to where they were once again
face-to-face.
 
She knew what to do, and
he expected her to do it.

She
did it.
 
She took his now stiff dick that
was oozing with pre-cum already and guided it into her now wet pussy, so that
he could saturate her with his love.
 
Both of them shook at the impact of his entry and he took it one step
further: lifting her blouse and her bra and sucking and squeezing her
breasts.
 
Jenay rode him hard, and he
sucked her hard.
 
It was that two-prone
approach, where she was getting it from both ends, that caused her to wrap her
arms around him and enjoy every second of the ride.
 
This fuck was not supposed to be about her at
all, but Charles’s love, even in his despair, even as he was fucking her in
that hard, undeniable release of stress way, made certain that it was.