Mick Sinatra 4: If You Don't Know Me by Now (24 page)

Tyson looked
at Roz as if she had no clue.
 
“Really,
bitch?” he asked.
 
“You are so far gone
that you think your life, and Mom’s life, and this so-called innocent girl’s
life, is worth more than two million dollars to me?
 
Really, bitch?”

“If
it’s
money you want,” Mick said, “I can give it to you.
 
You can take me hostage.
 
Just let my wife and daughter go free.
 
That’s all I ask.
 
And you’ll have five million within the
hour.”

Tyson stared
at Mick.
 
But it wasn’t because he
believed a word Mick had just said.
 
He
wanted to test him.
 
“I’ll let one of
them go free,” he said.
 
“And you can
pick which one.”

Roz looked
at Mick’s intense green eyes.
 
And her
heart slammed against her chest because she knew who he was going to pick.
 
She knew he was going to pick her!
 
“
Gloria
!”
she cried before he could open his mouth.
 
“We want Gloria to go free, and you can take the two of us.”

Mick closed
his eyes in agony.
 
He was going to do
it.
 
God help him, he was going to
sacrifice his daughter for his wife!
 
Good fathers didn’t do that.
 
Good
men didn’t do that.
 
He just confirmed to
himself, once again, that he wasn’t either.

Tyson
smiled.
 
“Saint Roz to the rescue,” he
said.
 
“But you can forget it.
 
I wasn’t born yesterday.
 
Sure I can take you and Mick hostage.
 
And then I’ll get the money?
 
And then what?
 
Let y’all go?
 
Let y’all go so that the great Mick the Tick could track me down, take
his money back, and do
me
in?
 
Not going to happen.
 
Because guess what?
 
I’m about to do you in, sister.
 
Goodbye!”

“
Nooo
!” Mick said as he lunged toward Tyson.
 
But the gunshot blast stopped him cold.
 
The gunshot stopped Tyson too.
 
It was such a powerful blast that it lifted
Tyson off his feet, and slammed him against the wall.
 
His stomach was blown open, the blood gushed
out, and he slid down, dropping his gun, and died.

Roz and Mick
looked upstairs.
 
Judge Bernadette Graham
was standing at the top of the stairs with the smoking shotgun in her
hand.
 
She had killed her son to save her
daughter.
 
Cecil, her ex-husband, a man
who hated guns, was standing at her side.

“I told you
to leave here,” Bernadette said to Roz.
 
“That boy isn’t right in the head and never was.
 
He hate you because you’re successful.
 
He hate me because I’m successful.
 
He hate Cecil because he’s living his
dream.
 
All that boy ever did was hate.”

But Roz was
still confused.
 
“You knew he had
kidnapped Gloria and didn’t say anything?”

“I didn’t
know that child was down there until this morning, when I heard a noise.
 
He put her down there last night.
 
I was trying to decide what to do about it
when you and Mick showed up.
 
I knew I
had to do something, but Tyson is my child.
 
I didn’t want him to rot in prison.”

“Now he’s
rotting in hell,” Cecil said.
 
“You can’t
do wrong to do right.
 
Wrong catches up.”

Tears
appeared in Bernadette’s eyes.
 
She
slumped against Cecil.
 
And as always,
Cecil held her up.
 
He also removed that
gun from her grasp.

But when
Mick and Roz came back to themselves, and realized the threat was over, but
Gloria was still bound, they hurried to her side.

Mick removed
the blindfold and removed the duct tape. Gloria let out a gasp of air, and a
great sigh of relief.
 
“Dad!
 
Mom!”

“Are you
alright?” Roz asked her, as Mick began loosening the rope that had her bound.

“I’m okay,”
she said.
 
She was bruised, from Devin Terranz’s
beating, but she was alive.
 

But as soon
as her hands were freed, she grabbed Roz by the catch of her blouse.
 
“He made me make that tape,” she said.
 
“He made me accuse you of having something to
do with my kidnapping.
 
He made me do it,
Roz.”
 
Tears were in her eyes.
 
“He made me!”

“Oh, baby,”
Roz said, pulling her into her arms.
 
“We’re just glad to have you alive!”

Mick had
tears in his eyes too.
 
Not only because
she was safe, but also because of his willingness to choose Roz over her.
 
And because he didn’t know his daughter
enough to realize she gave that tape under duress.
 
He didn’t know what her duress looked
like.
 
Even after all of his attempts to
reconcile with his children, he was still a failure as a father.
 
There was nobody, not even Rosalind, who
would deny that truth.

Gloria
looked at her father.
 
“It’s alright,
Dad,” she said.
 
“I’m alright.”

She opened
her arms to him.
 
And he went in.

Mick spend a big portion of the night making love to
Roz.
 
It was nearly a month after
Gloria’s disappearance, a month after Tyson’s death, a month after the horrific
discovery, by Tennessee authorities, of the body of Tyson’s wife buried deep
down in his backyard.
 
It was the first time
since that time that they felt unburdened by those horrors.
 
Roz felt especially unburdened because of the
special day it was.
 
Mick felt especially
unburdened because he was back in town after a weeklong trip to India.

But when Roz woke up that morning, instead of easing
out of bed without waking him, which had been her intention, he was already
awake, his penis was already lodged deep inside of her, and he was fucking her
again.

Roz couldn’t resist the feeling, so she didn’t mind at
all.
 
They were lying on their sides,
spooning, and he had entered her from the back.
 
His hand was resting on her stomach, a stomach no longer as flat as it
used to be, as he pushed into her.
 
She
let out a sigh as she felt his fullness, and let out a groan when he hit her
spot repeatedly.

She reached her hand back, placed it on the back of
his head, and turned her face toward his.
 
They began kissing as he fucked her.
 
Mick loved doing her up and down and he was overworking her that morning.
 
Until her orgasm came with such a heightened
thrust that he came too.
 
He poured into
her.
 
And he kept on pumping.
 
He kept on fucking her.
 
He kept on squeezing the life out of his
release until there was nothing left.

Roz waited. She knew her husband too well.
 
And minutes afterward, as she laid still in
his arms, he fell asleep again.

Roz smiled.
 
And
finally did as she had planned to do a half hour earlier, and eased out of bed.

Mick woke up alone in bed.
 
He was usually the early riser of the two, so
it surprised him.
 
But when he got out of
bed, his dick still wet and red from fucking Roz so hard, and he did not find
her in the bathroom where he expected to find her, he became worried.
 
He put on his bathrobe and made his way
downstairs.

“
Rosalind
?”
he called out.
 
But there was still no
Rosalind.
 
He went into the Nursery.
 
No twins, no nannies, and no Rosalind.
 
He went through the living room, into the
kitchen, and through the dining hall.
 
But still no sign of his wife.
 
He
went to the intercom, asked his front gate security if his wife had left
already, and left with the twins, but they said no.
 
They had not seen her, or his children, since
last night.

Now Mick was really worried.
 
He went into his study, grabbed a loaded 357
magnum from behind his display case, and searched the entirety of the
house.
 
Not even a servant was found, and
they had an army of servants who were usually all over the place.
 
He saw no one.
 
Until he pushed open the doors that led into
their ballroom, and saw Rosalind.
 
But
not just Rosalind alone.
 
There was a room
full of his family and friends, including his big brother Big Daddy Sinatra,
Jenay Sinatra, and all of their children.
 
His nephews, Tommy Gabrini and Sal Gabrini were there, along with his
cousin and close friend, Las Vegas casino owner Reno Gabrini, and their wives
and children too.
   

“
Surprise
!” they all said in one voice,
and Mick was floored.
 
And confused.
 
They all realized he had a magnum in his
hand, and they were confused too.
 
And
silence ensued.

“What are
you surprising me for?” Mick asked.

Roz
smiled.
 
“Mick!” she said.
 
“It’s your birthday, darling.”

But Mick
frowned.
 
“My birthday?
 
It’s not my birthday.
 
My birthday is three months away.”

Roz’s heart
fell.
 
Surely she wasn’t
that
far gone?

Then Mick
smiled.
 
Big Daddy was already smiling.
 
“
Surprise
!”
Mick said to his wife, and they all laughed.
 

But what
tickled Mick the most wasn’t the surprise party itself, or even seeing all of
the out-of-town family faces he saw.
 
What warmed Mick’s heart the most was seeing all three of his grown children
there.
 
Teddy was there, but he was
expected to be.
 
Mick had allowed him
into his inner circle, and they were now close.
 
But what thrilled him was seeing Joey and Gloria there too.

It had been
a rough month after her disappearance.
 
Gloria stopped speaking to him when she found out that he had detained
her mother in a safe house, all but accusing her of some involvement in the
disappearance.
 
She was also angry that
Fonz had been placed in a safe house too, until she found out that his new
girlfriend Rita had been there with him.
 
Joey was still on the outs with Mick after he punished him so severely
for giving that DVD to Bella Caine, with Joey leaving his father’s estate with
vengeance on his mind.
 
But they were
both there.
 
Mick had a feeling that Roz
coaxed and pleaded for them to show up, but it didn’t matter.
 
They showed up.
 
And Mick, to Roz’s delight, made sure he
thanked them personally.

“Hello
guys,” Mick said as he walked over to them.

“Hey, Dad,”
Gloria responded.

“Hey, Dad,”
said Joey.

It was
awkward as hell, but Mick didn’t care.
 
He pulled Gloria into his arms and kissed her.
 
He pulled Joey into his arms and kissed
him.
 
“Thank you for coming,” he said to
both of them.
 
They both threw their arms
around him when he hugged them, and closed their eyes to suppress their
emotions.
 
This was what they wanted more
than money, fame, or anything else.
 
They
wanted their father’s love.
 
Mick knew it
too.
 
That was why he closed his eyes in
a tight squeeze, as they embraced.

When they
stopped embracing, all three kind of looked away from each other to shield
their teary eyes.
 
And then the crowd of
people, all of whom were there for Mick, after all, overtook him.
 
Gloria and Joey wasn’t mad at them.
 
They needed to regroup.
 
They figured that was the end of that.

And it was
until later, when Mick was standing in front of the enormous cake, with Roz at
his side and the twins, one a piece, in their arms.
 
Joey and Gloria and Teddy had been called
over by Roz, and were at Mick’s side too.
 
The whole family.
 
But when Joey
got to the table, and he saw the cake, he couldn’t resist.
 
Joey had to be Joey.

“Damn, Dad,”
he said, “that’s a lot of candles!”

And
everybody laughed.
 
Including Mick.
 
Who, with his one free hand, pulled Joey into
his
arms.
 
They
had a world and a day to work on.
 
Their
problems were not over by a long shot.
 
But the love was there.
 
And Mick,
as Gloria laughed, and Teddy laughed, and Roz laughed, and even the twins were
grinning, was going to bank on that love.
 
For once in his life, he was counting on his family’s love.