Mick Sinatra: The Harder They Fall (23 page)

“It’s not
outrageous,” Parusshi said.
 
“Stranger
things have happened.
 
Sometimes the
answer is right in front of you.”

But as they
talked, attempting to implicate Teddy of all people, Mick’s brain was working
overtime.
 
And what used to be so
muddled, all began to make sense.
 
It all
began to tie together.
 
The crash for
cash scheme.
 
The sex harassment
allegations.
 
Frog’s name, that led to Al
Zanetti and Lenny D’Amato.
 
How Stu Scott
was a plant in Roz’s organization.
 
How
simple it was to figure out that Marty B.’s motorcycle gang was the muscle
behind the hijacking of his shipment.
 
It
was all so simple.
 
It was all so easy to
figure out.
 
It was all too easy.

And Mick
suddenly realized, his eyes brightening as his brain became more aware, that it
was meant to be easy.
 
He was supposed to
put two and two together.
 
He was
supposed to have that false sense of security, that false sense that all
threats had been eliminated, so that the real threat could strike.

Mick looked
at his three associates.
 
He looked at
his three old friends.
 
It took fools, or
very powerful men, to pull this off.
 
And
he realized, as surely as he realized his name, that no fool could do it.
 
Power did it.
 
Power allied with more power.
 
Three bosses, not one.
 
That was
why there was no chatter.
 
They would
have been telling on themselves.
 
The
questions had been asked repeatedly.
 
Over and over again.
 
But now,
Mick realized, the answer was right in front of him.

“As I said,”
Vietti said, “stranger things have happened.
 
It could be Teddy.
 
Or it could be
a wild card.
 
Like Stu Scott.”

When Mick
heard that name, he looked at Vietti.
 
“Stu Scott?” he asked.

“Stu Scott,”
Vietti said again.
 
“He was your wife’s
talent scout.
 
But you know what else he
was?”

Mick had his
confirmation.
 
But he couldn’t let those
bastards know it.
 
“What?” he asked.

“He was our
inside man,” Parusshi said.
 
“We found
our man Stu with a cord around his neck.
 
Tossed away like trash.
 
And just
like you’re about to fight for your life now, I’ll bet your ass he fought for
his life too.”

Renault
pulled out a cord.

“You’ve been
taking over our operations, Micky,” Vietti said.
 
“Our profits have been cut in half because of
your greed.
 
Used to be a time a man
would let a man have his territory.
 
But
you’ve gotten bigger than all of us.
 
You’ve gotten too big for your britches.”

Then Vietti
smiled.
 
“But guess what we did?
 
We didn’t get mad.
 
We got even.
 
We paid Marty B.’s gang to hijack your shipment and give it to us.
 
That was a good take.
 
We’re still living off of the fruits of that
take.
 
We put Stu at your wife’s agency
to make sure he kept us informed about your goings and comings.
 
And the plan was working.
 
Al Zanetti and Lenny D’Amato failed to
launch, but we didn’t need them to.
 
We
needed them to create trouble, you solve it, and then you think you eliminated
the threat.
 
It was systematic and
brilliant.
 
You didn’t know what hit you
when the hit came.”

Then an
angry look appeared in Vietti’s eyes.
 
“But you know what we discovered?
 
Only a man can do a man’s job.
 
When we heard you were recovering, we came.
 
The Gabrinis are gone.
 
Big Daddy Sinatra and his police chief son
are gone.”

Then Vietti
nodded to Renault, and then looked at Mick.
 
“You’re all ours,” he said with a smile, as Renault took the cord and
flung it around Mick’s neck, just as Teddy had flung it around Stu Scott’s neck,
and tightened and tightened his grip.

Outside, the
Gabrinis were driving away in their limo and Roz was heading back up the steps
toward the front door.
 
But something
suddenly felt off to her.
 
Something felt
wrong.
 
But what was it?

And that was
when it hit her.
 
She remembered that
name!
 
Vietti.
 
She remembered Tamron telling her that Vietti
was one of those big shot donors attending her masquerade ball.
 
She remembered Tamron telling her that Vietti
was the main one demanding that she made sure Mick attended that ball.
 
Tam didn’t understand why at the time, she
even told Roz she didn’t understand why.
 
But he was a big donor, and Tam wanted to please her donors.

Roz had no
idea at the time Vietti was a crime boss.
 
Because it wouldn’t have made sense.
 
Why would a major crime figure like Vietti need Mick at some ball to
validate the ball?
 
His presence would
have been enough.
 
Unless, Roz suddenly
thought, Vietti needed Mick at the ball to take Mick out of circulation.
 
It would be a good hiding place.
 
Plenty of masks.
 
Plenty of people.
 
Easy access.

And Vietti
had access now.
 
He was upstairs
now.
 
With
Mick
!

Roz turned
around just as the limo was heading toward the gate.
 
And she ran toward that limo screaming unlike
she had ever screamed before.

Tommy was
the first to hear her scream.
 
Reno and
Sal were sitting back bickering about something, when Tommy turned around to
the sound.
 
When he saw Roz, and saw that
she was running and screaming, his heart slammed against his chest.
 
“Stop the car!” he yelled.
 
“Stop the car!”

The car
stopped suddenly on Tommy’s word alone, and all three men jumped out.
 

“It’s a set
up!” Roz was yelling.
 
“Vietti wants to
kill Mick!
 
It’s a set up!”

She didn’t
have to explain why.
 
She didn’t have to
say another word.
 
All three Gabrinis
pulled out their weapons as they ran across that driveway, into that house, and
up those stairs.
 
But as soon as they hit
the stairs, they heard two consecutive gunshots.

What they
heard came after Renault still had the cord around Mick’s neck.
 
He was killing him.
 
Only he was killing him slowly.
 
He was tightening and tightening the cord,
and then loosening the cord.
 
They didn’t
want Mick to die too quickly.
 
They
wanted Mick to suffer.

Mick
suffered.
 
He fought when the cord was tightened,
and gasped for breath when the cord was loosened.
 
They were laughing.
 
Vietti and Parrushi were laughing their heads
off.
 
They were enjoying the hell out of
Mick’s pain.

But as they
laughed, and as Renault tightened and loosened the cord, Mick’s hands were
beneath the covers, struggling to grab the guns he himself had placed there
days ago just in case, as he fought for his life.

It took all
the strength he had, and some more beside, but as soon as Renault loosened that
cord again, Mick threw the covers off of his battered body, revealing his
weapons.
 
Stunned that a man in his
weakened state would have guns at his side, the mobsters scrambled to retrieve
their own weapons.
 
But it was no
contest.
 
Mick was too fast.
 
He aimed one gun at Renault first, shooting
him through the head, and at Vietti second, killing him on the spot.

Then Mick
looked at Parrushi, who began backing up with his hands in the air.
 
But to Parrushi’s shock, Mick suddenly looked
faint, and his body collapsed into the bed.
 
Parrushi, figured the impact of the cord that had been strangling Mick,
and Mick’s own compromised state from his own wounds, had caused him to
suddenly collapse.
 
And he saw his chance
and made a run for it.
 
He kept backing
up, just in case he had read that mean bastard wrong, and then he was going to
turn and high tail it out of there.

But Mick
collapsed only because he could.
 
Because
he saw where Parrushi was heading.
 
He
saw that Parrushi was backing up alright, but into the arms of the Gabrinis.

“Going
somewhere?” Sal asked Parrushi when Parrushi backed into him.

Parrushi
turned around suddenly.
 
“But I thought,”
he started saying.

But Sal
interrupted him.
 
“Who gives a fuck what
you thought?” Sal responded.
 
And then
did the honors himself.
  
Parrushi fell
too, and joined his partners in crime.

By the time
Roz made it upstairs, and by the time Mick’s children, who had been in the
family room, hurried upstairs too, it was all over.
 
They had to step over bodies to get to Mick,
which gave his children considerable pause.
 
But that didn’t stop Roz.
 
Bodies
or no bodies, blood or no blood, she ran to Mick.
 
She couldn’t get to him fast enough.

When Mick
woke up and saw that Roz was already in the master bath soaking in the tub, he
got up too.
 
Today would be the day when
he would push the envelope.
 
Today would
be the day when he would see if his healing body had healed enough.

One month
ago he had been shot down in the street.
 
Shot multiple times.
 
He didn’t
think he would make it.
 
If Roz would
have left him, he wouldn’t have made it.
 
But now he was getting out of bed naked, slipping on a pair of shorts,
slipping on a t-shirt, and stringing up a pair of tennis shoes.
 
He had to know the limits of his
stamina.
 
He had to know the limits of
his movements.
 
He had to know if today
would be the day when he showed himself in public again.

He went
downstairs.
 
After checking on the twins:
they were both asleep, he headed for the front door.
 
The house was wondrously quiet, just the way
he used to love it, and he felt as if he had traveled around the world in a
month.

Outside, the
gray clouds were already receding and the sky was beginning to show some
sun.
 
There were no roosters on his estate,
but there were plenty of birds and squirrels.
 
And they were out in force.
 
It
was six a.m.
 
The world was waking up.
 
Mick Sinatra was on the rise again.

He stretched
on his front porch for several minutes, and then began running.
 
He didn’t have to leave home.
 
His estate was big enough.
 
He ran across his estate.
 
He ran and he ran.
 
His first run since the shooting.
 
His first run in over a month.
 
He used to be able to run five miles
easily.
 
Today, he could barely manage
two.
 
But by the time he made it back
into the house, he was satisfied.
 
He was
back.

But as he
grabbed a bottled water out of the kitchen’s frig, and made it way upstairs
drinking it, he was unsettled too.
 
Three
heads of families were killed in his home.
 
Three mobsters who thought they were going to put an exclamation point
on their ambush by proclaiming to the world that they not only took Mick the
Tick out of commission, but they took him out in his own home.
 
It didn’t work.
 
But that didn’t mean it was over.
 
That didn’t mean he was going to let it
stand.

He and his
family remained on high alert.
 
That was
their new normal now.
 
There was no
chatter, and he had an army listening for it, but that didn’t mean he would
ever put his guard down again.
 
He blamed
himself for that ambush.
 
He blamed his
inability to put two and two together until it was almost too late, for that
day in those streets when his wife saved his life.
 
His family was at stake now.
 
If his enemies thought he was ruthless
before, they hadn’t seen the half of it.
  
Because Mick wasn’t going to be fucking around anymore.
 
He was going after every soul who knew what
those three fuckers were up to, and every soul that should have known.
 
He was going hard and harder until he
annihilated all of them.
 
They might have
thought it was over.
 
Because of the
silence on his end, they might have thought he was moving on.
 
But Mick was only regaining his strength.
 
This shit wasn’t over by a long shot.
 
It hadn’t even begun.

Rosalind was
still soaking in the tub when he made it upstairs.
 
Instead of disturbing her, Mick went into one
of their numerous guest rooms and showered quickly.
 
He returned to their bedroom, sat on the edge
of the bed, and then laid back.
 
Within
minutes he was fast asleep.
 
And
snoring.
 
As if that two-mile run had
taken a toll.

When Roz got
out of the tub and walked into the bedroom drying off, she stopped in her
tracks.
 
There was Mick, lying across
their bed asleep and naked, and looking so serene to her that it concerned her.
 
It had been a long road to recovery for
Mick.
 
There were days when he had
set-backs.
 
There were days when he
exceeded all expectations.
 
But it was
still a long way back.
 
He hadn’t been to
SI, to his office, since it happened, and she hadn’t been to hers.
 
She opted to stay by his side.
 
She opted to recover right along with him.

Today, she
was going back to the office because he decided he was ready to go back
too.
 
But it looked as if he had gotten
out of bed, to get ready for work, and fell back asleep.
 
As if he didn’t have the stamina to even get
ready.
 
As if he wasn’t quite there after
all.

She wrapped
the towel around her body and moved over to the bed.
 
She sat down beside him on the edge, and
lightly shook his arm.
 
“Mick?
 
Wake up.
 
Mick?”

But he
continued to sleep soundly.
 
And
normally, she would have let him.
 
This
past month was the most rest he’d had in probably decades.
 
But she knew he wanted to give the world
another try today.
 
She knew he wanted to
get back to work today.
 
She shook him a
little harder.
 
“Mick?
 
Mick, wake up!”

When he
still didn’t bulge, she decided to let it go.
 
This was his first day back in the grind.
 
If he wanted to get a later start, he earned
the right.
 

But she
wasn’t interested in any later starts.
 
She stood up, to get busy dressing, but was suddenly stopped in her
movement.
 
When she turned, she saw that
Mick, wide awake, had grabbed her towel and was unraveling it from around her
body.
 
And he was smiling as he did it.

“Boy!” she
said, hitting him playfully on his arm.
 
But
his little stunt had the desired effect: Roz was naked before him, and his
sleeping dick, seeing that beautiful sight too, came to life.

“Do you take
anything seriously anymore?” Roz asked him.
 
“I thought you were asleep!”

“I was
asleep,” Mick said, pulling her down on top of him, “until I smelled your sweet
scent, and heard your sweet voice.”

Roz smiled
as she laid on top of him, her head up and looking him in his eyes.
 
He cupped her ass and began massaging
her.
 
“What happened?” she asked.
 
“You got up, and had to take a break?”

“I got up,
ran two miles, showered, and then had to take a break.”

Roz
smiled.
 
“Really?
 
Two miles, Mick?
 
That’s great!”

Mick smiled
too.
 
“I thought so too,” he said, as he
placed a finger into her vagina, and massaged her there too.

They stared
at each other.
 
Roz felt his wonderful
touch.
 
“It’s your first day back,” she
said.
 
“Must feel daunting.”

“It
does.
 
I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

“At SI?”

“There
too.
 
But mainly my night job.”

Roz knew
what he meant. And she sensed something more.
 
“Is your night job going to become your day job?”

“While I
restructure, while I show those bastards who’s still in charge, yes,” Mick
admitted. “Then I’m going to put it down for good, Roz.
 
I don’t know how.
 
And I don’t know how many bodies I’ll have to
step over to get there, but I’ll get there.
 
For your sake.
 
For all of my
children’s sake.
 
I owe you that.”

Roz knew he
didn’t owe her anything, but she also knew he was not going to be
deterred.
 
He killed the heads of the
snakes, but he wanted the bodies too.
 
When Mick got this way, there was no turning him around.
 
She stopped trying long ago.
 
And she wasn’t about to now, since she agreed
with him.

But as she
was thinking about their future, he was thinking about their present.
 
And her body on top of his.
 
He began to rub her body against his
hardening shaft until it was rock hard.
 
And they kissed, long and lovingly.
 
They still had a long road ahead.
 
But right now, as Mick eased his cock into her pussy, and wrapped her
tighter into his arms, they both knew they were on the right road now.
 
They both knew they were going to get on that
road to eternal peace, where they would study war no more, one of these old
days.