CHAPTER THIRTEEN #2
But Mick, who ignored Roz’s jab, nudged Jenay. “Move,” he ordered her.
Big Daddy didn’t like his tone, and neither did Jenay, but they both were glad Mick still had some fight for Roz left in him. She gladly obliged and got up and moved.
“See Roz, I told you,” Jenay said as she was moving to sit beside her own husband. “It never fails.”
Roz knew it had already failed that night in that restaurant, but she didn’t bother arguing the point. Mick sat next to her. That was all that mattered.
But she was still curious. She looked at him. “I thought you said you wasn’t coming down tonight.”
Mick didn’t like any shows of public affection, but he knew he had no choice.
He came down to give it to her, and Kelly’s presence made it all the more urgent in his eyes.
“I had to give you your gift,” he said, as he handed her a gift-wrapped narrow box that nobody realized he had in his hand until he presented it to Roz.
Roz was genuinely surprised. “I thought you said what we did in bed was my,” Roz started saying.
Mick swiftly cut her off. “Forget what I said,” Mick said, but everybody had already gotten the gist of it and were laughing. Even Roz had to smile.
“Just open the damn gift.” Mick shook his head. Why did he put himself through this bullshit?
But Roz was happy again. Especially when Mick sat his phone on the table so that he could place his arm around her waist. Roz sat Kelly’s book gift on the table too, which pleased Mick.
But when Roz opened Mick’s gift and pulled out the most incredible diamond necklace her eyes had ever seen, everybody at that table gasped.
“Gotdamn, Uncle Mick,” said an impressed Sal.
“How many carats are in that thing, Uncle Mick?” asked an astounded Reno.
“One-twenty,” Mick said proudly.
“One-hundred-and-twenty diamonds?” Reno was floored. “Damn! Golconda diamonds?” Reno asked.
Mick looked at Reno. He wasn’t book smart, but he was as savvy as they came. “That’s correct,” he said.
“Shit!” said Reno. “That necklace alone is worth over a million bucks easy.”
“A million dollars for a necklace? I got to see this up close,” said Trina as she and Gemma got up and went and stood behind Roz.
There were rumors that Mick was a billionaire, although it was impossible to prove those rumors. But they all knew he was certainly richer than everybody else in their family of very rich and powerful men.
Tommy, one of the richer of the rich men in the family, leaned toward Grace.
They always complained that he treated Plain Jane Grace, as she once was called, with kid gloves.
Babied her even. But he knew that wasn’t true.
He just loved her and wasn’t afraid to show it.
“You don’t want to go see it, honey?” he asked her.
“I can see from here it’s gorgeous,” said Grace. “That’s enough for me.”
Tommy placed his arm around her. She was the most unpretentious, non-materialistic person he’d ever known, and he loved her even more for it.
But Trina and Gemma were material girls from way back and didn’t hide that either. “Damn,” Trina said when she saw those diamonds up close. “Now this is what I call a necklace!”
But Roz was too busy checking it out herself to even notice Trina’s praise. Because Roz was floored too. “I’ve never seen anything more beautiful,” she said, her eyes sparkling with emotion and delight.
“Me neither,” said Gemma. “That’s some Hope diamond level jewelry right there.”
“It’s no joke, that’s for damn sure,” Trina agreed.
Roz looked at Mick. “When did you buy this?” she asked him.
“I had it made a couple months ago,” he said. “For your birthday.”
She stared deep into his eyes. If she lived to be a hundred and three, she’d never understand that man.
“Why didn’t you just tell me that upstairs, Mick?
” she asked him with a baffled look in her eyes.
“You knew I was upset with your little remark. Why didn’t you just .
. .?” She couldn’t find the words to say.
It seemed to her that he was all but pushing her away from him and into the arms of another man with his sour indifference, and then he went and did something this sweet.
She could hardly believe it. “Why didn’t you just give it to me? ”
He was waiting for tonight, when everybody had gone, was his reason. But it was a moot point now. “How do you like it?” he asked her instead.
She looked at the necklace again. “I love it. I absolutely love it almost as much as I love you,” she said and smiled. Their eyes met. Her smile dissolved. And she leaned over and kissed him on the lips.
Everybody sat astounded. Mick allowing anybody to show him affection in public just wasn’t done. They knew he hated it with a passion. But Roz, and only Roz, always broke his rules.
But Trina wasn’t just amazed by the beauty of that diamond necklace, she was envious too. She looked at Reno with one hand on her hip. “You need to step up your game, Reno,” she said. “For real,” she added, as they all were laughing. “Why your crusty ass never got me anything like this?”
“What I look like taking a million of my hard-earned dollars for you to put around your hag neck?” he asked her, getting her back. They all laughed at that one too.
But Trina didn’t find it funny at all as she reached over and slapped Reno so hard upside his head that he fell over backwards in his chair. Everybody, even Mick, laughed at that.
But then they heard the sound of a large truck. Mick frowned. “What the fuck is that?” he asked as he stood up and looked toward the street. His security gate was high, but he still could see the top tip of a semi on his street.
Then the intercom at the table buzzed. Mick pressed it. “What is it?”
“The truck is here.”
Mick looked at Teddy and Nikki, who stood up too. “What truck?” Mick asked them.
“I didn’t order any truck to come over here,” said Teddy.
“Neither did I,” said Nikki.
“Did you ever track down those tankers that had gone off line?” Mick asked them.
“Yes. All three were located the next day. It was a logistics error.”
“I don’t know what’s going on,” said gate security on the intercom, “but one of your semis are heading toward the gate.”
Every man at that table immediately pulled out their weapons. “Get the ladies inside!” Mick ordered as they all ran down the long driveway that led to the gate. Grounds security was running toward the gate too.
But Big Daddy, along with Nikki, Jimmy, and Dommi, began hurrying the ladies toward the house.
Roz grabbed her necklace, book, and Mick’s phone as she and the other ladies hurried out of the courtyard.
Nikki was on her walkie talkie ordering the grounds security around back to get all the young people in the house and to get them in now!
But up front, when the gate opened and Mick, Teddy, and the Gabrinis ran out, they were shocked to see one of their transport trucks heading for the house. “What the fuck are they doing?” Teddy asked.
“Is anybody driving that thing?” asked Reno, who was squinting his eyes to see a driver.
“Shit,” said Mick, when he realized it was powering down without a driver. “It’s an ambush! Get back in the gate!” He was waving his gun and ordering everybody back inside the gate. “Get back in the gate!”
They all were running back inside the gate when they witnessed that big tanker of a truck suddenly explode into a fireball, with the shockwaves knocking every one of them off their feet.
When they all got back up, everybody was okay.
But Mick, who never made it back inside the gate, was the first one running toward the explosion.
By the time everybody else had run up to him, he had to back off because of the extent of the blaze.
He just stood there, staring and thinking. Thinking and staring.
But everybody else was confused. “What motherfucker is bold enough to pull this shit right in front of Mick Sinatra’s house?” asked Reno. “And with his own tanker? They must have several screws loose.”
“They got something loose,” Sal agreed. “Why else would they do it?”
They didn’t know why, but Mick knew why. And Teddy, who was at his father’s side staring, not at the explosion, but at his old man, suspected why. It was a warning. That much he knew. A warning of the highest order.
But unlike his old man, he had no earthly idea why they were being so violently and undeniably warned.
Unless . . .
“Pop, are we at war?” Teddy asked Mick point blank.
And Mick didn’t skip a beat. “Yes,” he said. Then he looked at his son.
But Teddy didn’t see that arrogant defiance he usually saw in his father’s eyes. He didn’t see a defiant man at all. He saw a broken man. A general sick and tired of the battlefield, but was forced to be on another one anyway. And then Mick walked away.
What was that about? Teddy wondered.
He was even more baffled than he already was.