CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The GPS took Mick and Nikki to an empty shopping center parking lot in west Philadelphia.
When they saw Roz’s Mercedes parked alone in one of the spaces, Mick stopped on the side of the building to stay out of Roz’s sight.
It was late night. The shopping center had long since shut down and everybody had gone home.
Why she chose that particular location was a mystery to Nikki.
She looked at Mick as he was just sitting there, staring at Roz’s car as if he torn about being there. As if he was watching something he wasn’t sure he should have subjected himself to watching. It was a weird vibe.
Nikki wasn’t usually bold around Mick. Nobody, except for maybe Roz and Big Daddy, were. But that news of this son hit her hard too. She knew how she felt when she found out that Teddy had a grown son too. She could only imagine how Roz felt.
She decided to start there. “I spoke with Marco earlier,” she said.
Mick continued to stare at that car. “Did you?”
“He’s in Barcelona breaking in a new port of call before we commit to any shipments. He says he likes it there.”
“His ass is on assignment too much,” said Mick. “He needs to pick a spot and settle down.”
“That’s what Teddy told him. He’s hardly ever at any family functions when the family is still trying to get to know him better.” Then she decided to try it. “It hasn’t been all that long since Teddy told me he had a grown son.”
Mick had already known where she was going with that sudden conversation about Marco, so he continued to stare at Roz’s car. Until Nikki stopped being so cagey.
“I’m going to ask you what I asked Teddy when Marco came on the scene,” she said to Mick. “Are you certain he’s your son?”
Mick looked at her with that look that made clear she had crossed a line. Who the fuck do you think you are, was his look. And that was exactly how he felt. But like most times when it came to Nikki, his first response softened. Then he exhaled. “I’m certain,” he said.
Their eyes met and Nikki thought she saw pain in Mick’s hard, deep-green eyes. She also could sense that he wanted to confide in her. That he desperately needed somebody to spill his guts to. That might very well have been the reason he ordered her to ride with him.
But he wasn’t that kind of man and he couldn’t pull himself to do it. He quickly looked away from her and back at Roz’s car.
After nearly half an hour of waiting, an olive-green Ferrari Portofino sped into the parking lot and parked beside Roz’s car. Nikki sat upright when he saw the car, but Mick remained unmoved as if he knew the car and who the driver would be.
But when Roz got out of her car and ran around to the driver’s side door just as a tall black man was stepping out, Mick seemed to angrily sling his gearshift into Drive and was about to speed over to the twosome.
When Nikki realized the man was that good-looking brother Kelly Cochran, a man everybody at Roz’s party could see was in love with her, she expected fireworks.
She expected Mick and Kelly to get into it over Roz.
How in the world, she wondered, would she and Roz be able to stop those two big, alpha males?
But after slinging his gearshift into Drive, Mick didn’t move his Escalade an inch. Nikki looked at him. What was he waiting on? But something stopped Mick. He put the gearshift back into Park. Then he pressed a button on his door, a compartment opened, and he pulled out a small pair of binoculars.
As Kelly pulled Roz into his arms, Mick zoomed in, not on the man, but on Roz. Her eyes were tightly shut and tears were streaming down her face. And that look, that pain on her face, devastated Mick.
He removed the binoculars from his eyes and tossed them aside. He couldn’t look anymore. But as Kelly began walking Roz around to his Ferrari’s passenger door, Mick had to look. And he said five words that stunned Nikki:
“I did that to her,” he said out loud.
Nikki looked at him. She started to ask what did he do to her, but she already knew what. It was pain. Roz was in pain and he caused it.
He watched unblinkingly as the man placed Roz onto the front passenger seat of his car, closed her own car door, and then walked around and got into his own car.
From inside his car, Roz’s Mercedes lit up, and the side mirrors folded inward as she locked her car.
And then the Ferrari began driving away.
Nikki was stunned when Mick didn’t follow them.
She was confused when he pressed a button on his steering wheel and not one security detail car, but a second detail car came flying from seemingly out of nowhere and followed that Ferrari.
When did he order two details to follow them to that shopping center?
Was it some gadget on his steering wheel that allowed him to do so without saying a word?
It was incredible how little she and Teddy knew about the full extent of how cleverly Mick operated.
Nikki looked at those cars and then she looked at Mick. She absolutely did not remember him calling up a detail to follow them, let alone two. “Those are our guys?” she asked him.
But Mick made a U-turn and began heading back to the house.
“Mr. Sinatra, are those our guys?” Nikki asked him again. As the second-in-command of SCF, she knew she had a right to know. She was, after all, their supervisor!
It took a minute, but Mick ultimately responded to her. “No,” he said.
Then who are they, Nikki wondered. Then she realized who. “Are those your guys?” she asked him more pointedly.
“Yes,” Mick said.
Nikki couldn’t believe it. She shook her head.
Mick saw her head shake from his periphery and looked at her. “You got a problem with that?”
Nikki never liked to mix it up with Mick. She knew the man had the weight of the world on his shoulders and she would never intentionally add to that weight. But he asked the question. “I do, yes,” she said.
When he didn’t take her head off for answering his question honestly, she added: “How can Teddy ever be in charge of the syndicate if you have all of these cells we know nothing about?”
Mick’s irritation overtook him. “Do you think I give a fuck about that right now? Right now, Nikki!” he added with a scream in his voice as he hit his steering wheel with the palm of his hand.
Nikki immediately regretted going there, but he asked the question. “No sir,” she said. She also knew he was taking his frustrations with his marriage out on her. “You have more to worry about than that.”
Whereas a lesser person would have been offended by his outburst and fought back, Nikki showed compassion for the position he was in. Her response was exactly why Mick loved her. Her response disarmed him.
He looked at her. Then he looked back at the dark road ahead of them. “She was crying,” he said.
Nikki didn’t have the advantage of binoculars when Roz got out of her car, but she had assumed, by the way Roz fell into that man’s arms, she was deeply upset. But it seemed to have stunned Mick. That was why she didn’t respond. He needed to talk about it she could tell.
“She deserves so much better than what I can give her,” Mick continued in the silence. “And if Kelly can do better than I can then . . .”
Nikki looked over at him. “You know him that well?” she asked him.
“Not like that, no. But I know him. He advocated for Roz to be in a couple of his major productions, including his latest one, which was how he earned my respect. They’ve known each other for a long time.”
“I see. So you’re not worried about him coming on to her?” Nikki had forgotten who she was talking to when she so casually asked that question. She waited for the dress-down.
But it didn’t come. Because she was right: Mick needed somebody to talk to. “It’s a concern, yes. Always,” he added with a resigned sadness in his voice. “But as I said, if he can do better by her then why should I stand in the way?”
“You should stand in the way because you love her,” Nikki said.
Mick gave her that you’re crossing the line/who the fuck do you think you’re talking to look again. But then it softened again and he looked back at the road ahead. “I don’t chase women,” he said. “She wants him, she can have him.”
Nikki knew he was talking nonsense. He didn’t chase women, yet they were sitting in an empty shopping center parking lot because he had chased a woman to that lot.
He was only kidding himself because Nikki knew that man loved himself some Roz.
But she also knew he had laid some news on Roz that might just be on the outside of enough for both of them.
And both of those titans were stubborn, vicious people who were capable of anything if you crossed them.
She had enough to worry about in their battle with another titan called Monk Paletti.
She was staying out of Mick and Roz’s battle.