CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Teddy arrived at his seat just before curtain call. He had to squeeze past his father, who sat beside Nikki. He took his seat on the other side of Nikki. Duke and Jackie were seated on the other side of him.
Nikki leaned against him. “He just got here a few minutes ago. I text you.”
“I know.” Then he leaned against Nikki and whispered: “Bella’s at his penthouse.”
Nikki looked at Ted with surprise in her eyes. Then she shook her head. She’d never figure those two out. But that was their business anyway. She was there to support Roz. That was all that mattered that night.
And when Roz finally appeared on stage to thunderous applause, not just from the twins and Nikki and Teddy, but from the entire audience, Teddy looked over at his father.
He was expecting him to be happy to see her back in top form again too.
But Mick wasn’t clapping at all. He wasn’t even smiling.
He was, instead, staring unblinkingly at Roz.
Roz.
He saw no one else on that stage but her.
They’d been together a long time and he still got butterflies whenever she entered a room.
All those younger, beautiful ladies that threw themselves at him practically every single day, as if Roz was just another somebody in his life that didn’t mean shit to him, were clueless. She meant the world to him.
But he also knew her better than anybody else alive.
And on that stage she seemed unsure of herself to him.
As if she wasn’t certain she could pull off such a hefty role after years of all those supportive, okay roles.
Hard as she worked. Devoted as she was. But Broadway never fully embraced her.
Not the way they embraced other actresses of her caliber.
But she kept on striving. She kept on putting the work in.
She kept on hustling. She would fail, and get right back up.
But all of that rejection was taking a toll. If nobody else in that theater saw it, Mick saw it.
Roz was scared.
She was reciting her lines and making all the appropriate gestures and trying with all she had not to seem as if she was just going through the motions. Because she wasn’t. She never phoned it in.
That was why he was shocked when the booing started.
Everybody looked to the middle of the theater.
That just wasn’t done on Broadway. At least not like that faction of young people were booing and hissing.
It was getting so loud that the performers couldn’t continue the performance.
It got so loud that Mick considered dragging their asses out of that theater himself.
But just as Security was hurrying toward the group to do just that, those same hissing young people jumped from their seats as if they were a flash mob and began running toward the front to storm the stage.
The audience members upfront began screaming and running for cover as those agitators began jumping over their chairs and knocking them over to get to that stage.
Because Roz was on that stage, Mick was already on his feet and running for the front as soon as he realized what was happening. His clandestine bodyguard, that was also in that theater seated behind him, took off running to protect the boss.
The other capo, who was there to protect the twins, rushed to their side. “Stay with the family!” Teddy ordered their capo. “Get the twins out of here!” he then ordered Nikki as he ran behind his father.
But Duke, scared for his mother, attempted to rush the stage too. “Forget this,” he said angrily. But Nikki pulled him back. “Let me go!” he yelled as he wrestled to break free from her. “I gotta get my mama!”
Nikki angrily grabbed him and slung him against her. “You listen to me, Duke Sinatra, and you listen good. Teddy and your father is handling that. They’ll take care of her. Your ass will do exactly what I tell you to do. Now let’s go!” she said, dragging him along.
Duke had forgotten, just that quickly, that his father would have never allowed Nikki to be the underboss of his syndicate if she didn’t have what it took.
He also remembered how his father felt about Nikki and how he would kick his ass if he disrespected her.
That was why he stopped resisting and allowed her and their bodyguard to usher him and his sister out of that now-chaotic theater.
But as Nikki was hurrying them out of that theater, Mick and Teddy and Mick’s bodyguard were on stage searching frantically for Roz.
It was madness times ten as that loud faction from the audience had turned into what appeared to be hundreds of people on that stage.
People were fighting the disruptors in defense of the performers.
The disruptors were brutalizing the performers.
Others were just up there because that was where the action was.
And theater security was trying with all their might to break it all up.
But where was Roz???
Mick and Teddy had to knock people aside as they searched frantically for Roz. But she was nowhere on that stage.
Then Mick and his bodyguard ran offstage left, while Teddy ran offstage right as they searched backstage for Roz.
Mick ran down a long, winding corridor, kicking open doors, but there was no sign of Roz.
He ran and ran, and kicked and kicked. His heart was racing with so much fear that it felt as if it was going to drive out of his chest. But he couldn’t stop running and searching and searching and running until he turned another corner and Teddy was running toward him. They had effectively run into a circle.
“Where could she be?!” Teddy asked anxiously.
But Mick wasn’t answering questions. He began running down another small corridor. Teddy and Mick’s bodyguard hurried behind him. But when they turned yet another corner, that was when they finally saw Roz.
She was fighting with all her might against a man who was attempting to get her out of that back door. When Mick and Teddy saw her, she was scratching her abductor’s face with her long nails, and he slapped her so hard that she fell on her butt.
The bodyguard was stunned. Did that idiot just slap Mick Sinatra’s wife, and right in front of Mick Sinatra??? He couldn’t believe it!
Mick couldn’t believe it either as his already hammering heart plunged when he saw it with his own two eyes. He raced up to Roz as the attacker attempted to grab her again.
Mick grabbed that attacker and snatched him away from her. He began punching that man so hard that the man was bleeding after the second punch.
Mick had run to that man so fast that by the time Teddy and the bodyguard made it by Roz’s side, he had beaten that man until the man was already unconscious.
“Kick his ass, Mick,” Roz was saying angrily even as she still sat on the floor. “Kick his ass!”
But as Teddy was helping Roz to her feet and making sure she was okay despite her bravado, Mick had thrown the unconscious man to the floor and was stomping him like a dog.
He was stomping on his stomach, on his penis, and then repeatedly stomping him in his face.
The bottom of his expensive shoe was covered in the man’s blood he was stomping him so hard.
It became so bad that it took Teddy and the bodyguard fighting hard to pull Mick off of the man before he killed him in that public space.
“We’ll take care of him later, Pop,” Teddy had to bear hug his father and whisper in his ear. “But we can’t do it here!”
And that fact was the only reason that caused Mick the Tick-ing time bomb to come back to himself and stop his assault.
Mick snatched away from Teddy’s grasp and hurried over to Roz. “Are you okay?” he asked her as he was looking all over her body.
She was nodding her head “He didn’t hurt me,” Roz said.
“You know him?” Teddy asked her.
“Never seen him before in my life. That bastard! He ruined our play!” Then she kicked him too.
“Guys, there are cameras around this place,” Teddy said. “Let’s get out of here.”
But Mick knelt down to Roz’s attacker. “Who hired you?”
“Nobody.”
“Why were you trying to snatch my wife?”
“I’m a fan. I was trying to take her to safety.”
“Bullshit!”
“I’m a fan. I liked Miss Graham since she played Bess in Porgy and Bess. I was trying to help her until she got nasty and slapped me.”
Mick looked at Roz. “Ever been in that play?”
“That was one of my earliest plays, yes,” she said.
It gave credence to what the creep was saying. That was the only reason Mick left that guy where he laid and stood up.
Then he looked at Roz again. And when their eyes met, and Roz could tell that Mick saw the pain behind her toughness, tears began to appear in her eyes. It was opening night. She was already terrified. Now this disaster! She leaned against him.
It was strange to Teddy whenever he saw his stepmother vulnerable like that even though he knew she had a lot of vulnerability.
But the way his father wrapped her into his arms and held her was still mind-blowing to Teddy.
The idea of his father, the harshest man in the world, showing affection toward anybody always caught him off-guard.
And it always reminded him just how much he loved Roz.
He didn’t treat her right. But he loved her.
“Let’s get out of here before the cops want answers,” Mick said to Roz softly as he stopped embracing her and began escorting her toward the back door.
“What was that all about, Boss?” the puzzled bodyguard asked Mick. “Why they storm the stage like that?”
“Either they didn’t like the play,” Teddy responded for Mick, “or they didn’t like Roz.”
Mick gave Teddy a hard look. He didn’t like any of his children calling his wife by her first name. Although Roz had no problem with it, they all knew Mick did. It was disrespectful to him.
“They didn’t like Mrs. Sinatra,” Teddy said in correction.
But when they walked out of that stage door and into that alleyway, and began to head toward the front where Mick’s Escalade and Teddy’s SUV were waiting, a terrified voice suddenly came over Teddy’s radio on his wristwatch. “Help! Teddy, help!”
It was Nikki’s distressed voice. And then they heard what sounded like Jackie screaming.
“Where are you?” Teddy asked frantically.
“In front of the theater. Teddy help!”
Everybody knew Nikki was chill even in the face of danger. To hear her in such a state of distress let them know without a doubt it was bad. Worse than bad. And they ran up front as fast as they could.
But when they got up front, and could see a van with its backdoor flapping open and Nikki and Jackie and their bodyguard all running and attempting to grab Duke out of the back of that van, their collective hearts dropped.
It wasn’t Roz they were after. It was their child!
Storming the stage and forcing them to find Roz was the distraction.
They were taking Duke.
They had Duke!
They had the youngest son of Mick The Tick Sinatra.
Mick’s very soul burned in fury.