CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The small church on the hill was filled to capacity with the townspeople, alongside Reno and Trina, with Dom’s child and Mariah seated beside them.
Sal and his wife Gemma and their children were also there, along with Tommy, his wife Grace, and all of their children.
Sophia and her husband Jovie were in attendance, as were Jimmy, his daughter Madison, Trina’s parents, Sal’s father, and Carmine.
Charles “Big Daddy” Sinatra, Mick’s older brother, was also there with his wife Jenay and Mick’s wife Roz.
And Hammer Reese, the former head of the CIA, was also there with his wife, Mick and Big Daddy’s half-sister Amelia Sinatra-Reese.
Standing against the walls were a who’s who of other Sinatras, including Big Daddy’s adopted daughters Ashley and her husband, mob boss Monk Paletti, and Carly Sinatra and her husband, government operative and business titan Trevor Reese.
Mick’s children Teddy Sinatra, Gloria Sinatra, and his twins were all there too.
All of Big Daddy’s sons were there as well.
And alongside them were business tycoon Alex Drakos and his kid brother Oz, and a various assortment of children and other young people in the family.
In that little church, in that moment, there were more billionaires per square feet than most anywhere else in the world.
And many of them had black wives.
It was a startling thing to witness for a townspeople who’d only known poverty and struggle their entire lives, and blacks on the bottom of everything. They felt proud.
But nothing made them more prideful than seeing their champion, Dom Gabrini, standing at the front of the packed church beside their fellow townsman and Dom’s neighbor from across the street, Otis Freeman. Ready to take charge.
It was Souls to the Polls Day, which, for Washwater, was their one and only election day where the candidates made their speeches for support and then the townspeople voted. And they were all waiting for the incumbent Sheriff and the incumbent Mayor, both of whom were up for reelection and had never had opponents before, to show up. But even as they waited; even as Dom looked at his watch and fumbled with his tie, it was still surreal to every member of his family.
Seven months ago, after all the chaos was finally over and a major war averted, Dom made the incredible decision to remain in Washwater. They all thought it was just a fad. Dom was known for being amped-up about something, and then quickly losing interest. But when he returned to Vegas and Mariah decided that she and the baby would go with him to give their relationship another chance, the family took notice. Mariah didn’t play. If she thought Dom was serious, he must have been serious. And now, seven months later, he was a candidate for the town’s sheriff along with Otis Freeman, who was running for mayor.
But they were up against some serious headwinds. The mayor and sheriff had rigged the game in such a way that no black adult could vote. They all had felonies on their records, all for bogus traffic violations, and felons couldn’t vote. The mayor and sheriff, both white and neither of which even lived anywhere near Washwater, ran unopposed election after election after election.
But this time Dom and Otis had decided to challenge them anyway. Especially after Dom was given a traffic citation for supposedly running a nonexistent stop sign and was slapped with a felony too. That was when he knew he had to stop this nonsense. But how?
He didn’t want to use strongarm tactics. He was turning over a new leaf. And since he was always a smart young man, although his actions in the past didn’t lend themselves to brilliance, he did his research and discovered that there were three young ladies in town that were just about to turn eighteen. He registered them to vote and then hid them in his house until election day. That way, the sheriff couldn’t find them and write them a ticket for some made-up violation, like jaywalking or public loitering or whatever else he could come up with the way he usually did whenever a resident turned eighteen. Tainting them with a felony out the gate of adulthood and thus preventing them from ever being able to vote him and the mayor out of office was how the game was played. But Dom’s move changed all that.
Because now, on election day, Dom placed the three cherished voters in his truck and personally drove them to the church. They were ready to cast the deciding (and only) votes. Although it was monumental foolishness to have to go to such lengths just to vote, it wasn’t foolishness to the people of the town. It was the way it was in Washwater.
When the door of the small, wooden church creaked opened, everybody turned hoping to see the mayor and the sheriff so they could get on with the election. Because all the townspeople were worried that the men would have some trick up their sleeves that their new leader Dom hadn’t thought about. They were bracing themselves for the worst.
But when both men walked through that door, they didn’t see that arrogance on their faces that usually was there. They didn’t look smug and full of themselves either. They looked terrified.
Probably because they weren’t alone. They were escorted into the church by the man the townspeople knew as Dom’s uncle, but who Otis drove over to Tutwiler and looked up online. That man, he discovered and later told the whole town, was none other than Mick “The Tick” Sinatra, the boss of all mob bosses throughout the world. But because he was Dom’s uncle and therefore on their side, they were cool with it. They wanted their town back and maybe he and Dom and Dom’s great father, the man they still affectionately called Tyrone, could give it back to them. They would take whatever help they could get.
As the mayor and sheriff made their way to the front of the church, Mick took a seat up front beside his wife.
“Where have you been?” Roz asked him.
“I went on a drive,” Mick responded.
Roz gave him a hard look. She knew what kind of drive he went on.
But as the two white leaders of the all-black town made their way up front, all of the women in the Gabrini and Sinatra families were shaking their heads. From Trina, Roz, and Jenay, to Gemma and Grace and Sophia, they were all just appalled by how those two men managed to stay in power all those years by suppressing the black vote. Today, they felt, it would all change and never be the same again. And Reno and Trina were proud to know that their son, the one that usually caused the problem instead of being the problem solver, had everything to do with it.
The pastor of the church stood in the middle of the two incumbents and their two opponents.
The opponents spoke first.
“If I am elected as your new sheriff,” said Dom, “the very first order of business for me will be to rescind every one of the fake felony charges against every man and woman in this town and restore your voting rights,” he said to great applause.
“If I am elected as this town’s mayor,” said Otis, “my first order of business, thanks to Dominic Gabrini’s construction company, will be to take our tax dollars and instead of putting them in my pocket like my opponent has done for years, I’m gonna renovate every single broken down house in this town and pave the roads and clean the whole place up.” He received even greater applause.
“Okay,” said the Pastor who couldn’t vote either because he was cited for loitering just by standing in front of his church, “we will now hear from the current officeholders. Beginning with the sheriff.”
“I ain’t got nothing to say,” the sheriff said, as he glanced over at Mick. The townspeople looked sneeringly at him. They weren’t hateful people, but they hated how that big belly sheriff treated them.
“Mayor?” asked the pastor. “What you got to say?”
But the mayor had nothing to say either.
“Alrighty then,” said the happy pastor, “time to vote! Will all eligible voters please come up and cast your ballots.”
When only three young ladies got out of their seats and went and cast their ballots, Trina and Reno both were shaking their heads. “Just three people. A crying shame,” Trina said, and Reno, who couldn’t agree more, squeezed her hand.
But when the three young ladies cast their ballots, the entire town erupted in applause. They were voting for all of them, and they all felt it.
But as the elections supervisor, a stout black woman, went to the ballot box and took out the three ballot to officially tabulate them, Roz noticed that Mick seemed uncomfortable in his seat.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asked him.
He looked at him. “Nothing’s wrong with me.”
“Then sit still. Why are you squirming around in your seat like you’re that ho in church people talk about?”
When Trina heard it, she laughed. Mick looked at Trina, first, and then at Roz as if he couldn’t believe she just said that about him. Anybody else would have cowered under his chillingly brutal gaze. Trina nor Roz, both OGs, didn’t so much as batted an eye.
And then the votes were announced. “With three votes to zero, the new mayor of Washwater, Mississippi is Otis Freeman!”
The town erupted and stood on their feet with applause.
“With three votes to zero,” the elections supervisor continued, “the new sheriff in town is Dominic Gabrini!”
The town and all of the Gabrinis and Sinatras erupted in the kind of applause and cheers that made the floor shake. Dom a sheriff? It was as crazy as it was natural to all of them.
After the elections supervisor showed everybody the actual ballots and the winning names on all three ballots, the pastor said a prayer, and then election day was over.
The former mayor and former sheriff nearly ran out of that church, with both of them staring at Mick, with both of them remembering his warning that after election day they had better clear out of town. And if they ever came back to that town for any reason whatsoever, they and their families would find themselves as the latest unique mixture in a barrel of cement.
They couldn’t get out of that church, and that town, fast enough.
But when everybody made their way outside, they were pleased to see all the tables filled with food and the ladies ready to serve everyone. Sal and Gemma hurried over to Reno and Trina. Sal was starved. “Who paid for this kind of spread?” he asked Reno. “You?”
“What are you talking? The people paid for it. They make decent wages now.”
“You still haven’t paid me for taking over my diner and factory and refusing to give them back,” Sal said.
“Your repayment is that I didn’t kill your ass for that Tyrone Black shit,” Reno fired back.
Trina and Gemma laughed.
“Thought you’d get a kick out of that,” Sal said.
“I got your kick right here,” Reno said.
“And how could Dom afford to buy a construction company pit-bossing for you?” asked Sal.
“How do you think? He’s my son. If I’m rich, my children are rich.”
“People should earn their own way.”
“Yeah right. As if Lucky’s gonna earn his own way. As if you aren’t gonna help that motherfucker—”
“Reno, you’re on church grounds,” Trina reminded him.
“Pardon my French,” Reno said, “but you and me both know Sal’s just blowing smoke.”
“I don’t know why I’m even talking to you. Come on, Gem,” Sal said, taking his wife’s hand, who was smiling and finding it all amusing, “let’s go get some of this food. They’ve got everything here.”
“Oh, Sal,” said Reno.
Sal looked back. “What?”
“Try some of those crabs over there why don’t you? They’re delicious.”
“Crabs? Not something I normally eat, but they’re good hun?”
“Delicious,” said Reno. “Especially that yellow-looking cheese like stuff inside of those crabs, and those finger-looking gills? Man, they’re the best.”
Sal was getting excited. “Okay. I’ll try the cheese and those fingers especially.”
Gemma couldn’t help it. She burst into laughter. “Come on, boy,” she said and dragged her hapless husband away from Reno’s nonsense.
“You were wrong for that, Reno,” Trina said when they walked away.
“He deserved it.”
Trina couldn’t disagree. “Yes, he did. But that still don’t make it right.”
“But don’t you love it, Tree?” Reno asked her.
“You needling Sal?”
“No! This,” Reno said as they looked around the yard at the family eating and the children playing and the townspeople mingling with millionaires and billionaires like it was just another day. “Just seven months ago, we were in a war. But now there’s peace. Our enemy is neutralized, his wife and kids are out of the safe house, and we’re no longer burdened by shit, I mean stuff we can’t control. And Dommi,” said Reno as both parents looked over at their oftentimes troublesome son as he played with his own child. “I think he’s really trying to change this time, babe. I truly do. Don’t you just love it?”
“Yes, I do.” Then she looked at Reno. “Just like I love you.”
When Trina said those words, Reno stared at her. Neither one of them said those words nearly enough. And Reno smiled. “Ditto kid,” he said to her.
But Trina wasn’t having it. “ Ditto ? What is that to say when somebody tells you they love you? Ditto ? Are you joking?”
Reno laughed. “Actually, yes, I am.” Then his look turned serious as a heart attack, and Trina was ready to receive it.
“You said that you loved me,” Reno said, “and that’s why, with all my heart and soul, and with all the affection I have for you, I say to you with all the force that these three words truly mean: Same here, kid ,” he said, and immediately began laughing and running for his life because he knew Trina was going to kill him if she caught him.
She was right on his tail.