CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Sophie?”
“What?”
“Girrl! A real, honest-to-goodness Mister McSexy just walked through that door. I’m telling you that man is fine!”
Sophia was certain that Porsha, a fellow coworker with such poor judgment that she thought getting a job in a woman’s clothing boutique would be just the place to find herself a husband, was exaggerating big time.
But she was bored unpacking boxes so she hurried out of the stock room in back of the checkout counter to check him out for herself.
It was a running joke between her and Porsha because they could never agree on who looked great on those rare occasions when a man walked through their store doors.
And when Sophia followed Porsha out of the stock room to the checkout counter, and she saw who the man was that was slowly walking towards that counter, she realized just how crazy Porsha truly was. It wasn’t some random sexy man that had walked in. It was Mick Sinatra!
“Uncle Mick?” There was shock in Sophia’s voice as soon as she saw him. She could not recall the last time she saw her uncle in Champagne’s. If she ever did.
When she was younger she and the other children in the family always wanted to run and jump in his arms the way they did Uncle Tommy and Uncle Sal and even his big brother Big Daddy Sinatra, but they could never bring themselves to be that familiar with Uncle Mick.
They were mostly scared of him. Terrified even.
Like now. He looked bigger than the store to Sophia. “What are you doing here?” she asked him.
“Where’s your mother?”
That was her Uncle Mick, she thought. He always seemed to answer her questions with a question of his own. “She’s upstairs in her office. Want me to call her down?” She picked up the landline phone.
“No,” he said, and began making his way toward the stairs.
Sophia hung up the phone. She could hardly believe he was there.
Porsha could hardly believe it either, but for a very different reason. “McSexy is your uncle?”
Mick the Tick sexy? Sophia used to actually have a crush on him. But not because she thought he was sexy. She thought he was tough. And that, to her, was sexy. “Yes, he’s my uncle,” she said.
“That white man? But how?” asked Porsha. “You and your mama black.”
“You have seen my father before, Porsha,” Sophia reminded her.
She looked harder at Sophia as if she was confused. Then she realized Reno Gabrini was Sophia’s father. “Oh, that’s right!” she said, and then she laughed.
But then she shook her head as Mick disappeared up those stairs. “That fine man is your uncle. Wow. My uncles don’t look nothing like that girl,” she said, and Sophia laughed too.
But upstairs was no laughing matter as Trina, seated behind her desk, was forced to listen to an irate franchisee complain ad nauseum about the new rules Trina and Gemma were forced to put in place to protect their investment.
She even put the call on Speaker and put the desk phone on the hook.
And he kept going on and on as if all that complaining was going to change anything.
It wasn’t and he had to know it wasn’t. But she let him air it out.
When Mick walked into her office her caller was still going strong.
By the time Trina looked up and saw Mick, and after her heart dropped because she knew why he was there, she knew she had to wrap it up.
“In any event, the rules will not be changing. Have a nice day!” Trina said, lifted up the phone, and then sat it back down on the hook: effectively ending the call. “Hey Mick.”
Every time Mick saw Trina, a small part of his heart squeezed. She was still near and dear to him even though she was never his. He sat down in the chair in front of her desk. And crossed his legs. “What’s going on, Katrina?”
“You were in Rome on business?”
“Vacation.”
Trina was shocked. “Vacation? Mick! Was Roz with you?”
“And the twins, yes.”
“Mick! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You didn’t ask.”
“But you still came anyway? Even though you were on vacation?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
There was a slight hesitation, but he answered her. “You don’t phone me unless you’re at the end of your rope.”
Trina felt a swell of emotion come over her. She tried to suppress it. “Yes,” she said. “That’s where I am. Did you tell Roz you were coming to see me?”
Although Mick viewed Reno and Trina as one of very few couples that were more his equal in the family, he still didn’t answer her question. What he told or didn’t tell his wife wasn’t her business.
But Trina wasn’t trying to be nosey. She was concerned. “Is she upset that you had to cut her vacation short to come see me?”
“I didn’t cut it short,” Mick responded. “I’m returning when I finish here.”
Trina was shocked. “You’re flying all the way back to Rome?” Now she felt worse. “Ah Mick, I’m so sorry to put you out like this! I could have waited until you came back.”
“I’m here now. What is it?”
Trina exhaled. It would be the first time she verbalized it to anybody other than Von, and she had no choice about him since the blackmailers made him their go-to person. “I’m being blackmailed,” she said.
Mick knew it had to be something of that magnitude or she would have informed Reno. “It’s personal, rather than professional blackmail I take it?”
She nodded. “Very personal, yes.”
“What do they want?”
“I expected you to ask me why was I being blackmailed,” Trina said.
“The what will tell me the why. What do they want?”
Another exhale by Trina. “They want one-hundred percent ownership of the PaLargio Hotel and Casino on the Vegas Strip.”
Even Mick was shocked. “Damn! They want the whole thing?”
“They want all Reno’s shit, yes,” said Trina. “That’s their ask.”
Mick stared at her. “This wasn’t their first ask,” he said.
Trina’s eyes became anguished. And she shook her head. “No. Last year they came at me. They wanted fifty-one percent ownership. I told them a flat no. They settled for three million.”
Mick was inwardly floored even though he didn’t show it. “You paid them?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“And Reno didn’t know?”
Trina was ashamed. “No.” She fought back tears.
“That’s why Champagne’s is still struggling.
I took it straight out of the operating budget, which was already crippled and dependent on Reno way too much.
We were barely breaking even. Now he’s carrying the whole company because we’re in the red every single month. ”
“You ever thought of shutting it down?”
She nodded. “But Reno won’t let me. He knows it’ll break my heart if I fail. He believes we’ll turn a corner again after the economy picks back up, but I’m not so sure about that. Luxury stores are struggling big time.”
“Who’s the person that contacted you originally?”
“None of the blackmailers have contacted me at all.”
That was strange to Mick. “Then how did you know they had the goods on you?”
“Video. Photos. They have it, Mick. There’s no doubt about that.”
“How are you getting information from them if they aren’t contacting you?”
“They contacted an old friend of mine. Somehow they found out he knew, so they made him the middleman.”
Mick stared at her. “It’s a he?”
Trina nodded.
“What was the nature of the relationship?”
“Why would that matter?”
Mick was his usual bluntness. “It matters because if your ass is cheating on Reno,” he said, “you can kiss my ass.”
Trina was offended, but she needed his help. “We were friends before I knew Reno existed, okay Mick? So kissing ass won’t be necessary.”
Mick continued to stare at her. He wanted more.
“We slept together once,” she admitted. “Just one time. But that was before I even met Reno. It’s nothing.”
“Stop putting lipstick on this pig, Trina,” Mick warned her. “You’ve gotten yourself in a hellava mess. And by the way you’re reacting, and by the way you paid out all that money, it’s for good reason it’s a mess. So stop trying to minimize this shit.”
That was Mick too, she thought. He’d chew you up and spit you out and keep on talking.
“What’s the name of this friend?” he asked her.
“Javon Douglas. Von. We call him Von.”
“Is he still a friend with benefits?” Mick asked her.
Trina frowned. “Mick, kiss my ass! No! I already told you no. I’m not like you.” Then she caught herself. “I didn’t mean that last part.”
“But you meant the first part?”
“No no, no. I’m just . . . I wouldn’t do that to Reno. That’s all I’m saying.”
Mick now seemed convinced, and he nodded his head.
“Von and I are just friends,” Trina said again.
Mick stood up, prompting Trina to stand too. “You’re leaving?”
“You think I’ve got time to sit around here all day?”
“But you don’t even know why I’m being blackmailed.”
“I need to hear the story your middleman has to tell first. If it adds up, I’ll know he’s not the blackmailer. If it doesn’t add up, I’ll know what’s next. Right now, I don’t know shit. But your ass is going to tell Reno.”
Trina was horrified. “Tell him what?”
“Everything,” Mick said. “And I mean everything.”
“Even if it’ll cost me Reno and my children, and even your respect?”
Mick was stunned she was being that dramatic.
He knew it was bad. The ask by the blackmailers proved that.
But losing Reno and her children? What the fuck?
“That’s the price you may have to pay for whatever shit it is you did.
And apparently it’s no lie. You did it.” He looked at her for confirmation.
Trina hated to do it, but she nodded her head.
Then his looked turned even more chilling than it already was. “Tell Reno,” he ordered her. “Or I’ll tell him whatever I find out in whatever way I find it.”
She somehow had hoped Mick could handle it and Reno would never have to know. But she should have known, when it came to family, Mick didn’t roll like that. He wasn’t keeping anybody’s secrets. Not even hers. She nodded. Even as tears began to appear in her huge hazel eyes, she nodded.
And Mick was thrown. Next to Roz, Trina was the strongest woman he knew. To see tears in her eyes cut him to his core. What had this woman done?
But he couldn’t bear to see her in so much pain. That was why he behaved so completely out of character that even Trina was amazed when he came around her desk, and then pulled her into his arms.
Trina sobbed mercilessly in his arms. It was as if she’d been waiting for over a year for a shoulder to cry on. She never dreamed it would be Mick’s of all people. But it was. He held her and let her cry.
And when she stopped sobbing, and he released her, they looked into each other’s eyes.
Mick loved Trina. She was as much a Gabrini as Reno, Sal, and Tommy were, and she would always be near and dear to his heart despite whatever shit was going to come out about her.
But neither said a mumbling word. They didn’t need to. And Mick left.