CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

After everybody managed to pick up their jaws from the floor, they all were staring with astonished eyes at Mick and Roz. Mick and Roz were still seated with their legs crossed, but unlike everyone else who were looking from one to the other one to see which was going to spill the tea first, they were staring unblinkingly at each other.

But it was Roz who spoke first. “What video are you talking about?”

At first Mick didn't move a muscle. It looked to Roz as if he was trying to decide if he wanted to even discuss it. Notorious for his monumental lack of communication, that didn’t surprise her at all. It was a character trait that nearly doomed them from the start. But then he reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, pulled up the video, and handed it to Roz.

Although everybody in that room wanted desperately to see what could possibly be on that video that would have caused Mick to play along with some woman rather than just take her out, they dared not even attempt to look. But Charles went over to Roz's chair, held her shoulders as he leaned over her, and looked at that video along with her. He was the only one that dared.

The video, though grainy, was undeniably Roz, in bed, having sex with a big black man that obviously was not Mick's big, white body. Charles’s heart drew faint when he saw it. How on earth were they going to come back from this? He looked at Roz.” Who is he?”

Roz’s heart was faint, too, as a devastated look appeared on her face. “I don't know.”

“You don't know,” said Mick, “or you don't remember?”

Roz looked at him with so much hurt and anger that she threw his phone at him so hard that had he not caught it, it would have been utterly destroyed. And then she got us and tried to leave the room.

But to everybody's shock, Mick jumped up, too, hurried to her, and grabbed her by her elbow, turning her around. But it was the words he said that were even more shocking: “I’m sorry, Rosalind,” he said so quickly and so unambiguously that it didn't even sound like him. And to hear him apologize? Incredible.

So incredible that it caught Roz by surprise, too, and she allowed him to stop her progression.

She looked into his eyes. He looked into her eyes. And for the first time in a long time they saw each other again.

“I know him,” Roz said, contradicting what she’d just said earlier, and causing everybody to look at her with skeptical eyes. Roz was no liar, but yet she’d just lied? Roz was no cheater, but yet she was the one that cheated on Mick, and not the other way around? Up was down and down was up!

“He was an actor I dated when I was struggling in New York. Long before I even came to Philadelphia. Before I ever met you.”

“I thought so,” said Reno, as if he knew there was more to that story than Roz cheating. Mick cheating? He'd believe that all day long. But Roz? No way!

But Roz had a perplexed look on her face. “You saw me in that video and how young I was, Mick. How could you think that was new?”

“I never thought it was new,” Mick said.

Roz frowned. Everyone else was confused too. “Then why did you claim the reason you were cheating or flirting or whatever you were doing with that woman, was because of that video?”

“That video got me in the door.”

“In the door to what?” Charles asked for all of them.

“I needed, and still need to find out why this woman would have the unmitigated gall to show me a video of my wife, threaten to spread that video all over social media, if I didn’t do what she wanted.”

“What did she want, Mick?” Jenay asked.

They could tell whatever it was Mick found it distasteful. “Me,” he ultimately said.

To the men it seemed laughable. Who would want somebody as difficult and vicious as Uncle Mick? But to the women, it wasn’t laughable at all. Mick was team too much on his best day, but he was fine as pure wine. Sexy as sexy could get. Even sexier the older he got. Stronger than strong. It seemed completely plausible to them.

But it seemed confusing to Jenay. “But why would some woman out of the blue suddenly want you? Did you know her before her proposition?”

Mick hesitated again. “Yes,” he said.

“Have you slept with her before?”

Mick hesitated again. “Yes.”

Roz shook her head. “Why am I not surprised?”

“It was before I met you,” Mick said. “So don’t even go there.”

Everybody expected Roz to lash back at him, but she didn’t. There was a ray of hope that he wasn’t running around cheating on her, and she didn’t want to lose that hope.

“So to keep this broad close,” said Sal, “you were doing that sexting shit with her?”

“I wasn’t, no.”

Roz frowned. “What do you mean you wasn’t? I saw those text messages on your phone. They were loaded with sexual references.”

“If I know my brother, and I do ,” said Charles, “what he’s saying is that he didn’t write that shit.”

They all looked at Mick. “You didn’t write it?” asked Roz.

It was Mick’s turn to frown. “I don’t write that to you, but I’m going to write it to some woman I don’t give a damn about?”

Roz was baffled. “Then who wrote all that?”

“Blair.”

“Blair Witch?” asked Teddy. “Your secretary?”

“Blair Conyers. My executive assistant, yes. I told her to handle that.”

“But those messages were on your phone,” said Roz.

“He could easily connect the two phones,” said Reno, “so that Blair could write the messages on her phone, send them to his phone, and then he send them to the woman’s phone as if they came straight from his phone.”

“But why wouldn’t you just take her to a safe house, order her to cut it out, and call it a day?” Roz asked. “Why you had to go through all of this texting stuff?”

“She made clear that if anything happened to her, many more tapes of you with that same ex-boyfriend, who happens to be her boy toy now, would be plastered all over the internet. She said the tape she sent to me was the tame one.”

“Tame?” asked Charles. “That shit I saw wasn’t tame.”

“Compared to that other shit it was.”

“Have you seen the others?” Charles asked him.

Mick exhaled. “Some of them, yes.”

“Same guy?”

“Yes.”

“How would she know about these tapes?”

“She’s a jealous bitch,” said Mick. “She did her homework. Tracked down all of Roz’s ex-lovers. Found that guy and he had receipts. She purchased every one of them.”

“But if she’s so far in your past,” said Roz, “why would she suddenly want you back?”

“It wasn’t sudden. It’s been going on for years. I ignored her ass. Until she produced those tapes and involved you.”

“But if it wasn’t for those tapes,” said Roz, “you’d still be stringing her along.”

“I don’t string anybody along,” Mick said bluntly, and they stared at each other. They were nowhere near out of the woods yet.

“What was the point of all the texting?” asked Trina. “That’s what I don’t understand.”

“I ordered Blair to give her all the hope she needed until I can find out what her real motive is.”

“You don’t think it’s just that she wants you?” asked Jenay.

“That’s what she says is the motive. But I’m not buying it.”

Roz frowned. “But why couldn’t you just tell me all of this, Mick? Why did you let me think you were cheating on me with her?”

“Your ass didn’t give me a chance to tell you anything,” Mick said. And then he got blunt. “And I was tired of it.”

Roz stared at him. “So you were willing to risk our marriage rather than just tell me what’s going on?”

“When was I going to tell you?” His voice was raised an octave. “I go to the house to talk to you after you slap me in front of my men and you’ve already thrown my clothes out on the lawn because that’s what you do when you fly off the handle. I wasn’t going through that shit again. You were done with my ass and I was done with yours. I was done!”

Rarely had they ever seen Mick display that kind of emotion. And they all understood it. Roz was not approachable when she was angry. She could go off on you worse than any wife in that room. Even worse than Trina, although Reno would beg to differ. But even he knew Roz could be a stubborn mule when she wanted to be. And a silence hovered over the room.

But then, in the midst of that silence, loud sirens suddenly sounded like those European bomb alerts from World War II that caused everybody in that parlor to jump out of their seats and nearly out of their skins. Then a voice was heard over the loudspeaker: “An external breach on the property, sir,” it echoed over the sound of sirens. “An external breach on the property, sir!”

Charles ran over to the desk in the parlor, pressed a button that caused panels on the wall to part and a big screen to appear. The screen had a layout of the massive property in what appeared to be ten different camera angles. Charles put on his reading glasses to see the layout. And that was when he saw the hot spot. “It’s coming from the south gate,” he said as he pressed a second button that opened up a weapons closet filled with every weapon imaginable. Although every man in that room was already packing, they all went for the big guns: the assault rifles. Nikki did as well.

“Reno you, Tommy, and Tony protect the interior,” Charles ordered. “Mick and Sal, and Ted and Nikki will come with me.”

They all knew why he picked that foursome: they were all currently working mob bosses. Mick was supposedly retired from the day-to-day, but he was still as active as he’d ever been. Reno and Tommy were too busy running their business empires to do much of anything else. Tony had never been in the game. And Charles aimed to keep it that way.

Charles hurried to a different cabinet to gather up the two-way radio he would need to communicate with his grounds security. But as he was doing that, Teddy grabbed Nikki by her wrist and pulled her back. Everybody looked at him. “You stay inside,” he said to her.

There wasn’t a man in that room who didn’t sympathize with the position Teddy was in as her husband. But he made his wife his underboss. That was on him. They were all old school who believed in doing your duty. And she had a duty to perform, wife or no wife. Which the look on Mick’s face made clear as well.

And the look on Nikki’s face made clear, too, as she snatched away from Teddy. “What are you talking about? I’m not staying inside. Big Daddy gave an order and I’m going to perform it.” She was looking at Teddy as if she didn’t know him anymore. There was a time when he trusted her instincts so completely that there was nobody else he wanted in the field with him. Now he was scared to let her go investigate a potential security breach? Was he kidding her?

He wasn’t kidding. Their relationship was fraught with all kinds of problems that had him feeling a sense of forebodingness and dread that he just couldn’t shake. Like something was off. Something was wrong. And he was determined, for her sake, for their baby’s sake, to keep her out of harm’s way. “You’re staying inside,” he said again. “And since I’m your boss, that’s final.” He said that while staring dead at his father.

But Mick would have none of it. “And since I’m your boss,” he said, “she’s going.” Then Mick frowned. “What’s wrong with you?” And he left out of the parlor behind his brother and Sal.

Nikki didn’t want to defy Teddy. She hated that they were always seemingly on the opposite side of every issue lately. But his behavior was strange. And in her view just plain wrong. She hurried out of that parlor too.

Tony went over to Teddy. “Make her your priority while you’re out there,” he whispered to his cousin, “and it’ll be okay.”

Teddy looked at Tony. He was the only one who seemed to understand that he wasn’t being unreasonable, and that it was a feeling he couldn’t shake. But Tony was right. He’d be there. He’d have her back. And Teddy hurried out of the parlor too.

But Reno was shaking his head. “That’s why you don’t make your wife an underboss I don’t care what the fuck they say. I knew that shit was whacked when they first told me about it.”

“Just stay out of it, Reno,” Trina said.

“Ah fuck you, Trina, you don’t tell me what to stay out of.”

“I told you. And you’re out of it. How about that?”

“How about it, motherfucker?”

But before the two titans could fully engage, gunfire suddenly erupted from outside and the men rushing out began running out of the house. Tommy hurried behind them to secure the front entrance.

“Everybody in the corner!” Reno ordered forcefully as he and Tony began shepherding the ladies over to one side of the room. The two men looked at each other. Nothing was within ten miles of this place. How could there be a breach here ? And gunfire too? With all of this so-called security? It was as baffling as it was concerning.