CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Jackie saw her mother getting out of her Mercedes dressed to the nines like she usually was in her above-the-knee form-fitting dress and stilettos, with a small, black leather jacket to round out the package. But she didn't like the way the jocks out front, whom the school let them do pretty much anything they wanted, were whistling at her mother. As if everything was sexualized to them. As if everything was based on appearances to them and not on what was inside the package. That was why Jackie started wearing baggy jeans and shirts one side too large with a backwards baseball cap on her long, flowing hair that she kept in a thick braid. She didn't want those guys sniffing around her. They didn't call her names: they were all afraid of Duke. But they gave her looks she knew was just as bad as the name-calling. But she didn't care. Nobody was going to objectify her body.

Her mother hated her dress style. It had no rhyme or reason to Roz. Just clothes thrown together into a baggy mess. Although she appreciated that her daughter didn't like guys gawking at her, and she understood it, she felt as if Jackie was giving them too much power with her dress choices. Ignore them, was Roz's suggestion. But Mick had no problem whatsoever with their daughter's decision to not give those jocks something to gawk about and fantasize over. And he should know. He used to be one of those jocks too.

"Why aren't you in class?" Roz asked her pretty, biracial daughter as soon as she walked up to the front entrance where Jackie was standing.

"I wanted to show you something before you went in to see Jaws."

Roz looked at Jackie. "Jaws?"

"Our new principal. Principal Jaworski. We call him Jaws because he talks so much," Jackie said as she and Roz walked into the school. They stopped walking just outside of the main office. "Look at this, Ma." She handed Duke's phone to Roz. "This is why he fought Cody."

Roz looked at the video. It was one of those online newsbreaks where Mick was walking with Bella Caine on a red carpet event. "And at Paris Fashion Week earlier this evening," the announcer said, "Designer Bella Caine had her old beau and benefactor Mick Sinatra on her arm. Are they back together again? Bella's people are tightlipped. But if I had to say so myself: Their silence is a resounding yes! Mick and Bella – together again!"

Jackie stared at her mother as she watched that video. She was a beautiful woman in her own right, but she wasn't a young woman like that anymore. And she wasn't on Bella's beauty level. That video had to hurt.

But her mother had one of those faces that revealed nothing. Other than her father, she'd never known anyone so difficult to understand. Roz was attempting to hand her back the phone. "Go to class," she said cooly.

"But what are you going to do about it? They said Dad's back with Aunt Bella."

"She's not your aunt," Roz said firmly.

It was the first crack in her armor. But Jackie needed more. "Why do you keep putting up with this, Ma? Every other month it's something about him and Bella Caine. And it's been that way all my life. If he wants her so bad, let him have her. You're beautiful too. You don't have to put up with this."

"I said go to class." Roz remained cool. Inwardly she was raging, but outwardly she remained cool.

Jackie rolled her eyes at her mother.

"Roll'em again and you won't have any," Roz warned her daughter. "And take this phone."

"It's Duke's," Jackie said and walked away.

Roz watched her daughter walk away. In a lot of ways she admired Jacqueline. She refused to let these men twist her in the wind. But Roz had been twisting with Mick so long that she didn't know how to get out of the wind. It was easy for her children and her friends to say leave and let him have her. But she'd been there and done that too. She always came back. Or let him back. It wasn't the marriage she wanted. It was the marriage she had.

And Bella Caine? She didn't know where to begin with that woman. It would have been easier had it been some young bombshell Mick was spotted with because she'd know he didn't love her. It was just a sex thing that Roz could rectify. But with Bella? Mick had some serious love for that woman and Roz knew it, regardless of what he said. He loved Bella Caine. That was the problem.

But right now, Duke was the problem as she entered the main office. The secretary and one of the clerks were talking behind the counter, their backs to the entrance, when Roz walked in.

"And she had the nerve to ask did anybody die," the secretary said. When Roz heard her say that, her walk slowed.

"Did anybody die?" the clerk asked with astonishment in her voice. "Why would she say that?"

"You know why girl. Don't forget who her husband is. The apple don't fall far from the tree."

"And neither does a fist up an ass," Roz said when she heard that putdown.

The secretary and clerk, shocked that they had been overheard, and even shocker by what she'd just said to them, turned quickly. When they saw Roz walking away from the door and further into the main office, looking like the hardhearted woman they'd heard she was, both of their pink faces turned red. "Mrs. Sinatra, hello. Are you here to," the secretary started saying but Roz ignored her and continued walking down the hall to the principal's office. It was already a bad day. She wasn't about to let those silly women make it worse.

When she entered without knocking, Duke stood up from the chair in front of the principal's desk, but the policeman, their resource officer, sat him back down. Roz frowned. "What's this about?"

The principal stood up. "Have a seat, Mrs. Sinatra."

Roz sat beside her son. They hugged, but Duke knew his mother's energy. She was pissed. "What's this about?" she asked the principal again.

"Your son beat another young man so severely that we had to call an ambulance."

"Is the boy alright?"

"We don't know yet. His parents just arrived at the hospital and he's still being assessed. Because Michello is a minor, and because of our school policy, we wanted a parent here when he is arrested."

Roz frowned. "When who's arrested?"

"Your son, Mrs. Sinatra."

" For a fight ?" Roz was incredulous. "You're arresting him because he got in a f ist fight ?"

"It wasn't a fight, Mrs. Sinatra. It was a beatdown. One boy beating down another boy for no apparent reason. Pure and simple."

"Nothing's pure and nothing's simple. Not up in this bitch," Roz said. Then she looked at the school's resource officer. "You're the one who's going to arrest him?"

"That's correct, ma'am," he said confidently.

Roz hated to do it. It went against everything she knew to be right and decent. But they weren't locking up her boy. "May I speak with you, privately, in the hall please?"

The young officer seemed reluctant. "Well um. . . um."

"I'm not going anywhere," Duke said. He had a pretty good idea why his mother wanted to talk to the cop. "Where I'm going with the Principal right here in front of me?"

The officer knew that was true, too, and he also knew he had no choice. He followed Roz out into the hall, closing the office door behind them.

"Yes, may I help you?" he asked her.

"I don't know if you know this, since you're very young, but his father is Mick Sinatra."

The young officer stared at Roz.

"You've heard of him?"

"I heard of him, yes." Boy had he. Many of the teachers already told him to be careful. To tread lightly. To not go overboard. That was why he hadn't hauled Michello down to be booked the way he would have done any other student. He was playing it strictly by the book.

"You know who he is?"

"I know who he's reputed to be, yes ma'am."

Roz hated that word. It was always added on whenever reporters attempted to describe members of her family: Teddy Sinatra, Mick's oldest child, was the reputed head of Mick Sinatra's crime syndicate. Business titan Sal Gabrini was reputed to be the second most powerful mob boss in the world, behind only Mick himself. Vegas casino owner Reno Gabrini, once the head of the Gabrini crime syndicate, was reputed to still have numerous mob ties. And Mick? He got the worse of it. He wasn't just one of the most successful businessmen in the world. And he wasn't just a mob boss, either. He was the reputed boss of all mob bosses. At least let the press tell it. Roz, like all the women in the family, would never admit the validity of any of it. "All lies," was the go-to phrase.

But she needed this young upstart cop to believe it. "Who is my husband reputed to be, young man?" she asked him.

The young officer cleared his throat. "He's reputed to be the boss of all bosses. The head of the Sinatra crime family. The most powerful mob boss in the world."

If he was all that, why isn't he locked up , was another one of her go-to lines. She knew why. The powers that be were afraid of him too. He had gotten too big to touch. His reach was too wide. But she needed the cop to believe what he'd just said himself. "If he's all what you said," she said, "then what are you doing?"

"I'm doing my job. None of that stuff matters to me."

Roz laid down the hammer. "Do your balls matter to you?" she asked him.

The young man didn't realize it, but his mouth had gaped open.

"What about your arms?" Roz continued threatening him. "They matter to you? What about your legs? Your eyes? Your wife ?"

The young cop swallowed hard. And Roz could see in his beany eyes that he was getting the picture and getting it in living color.

"You're fucking with the wrong motherfucker," she said as icing on the cake.

It was working. His mind was running through all kinds of scenarios. He'd seen firsthand the horror those mobsters did to their enemies. The shear brutality of it. That was why nobody wanted to be on their enemies' list. Including him.

He cleared his throat. "Um, ma'am, well, my thought is that I don't think arresting him just yet is necessary," he said. "Since we don't really know the boy's condition yet."

"Right," said Roz.

"But if his condition takes a bad turn," said the officer, "it'll be out of my hands."

He was a coward in the end, a man washing his hands of law and order to save his life, and she appreciated that. She hated it. But she appreciated it. And she was able to take Duke out of that principal's office with just a two-week suspension. At least for now.

But as soon as they sat down in Roz's Mercedes, she slapped Duke upside his head. "Fighting like some damn thug in the street! Those white folks aren't going to put up with that shit at this kind of prestigious school! What's wrong with you?"

"You saw what Dad and Aunt Bella did?"

"What did they do , Duke? Tell me what did they do ?"

"She was on his arm in Paris."

"So what? They're friends!"

"Ah, Ma, give me a break! They're friends alright. Friends with benefits."

Roz slapped Duke across his face. "That's your father you're talking about!"

"A father who doesn't give a damn about us! Cody was picking at you. That's why I clobbered him. He said y'all had an open marriage and you let him do any woman he wanted to do."

"You know that's not true, Duke."

"I know it's not. And you know it's not. But does Dad know?"

Roz stared at her son. She knew Duke better than any of their children. She knew his heart. She knew that he loved his mother and father so much that it hurt him to think that his father could ever hurt his mother. But he'd seen him hurt her so many times before. Roz wanted to know why was this time any different?

"Your father and I have had our issues, Duke, and you know that. What makes this time different?"

But Duke didn't seem to know himself. "I just snapped," he said. Then he frowned. "What difference does it make?" he said as he began getting out of his mother's car.

"Where are you going boy?"

"I'll drive my own car home."

"I already told you Jackie's gonna drive your car home."

"I'll drive my own car home," he said again, reminding Roz so much of Mick. He was so much like his father and didn't realize it!

And she'd had it up to here with both of them. "Whatever," she said, Duke closed her door, and she sped away.

But tears rolled down her eyes as she drove. What kind of mother was she that her own children felt a need to fight her battles for her? She knew Mick wasn't going to be the best father, given how he wasn't there emotionally for any of his grown children when she first met him. Not for Teddy. Not for Gloria. And not for his two now-deceased sons Adrian and Joey either. They all had different mamas. He had different levels of relationships with all of their mamas. But Roz had made it clear to him that she wasn't going to allow him to do her or her children that way. She made him be available for them. He didn't do a great job, but he did a better job than he'd done in the past. She knew going in that making Mick a good father would take work. She never dreamed that making Mick a good husband would not only take work, but be damn near impossible to work out. And as hard as she tried to shield her children from his hurt, he was hurting them by hurting her. And she was allowing it. That was the part the children hated. That she was allowing it.

But what was she allowing? That was what the children didn't understand. They were certain he was cheating on her. Everybody was certain of it. But Roz wasn't. There were always receipts, if you could call that video a receipt, but Roz wasn't buying it. And she could kick Mick's ass for still having that out there. But for her to think that he'd lay down in bed with another woman and fuck her? She couldn't believe it.

He was an asshole. She believed that. But a cheater was another matter.

She pressed her screen and attempted to phone him again. She'd already tried on her way to the school. But once again it went to Voice Mail. Which made no sense. It was like eight at night in Paris. It wasn't late. And she hadn't heard from him since he left to go over there. But she'd be damn if she had to call his driver or his bodyguard just to make sure he was okay. She was far gone with Mick. But she wasn't that far gone.

She ended her call. Wiped her tears with the back of her hand. And took herself back to work.