CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

When Mick and Nikki walked into the house, Charles "Big Daddy" Sinatra, Mick's older brother and the man who raised him, was already there and sitting in Mick's favorite living room chair. Anybody else would have quickly gotten up when the big man entered the room, but they both knew Big Daddy didn't give a shit.

Mick sat on the sofa. Nikki went over and hugged Big Daddy's neck. She was always amazed at how handsome he was. Everybody always said Tommy Gabrini was the best looking man in their family of very good looking men. But Big Daddy was the best looking in Nikki's eyes. "It's been a minute, Big Daddy, "Nikki said as they hugged.

"Teddy still treating you right?" he asked her as he hugged her tightly. She was one of his favorite's too.

"Yes, he is," Nikki responded as they stopped embracing. She and Teddy were having their issues, but that wasn't for public consumption. "When did you get in town?"

"Since about four after I heard what happened."

"Teddy was out in the field. Has he been by?"

"He just left. Had to go to the docks. He said a ship didn't come in."

That surprised Nikki. She looked at Mick. "Did you know that?"

"No. Call him and find out what's going on."

"Excuse me," Nikki said as she pulled out her phone and began heading back outside to avoid Mick hearing her conversation – and taking it over.

Big Daddy looked at Mick. "You look terrible."

"So do you."

"Yeah well." Big Daddy ran his hands across his face. "I look like I feel."

"Jenay?"

"Among other things, yes."

"In or out?"

"She's back in the hospital."

Mick frowned. "Then what are you doing here?"

"Because your ass wasn't here," he said firmly. "Roz was calling me crying."

"Crying?Over what?"

"Over your ass. What else? And what's this bullshit I hear about you and Bella Caine?"

"Nothing to hear."

"That's what you always say."

"It's the truth. How's Jenay?"

Big Daddy hesitated. "She's drained of all energy again. They're running more tests. Experts are flying in. The usual routine. Whatever she's got is so damn rare that nobody seems to know what it is. She could be fine for months, then bam. We thought we had it figured out. It was the medication they were giving her at the hospital we thought. But then she had another episode and that was that. We keep going back to the drawing board."

"I thought they said it was Lupus."

"They said it was a kind of Lupus. Which is another word for saying they don't know what it is. You know what she told me?"

"What?"

"She said it would be awful to not what she died of."

"Died? Why is she talking like that?"

"I told her to cut that shit out every time I see her. But she's just tired of being sick, that's all."

Mick hated when Charles was distressed. "What's the prognosis?"

"I just want her healed. I just want her back. That's the prognosis. She's going to be just fine and be herself again."

Mick stared at the strongest man he'd ever known. "And if that doesn't happen?"

Big Daddy let out a harsh exhale. "Then it won't happen. I'm not God. God is God. And the master's plan will not be altered. But . . . I want her back. I want her to be herself again."

He said this and looked at Mick. And in that moment Mick realized the writing was on the wall and Charles knew it, but he was still coming to terms with it. "How's Jenay taking it?"

"Taking what?"

"Her illness." Mick meant the other thing, but he could tell Charles wasn't ready to go there.

"She's taking it better than I am. That's for damn sure." Then Big Daddy leaned his head back and closed his eyes momentarily. Then he reopened them and looked at Mick. "What's this shit about you and Bella Caine?" he asked again.

He and Mick were so alike. They didn't just sweep the bad stuff under the rug. They swept the bad stuff out of the door. "I told you t's nothing."

"Your son beat the crap out of a kid over nothing? Who do you think you're talking to, Michello?"

Mick exhaled. "Where's Junior?"

Big Daddy pressed the intercom button on the side table. "Duke, get down here! Your father's home."

It took seconds for Mick to hear the sound of running down the staircase and then he saw Duke, along with his partner in crime Jackie, come into the living room. It wasn't lost on Big Daddy how both twins went straight to the sofa and sat on either side of their father: boxing him in. It was the same way with Teddy and Gloria. They loved their old man to death and had no problem showing it. The ball was in Mick's court to reciprocate because Charles knew his kid brother loved them as well. But Mick always left that ball sitting there.

"Have you heard anything about Cody?" Jackie asked their uncle.

"I went to the hospital before I came here," Big Daddy said and even Mick looked at him. "He's in bad shape. No other way to put it."

"How bad?" Duke asked him.

"Bad," Big Daddy said. "What your ass thought was gonna happen the way you punched the daylights out of him?"

"He should have kept his mouth shut."

"Don't you dare justify that shit," Big Daddy said, "or I'll kick your ass myself."

Duke said nothing. He rarely said a lot anyway. Like Mick, he usually let his actions speak for him.

"Is he still in surgery?" Mick asked his brother.

"He's out. He's in ICU, but he's out of surgery. It's touch and go."

Mick looked at Duke. Then Duke looked at his father. And tears appeared in Duke's beautiful eyes. "I didn't mean for it to happen that way. I didn't mean to put him in no hospital," he said, and then leaned against his father.

Big Daddy stared intensely at Mick as Jackie wiped tears from her eyes too. When Mick placed his arm around Duke, and then around Jackie too, Big Daddy exhaled. It was about time, he thought.

But if Big Daddy had hoped Mick would offer words of encouragement to his son, that didn't happen. But it was enough that he at least acknowledged his boy's pain. More than he ever did for his grown children. But Big Daddy knew that was Roz's influence over Mick. Unlike the mothers of his grown children, they never had the balls to stand up to Mick the way Roz did. Mick, in Big Daddy's estimation anyway, married the right one.

When both twins stopped leaning on their father and sat upright again, Jackie, who had her mother's spunk, Big Daddy thought, took the handkerchief from her father's suit coat and blew her nose. That made Big Daddy smile. It reminded him of when she used to crawl up on her father when she was a baby and wouldn't let anybody move her.

Then she looked at Mick. "What's gonna happen to Duke if Cody doesn't make it, Daddy?"

"He'll make it," Duke said.

"We have to be realistic, Duke. He might not."

Just like her mother, Big Daddy thought. She was a realist too.

"What's gonna happen to Duke?" Jackie asked again.

"Nothing will happen to him," Mick said.

"Will I get arrested?" Duke asked.

"Did you think about getting arrested when you jumped on that young man?" Mick asked his youngest son.

Duke scrunched up his attractive face. "No sir."

"Then what are you worrying about it now for?" Mick settled back down. "Let me worry about that," he added.

Duke and Jackie both looked at their father. It seemed to Big Daddy that they were just realizing the burdens Mick carried for them. And that, for them, meant more than a hug or an I love you. It showed the hug and it showed the love. "Yes sir," Duke said.

"Teddy said you were expelled," Mick said.

"I would have been if Ma hadn't talked to that cop. The principal gave me a two-week suspension though."

"You should have gotten more than that," Big Daddy said. "Don't you dare minimize what you did to that kid."

"Was he smaller than you?" Mick asked Duke.

"Bigger," said Duke.

"Much bigger," said Jackie.

Mick nodded. "Good. Your ass better never beat up a kid that can't fight back."

"I would never do that," Duke said. "Cody's always been a bully. He just can't bully me."

Duke and Jackie fist bumped. Big Daddy shook his head.

"Where's your mother?" Mick asked.

Duke hunched his shoulders. "I don't know. You know, J?"

"She said something about going to a meeting."

"A meeting this time of night?" Mick asked her.

"That's what she said," said Jackie. "She'll knock me through that wall if I question her, just like you would if I question you." Then Jackie said beneath her breath. "Y'all just alike."

Mick cut her a hard look.

"In a good way," she said with a smile, and Duke grinned. His sister was the master politician already, he thought.

"You guys go back upstairs," Big Daddy said. "I want to talk to your father."

They didn't hesitate. They hurried back upstairs.

Big Daddy leaned forward. "Does Roz know about that video?"

"I haven't seen it myself so how should I know?"

"Did she meet your plane?"

Mick hesitated."No."

"Then she knows about it. And you don't know where she is?"

"No.Do you?"

Big Daddy frowned. "How would I know where she is? I've said this before, and I'm gonna say it again: She's gonna get tired of putting up with your bullshit, Mick. All of this on- again, off-again marriage is ridiculous. And it's affecting Duke and Jacqueline. It has to."

"Don't worry about my marriage. Worry about your wife."

Big Daddy jumped up so fast and slapped Mick so hard that Mick's face jerked sideways. "I'll worry about whoever the fuck I wanna worry about, you cold motherfucker!"

Any other man would have been dead. There was no two ways about it. But Mick just sat there staring at his older brother.

Big Daddy was hard on Mick when Mick was a kid. Wouldn't let Mick get away with shit. But he was the same way with his four sons. He raised them alone when his first wife left him high and dry. He didn't let them get away with shit, either, and still didn't. And they loved Big Daddy to death. He did a great job even Mick had to admit. He was a great man.

That was why Mick's look softened. "I was out of line," he said to his brother.

"Yes you were."

"But if you slap me again," Mick started saying.

But Big Daddy finished it for him. "If I slap you again you still won't do shit. So shut the fuck up," he added, dared Mick to dispute what he said, and then he went and sat back down. It was as close to an apology as Charles was going to get. He was pleased to get that.

Mick continued to give his brother a hard look. Everybody knew how vicious Mick could be. But there were only two people in this entire world that he never struck back: his brother and Roz.

He pulled out his cell phone and called her security detail chief. "Where's my wife?"

"Right now she's at the Ritz-Carlton, sir."

"At a hotel?"

Big Daddy looked at Mick when he said those words.

Mick was still jetlagged because it was a six hour difference between Paris and Philly, an eight-hour flight home, and it all ran together. When he boarded the plane in Paris, it was eight at night and two in the afternoon in Philly. After eight hours in the air and the change in time zones, when he landed it was ten at night in Philly and four in the morning in Paris. It felt like it always felt to Mick when he returned from Europe: as if it was déjà vu all over again. But he still had enough faculties to know that it was late local time. Why would she be at a hotel? "Doing what?" he asked her detail chief.

"They talked for a long time. Now she and the young man are having dinner, sir."

"How young?"

"He looks to be under thirty."

Mick exhaled. "Do you know what this meeting is about?"

"No sir. Our mission is not to spy on your wife."

"You don't tell me what your mission is," Mick snapped at him.

"Oh no sir. I didn't mean it that way, sir."

Mick ended the call. Then he exhaled again.

Big Daddy watched him just sit there. It took several seconds, but then Mick got up and walked out of his front door.

Big Daddy shook his head. "That's my kid brother," he said out loud to no one. "He can do anything he wants. But let Roz try that shit."

Then he leaned back, thought about his own wife, and gave her a call.