“I’ve never seen Roz like that before,” Nikki said as she drove Roz’s car. “She’s had her share of outbursts. I’ve seen that many times before. But that sadness? That was new.”
Teddy nodded. “Yeah, I know.”
“What if they don’t make it, Teddy? What’s gonna happen?”
“Hopefully Roz will find herself a man that can appreciate her,” Teddy said. But then he exhaled. “It’ll kill Pop. It’ll kill him. He loves her even though he doesn’t show it right. It’ll be awful for both of them.”
Then another call came in over Teddy’s car screen. It was his transport supervisor. “It’s Ollie,” he said. “Let me call you back.”
Nikki ended their call and Teddy picked up Ollie’s call. “What?”
“We got tankers missing, Boss.”
“What do you mean missing?”
“Unaccounted for. We did roll call. It didn’t add up. We’ve got tankers missing.”
“And what do you mean by tankers? It’s more than one?”
“From what we can come up with we’re talking three trucks in total.”
“Motherfuck!” Teddy was shocked. “How the hell did we lose three big-ass tankers, Ollie?”
“I don’t know! We’re trying to see now what’s going on, but nobody has any information. I’m working every angle I can think of.”
“Gotdammit! Why didn’t you call me sooner?”
“I knew you were having dinner with the big boss so I figured you wouldn’t want him to find out until we got more intel.”
Although Mick anointed Teddy the boss of the Sinatra Crime Family when he decided to step aside from the day-to-day so that he could focus on his legitimate and ever-expanding business empire, everybody still considered Mick to be the undisputed head of the family. Teddy was still, in their eyes, his second-in-command. Which pissed Teddy off. His heavy-ass workload made clear he was the boss, but the guys still saw Mick as the “big” boss and Teddy as his number two.
But none of their asses called Mick when trouble was brewing. And if Ollie hadn’t miscalculated, trouble was definitely brewing. “I’m on my way,” Teddy said and ended the call.
Then he looked down to press the microphone to ask Alexa to call Nikki back. But he was still so angry by the news he’d just heard that he blew through the intersection still behind Nikki without realizing the light had already turned red.
Before he could clear that intersection, a big brown Ford Expedition was speeding through what was a green light on his end of the intersection. As soon as that driver saw the Porshe, he slammed on brakes with such force that his SUV began to screech and shoot sparks of fire from its tires.
But it was already too late.
That SUV slammed into the driver side of Teddy’s Porsche with such force that the Porsche flipped so violently and then bounced so high that Nikki, watching it in horror through the rearview mirror, thought she was watching an action flick.
She slung Roz’s car over to the side of the road as Teddy’s Porsche slammed back down to the ground with such violence that it landed on its roof and began spinning wildly out of control.
Nikki’s heart was in her shoe as she ran to Teddy’s car. People were hopping out and running to his car too. Including the driver of the SUV, who looked inside of the Porsche, saw the condition of the driver, and started wailing in terror.
“I didn’t see him until it was too late,” he was saying to whoever would listen as he held his hands over his head and kept turning around in horror. “I didn’t mean to kill him! I didn’t mean to kill him!”
When Nikki ran up and looked into Teddy’s mangled car and saw his condition too, she nearly dropped to her knees in shock and panic.
But she didn’t drop at all. She couldn’t give up on Teddy. She could never give up on Teddy no matter how bad it looked!
She, instead, worked like hell to get him out to administer CPR even as that SUV driver was still repeating that he didn’t mean to kill him. As if it was a done deal. As if it was a wrap and already over. As if there was no hope to be found and she was just wasting her time.
Nikki could barely see what she was doing for her tears, but she kept working feverishly to get to him through the wreckage. She was not giving up. There was no way she was ever giving up on Teddy.
CHAPTER THREE
The automatic doors of the hospital slid open and Mick and Roz hurried into the ER. The hospital administrator had just gotten off the elevator and was rushing to greet them. It was obvious that he had to scramble to get downstairs as soon as he got word that Teddy Sinatra had arrived by ambulance after a nasty car crash and that his father was on the way. Everybody in Philly, including that administrator, knew Mick Sinatra as a titan of industry. But they also knew the rumors that Mick Sinatra was the boss of all mob bosses. He was as nervous as he was excited. “Mr. Sinatra, welcome sir,” the administrator said as he hurried toward them.
