PROLOGUE
TWO YEARS EARLIER
“He’s coming now. Yes, right now. I gotta go. I said I gotta go. Bye!”
Cleo Burgess took a final drag on her cigarette and put away her smartphone when she saw the Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat drive behind the boarded-up, abandoned shoe factory building where she was leaned against her classic Stingray. She knew Teddy drove the Hellcat, and she saw him behind the wheel. That wasn’t surprising. But it was damn surprising that Mick would bring him along in the first place when he knew how she felt about that asshole.
She dropped her cigarette and smushed it beneath her high heel. Teddy was driving like a maniac on the verge of losing total control of the wheel just like his father drove. When they were in high school that was always Teddy’s chief ambition: to be just like his old man. He bragged about him nonstop. It was no surprise to Cleo when Mick made him boss of his entire syndicate.
But even Teddy didn’t drive as crazy as Mick. Mick was so far out there in everything he did that she often wondered how that man managed to stay alive all these years.
But alive he was, she thought. No man was more alive than Mick Sinatra.
But when Teddy Sinatra first drove around the back parking lot of the old, boarded-up building in his revved-up Hellcat with its 6.2-liter HEMI V8 engine and he saw Cleostanding there, he looked at his father. “Her? That’s why we’re making this detour all the way over here? Forheragain?”
Mick didn’t look at his son. Didn’t answer him either.
But Teddy couldn’t let it go. “Pop, is this what we’re doing? Why are you always coming to her rescue? She’s almost as bad as Bella Caine. But at least you have a child with Bella. There’s a reason for you to stay civil with Bella. But you don’t owe shit to Cleo.”
But when Teddy came to his usual abrupt stop, with his Charger jerking to a halt, Mick didn’t mince words. “Get out,” he said to his son, the head of his Sinatra Crime syndicate, and the third most powerful mob boss in the world behind only Mick himself and Sal Gabrini.
But Teddy knew his status. That was why he looked at his father again. “If it was any other man disrespecting me like this? Oh it’ll be on. Bet that.”
But Mick wasn’t any other man and nobody knew it better than Teddy. Mick looked at him. “I said get your ass out and let her in.”
Teddy angrily unbuckled his seat belt and opened the driver side door. “One of these days I’m gonna leave you and your organization and do my own shit.” He looked at his father. “What you gonna do then, Pop? Nikki and Marco goes with me, and Dommi ain’t thinking about your ass anymore. What you gonna do?”
Mick didn’t say a word. He just stared those hard, icy-green eyes at his son as if he was daring him to leave him. But that was on the outside. Inwardly Mick was extremely concerned that Teddy would one day take off and take Nikki with him too. They ran his day-to-day operations while he ran his corporation. Nobody could do it better than Ted and Nikki. But he’d rather die than let even his son uncover so much as a hint of his vulnerabilities.
But Teddy didn’t see all that. All he saw was the outside. And when his father didn’t respond to his challenge, he chalked it up to his father’s general hard-heartedness, and got out of his own car as he was ordered to do.
But Cleo was pissed when Teddy stepped out. They were right around the same age. They went to the same high school. Teddy used to try to talk to her back in the day long before she met Mick, and she would always turn him down. She wasn’t into white boys, she’d tell him. And she wasn’t. Black men were all she wanted. And that remained true until she turned twenty-two, was still struggling to make ends meet, and went to Mick the Tick for help.
But Teddy didn’t like it when she started fooling around with his father, and never ceased to tell her so either. As if she wasn’t good enough for the big man. As if she was too street for a man like his daddy when his daddy was the very definition of street. With his gangster ass.
But that was Teddy, Cleo thought as Teddy got out of his car and the two former classmates eyeballed each other. He was always putting Mick on a pedestal when all Mick ever did for him was to work him like agotdamn slave. She didn’t like him, and he couldn’t stand her. “And hello to you, too, Teddy T.”
“Ah fuck you, Cleo,” Teddy said as he moved away from her. “How ‘bout doing that for me?” Then he grinned. “Killed any capos lately?”
She gave him a hard glare. Six months ago she was accused of leading two of Sal Gabrini’s capos to their slaughter, which she vehemently denied but could never live down. “You can kiss my black ass,” she shot back. “How ‘bout doing that for me, Teddy T?” Then she addedassholebeneath her breath as she opened the back passenger door of his Charger and got inside.
“That damn Teddy,” she complained as she closed the door. “You should teach that boy some manners. Why you had to bring him anyway?”
Mick Sinatra was leaned back on his seat and didn’t respond. All she could see was the back of his head full of his thick brownish-black hair. He didn’t look at her and she knew he wasn’t going to answer her question. His entire gaze was straight ahead as if that early night fog held his strictest attention. Like he didn’t want to be there. But she’d known him long enough to know that he always looked as if he didn’t want to be anywhere.
But she had to see his eyes. Mick’s eyes always told his story.
That was why she got up from the backseat and then climbed over and plopped down on the front driver side seat that Teddy had just deserted.
Then she turned sideways toward Mick, folded her arms, and looked at him. “Did anybody follow you here?”
“Still paranoid, I see.”
“Did anybody follow you, Mick? I’m serious. You need to answer my question.”
“You need to leave those damn drugs alone.”
“I don’t do drugs.”
