“You’re doing something because I told your ass not to call me again. But yet you did it anyway,” he said and then looked at her. It was only then did he see the distress all over her gorgeous, dark-brown face.
“Did anybody follow you, Mick?” She had a plea in her voice.
“No. Nobody followed me. Damn girl! What the fuck somebody look like following me?”
She momentarily closed her eyes, and then she leaned the side of her head against his leather headrest. She knew sheneeded to get a grip. She knew Mick hated weakness in people and would dump her like a hot potato if her armor didn’t stay up.
But that was why she broke down and called him. She was hoping he would calm her fears. She was hoping he would look his hard green eyes into her bright brown eyes and tell her everything was going to be alright. Like he used to tell her.
But she should have known better than that. The last time Mick Sinatra reassured her was the first time he ever had her. “I’ll be gentle forever,” he said to her. Which was such a unique thing to say that even back then she knew he was a different kind of dude. Those words alone won her over to his side forever. It immediately went downhill after that.
“It’s been a struggle, Mick,” she finally said. “I ain’t gonna lie. It’s been hard.”
Mick was used to attitude from her, not vulnerability. And just seeing her in such disarray caused that guilt to hit him hard.
He was the one who brought her onboard as “entertainment” for his higher dollar clients like those third-world leaders and other unsavory characters in need of illegal weaponry. She was barely twenty-two at the time. And even after he stopped using her, she never left that life. She kept hanging around. She cut side deals with those despots and they flew her around the world to hook up with them. Mick told her she was playing with fire, but she wouldn’t listen.
Now she was once again needed him. And she couldn’t take her eyes off of him. That bastard got better-looking every time she saw him, which she hated to admit. And the way he used to do her. To this day, nobody could compare. She hated to admit that too. “I wanna move on, Mick, honest I do. But it’s hard.”
Still no response from Mick.
She continued to stare at him as if she was wondering if she should bring it up. She decided to bring it up. “I saw Sal Gabrini.”
She waited to see if that would get a rise out of Mick. Sal was Mick’s nephew. But he showed no emotion. “What’s he doing in Philly?” she asked Mick. “I’m not trying to start no mess with Sal Luca again. He knows I’m untouchable. He knows I belong to you.”
Mick’s jaw tightened when she said those words.
“He should have never come at me sideways like that, Mick,” she added as if herI belong to youremark was gospel. “That’s why that shit popped off. Because his guys came for me. I was minding my own business when they wanted to hook up. I didn’t know his enemies were hiding in my apartment. But he still blames me. He’s wrong for that, Mick, and you should have told him he was wrong. Now he’s back in town. Why all of a sudden he’s back? I’m being hounded on all sides. It’s not fair, Mick. It’s not fair!”
Mick really didn’t want to hear it. She was trying to justify what she did to Sal’s men when it wasn’t justifiable. Her ass would already be six-feet under had he not told Sal she was hands off. He did all he was going to do about it.
Besides, she didn’t call him because of Sal. And they both knew it.
That was why he reached his hand out to her with a thick wad of one-hundred-dollar bills. It had to be five thousand easy, which was more than what she could have hoped for. But he always gave her more than she asked for. Always.
But Mick the Tick didn’t give any shit for free. He always expected some form of repayment. And she knew, like all those times before, he would expect it of her too. As an informant maybe? As “entertainment” for one of his arms clients maybe? It used to be being with him was the repayment. But that wasback then. And that was why she didn’t grab the money and run. She’d never outrun him. That was why she watched that money flap in his hand like a bad temptation dangling in front of her.
“Once I leave his ass this time it’s gonna be final,” she said. “I mean it this time, Mick.”
Mick didn’t want to hear that either. She could fool herself about that toxic relationship she had with whichever man she was fucking now, but she couldn’t fool Mick.
She knew it too. A part of her wondered if she kept getting in bad relationships so that he could bail her out. A part of her wanted to forever be in his grip, anyway, and she knew it. And to her shame she wouldn’t have it any other way. She wanted to stay in his debt. She wanted to stay at his beck and call.
She hated herself for doing it, but she took the money. God help her, she took it.
Then she looked at him. He never looked smug like some men in his position easily would. But he always seemed disappointed. Like she, once again, had disappointed him. Like she, once again, would never live up to the only woman he ever thought enough of to marry. The one woman she and every woman that had ever been with Mick despised more than life itself.
“I know I’m not Roz in your eyes,” she started saying to him.
But before she could finish her sentence, Mick gave her a look that could bend steel. “Keep her name out of your mouth,” he said to her in no uncertain terms.
She wanted to cuss his ass out right then and there. Why did he put Roz above all the rest of them? Even above Bella Caine, who was another one Cleo hated with a passion too. But what did Roz have that they didn’t have? Cleo knew she was a beauty no man could deny. Men still groveled at her feet andwould give a right arm to be with her. She could have any one of them she wanted!
But none of them was Mick.
And that was the problem of her life.
But every time she called, he came. Every time she cried on the phone to him, begging him to help her, he gave her whatever she needed. Why would he always be there for her if he didn’t love her and want her too? Him coming to her was what kept her going back to him. Although she knew, by keeping her on hisyou owe melist, it benefited him far more than it would ever benefit her.
