“No, but Amelia is,” Brent said. “Hammer’s on some assignment where he can’t be reached, but he’ll show up. He always does.”
“Why aren’t you in the principals meeting, Big Daddy?” Marcellus asked him.
Big Daddy shook his head. “I can’t hear anymore details. Not yet anyway. I need to know that my brother is going to pull through this before I can get my head in the game. I just can’t do it,” he said heartfelt.
Alex squeezed his shoulder. “Perfectly reasonable,” he said. “But if you don’t mind, Marcellus and I need to get up to speed.”
“Please do,” Big Daddy said, and both men made their way toward the conference room.
Brent looked at his father. “Uncle Mick will pull through, Dad. He always does.”
Big Daddy gave a cursory smile. He wished to God he could believe it too.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Hours later and there was still no word other than thehe’s still in surgerymantra. And even with the superior talent in that operating room, and the hospital’s CEO constantly assuring them that Mick could not be in better hands, a somberness overwhelmed the entire place.
All of the wives stood around that waiting room in total support of Roz. Her daughter Jackie sat beside her holding one of her hands, while her stepdaughter Gloria held her other hand. But Roz couldn’t stop herself from crying. Roz was a mess.
Even Gloria’s mother Bella Caine and Teddy’s mother were in that room waiting for word about Mick too. They were his baby mamas, and was in Mick’s protocol to be picked up whenever there was a threat to the family unit, and Reno gave the okay to bring them in.
But for both ladies it was more than just protocol and Reno obeying Mick’s wishes. They loved Mick deeply. He was the best man either one of them had ever known and they still held onto him. They were no fan of Roz: She won the prize that they felt, by rights, should have been theirs. But they loved Mick. They were as much grief-stricken as everybody else in that space.
Although the undisputed patriarch of the family was still Big Daddy Charles Sinatra, Mick’s big brother, he was too crushed to handle anything. He was leaned against the wall in the waiting room too, silently praying and holding his wife Jenay’s hand. Roz and Big Daddy were the closest human beingson earth to Mick, and they both knew, until Mick was out of danger, they were useless.
But inside the hospital’s conference room was a different story. The principals were in that room, and they needed details. If they had to initiate a war, they had to know who they were going up against and why.
That was why they were listening to Duke, who was the only one of the younger set allowed to meet with them, tell what happened. He’d already told them more than once, but they wanted to hear it again. In case they missed something.
Duke was as distraught as his mother was, but it didn’t go unnoticed by every one of those heavy hitters how he was able to keep it together in the face of all he had endured. And in light of his father’s very grave condition.
Reno Gabrini was seated at the head of the table, while seated in chairs around the table were Sal, Frankie “The Monk” Paletti, Tommy Gabrini, government operative and business owner Trevor Reese, and private investigator/former drug queen pin Amelia Sinatra. Alex Drakos, who was once in his father’s Greek Mafia, and Marcellus, who never was in anybody’s mafia, were also in the conference room.
But they were all tainted people, in one way or the other, who sat with their legs crossed as if they were in a Godfather movie, staring at Duke. Listening to his every word for what seemed like the fourth or fifth time. Wondering to a person if they were missing something. If they knew something but it wasn’t registering. They knew they were at war. The way that ambush went down in that small town proved that. But who was behind it? And why did they target Mick? And Roz? They were desperate for answers.
But Duke, to his credit, showed no intimidation as those powerful men and his Aunt Amelia looked unblinkingly at him. The shock of what he’d been through might hit him like a ton ofbricks later, but right now he knew his mother was in no shape to tell it. His father was incapacitated. He was all they had.
“After we managed to get out of that town,” he was saying, “we had phone service again. Which was crazy to me. It was as if they knocked out the cell towers that prevented us from calling for help. Because Daddy made me promise to call my brother Teddy if anything went sideways. But I couldn’t even do that. But even when our service was restored after we left that town and was flying up the interstate, Ma still wouldn’t let me call 911. She kept comforting Daddy and saying that we were in ghost protocol. She called this hospital we’re in now, and they then contacted the surgeons Dad had assigned should the family need help. But she kept saying we were in ghost protocol. Whatever that means.”
When he said those last three words, everybody was surprised. Especially Reno. Although he was known the world over as a hotel and casino mogul of the first order who was voted the most powerful man in Vegas so many times that even he couldn’t keep track of how many, he had also been the son of a powerful mob boss and eventually had to take over the entire syndicate after his father’s assassination. He was a man of many talents who, with Mick down and Big Daddy crushed, was considered to be the man in charge.
But what Duke had just said floored him too. “You don’t know what ghost protocol means?”
Duke shook his head. “No sir.”
Even Sal frowned. “What are you talking you don’t know? Why the hell not, Duke?”
“What you jumping down my throat for, Uncle Sal? Nobody never told me nothing about no ghost protocol.”
Monk Paletti spoke up on Duke’s behalf. “It’s not his fault,” he said. “It’s no secret that his mother doesn’t want either one of her children involved in what many of us in this room areinvolved in. Which we all can agree is the right thing to do to protect your child.”
“Protect him?” Reno asked. “You mean she shields him as if he’s some fucking schoolgirl?”
“That’s exactly what she does,” said Amelia, the only woman in the room. “I told her countless times it wasn’t going to work.”
“But how can that be?” Sal couldn’t wrap his head around that news. “Even my boy Lucky knows the protocols. Even Reno’s boy Carmine knows it, and Tommy’s son TJ knows it. Our girls know it too. But Duke doesn’t? And he’s Mick Sinatra’s son?! Are you fucking kidding me?”
“You’re focused on words, Sal Luca,” said Monk. “Duke may not know the words of the protocol, but look at what he did. Look how he saved both of his parents and got them out of that town.”
