Gomez didn’t know what to say to that. He hunched his shoulders. He didn’t know what to tell her. Nikki was his boss, not his confidant. She didn’t tell him her business like that.
And Roz’s sudden defiance of Mick was quickly deflated. With Nikki gone, how was she going to get there without Mick’s guys alerting him? “Thanks Gomez,” she said, and made her way out of the office. When she got back into her Maybach, she called Nikki.
But the call went straight to Voice Mail as if Nikki already was in vacation mode and had turned it off.
But as Roz drove out of that gate and pulled out into the highway, she knew Mick would blow a gasket if she even thought about driving all the way to New Orleans by herself. Nikki was her cover, and even she wasn’t enough to get Mick to yes. Driving alone to New Orleans would be loads of fun to Roz. It would be her very definition of the kind of freedom she needed in her life right now. But Mick would go apoplectic on her ass if he ever found out.
But as she drove away from the docks, she began to wonder why was she always so concerned about his feelings when he didn’t give a damn about hers? Because she knew, despite the fact that he had comforted her last night, he was thereason why she had to be comforted! Him and his women. It always had something to do with him and some woman. And she was worried about him getting all upset because she decided to do what she wanted to do for a change? Why did she have to have his buy-in and permission like she was some damn child? She was a whole adult in every way. She didn’t need anybody’s permission to do shit. Like the old Roz before she married Mick all those years ago. She wanted the old Roz back and she was going to get her back.
That was why she quickly hung a U-turn at the light, and took off. She was going to treat herself to a cross-country drive to New Orleans even if it angered Mick no end. She needed it. She was taking it. Mick would just have to deal with it.
CHAPTER TEN
When Mick first walked inside his safe house and saw Cleo sitting in that chair with her legs crossed in a miniskirt that purposely revealed way too much, looking as if she’d seen some rough days in the last two years, his heart squeezed with that heavy guilt again. She was a good kid before she hooked up with him. Now look at her. There was no telling what she’d been through.
When Cleo saw Mick for the first time in two years, her heart squeezed too. And the tears flowed from her huge eyes. She thought he loved her on some level. But he didn’t love anybody but himself. He never even tried to find her, or she was certain he would have.
“Mick, you see how they treat me? Got me in handcuffs like I’m some criminal. Y’all the criminals, not me. I haven’t done anything wrong, and this is how you let them treat me?”
“Untie her,” Mick ordered the two capos standing beside her chair and one of them quickly did as he was told.
But when Cleo saw Sal walk in, she went ballistic. “Get him away from me!” Terror was in her voice. “Mick, get him away from me! Mick, don’t let him hurt me, Mick!”
But Sal was frowning. “If I wanted to hurt your ass you would have been hurt. You just better be glad it was Teddy who found your ass and not me.”
“See Mick. He wants me dead. He’s always wanted me dead.”
It happened nearly two-and-a-half years ago when two of Sal’s capos followed her to her apartment after hanging out ata bar with her. A rival boss was waiting for them inside her apartment. She declared up and down she had nothing to do with it and that the mobster somehow broken into her place without her permission. Which Sal knew was bullshit. And Mick knew it too. That rival boss killed both of Sal’s guys.
Sal took out the rival boss and his entire crew for what he did to his men. But Mick inexplicably ordered hands off when it came to Cleo. Sal was livid, because he was certain she set the whole thing into motion, and he and Mick almost came to blows over that craziness. But no matter how badly Sal wanted to do so, he knew he couldn’t defy a direct order from Mick. He didn’t touch her.
But Cleo was certain he still blamed her for what happened to his men. He could pretend he didn’t around Mick, but she knew Sal Luca. She knew, one day, when Mick wasn’t paying attention, he was going to exact his revenge. “He just said so,” she said. “He said if he would have found me instead of Teddy, he would have killed me, Mick. You gotta keep him away from me!”
As Mick and Sal walked up to Cleo, the two capos hurriedly got them chairs from the card table. They both sat down with Mick crossing his legs with his arms resting in a cross fashion across his lap.
But Sal, who despised Cleo for what she did, slouched down in the chair with his arms folded and his legs stretched out before her. She was a gorgeous girl. He’d never deny that. But she was nothing more than a conniving, dirty bitch as far as he was concerned.
But outside, Teddy was fuming. He ran his Pop’s syndicate, which was the most powerful syndicate in the world. And they relegate him to wait outside like he was the damn help? This was so disrespectful that it bordered on disloyalty to Teddy. And he wasn’t having it. He began heading for the entrance.
“Pop, I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Marco warned. “You know how Big Pop can get if you defy him.”
“You’re not me and fuck Big Pop,” Teddy said as he walked past the capos guarding the door: they weren’t about to stop him. Then he opened the door and let himself inside.
Sal looked at him as soon as the door closed. “Didn’t we tell your ass to wait outside?”
“I’m not waiting outside,” Teddy said as he walked over to them. “Your ass wait outside.”
Sal didn’t order him out, which he knew he could have done, and Mick didn’t even look his way. Mainly because both of them were inwardly pleased that Teddy didn’t let them handle him. He was the head of the Sinatra Crime syndicate. He’d better not wait outside!
But Mick’s attention was on Cleo. “You were supposed to be dead,” he said to her.
“To everybody who cared to know, I was.”
“That was the point?”
“That was the point, hell yeah.”
“Why?” Mick asked her.
