Ricardo smiled. “I am.”
“Bullshit,” Mick said. “Where your ass was able to get that kind of dough to sling around?”
“I have my ways of making money just like you do, Mick the Tick. It’s not that hard.”
Mick knew he was lying, but he needed answers. “Why did you target me? Because of my past relationship with Cleo?”
Ricardo smiled again. “If that’s what you think you’re dumber than I thought.”
“Then why?”
“That’s for me to know and for you to find out,” he said, and Mick hit him violently in his mouth with the butt of his gun.
“Gotdammit!” Ricardo cried out from his busted lip. Then he reached for that gun again and began wrestling with Mick again. But Mick got the upper hand again and took charge of his weapon.
Despite his own pain, Teddy pulled that knife out of his hand and then began crawling toward his own gun, but that was when they heard Roz’s voice.
“Mick! Don’t shoot him!” Roz cried out. “He’s your son, Mick! Don’t kill him!”
When Mick and Teddy heard Roz’s voice first, and then the words she was saying, they both looked in that direction.
That was when she and Nikki ran up to them. “He’s your son, Mick,” Roz kept saying. She was virtually out of breath. “Cleo says he’s your son!”
As soon as Roz said those words, Teddy knew it was true. He knew it! That kid looked just like they looked. That kid looked like a younger, black version of Mick!
But Ricardo had taken advantage of their shock and had taken the gun from Mick like a damn magician and had it pressed against Mick’s head.
Nikki had run to Teddy’s aid until she saw that gun turned on Mick. She quickly drew her weapon, but Ricardo yelled at her. “Drop it now or he’s dead!”
Nikki wasn’t taking any chances with Mick’s life. She quickly dropped her gun.
Then Ricardo got to his feet, still pointing that gun at Mick’s head. Mick looked up at him. He had green eyes just like the Sinatra men had. He had that same look he saw in Duke and in Teddy. It was as if Mick was looking at himself as he looked at that young man. He stared unblinkingly at those eyes.
Ricardo could have shot him dead right then and there. They all knew it. But he didn’t. He stared at Mick’s eyes for a moment longer as if he was shocked himself, and then he took off.
That was when the capos from the Expedition finally found their way into those woods too. Teddy got to his feet, grabbed his gun, and ordered the capos to follow him.
They took off further into those woods after Ricardo, with Nikki going to protect Teddy.
But Mick was frozen in place. He was still looking at Roz. “He’s my son? What are you talking about, Roz?”
“Cleo said he’s your son.” Roz was frazzled and so out of steam she was bending over. “You can’t kill your son. You can go through that again,” she said to him. “You can’t.”
Mick knew it too. But was it true? Or was Cleo trying to protect Ricardo again?
But he saw those eyes.
That kid had Sinatra eyes.
Just the thought of it staggered Mick.
But by the time Teddy and Nikki and their capos returned with no Ricardo in their midst, which meant he had yet another problem still out there somewhere, it staggered Mick even more.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The door to the cabin flew open and Mick, followed by Roz, Teddy and Nikki, ran inside like a man who couldn’t get there fast enough. Cleo stood up when he ran in with panic in her own eyes. “Is Ricky still alive?” she asked them frantically. “Is my son still alive?!”
But nobody was answering her as Mick hurried up to her, grabbed her by her blouse, and ran with her until he was slamming her small body against the wall.
