Big Daddy Sinatra: Carly's Cry (20 page)

“Who was your Jericho contact?”
Charles asked.
 
“You said there was
somebody in Jericho you were supposed to answer to. Who was he?”

“A she,” Gooch said.
 
“Gilda Lane.”

Charles knew that name.
 
“Gilda Lane?
 
The biker chick?”

“Her job was to get cozy with Donnie
Sinatra.
 
He was considered the weakest
link of your children, the one easiest to con. Her job was to pump him for
information, stay close to him, and use him to whatever benefit we needed.
 
She didn’t know the big plan either, but she
knew more than I did.”

Charles was ready.
 
They had what they needed to get to the
bottom of this.
 
But Mick had unfinished
business.
 
He walked with Charles outside
of the front door, and even closed the door, but then he stood still.
 
“Wait in the car,” he said to his
brother.
 
“I’ll be there.”

Charles looked Mick in the eyes.
 
He knew what he meant.
 
“He placed that body back in Carly’s
house.
 
He placed her, my child, in a
freedom-threatening situation.
 
It used
to be my belief that the law should handle it.
 
I gave up that right when we buried that body.
 
But it will never end, Charles, if we keep
burying more bodies.”

“That is not true,” Mick said.
 
“It never ends the moment you bury your
first
body.
 
It doesn’t matter if you do another one or
not.
 
It is hellish, and it never
ends.
 
But it will for you, and for your
family.
 
I’ll see to that.”

Charles stared at his brother.
 
Mick was younger, but in a lot of ways, even
when he was a kid, he was never young.
 
“Is that why you have to go back in?” he asked him.

Mick nodded.
 
“That’s exactly why.
 
Going back in is the only way out.”

Charles swallowed hard, and
nodded.
 
Mick didn’t need his permission,
but he appreciated it.
 
He squeezed his
big brother’s shoulder, and went back inside.
 
Charles knew he could have gone to the car and pretended it wasn’t
happening.
 
But he was not that kind of
man.
 
He stood there and waited.
 
It didn’t take long.
 
He expected one gunshot.
 
One should have been enough.
 
He heard five.
 
It reminded him of when Mick was a kid, and
the neighborhood children would always complain that he played too rough.
 
That he took it too far.
 
Other men killed.
 
Mick overkilled.

Charles walked away from the house,
and got in the car.
 
But it didn’t feel
triumphant in the least.
 
It didn’t feel
like a climb to the top, but like a race to the bottom.
 
It felt like another nail banging in another
one of his children’s coffins.

But if they thought Gilda Lane would
roll over like Gooch DeCarlo and tell all she knew, they had another thought
coming.
 
As soon as her front door was
kicked in, she wasn’t running out of any back doors.
 
She ran to her room, grabbed her always
loaded, semiautomatic rifle from behind her door, and ran out shooting.

Mick and Charles took cover, but she
was no match for either one of them.
 
Mick was about to fire, but Charles took her out with a single bullet
through the eye.
 
She stood there
momentarily, her rifle still aimed and ready to fire, as if her stubbornness
alone would get her out of the jam she found herself in, and then fell
backwards.

Mick and Charles stood up again.
 
Mick, upset that Charles didn’t let him take
the shot instead, exhaled.
 
Mick didn’t
want his brother to have that death on his conscience.
 
But Charles didn’t want it on Mick’s either.
  
Charles won out.

But as Mick stared at him, Charles
didn’t even look his way.
 
He continued
to stare at Gilda Lane.
 
“Don’t you worry
about me, Michello,” he said.
 
“I do what
I have to do too.”

Then Charles looked at his
brother.
 
And Mick nodded.
 
For once in his life, he felt as if he and
his brother were equals on his terrain.

But when the dust cleared and they
cleared out of that house, the fact remained: they were no closer to figuring
out who attempted to take Charles down, and Carly and Jenay along with
him.
 
Gilda wouldn’t let them take her
alive.
 
They were back to square one.

A week after Gilda’s death, Donald
Sinatra was still in shock.
 
Not just
because she died.
 
That was bad
enough.
 
But because, according to his
father and Brent, she was using him for some bigger, political purpose.

“What kind of bigger purpose?” he
remembered asking his father.

“She wanted to destroy me,” Charles
had responded.
 
“She was working for my
enemies, and she was out to destroy me.”

Donald remembered frowning.
 
“What enemies?” he asked.
 
“You mean like Cruikshank?
 
Why he’s just a pompous blowhard!”

“He’s on his way to becoming our new
mayor, if the polls are right.
 
He’s more
than a blowhard.
 
But not
Cruikshank.
 
Somebody else.”

“Who?”

Charles hated to admit it.
 
“We don’t know yet.
 
Gilda came out with both barrels blazing and
wasn’t interested in conversation.
 
We
had no choice, son.”

Brent handled the case, and didn’t
press charges against his father, which only gave more fodder to Cruikshank’s
campaign a couple months before the election.
 
He had been running for nearly a year.
 
He had been trying to paint Charles as the enemy all that time.
 
Brent’s exoneration of his own father proved
that the Sinatras were a monopoly that looked out for nobody but themselves,
and Cruikshank ran with it.
  
But Brent
didn’t care.
 
It was self-defense and he
was treating it that way.
 
Makayla, as
DA, treated it the same way too, despite Cruikshank’s calls that both of them
recuse themselves.

But Donald was on his family’s
side.
 
He knew his father wouldn’t harm a
flea unless that flea was trying to harm his family.
 
Gilda was a hothead.
 
That was why he could never love her the way
she wanted him to.
 
He loved her sex, and
he was going to miss that about her, but he doubted if he was going to miss
her
.
 
His father said they had no choice, and he believed him.
 
He knew Gilda was the type to shoot first and
ask questions later.
 
But when his father
said he and Uncle Mick went to talk to her, Donald also knew she was shooting
first at two men who wouldn’t hesitate to shoot back.

But it still hurt.
 
He still was tired of being used and abused
by these women.
 
He was still tired of
always picking the wrong kind of girl.

Carly was picking the wrong kind of
boy, in her family’s eyes, but she decided weeks ago that she couldn’t let somebody
else determine her life.
 
She knew they
didn’t trust Trevor. She knew her Uncle Mick believed, without being able to
prove it, that he was shady.

But she knew how Trevor treated
her.
 
She knew how he phoned her every
night and, over the last couple of weekends, how he came to see her.
 
He didn’t want anything from her when he
came.
 
He just wanted her company.
 
And he never, not once, grilled her about
Ethan Campbell or anything about that night.
 
She already had a secret crush on Trevor long before that night.
 
And the fact that he dropped everything to
get her out of jail, and his subsequent treatment of her, only heightened her
interest in the one man whose presence alone made her happy.

She made herself a bowl of cereal and
sat at the island counter beside Donald and Ashley.
 
Both were eating too.
 
“Good morning, people,” she said.
 
“Where’s Bonita?”

“She spent the night at Brent and
Makayla’s.”
 
Then Donald frowned.
 
“Why are you so cheerful?”

“Because I am.
 
It’s Saturday.
 
I don’t have to go to work.
 
It’s a good day.”

“But I have to go to work.
 
It’s a lousy day.”

“Isn’t Saint Cat’s having that
fundraiser today?” Ashley asked.
 
“That
car wash?”

“They’re having it,” Carly said, “and
I should probably be there.
 
But I’m not
going.”

“You aren’t a very good teacher,”
Donald said.
 
“The teachers I remember
were devoted seven days a week.
 
Not just
five days a week.”

“Perhaps they were.
 
But I’m not.”

“Don’t pay Donnie any attention,”
Ashley said.
 
“He’s not exactly devoted
to his job like that either.”

“Yeah, but I’m a natural goof
off.
 
She’s not.
 
At least not in Dad’s eyes.”

“Or her own eyes,” Ashley added, and
Carly laughed.

Donald looked at her with an even
stranger frown.
 
“What’s funny?
 
That’s not funny.”

“Don’t hate just because you have to
go to work,” Carly responded.
 
“You
should be glad you have a job.
 
Mom
doesn’t have to work, Dad takes care of her, but she works harder than anybody
I know.
 
She works every single
Saturday.”

“Has she left already?” Donald asked.

“You know she has,” Carly said.
 
“She’s never late, unlike you.
 
Why are you still here anyway?”

“Ah, put a sock in it, Carly,” he
responded, and Carly laughed.

“Now I’m with Donnie,” Ashley
said.
 
“Why are you so gosh-darn happy?”

“I told you why.
 
I’m off today.
 
It’s a good day.”

“So what are you going to do?” Ashley
asked her.
 
“No.
 
Let me guess!
 
You’re going to read books.
 
Then
go to the library and read more books.
 
Then come home and watch reruns of
The
Big Bang Theory
.
 
Am I right?”

Carly smiled.
 
“Wrong.
 
As usual.”

“So what are you going to do?” Ashley
asked.

Carly hesitated.
 
Ashley and Donald both looked at her.

“What?” Carly asked.

“You didn’t answer my question.
 
What’s the big deal?”

“Nothing.”

“Then what are you going to do this
weekend?”

Carly exhaled.
 
“I’m going to Boston for the weekend.”

“You’re
what
?” Ashley and Donald asked in unison.
 
“Why would you go to a place like that,”
Donald asked, “when they tried to pin a murder on you?”

“For real, Car,” Ashley said.
 
“You don’t need to be going up in that
place.
 
Are you nuts?”

“I know why she’s going,” Donald
said.
 
“She’s going to see that man.
 
I’ll bet any amount of money.”

“What man?” Ashley asked.

“The one that came to her rescue in
Boston.
 
Her former boss.
 
Trevor somebody.”

“Oh, you mean cutie,” Ashley said
with a smile.
 
“I saw a picture of
him.
 
Well,” she added, “if he’s the
reason.”

“Ash!” Donald said.

“Don’t
Ash
me!
 
A good man is hard
to find.”

“But he’s not good,” Donald
said.
 
“I overheard Dad and Mom talking.
 
They think that guy is bad news.”

“They don’t know him,” Carly said.

“You don’t either!” Donald replied.

“I do know him.
 
I worked for the man, remember?”

“He was your boss.
 
It was purely professional, I’m sure.
 
That was different.”
 
He looked at Carly.
 
“Don’t do it, Carly.”

Carly had had enough.
 
“Just leave it alone, alright?” She stood up
and went around to the sink.

Donald leaned against Ashley.
 
“I’ll be back,” he said, got up, and headed
upstairs.

“Dad!” Donald yelled as he entered
the bedroom.
  
He heard the shower
running and went in the direction of the master bath.
 
The door was open, and he could see the steam
coming from the running shower water, but when he entered the bathroom and saw
his father’s silhouette through the shower stall door, he froze.
 
At first it looked as if his father was
humping the shower wall.
 
His back was to
the door and his bare ass was pushing up into something, over and over again.
 
If it was a person he was fucking, that
person was so small she was virtually invisible.
 
Then Donald saw what appeared to be a
slender, shapely leg beside his father’s.
 
A woman’s leg.
  
His dad wasn’t
humping the shower stall wall, he was humping a woman.
 
But what woman?
 
His stepmother, Jenay, had already left for
work.
 
What the fuck?

Donald moved closer.
 
He was angry now.
 
How could his father betray Jenay like
this?
 
And he was going to expose it
right here and right now!

Donald flung open the shower stall
door angrily.
 
“How could,” he started
saying when the door flew open.
 
Until
his father turned toward him in shock, his penis dropping out of the woman’s
ass, and he got a tiny glimpse of his stepmother’s face as she turned toward
him too.
 
That quick glance alone gave
Donald an even quicker glimpse of her small, brown ass.

Charles knew it too, and it only
inflamed his already hot temper.
 
“Are
you out of your
got
damn mind?” he
angrily asked his youngest son as he flung the shower door back closed.
 
“What the fuck is wrong with you?
 
You know not to come into our suite without
permission!”

“I’m sorry!” Donald said, truly
mortified.
 
“I didn’t know Mom was still
home, I swear.
 
Carly said Mom had
already left for work.
 
I didn’t know it
was Mom!”

“What do you want?” Charles asked in
a voice that made it clear he was still super-hot, as he continued to shield
Jenay’s entire body.

Donald had forgotten what he had
wanted.
 
He was as traumatized as they
were.

“What, Donald?” Charles asked him
again.

“Carly,” he said, remembering.

“Carly what?”

“Carly says she’s going to spend the
weekend in Boston.
 
With that Trevor
guy.”

Charles’s heart dropped.
 
So did Jenay’s.
 
“She’s
what
?”
she asked.

“Where is she?” Charles asked.

“Still downstairs,” Donald said.
 
“Having breakfast.”

“Tell her I want to talk to her,”
Charles said.
 
“She’s not to go anywhere
until I get down there.
 
I’ll be there
shortly.”

“Yes, sir,” Donald said, still
mortified.
 
“And I’m sorry, Jenay,” he
added, as he hurried out of their room.

“That boy!” Charles said as he still
held onto Jenay’s hips.
 
His penis was no
longer inside of her, but had wedged itself between her butt cheeks.
 
She was still turned toward the shower stall
wall.
 
“He better not have seen an inch
of you,” Charles added.

Jenay looked back at him over her
shoulder.
 
“I don’t think he did,” she
said.
 
“Your big-ass body had me pretty
well covered.”

Charles smiled.
 
“I’m not that big.”

“I’ve got news for you,
Big
Daddy. Yes, you are.”
 
She rubbed her ass against his penis.
 
“In
every
way.”

And that rub did it.
 
Charles began to feel the lust again.
 
He leaned down and kissed her on her mouth,
and then turned her around, and kissed her harder.

“What about Carly?” Jenay said as he
kissed her.

“She’ll wait,” Charles said as he
lifted her legs against his hips, and guided his penis back into her wet pussy.
 
“She knows not to disobey me.”