Brent Sinatra: All of Me (7 page)

“Get what you need out of here,” he said to her, “but work in
a different office.”

Makayla agreed.
 
And
did as he suggested.

Mark Stravinsky smiled and kissed the babies and worked the rope
line like a man in full command of his surroundings.
 
His wife, Denise Donahue-Stravinsky, followed
him.
 
She shook hands and kissed babies
too.
 
She was willing to do, and had done
anything and everything to get Mark elected.
 
But Election Day was only a couple of months away, and they were
trailing badly in the polls.
 
If the
pollsters were right, and the pundits on statewide TV weren’t just talking
smack, Denise knew they were going to have a very bad election night.
 
They were going to lose, and lose by a
landslide.
 
And that defeat would defeat
everything for Denise.

That was why, later that night after they returned to the
hotel, she began to plot.
 
Mark was still
up front in their suite, talking to the governor’s campaign manager about what
in the world could they possibly do to turn those numbers around.
 
She got a glass of wine, undressed and got in
the tub, and leaned back in the calming warm waters and started thinking more
than one way.
 
For four years she had
been at the pinnacle of power in Massachusetts.
 
Mark became the Lieutenant Governor of the state, his wealth was
increasing with that new exposure, and things were going their way.
 
Then a year ago he decided, with great
encouragement from Denise, to run for a vacated U.S. Senate seat.
 
And he was polling very well.

Until news reporters started printing stories accusing him of
accepting bribes and kickbacks in his various businesses.
 
Until the Governor himself began to distance
himself from him.
 
The bottom fell out
and his nice poll numbers began to sink.
 
Now, instead of being an odds on favorite to win, he was a shoo-in to
lose.
 
And Denise was no fool.
  
He could not only lose the election, but he
could end up in prison and lose every business he owned.
 
She didn’t ride with losers.
 
It was her time to jump ship too.

But as soon as she began to move her thoughts from the ship
she was going to abandon, to the ship she wanted to board, the bathroom door
swung open and Mark, looking drained, walked in.

She sat up in the tub as her heart began to pound.
 
“How did it go?” she asked him quickly.
 
“What did the Governor suggest?”

“What he always suggests,” Mark said as he walked toward the
tub.

“Stay the course?”

“Yep.”
 
He took the
glass of wine from her hand and took a sip.

“That’s what we have to do, baby.”
 
She was his appeaser.
 
She hated the role almost as much as he hated
her in that role, but it was the only way she knew to keep him calm.
 
“Just like your poll numbers went down, they
can come back up,” she continued.
 
“We
still have a couple months to turn things around.
 
That’s forever in politics.”

“And the people of this great state won’t believe the press?”

“They won’t.”

“They will totally disregard all stories about my shady
business dealings and see the man not the myth?”

Denise smiled an uncomfortable smile.
 
“That’s exactly what they will do.”

“And that’s exactly why you’re full of shit!”
 
Mark took the wine glass and threw it against
the bathroom wall, shattering it.
 
“My
political career is dead and you know it!
 
Everything I worked for, everything I am is going down a
got
damn toilet, and you want me to
believe everything’s coming up roses!”

Denise tried to stand up, as he was towering over her, but he
pushed her back into the tub, placed his hands around her neck, and began to choke
the life out of her.

He’d done it to her before.
 
Many times before.
 
And she knew
the drill.
 
She grabbed his hands and
kicked her feet and fought with all she had to get away from him.
 
But all she was doing was treading
water.
  
He was too strong.
 
And too angry.
 
And her head was already underwater.

“You wanted it so badly,” Mark said as he choked her.
 
His big blue eyes were wide with excitement,
as he stared into her face.
 
“You could
taste that power.
 
The wife of a United
States Senator.
 
Washington here we
come!
 
But the bigger the light, the more
the scrutiny.
 
You should have known
that.
 
When you told me to run, when you
all but pushed me onto that stage, you should have seen how bright that light
was and what it would do to me!
 
You
should have looked out for me!”

But Denise couldn’t respond.
 
She was underwater and too busy fighting for her life.
 
He kept pushing her head down further and
further as he talked, until the back of her head hit the bottom of the tub.

That hit seemed to bring him back to himself and he pulled
her back up.
 
She was nearly passed out
when he pulled her back up.

But instead of apologizing for his madness; instead of giving
her a chance to get her breath and bearings back, he dragged her out of the
tub, into the bedroom, and threw her, on her stomach, onto the bed.
 
She tried to get away from him, because she
knew what was coming, but he still managed to keep her on that bed and remove
his belt.

As she struggled to break free, as she wiggled and twisted to
get away from him, he beat her like a dog across her back, and her buttocks,
and her thighs.
 
He beat her until her
skin began to peel.
 
The old scars had
barely healed, and now new ones were appearing.
 
And when she couldn’t bear it any longer and began to scream out, even
though she knew what a scream would get her, he took that same belt and wrapped
it around her mouth, tying it tightly in back, and silenced her voice.

By the time he dropped his pants and put it into her dry,
fucking her hard against her wounds, it wasn’t even adding insult to injury to
Denise.
 
That point of pride left her
years ago.
 
She was too far gone into his
madness to be insulted by it any longer.

No insult.

It was all just injury to her now.
 

The limo drove up and stopped at the curb.
 
Walter Pierce tossed his cigarette into the
gutter and got into the backseat.
 
He sat
on one end of the elongated seat, and his employer sat on the opposite
end.
 
But even though they were side by
side, Walter had yet to see his face.
 
Just barely a side view, but never a frontal.
 
Because the man never showed his face.
 
He always looked away from Walter, and kept
that same pose, whenever they met.
 
That
was why Walter called him, behind his back, Mister Hide.
 
There was something weasel-like about him
too, despite his wealth and position.
 
The name fit.
 
But Walter never
took a man like him lightly.
 
He knew it
could be coming out of his own hide if he didn’t start showing better results.

“That didn’t go according to plan,” Hide said, in his soft,
almost purposely broken English.

“I don’t know what happened.
 
I told him what to do.
 
I showed
him what we had.
 
But . . . I don’t know
what happened.”

“Don’t let it happen again,” Hide said.
 
“Or you won’t know what happened when it
happens to you.”

“It wasn’t my fault.”
 
Walter looked at him.
 
“It
wasn’t.
 
I did everything you instructed
me to do.
 
It wasn’t my fault.
 
If you would make it a straight kill, it’ll
be a piece of cake.
 
Right up my alley.”

“It’s not your alley I wish to go up.
 
It’s Brent Sinatra’s alley.
 
And you will follow my instructions and
follow them to the letter.
 
I am not
interested in any straight kill.
 
It will
never be that easy.
 
I am interested in
crooked, confused, earth shattering devastation.”

He quickly placed something to his mouth, an inhaler if
Walter had to guess, then he continued.
 
“Follow my instructions and you will be a very rich, very alive
man.
 
Detour from my instructions and you
will be a very poor, very dead man.
 
Now
get out and get to work.”

He pressed some button and the backdoor opened.
 
Walter Pierce, private eye extraordinaire,
got out.
 
And was left in the middle of a
side street like a discarded piece of trash.
 
Which was what he was going to be, he knew, if he didn’t start racking
up victories in the Brent Sinatra game of life.

Brent woke up early Friday morning, phoned to make sure
Makayla was still doing okay, and then put on clothes, drank his juice blend,
and went running.
 
He was no jogger.
 
Joggers to him moved as if they were running in
slow motion, and always looked at him as if he was doing something amazing; as
if they couldn’t believe he could run that fast for that long.
  
They knew he had been a track star in high
school and had been captain of the football team.
   
He still had that tanned, rock-hard body to
prove it.
 
But even a man like him should
have been tired by now.
 

But he wasn’t.
 
He was
still running like the wind.
 
Some of the
women tried to run with him: that was why they came to the new track in Ethan
Park.
 
It was Friday morning.
 
They either didn’t work or didn’t have to go
to work.
 
Why not?
 
Most of them came to run, but some of them
were there for the men.
 
Especially for
Brent.
 
They wanted that superfine man’s
man Brent Sinatra to finally pay them some attention too.

But after one lap, some could even hang for two, they were
done.
 
He ran too fast for too long for
them to keep up.
 
They were all younger
than he was, but their fast running had turned to barely-able-to-move jogging
before he was even slowing down.

Most of the female joggers left, mainly because they weren’t
a part of the catch-a-man crowd to begin with and didn’t find Brent Sinatra any
more attractive than anybody else.
 
And
even most of the man-hunters, after seeing the turnout, left too.
 
Men were in short supply in a town like
Jericho, which made men like Brent that much more premium, but they left
anyway.
 
They had too much pride in
themselves to go after a man that boldly.
 
But Imogene “Emmy” Price, who had been vying for Brent’s affections for
years, and two of her friends, stayed.
 
They arrived together.
 
They
stayed together.

“Will he ever stop?” asked one of Emmy’s friends.
 
They stood on the side of the track where
some teenagers were handing out bottled water, curtesy of the mayor and his
reelection bid, and continued to watch him run.

“He’ll stop,” Emmy assured her.
 
“He has to.
 
Not even Olympic athletes can run like that for much longer.
 
And once he sees us standing here, he’ll do
more than stop.”

“I don’t know if we’re his type,” the third friend said.
 
“I’ve seen that lady he dates.
 
She has more curves than all three of us
combined.
 
And she’s African-American.
 
Maybe that’s what he’s in to.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Emmy replied dismissively.
 
“She’s just a onetime thing.”

“
One time
?
 
He’s been dating that lady for years, Em!”

Emmy became defensive.
 
“And he dated other women before she came along,” she said.
 
“So what?
 
He dated Kiersten for longer than anybody else, and she’s as blonde and
blue-eyed as I am.
 
And where’s her
curves?
 
She has none and neither do
I.
 
So, yes, I am his type.
 
I’m beautiful.
 
I’m petite.
 
I have natural blonde hair and natural blue eyes.
 
I’m every man’s type.”

The other two, who were not blonde and blue-eyed, and not all
that petite either, looked at each other and rolled their eyes.
 
But Emmy didn’t see it.
 
She was too busy smiling and sipping water,
and watching Brent’s masculine pecs bounce up and down through the sleeveless
shirt he wore, and those tanned legs shake his hard muscle, as he ran.

Emmy heard from more than a few ladies that he was great in
bed and knew how to treat you afterwards.
 
He was very discreet.
 
She had
been fooling around with various local boys for as long as she could
remember.
 
She was tired of boys.
 
She wanted to know what it felt like to be
with a real man for a change.
 
To feel
his rock hard cock inside of her.
 
To
feel his arms around her.
 
And the fact
that he wasn’t just good looking, but was rich too, placed him at the top of
her Man list.
 
She wanted him.

That was why she and her friends stayed.
 
They felt they deserved the best.
 
That was why they stood like shameless Barbie
dolls on the side of the track, all three wearing their cute and colorful Nike
tennis shoes and short-shorts, and waited.
 
And eventually Brent did stop, and accepted a bottled water from one of
the teenage volunteers.
 

Emmy and her girls quickly gathered around him like swarming
flies, unable to take their eyes off of his sweaty body.
 
From his huge biceps, to his flat stomach and
hard abs, to his remarkable grass-green eyes and shiny black hair, he was
exactly what they wanted.
 
Emmy knew he
was fooling around with Makayla Ross, and she’d also heard that Makayla was
moving to Jericho.
 
It felt now or never
to Emmy.
 
She’d been making moves on Brent
for a long time, but now there was a sense of urgency about her actions.
Because she wanted next.
 
He was fair
game, as far as she was concerned.

That was why she moved to the front of the pack as soon as
Brent stopped.
 
“Hey, Brent,” she said
with the biggest smile she could muster.

Brent gulped water and looked down at her pink shoes, her
pink short shorts, her pink t-shirt with her braless pink nipples pinching
against the fabric.
 
Matchy-matchy kid
stuff, he thought.
 
“Hey.”

The other two young ladies spoke as well, and Brent spoke
back.
 
They, too, were dressed in various
shades of pink as if their leader’s style was now their style.
 
Both were plain Janes compared to Emmy, but
that, he knew, was by Emmy’s design.
 
They were her counterpoints.
 
They
didn’t know it, but they were shields for her to get what she wanted.
 
Brent knew the type.
 
He’d been dealing with them all his
life.
 
They would bring their friends
along, not because they enjoyed their company, but because they wanted the man
to realize just how much more attractive they were compared to the
competition.
 
That was why Brent missed
Makayla.
 
He couldn’t imagine a serious
person like her thinking about playing these kind of silly-ass games.
 
This would be child’s play to her.
 
He chose her for that very reason.
 
Mal was young too, but she was a woman among
girls.
 
His
woman.

“Running again I see,” Emmy said, when it was clear he was
more interested in drinking his water than talking to them.

But she was right: he wasn’t interested.
 
“Yup,” he said.

“You run almost every morning, don’t you?”

“Almost.”

“And you’re at it again I see.”

Since it was obvious that he was running again, and she had
already made that point, he didn’t bother to respond.

But his silence didn’t deter Emmy.
 
“I was just telling my friends how you’re
always on the run.
 
Every morning like
clockwork, unless there’s some big case in town you have to solve.
 
But you’re always on the go.
 
And you have the body to prove it.”
 
She laughed.
 
Her friends laughed.
 
Brent gulped
down more water.

The girls looked at each other.
 
He wasn’t thinking about them.
 
But Emmy kept smiling and kept on
trying.
 
“I like to run too.
 
We all do.
 
But you put us all to shame, Chief Sinatra.
 
You shame us all.
 
You run with a purpose, and all alone.
 
You probably could use some company
sometime.”

Brent gulped down the last of his water, tossed the empty
bottle into the recycle bin, and already felt his second wind.
 
“Have a nice day, ladies,” he said, and took
off running again.

Emmy couldn’t believe it.
  
“You saw that?” she asked.
 
“What
an a-hole!”

“He didn’t give us the time of day!”

Emmy shook her head in disgust, and then started walking fast
and angrily toward her car. Her two friends hurried behind her.

“Is that it?” one of them asked.
 
“Is this all?
 
We got out of our beds and came all this way, to this sweaty track, for
this?”

But Emmy was too embarrassed and upset to respond. She knew
it was a waste too.
 
She didn’t look
back.

And neither did Brent.
 
He kept running the track as they loaded into Emmy’s car and drove
off.
 
He kept running if he was running
for his life.
 
Until he ran off track to
the road less traveled: the backroads.

He ran along the quiet wooded trail that used to be overrun
with young, hotshot joggers who thought it was cool to put on their tight
shorts and fancy wristbands and brag about those miles they ran before
work.
 
Now it was the sanctuary of the
very few: the real runners.
 
The men and women
who could take the pounding of the rough terrain and not curse their beaten
bodies for even attempting.
 
The Ethan
Park track was a far more desirable jog path, and most joggers thought old
school men like Brent were out of their mind to run along such a hard road when
the city had built a better place.

But Brent loved this place.
 
He loved the seclusion of it.
 
He loved the sound of the loblolly trees
rustling in the wind as he ran beneath their massive trunks.
 
He loved the streaming water in the homemade
koi ponds that were illegal in the state but were hidden so far off the beaten
path that even he, the police chief, didn’t bother to destroy.
 
He loved the wondrously flowing creeks where
the water splashed over the irregular rocks and created small waterfalls along
the trail.
 
He loved this place.
 
His body was aching, his arms felt like lead,
but it was the only place in town where he could have a relaxing run without
distraction.

Until he ran full circle and jogged
his way back to the secluded Oakley Street, and his land by the lake.
 
His father Charles Sinatra, the man everybody
in town jeeringly called Big Daddy Sinatra because of his enormous power and
property throughout the county, was sitting on his front porch.