BIG DADDY SINATRA 2: IF I CAN'T HAVE YOU, Book 2 (24 page)

“A
pathetic try.”

“To
say the least,” Charles said.

“But
she never took her new husband’s name.
 
She kept your last name.”

“I
was her first and, let her tell it, only love.
 
This guy was her benefactor.”

“Poor
guy.”

“Yeah,”
Charles said, and rang the bell.

The
Butler answered after what they considered a longer than usual time.
 
But he was a very old Butler, probably
pushing seventy.
 
So they
understood.
 
“May I help you?” he asked
after he opened the door.

“Yes,
sir.
 
I’m Charles Sinatra.”

“Oh.
Mr. Sinatra.
 
Good afternoon.”

“Good
afternoon.
 
This is my wife, Jenay.”

“Mrs.
Sinatra,” the Butler said with a slight bow.

“We’re
here to see Ari.
 
Arianna.
 
Is she in?”

“Oh,
I’m afraid not, sir.
 
She’s not here.”

Charles
waited for more.
 
“Well can you at least
tell me where she might be?”

“Why
she’s in prison, sir.”

Charles
and Jenay were surprised.
 
“Prison?”
Jenay asked.

“Well,
not technically prison,” the Butler corrected. “But jail.
 
She’s been arrested.”

“For
what?” Charles asked.

“Why
murder, sir,” the Butler said.

Charles
and Jenay looked at each other.
 
And then
they looked at the Butler.
 
He seemed
thrilled by the prospect of his employer going away for a long time.
 
He seemed pleased beyond measure.

They
sat in the visitation room at the county jail and waited for the guards to
bring her in.
 
But both Charles and Jenay
were still digesting the news.

“It’s
so unreal,” Jenay said. “She murdered somebody?
 
That’s wild.”

“Yeah,”
Charles agreed.
 
“Even for Ari that’s
wild.”

“Wonder
if Quince had something to do with it?
 
Wonder if that’s why we haven’t been able to catch up with him?
 
We drove by that house he and the girls were
staying in, and it’s empty.
 
Maybe he was
involved too.”

“Maybe,”
Charles said.
 
Then he looked at Jenay.
“You don’t put it pass him?”

“I
don’t put anything pass Quince,” Jenay responded firmly.
 
“Not after he told me outside of the girls’
school that he was leaving me for another woman, and he didn’t care that his
words had just destroyed my life.
 
No.
 
I wouldn’t put it pass him.”

Arianna
was escorted into the room and the guard stood by the door.
 
She smiled when she saw them.
 
“How do I look?” she asked with a twirl.
 
She was a very petite woman.
 
“Jumpsuits aren’t usually my style.
 
But I think I rock this one.
 
What do you think?”

Charles
failed to see the humor.
 
“You’re awfully
upbeat considering where you are.”

Arianna
sat down at the table across from them.
 
“I’m surviving until my attorneys get me out of here.
 
That’s all this is about.
 
Now what do you want from me?”

“Somebody
planted a bomb in my wife’s car. Was it you?” Charles asked without ceremony.

Arianna
laughed.
 
“Very funny.
 
Why would I want to kill that bitch?”

“The
only bitch in here is you,” Jenay answered before Charles could. Charles
smiled.
 
“So who did you kill?” Jenay
asked her.

“Very
funny again,” Arianna responded.
 
“I didn’t
kill anybody.
 
That former right hand man
of mine, Ed Anderson, was arrested for killing a certain lady, and then he
implicated me in his scheme.”

“What
lady?”

“The
mother of Quince’s daughters,” Arianna said.
 
“His babies’ mama.”

Charles
was floored.
 
Jenay was too.
 
She leaned forward.
 
“But he said she died in a car accident.”

“She
did die in a car accident.
 
It was a
rigged car accident, at least that’s what the prosecution is now claiming, but
it was a car accident.”

“So
where’s Quince in all of this?” Charles asked.

“Right
in the dab thick of it honey,” Arianna gladly proclaimed. “That’s why he’s on
the run.
 
He took those daughters of his
and scrammed.
 
Nobody knows where he is.
 
Sick bastard!
 
And you think any of us had time to be planting bombs and blowing up
Miss Pick and Pay?
 
You have got to be
kidding.
 
I’m fighting for my
freedom.
 
That’s all that matters to me
now.
 
Bombing some bitch in Maine is the
last agenda item on my
to do
list.
 
Especially a low-rent bitch like
her.”
 

Charles
was about to fire back with an angry retort, but Jenay, again, beat him to
it.
 
“I might be a low-rent bitch in your
eyes,” she said, as she began to rise.
 
“But I’m a free bitch.
 
I’m the
bitch leaving this bitch.
 
You’re the
bitch who gets to stay.”
 
Jenay juggled
her hands as if she was weighing the options.
 
“I’d rather be me, bitch,” she concluded, and then she and Charles
headed for the exit.
 

Only
Charles was laughing hysterically as they left.

Later,
as they drove back to the airport, Jenay leaned back against the headrest.
 
“Are you going to tell your sons?” she asked
him.

“I
already have.”

Jenay
looked at him.
 
“You called them?
 
What did they say?”

“They
said they don’t care.
 
Even Donald
doesn’t care.
 
She’s a nonfactor as far
as they’re concerned and they don’t want to have anything to do with her.”

“Wow.”

“Too
many years she hasn’t given a damn,” Charles said.
 
“So they stopped giving a damn too.”

But
then Jenay thought about the girls.
 
“Carly and Ash,” she said and laid back against the headrest.
 
“They must be so scared and confused.
 
Their mother left them, Vernita left them, I
left them, and now Quince is on the run and probably acting like some madman.”

“Correction,”
Charles said.
 
“You didn’t leave
them.
 
He made you leave them.”

“I
know.
 
But still it has got to be a very
scary time for them.
 
And what if it’s
true about Quince being involved in their mother’s car crash?
 
Oh my goodness.
 
They will be devastated if they find that
out.
 
She wasn’t a good mother, but she
was still their biological mother.”

“I’m
sure that’s true.
 
Hopefully the cops
will track him down and bring him to justice.
 
And hopefully, in the meantime, he won’t do those girls any harm.”

Jenay
shook her head.
 
“He won’t hurt Carly and
Ash.”

“Did
you ever think he could be involved in their mother’s death?”

Jenay
closed her eyes.
 
“No,” she said.

“Then
stop giving him so much credit.
 
He’s a
bastard and that’s all there is to it.
 
But I pray you’re right about him concerning those girls.”
 
Then Charles exhaled.
 
“That’s why I’ll call Ike and get him on the
case.”

Jenay
looked at him.
 
“Who’s Ike?”

“A
private investigator I use.
 
He’s looking
into who could have planted that bomb in your car.
 
I told him we would check this angle.
 
Now that Quince has taken off, I want some of
his men tracking him down too.”

“You
think Arianna’s lying, don’t you?
 
You
think she and Quince did have something to do with that car bomb?”

“I
think the fact that the cops have arrested her, and have a warrant for Quince’s
arrest in another car accident, I don’t see how we can put it pass them.”

“So
you don’t believe her pleas of innocence?” Jenay asked.

“I
don’t know if I believe her or not,” Charles responded.
 
“That’s all the more reason why I need to
make sure.
 
That’s why Ike and his men
are going to find out one way or another if she and Quince and anybody else on
this end were involved.”

Jenay
shook her head.
 
“I never thought I’d
ever see Quince again.
 
And then after I
see him, all of these tragedies happen.
 
I just pray the girls are okay.”

Charles
nodded.
 
“That’s certainly my prayer.”

“So
if your investigator is going to handle this part of the story, where does that
leave us?”

“We’ve
got to go down our enemies list and check them off, one by one.
 
That’s the only option left for us.”

“And
if we turn up empty?” Jenay asked.

“Then
we’re screwed,” Charles responded.
 
“Because the devil you know is always preferable than the one you don’t
know.”

Jenay
exhaled, as emotions began to overtake her, and she looked the other way.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Over
the next several months, they went down the list.
 
From Stoke Ackerman to Aaron Gentry and every
other member of the country club governing board, to even those drug dealers Robert
had been briefly mixed up with, they checked off every name.
 
And turned up nothing.
 
No leads, no questions, no answers.
 
Nothing.
 
Even their private investigator, who was on the case in Richmond, was
turning up blanks.
 
It was as if Quince
had dropped off the face of this earth, and taken his daughters with him.
 
Even the local police, who had been
vigorously investigating the car bombing, eased up too.
 
Tess Magrid was dead and buried, Jenay and
Bonita were alive and well, they slowly moved on to other cases.
 

Even
Charles began to wonder if they would ever find the answers because he felt as
if they were just spinning wheels.
 
“Spinning wheels turn up a lot of dirt,” he once told his sons, “but
they also leave a lot of holes.”

Four
months after Jenay’s Mercedes was bombed on Harvey Street, and poor Tess lost
her young life, they still had a lot of holes.
 
It forced Charles and Jenay to reach an unsettling truth: that this was
their new normal, and they had to accept it, and live with it.
 

Jenay
drove up to the front entrance of the Jericho Inn in her brand new
Mercedes.
 
Unlike the last one, which was
red, this one was pure white.
 
And it
wasn’t an S-class like before, but a ML500 SUV.
 
Charles bought it for her because it was big and he therefore believed
it would be safer.
 
Jenay just liked the
look of it.

“Look
at you,” Megan said as Jenay entered the lobby and headed for the front
desk.
 
Her car might no longer be red,
Megan thought, but she was decked down in a red pantsuit and heels.
  
“I want to be like you when I grow up.”

Jenay
laughed.
 
For the first time in four long
months, she actually felt as if she could laugh without any lingering feelings
of dread.
 
They still had no answers, and
Quince was still roaming out there somewhere with his daughters, but for the
sake of her own family she had to lift that metaphorical black veil and move
the hell on.

“It’s
very nice,” Megan said, looking at the SUV.
  
“Did you just purchase it?”

“Charles
ordered it a month ago,” Jenay said as she walked behind the desk, “but it just
came in last night.”

Megan
shook her head.
 
“And here I was thinking
all those stories about Big Daddy Sinatra were true.
 
I believed that stuff before you came
along.
 
But he’s not ruthless at
all.
 
He’s not mean.
 
He’s a pushover.”

“I
wouldn’t go that far,” Jenay said, and Megan laughed.
 
“He’s no pushover.
 
But he is a good guy.
 
That much is true.”
 
Then Jenay realized what was missing.
 
“Why are you playing desk clerk again today?”

“Wanda
had a doctor’s appointment.”

“I
thought I said Denise would handle back-up when the clerk wasn’t here.
 
You have enough to do.”

“But
Denise went upstairs.
 
She said she
wasn’t feeling well.
 
Again.
 
And since Wilma is on vacation, and Betty
quit, and Wanda had a doctor’s appointment, there was nobody else to do it.”

“Well
did you remind Denise that there was nobody else?”

“I
told her,” Megan said.
 
“But she still
claimed to be too sick to come down.”

Jenay
exhaled.
 
Denise was becoming more
trouble than she was worth.
 
She and
Brent were still together, to even Jenay’s shock, and it was changing Denise
from the responsible assistant to the entitled girlfriend.
 
She even told Jenay that Brent was looking to
rent a house for her, that was how serious things were getting between the two
of them, and she would probably stop working soon.
 
Jenay told her it was a mistake.
 
She told her that she should never rely on a
boyfriend to pay her bills and take care of her.
 
But she wasn’t trying to hear that.

But
Jenay wasn’t trying to allow her to get lazy on the job and have other people
pulling her weight.
 
That was why she
headed upstairs even before she put her purse away.
 
She and Denise needed to have a
heart-to-heart.
 
She didn’t show
favoritism toward Donald when he worked here, she wasn’t about to show it
toward Denise.

But
upstairs, Denise wasn’t thinking about favoritism.
 
She was thinking about the test results
staring her in the face.
 
There it
was.
 
On the sink in her bathroom.
 
An undeniable plus sign.
 
It was her third test.
 
All three turned up positive.
 
She was pregnant.

She
didn’t know what to make of it.
 
Would
Brent be happy, or angry?
 
Would he want
to marry her, or dump her?
 
And what
about her?
 
She didn’t want to be
anybody’s mother!
 
That was why Brent
stopped wearing condoms three months into their relationship, because he knew
it too.
 
She made clear to him repeatedly
that she was on birth control and would never chance a pregnancy.
 
And she did take the pill faithfully.
 
She could only remember missing one or two
days.
 
One or two days in four
months!
 
She never dreamed that a missed
day once or twice would result in a positive test.
 
In a pregnancy!
 

She
would often miss taking her birth control pills when she was with Mark.
 
Now she missed a day here and there with
Brent and she was pregnant?
 
She knew it
was possible, but she never considered that possibility.
 

Knocks
were heard on her suite door.
 
And then
she heard Jenay’s voice.
 
“Denise, are
you in there?”

Denise
hurriedly grabbed the test stick and threw it into the wastebasket.
 
Then she wiped the tears that had been
falling from her eyes.
 
Then she hurried
to open the door.

“It
took you long enough,” Jenay said.
 
“I
understand you’re sick?”

“No
I’m good,” Denise said, grabbing her purse from off of the side table.
 
“I was on my way back downstairs.”

Jenay
looked at Denise as Denise hurried out of the suite, and hurried along the
corridor.
 
What in the world was wrong
with that girl, Jenay thought, as she watched her train wreck of a friend hurry
to her post.

That night,
when Bonita was asleep in her Nursery, and Tony was still being nanny and was
asleep in the nursery with her, Charles was riding Jenay’s ass in a slow motion
fuck.
 

Jenay
was naked and on her stomach, with her hands folded beneath the side of her face,
as she relished the weight of his big, naked body on top of her, and the feel
of his big, hard dick swelling inside of her.
 
Their sex life had eased considerably after that bombing, even to the
point where they would sometimes go weeks without doing anything.
 
But over the last few days that all
changed.
 
Charles’s appetite was back in
force.
 
He was still worried about his
family, and he was still concerned that they might never find the person
responsible, but he wasn’t going to let the stress of that nightmare ruin what
used to be a major part of his marriage.

He
fucked Jenay with slow, lingering strokes.
 
His big, muscular body was so horny when he first turned her onto her
stomach and laid his body on top of her back, he found himself rubbing his dick
between the crack of her tight ass for minutes on end before he put it in
her.
 
And when he put it in, he closed
his eyes, leaned down, and gathered her tighter beneath him.
 
The warmth of her vagina captured him.
 
It felt as if he was home again.
 
And he relished that feeling.

But
he was all in now, deeply in, and he was fucking her relentlessly.
 
He was thrusting in and almost out of her,
gliding across her womanhood repeatedly, until he had her on fire with sensual
pulsations.
 
His dick could feel her
throbs.
 
His dick was throbbing too with
every stroke.
 
For nearly an hour he
fucked her.
 
For nearly an hour they both
were on the verge of cumming, but were so intent on prolonging their cum that
they remained in a kind of euphoric, pre-climactic state the entire time.

Jenay
was nearly drowsy beneath him.
 
She felt
every muscle in her body relax as he did her.
 
And it was the best time all over again.
 
She never dreamed she’d be able to live with the pain of that day on
Harvey Street.
 
But right now, as Charles
fucked her, she was not only living with it, but had actually stopped thinking
about it.
 
It wasn’t a matter of seconds
anymore.
 
It wasn’t a matter of what
would have been if Donald had not taken Nita out of that car, or if she and
Reuben had not been delayed when that teenager took a corner too fast and
forced her back onto the curb.
 

But
because of the loving way Charles was doing her, he was allowing her to stop
celebrating a near-death, and was giving her permission to embrace her life
again.
 
She was alive.
 
Bonita was alive.
 
For Bonita’s sake, for Charles’s sake, for
their boys’ sake, she had to get over it.
 
Tonight, she felt, was that beginning.

And
when they both finally came, she didn’t scream out the way she used to, and she
didn’t groan or moan or laugh with delight.
 
She cried.
 
She cried for the life
she had, not the one she almost lost.
 
She cried for the husband she had, and the daughter, and the sons.
 
She cried.

When
Charles finally stopped fucking her, and his dick finally began its retreat, he
looked down at her.
 
He was filled with
his usual pride of completion, certain that he had pleased her mightily.
 
But when he saw that she was crying, and that
she was wiping away the tears, his heart dropped.
 
“Honey, what’s wrong?” he asked her, his big
green eyes bright with concern.

“Nothing’s
wrong,” Jenay responded.
 
“Everything’s
right.”

“But
you’re crying.”

“They’re
tears of joy,” she said.
 
“Everything’s
right.”

Charles
smiled with relief.
 
“Yes,” he said.
 
“Everything’s perfect now.”

“Not
perfect,” Jenay corrected him.
 
“Until we
find that bastard it will never be perfect.
 
But everything fits now.
 
Everything’s right.
 
Just right.”

Charles
was a contemplative man, and he therefore thought about what she had just
said.
 
Then he nodded his head.
 
He understood exactly what she meant.
 
All of the pieces in their life fit together
now.
 
Their sons, their daughter, and them.
 
Everything was right.
 
He kissed her lovingly on the side of her
lips, and then rolled off of her.
 

But
unlike her, he didn’t lay there still contemplating what she had said.
 
Within mere minutes, he was fast asleep.
 
Jenay smiled when she heard him snoring.
 
If she had a dollar for every time she was
forced, after sex, into cleaning his wet dick because he had fallen asleep and
wasn’t conscious to do it himself, she’d be a very wealthy woman.
 
Then she realized she already was a very
wealthy woman in every way, felt that surge of joy, and then headed for the
bathroom.

 
That next morning, Sunday morning, Charles woke
up alone in bed.
 
Not that he was
unaccustomed to waking up alone.
 
Jenay
was an early bird, always up and showered and dressed before seven a.m.
 
The idea of him getting up before nine was
laughable.
 
That was why he looked at the
nightstand.
 
If it wasn’t after nine, he
was going to turn over and get more sleep.
 
But it was ten.
 
He reluctantly
got his naked body out of bed, put on a robe, and then made his way downstairs.