BIG DADDY SINATRA 2: IF I CAN'T HAVE YOU, Book 2 (27 page)

And
suddenly she felt unsafe.
 
Suddenly she
felt as if a woman who would have this kind of image on her bedroom wall
couldn’t possibly be stable.
 
Something
was wrong.
 
She didn’t know to what
extent.
 
But she knew she had to get out
of there.

She
immediately turned and hurried back into the living room.
 
She grabbed her purse and was about to make
it for the front door.

“Leaving
without saying goodbye?” Mary asked.

Startled,
Jenay turned to the sound.
 
And there was
Mary, with gun in hand, pointing it directly at Jenay.
 
“Which is fine,” Mary added.
 
“Don’t say goodbye.
 
But you aren’t leaving.”

Jenay
began thinking.
 
She didn’t have time to panic,
she had to think.
 
This woman was obvious
nuts.
 
The gun proved that.
 
This woman was obviously obsessed with
Charles.
 
That Mount Rushmore type
photograph proved that.
 
She had to get
her to talk.
 
She had to get her to talk
about Charles.

“You
love him too?” Jenay asked.

“Of
course I love him!” Mary responded.
 
“That’s a stupid question. I’ve been with him all these years, how could
I not love him?
 
How could he not love
me?
 
We love each other.
 
Everybody knows that.”

“What
do you love about him?” Jenay asked.
 
What could she pick up and throw, she was thinking.
 
She was so close to that front door.
 
What could she grab to knock that bitch down
long enough so she could get away?

“I
love everything about him, why are you asking stupid questions?
 
Oh, that’s right.
 
Because you’re stupid.”
 
Then Mary smiled, but it was a cold, bitter
smile.
 
“And he married you.
 
You.”
 
She pointed the gun again, as if her patience with Jenay was over.

“But
why are you doing this?” Jenay asked quickly.
  
“Charles trusts you.”

“He
trusts me with everything.
 
I was
embezzling funds for years right under his nose, and had Will Horton cheating
some of the tenants too.
 
At least the
ones who rented the smaller properties Charles never paid any attention
to.
 
He had too many to worry about, and
all Will had to do was get them to sign the first contract, and then the second
one.
 
Our contract.
 
Where they had to pay extra or get out.
 
And all of that money was enriching my
coffers.
 
All of that money was being
collected so that one day I could get exactly what I wanted.
 
Charles.
   
Because you’re right.
 
He trusted
me.
 
He trusted me with his life.
 
And he was right to trust me with his
life.
 
I love him and would never hurt
him.
 
But then he trusted me with his wife.
 
That was a big mistake.
 
I hate her.
 
I hate everything about her.”

She
was coming closer now.
 
She was showing a
side of her Jenay had never seen before now.
 
“I could have married that man,” Mary kept talking.
 
“One day, he was going to see the light.
 
But then you came along.
 
So I took that money I saved and hired Will
Horton to put an end to it.
 
Will used to
be military you know.
 
He knew a lot
about explosives.
 
So I decided to use
explosives.
 
And the police never even
questioned him.
 
Or me either.
 
That was the beauty of it.
 
And I own Will Horton. I know things about
him that would make you blush.
 
But it
failed.
 
You and that baby had the luck
of the Irish.
 
The black Irish, that is.”

She
smiled at this.
 
But then she turned
reptilian again.
  
“He failed.
 
But I won’t.”
 
She was aimed and was ready to fire.
 

Instead
of bracing herself, instead of curling up into some ball, Jenay grabbed the
vase off of the side table and threw it at Mary.
 
Mary sidestepped and avoided it completely,
but it gave Jenay enough leverage to tackle Mary and attempt to take away that
gun.
 

They
struggled and they struggled.
 
They fell
over the sofa, and was on the floor struggling.
 
Until the gun was in both their hands.
 
But Mary was bigger than Jenay and was getting the upper hand.
 
Jenay saw the barrel of that gun pointing
directly at her eyes.
 
And she
prayed.
 
She fought and held on and
prayed almost as intensely as she prayed for Bonita to be all right when that
car exploded in a mushroom of smoke and fire.
 
   
And she fought.
 
She wasn’t going down without a fight.

Outside,
Charles’s Jaguar swerved into the driveway.
 
Brent, who had been closer to Mary’s house when he got the call, still
didn’t make it there faster than his father.
 
He arrived just behind Charles.
 
And Donald, who Brent had phoned after his father phoned him because he
knew Donald was even closer, arrived just behind Brent.
 
All three men jumped out.
 
All three men ran for the front door.

They
heard the gunfire before they could make it to the front porch.
 
But when they heard that gunfire, they pushed
the limits of their abilities and ran even faster.

Charles
knocked the door down on his first try, and all three men ran in.
 
But what they found startled them.

The
gun had been kicked away from both ladies.
 
No-one had been shot.
 
But one of
the ladies, Mary, had been so badly beaten that she looked as if she had been
shot.
 
Jenay, on the other hand, looked
flustered, but otherwise okay.

“Damn,
Ma,” Donald said with a smile.
 
“You
don’t be playing, do you?”

Charles
ran to Jenay and pulled her into his arms.
 
“Thank God you’re alive,” he said.
 
“Thank God!”

Jenay
agreed.
 
“I’m alive,” she said.
 
“I’m alive.”

But
it was, once again, a matter of inches.
 

EPILOGUE

The social
worker sat behind her desk and took another look at the Sinatras.
 
She was amazed that every last one of them
showed up.
 
The parents: Charles and
Jenay.
 
The handsome sons: Brent, Tony,
Robert and Donald.
 
And even the baby
girl Bonita was there, sitting on her daddy’s knee.
 
They all showed up.
 
It was refreshing.
 
It made her even more hopeful that this might
actually work.

“They’re
bringing them down now,” the social worker said.

“Good,”
Jenay responded.
 
She was more nervous
than anybody else.

“But
I have to ask again,” the social worker said as she looked from Charles to
Jenay.
 
“Are you absolutely positive you
want to take this on?
 
The last thing we
want is for the girls to think they have a home, only to be returned back to
us.”

“That
would be the last thing we want too,” Charles made clear.
 
“We talked this over as a family and we
agreed that if this is what Jenay wants, this is what we all want.”

“And
I want it very much,” Jenay said.
 
“Those
girls have been through so much.”

“Too
much,” the social worker agreed.
 
“Their
mother was killed, and there are allegations that their father had a hand in
it.
 
Then their father was killed in a
shootout with police. This has been a very trying time.”

More
than she realized, Jenay thought.
 
From
Will Horton confessing to planting that bomb and then getting killed by that
car, to Mary Stalworth getting arrested, to Joffee getting fired, it had been
the most challenging time of their lives.
 
The only silver lining was that Brent was reinstated as a policeman, and
the girls, Carly and Ash, were placed into Jenay’s custody.
 
That was a major silver lining.

“What
I don’t understand,” Donald said, “is why wouldn’t any of their relatives step
up?
 
If something were to happen to one
of my future children, I can’t imagine my Dad not stepping in and raising my
child for me.
 
Or my stepmom or my
brothers stepping in.”

“But
they have to be appropriate placements,” the social worker said.
 
“It’s not enough that they’re related.
 
At least not here in Richmond.
 
They have to be able to properly care for
those children.
 
Both of the girls’
parents had relatives who either had major criminal records and were therefore
not qualified to care for the children, or they had relatives who were more
than qualified, but refused the offer.
 
They didn’t want the responsibility.
 
So again,” she said, looking at Jenay and Charles, “I ask you before
those girls walk through that door: are you absolutely positive that you want
to take on this responsibility?”

Jenay
looked at Charles.
  
“We’re positive,” he
said for all of them.
 

And
in less than three minutes, the door opened, and Carly and Ashley Franklin
walked into their lives.

Jenay
stood up and they ran to her.
 
They threw
their arms around her in an incredibly emotional embrace.
 
Even more emotional than the last time they
met.
 
When asked, after Quince’s death,
who did they want to live with, the girls immediately said Jenay.
 
No one else but Jenay.
 
But they also warned that she probably didn’t
want them.
 

Yet
when the Richmond authorities phoned Jenay, she begged to take the girls.
 

Now
they were in her arms and crying like two little children.
 
Even Donald, who was now on his meds and was
less moody than he’d ever been, was shedding a tear.
 
Life wasn’t great for Brent, not after that
fiasco with Denise, but even he felt happy for the girls.
 
Jenay would take great care of them.
 
And the one thing his dad was great at, he
thought, was raising children.
 
Those
girls had nothing to worry about.

“We
know about the court order,” Ashley said to Jenay.
 
“The social workers told us it was true.
 
We know you didn’t come see about us for all
those years because our Dad wouldn’t let you.”

“And
then he moved us to Richmond,” Carly added, “and you had no idea where we
were.
 
We know it now, Jenay.
 
We’re sorry.”

But
Jenay threw her arms around them again.
 
“There’s nothing, and I mean nothing to be sorry about.” She was just
thrilled to have them back again, safe and sound.
 

Little
Carly looked at Charles through her tears.
 
“We’ll be good,” she said.
 
“We
promise.”

And
that did it for Charles. Carly’s sweet, tender eyes did him in.
 
Now he had tears in his own eyes.
 
Every one of his sons, when they saw that a
girl could reduce their father to tears, were stunned.

Charles
stood up and placed his arm around Carly and Ash too.
 
And since Nita was in his other arm, she was
hugging them too.
 
“We’ll be good to
you,” he said back to them.
 
“We
promise.”

And
Bonita started grinning and eating her thumb.
 
The Sinatra boys laughed and wondered what in the world was life going
to be like with not just two females to deal with, which was already a handful,
but four.
 

But
since their father didn’t seem to mind, they didn’t either.

And
Jenay was simply happy.
 
This was going
to be good.
 
She could feel it in her
bones.