BIG DADDY SINATRA 2: IF I CAN'T HAVE YOU, Book 2 (8 page)

“Sarge!”
Marty yelled again.
 
“You alright in
there?”

The
trance was broken.
 
Brent made his
decision.
 
“I’m fine,” he said, backing
up and walking away.
 

Robert
exhaled, and dropped his head.

“Where’s
your collar?” Robert heard Marty asked his brother.
 
“I thought one of them ran in there.”

“I
did too,” Brent said.
 
And that was all he
said about it.

Robert
knew that said a lot about his big brother.
 
Brent was a law and order kind of cop, not some hotheaded, rogue
cop.
 
Robert ran his hands through his
thick, blond hair and was grateful to his brother.
 
He knew he had dodged a bullet.
 
But he also knew his uncannily great luck
wasn’t going to last forever.

“She
hates me,” Donald said as he sat on the leather couch inside his father’s
downtown office.
 
His father, comfortably
slouched down, was seated beside him.

“She
doesn’t hate you,” Charles responded.
 
“She doesn’t like your attitude with her staff.
 
She’s not crazy about your work ethic.”

Donald’s
round eyes looked puzzled. “That’s what I’m talking about.
  
I work hard, Dad.”

“When
you bother to show up you work hard.
 
You
miss too many days.
 
Keep it up and she’s
going to kick you out on your ass.”

“And
you’ll let her, won’t you?”

“I’ll
let her, yes.”

Donald
sighed.
 
“She can do no wrong in your
eyes, even though she . . .”

Charles
looked at his son.
 
“Even though she
what?”

“She flirts
all the time, Dad, with every man around there.
 
I mean all of them.
 
Ask
anybody.
 
She’s taking you for a fool.”

Charles
didn’t say anything.
 
He just continued
to sit there, and to look at his son.

“I’m
only telling you what I know,” Donald said.
 
“What are you looking at me like that for?”

Charles
only looked away from Donald when he heard his office door open.
 
Jenay peered inside.
 
“Are you decent?” she asked.

“Barely,”
Charles said, as he remained in his slouched position.
 
“Come on in.”

Donald’s
body stiffened as Jenay opened the door further and walked on in.
 
“Look who I picked up in the parking lot,”
she said as she entered.

Brent
walked in with her.
 
“Hey, Dad,” he
said.
 
Then he looked at his baby
brother.
 
“Why aren’t you at work?”

“Good
question,” Jenay asked.

“Why
is it your business?” Donald asked and Charles looked at him.
 
“I’m talking to Brent,” he quickly
corrected.
 
“Not your wife.”

Jenay
ignored him anyway as she walked toward her husband.
 
Charles held out his hand to her and pulled
her down onto his lap.

Donald
looked at Brent.
 
“For your information,”
he said, “I left work because I needed to talk to Dad.”

 
“Talk to him later,” Brent responded,
motioning for Donald to get up.
 
“I need
to talk to him now.”

Donald
frowned.
 
“Then wait until I finish.
 
You don’t tell me what to do!”

Brent
looked at his youngest brother.
 
“Don’t
make me make you,” he warned.

Donald
didn’t like it, but he knew Brent.
 
In
some ways, he was as tough as their father.
 
“I’ll talk to you later, Dad,” he said, as he stood up.
 
“I’m going back to the Inn.”

“No,
you aren’t,” Charles responded.
 

Jenay
and Donald both looked at him.

“I’m
not?” Donald asked.

“No.
 
You’re not.
 
You’re fired.”

This
surprised Jenay, who ran the Inn.
 
“He
is?”

“He
is,” Charles responded.

“But
why?” Donald wanted to know.
 
His blue
eyes were filled with puzzlement.

“You
lied on my wife.
 
That’s why.
 
I don’t want you around her.”

“What
did he lie about?” Jenay asked.

“I
was just kidding around,” Donald said.

“What
did he lie about?” Jenay asked Charles again.

“He
says you flirt with every man that dawns the doors of Jericho Inn.
 
He claims the place is now a cesspool of your
flirtatiousness.
 
He all but implied that
I shouldn’t trust you within a hundred yards of any nice looking man.
 
He lied on you.”

Jenay
appreciated the fact that Charles didn’t dignify those lies by asking her to
shoot them down, but she looked at Donald with very hurt eyes.
 
She was the one who went to bat for him.
 
She was the one who gave him a chance to prove
his father wrong by hiring him in the first place.
 
And this was how she got rewarded?

“I
was just playing,” Donald said in his lame attempt to deflect any blame.
 
“I was just playing around, Jenay.”

But
Jenay was shaking her head.
 
“Own your
shit,” she said to her stepson.
 
“You
made those allegations behind my back.
 
Be man enough to own those allegations to my face.”

Donald
began breathing heavily.
 
A sure sign,
Charles and Brent both knew, that he was mad as hell.
 
But not at her, at his father.
 
“You don’t see it, do you?” he asked
Charles.
 
“You don’t see what she’s doing
to us.
 
Ever since you married her you
never have time for me.
 
It’s all about
her and the baby now.
 
And even before
you married her it was all about her.
 
You let me rot in prison for a whole year because of her!
 
If you wouldn’t have been with her you would
have bailed me out and got me a good attorney and testified on my behalf.
 
And I could have gotten probation instead of
jail time.
 
But you didn’t do any of
those things for me.
 
You let me rot in
prison for a whole year!”
 

He
was in tears now.
 
“You’re her husband
now, and I respect that.
 
But you were my
dad first!”

Charles,
however, was unmoved.
 
“You aren’t a kid
anymore, Donald,” he said sternly.

“See?”
Donald responded, nodding his head.
 
“You
never understand.
 
You always dismiss
everything I say as immaturity.
 
I’m
immature, that’s all you ever say.
 
But I
want my dad back!
 
I want to be able to
talk to you and you work it out like the old days.
 
You used to take me hunting and laugh and
talk with me, and hold me.
 
Now you don’t
do any of those things with me.
 
And I
want you back!
 
Just because you’re
looking out for her now doesn’t mean you have to stop looking out for me!”

Brent
and Jenay both felt the depths of Donald’s pain.
 
Especially Jenay, who understood it
completely.
 

But
if they were expecting similar understanding from Charles, they were grossly
disappointed.
 
“You aren’t a kid
anymore,” Charles said again.
 
“You’re a
twenty-one year old man now.
 
You’ve got
to put away this childishness.
 
I was a
husband with four sons when I was your age.”

“I’m
not you!” Donald shot back.

“I
didn’t say you were me,” Charles responded.
 
“But you’re a man, that’s a fact.
 
And the fact that I don’t bail you out of your stupid shit anymore
doesn’t negate the additional fact that you lied on my wife.
 
You lied on her, Donald.
 
You sat right here and tried to create a
wedge between me and Jenay like I’m some
got
damn
idiot who didn’t know what you were doing!”

Charles’s
heart was racing.
 
He knew he had to calm
himself back down.
 
“And to blame Jenay
for that year you spent in prison is rich.
 
Really rich.
 
You nearly beat your
ex-wife to death.
 
That’s why you spent
that year in prison.
 
That wasn’t my
shit.
 
That wasn’t Jenay’s shit.
 
That was yours.
 
But you want me to overlook all of your crap
because we don’t go hunting anymore and I don’t have time to coddle you and
baby you anymore?
 
Get the fuck out of
here!
 
Get the fuck out of my face until
you take responsibility for a change and come to me correct, and stop making
all of these bullshit excuses for yourself!”

It
hurt Charles to his heart to be so blunt with his son, but he knew he had to do
it.
 
Donald was still trapped in his own
self-centeredness.
 
Everything revolved
around him.
 
If he allowed him to
continue to get away with his lies and manipulation, there was no end to what
he could try and pull to destroy Jenay in the eyes of the people in this town.
 
And nobody was destroying Jenay.

Donald
knew it too.
 
That was why he didn’t try
to explain anymore.
 
He just turned and
left.
 

But
as soon as he stepped outside and got into his Mustang, he pulled out a piece
of paper, and then his cell phone.
 
He
pressed in the number and allowed the phone to ring.
 
When it was answered, he didn’t
hesitate.
 
“You’ve got to do it,” he
said.
 
“You’ve got to do it now!”

Back
inside the office, Jenay was still reeling.
 
Just as Charles didn’t want his son to create a wedge in his marriage,
Jenay didn’t want to create a wedge between father and son.
 
She was going out of her way to make certain
Charles maintained a strong relationship with all four of his sons.
 
But Donald was always the toughest nut to
crack.
 
He and Jenay, in truth, had yet
to really get along.
 
She had hoped the
fact that he was working at the Inn would change all of that.
 
It hadn’t changed a thing.

Charles
could feel the tenseness in her body as he held her.
 
He pulled her closer against him.
 
But it couldn’t be helped.
 
Donald was hell bent on creating havoc in
their marriage, and Charles was just as hell bent in preventing him.
 
There was liable to be confusion.
 
There just was.

“Don’t
let him worry you, Jenay,” he warned her as he patted her thigh.
 
“He knows what he’s doing.”

“Yeah,”
Brent said, sitting down beside his father and Jenay.
 
Although Jenay was only ten years older than
Brent, he respected her immensely as his father’s wife.
 
He was very supportive, in fact, of his
father’s selection.
  
“When Tony and I
were born, Dad was hard as a rock with us.
 
But when Bobby and Donnie came along, Dad and Mom were having so many
problems that he decided to go all soft on them.
 
Now he’s paying the price.
 
Like with Bobby.”

Charles
looked at him. “What about Robert?”

Brent
leaned forward and let out a harsh exhale.
 
“It’s bad, Dad.”

Charles’s
heart began to pound.
 
“What is it?”

“I
got a tip on a new drug ring operating in town earlier this morning.
 
We busted up the group, and even arrested a
few, but most of them got away.
 
When I
was searching this storage unit onsite, I found one of the participants hiding
inside.
 
It was Bobby, Dad.”

Charles
frowned.
 
“Robert?”

“Are
you sure?” Jenay asked.

“I’m
positive. It was him.”