Page 1 of Nikki Sinatra: For Her Lover
PROLOGUE
YEARS EARLIER
“A new car?For me? Oh Mill you didn’t!”
Young Nikki Baker threw herself into the arms of her man so hard that his thick gold chain nearly embedded itself into his chest. She laughed and backed off. And looked at the car again. It wasn’t a new car. It was more like a hunk of junk. But she was in that love bubble where anything Emilio did for her was grand. “Nobody’s ever given me anything like this before. Not even close.”
“Get in. Crank it up. I had my man check it out for you. It’s a bad ride, Nikki, no lie.”
Nikki gladly took the keys and hopped inside. It was summertime in Miami and she was in hotpants and a halter top. Her super-curvaceous body and large natural breasts, topped off by her gorgeous, velvety-smooth dark-brown face, often made her a target for those drug boys who wanted a trophy like her on their arms. Her boyfriend, Emilio “Mill” Cabrera, who always seemed to be shirtless to highlight his Dominican-black six-pack abs, and who always wore that thick gold chain around his neck and had his jeans purposely poised halfway down his ass, was one of those boys.
To the old ladies who sat on their stoops gossiping and shaking their heads at all the illegal activity swirling around them, he was a straight-up gangbanger ruining the neighborhood. Even to his mother, whose house Mill and Nikkilived in and whose driveway they were standing on, he was a no-good thug.
But to eighteen-year-old Nikki Baker, who’d never been in love like this before, Emilio Cabrera was the kindest, sweetest, most beautiful boy in the world. He sold drugs and she knew it, but he told her it was only weed so she convinced herself it was no big deal.
By the time she found out Emilio was moving more than just weed, and that opioids were by far his drug of choice, she was in too deep to turn back. By that time she loved him more than life itself.
She had just recently fled her mother’s house, who had fled her father and his gangbanging lifestyle so that she could give Nikki a better life. But by the time Nikki was a teen, she was getting tired of her mother’s rules and regulations and as soon as she turned eighteen she was out of there. She ended up in Liberty City, in Miami, where Emilio, who already was eyeing her, happily took her in. By buying her a car he was taking their relationship, at least she thought, to the next level.
“Crank it up,” he said to Nikki with his grilled-teeth smile as he leaned his slender body over the frame of the front driver side window. “Give it a spin, my love. It’s a smooth ride.”
It took two attempts by Nikki, but the engine finally turned over and the car was humming. Loudly as if it needed a new muffler, but it was humming nonetheless. And Nikki could not have been happier.
Until Emilio took it a step further. “While you’re driving and showing it off, I need you to make a run for me, Nick.”
Nikki looked at him suspiciously. “A run? What kind of run?”
Emilio looked over at his mother’s porch and snapped his finger. One of his boys that was hanging on the porch camedown with a brown paper bag and handed it to him. He handed it to Nikki.
“What’s this?”
“Just a package I need you to take over to Oliver’s house.”
Nikki was astounded. “Drugs?”
When Emilio didn’t respond, she knew that was exactly what it was. “Oh hell no!” She quickly got out of the car. “Are you nuts?”
“Come on, Nikki, come on!”
“Are you out of your mind? I told you to leave that shit alone and now you want me all up in it too? Hell no!”
“But he needs it now.”
“Then send one of your boys.”
“They got other drop-offs. I’m sending everybody. I got to move this product by nightfall or I’m in trouble, Nikki. No lie. They’ll make an example out of me if I don’t come through. I’m sending everybody everywhere.”
He then placed his hands on Nikki’s arms and began rubbing them. “Outside of my boys, you’re the only one I can trust. These fools out here ain’t trying to help a brother out. I’m just a Dominican to them. Same skin color but not the same. You’re the only one I can trust baby.”
But Nikki dug in. “No.”
“Nikki please.”
“I said no!”
“But I’m in trouble!”
“Too bad, Mill, that’s just too bad. What’s wrong with you? How could you ask me to do something like that? I’m not having anything to do with drugs and you know that. I told you that.” She folded her arms. “You can forget that shit. No way am I making any runs for you or anybody else!”
