Page 22 of Nikki Sinatra: For Her Lover
“Yes ma’am.”
Then Nikki looked at everybody else surrounding her. “Starting right here and right now, anybody that disrespects me and my authority will be terminated summarily and without hesitation. I gave Sammy a second chance because his situation is different. The rest of you are deckhands. Your situation is the same as Mike Driessen’s. You will be terminated immediately with no questions asked or answered. I’ve had it up to here with this insubordination and if it continues you won’t continue making that big fat salary we pay you. And forget about all those benefits we give you. You earn more than people with two or three degrees earn. That’s how well you’re paid. You’d better realize what your inability to accept me as the boss will cost you. Because it will cost you dearly. Ask Driessen! But make no mistake about it. This shit ends today,” she said firmly, gave them all another good hard look, and then got off the ship.
She could tell the crew was stunned, but that was exactly what she was going for. They needed to be stunned. All of this disrespect after all this time she’d been their boss was ridiculous.
But when she saw Teddy leaned against his car in front of the office, she exhaled. Just when she needed him most, he found a way to show up for her. She walked faster getting to him.
CHAPTER TWELVE
When she saw Teddy she was also glad he didn’t come running to her rescue. He didn’t try to fight her battle the way he usually did. That would been all she needed. Every worker on that ship would have dismissed every word she had to say and label her a fraud. And their disrespect would have continued. His intervention would have ruined everything.
When she finally made it up to him, she smiled. He was leaned against Marco’s Bugatti, his big arms folded, his legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, and he had put those sunglasses back on his face, covering those eyes Nikki loved so much. “So much sun,” she said jokingly.
Teddy smiled too. He knew it was ten at night. He knew the sun had long since gone down. “You are my sunshine,” he said. “What can I say?”
Nikki wanted desperately to run into his arms. He gave her that sense of peace and calm nobody else ever could. But they tried their best to never show affection around their employees. She remained where she stood.
But as she stood there looking at him, it alarmed her how much she needed him. That was why holding back on him felt so unnatural. So against the grain. And in the back of her mind she knew it could all blow up in her face. She just wanted to get Emilio out of the way and the major threat he posed to her and potentially to her marriage. Once he was taken care of, she hoped she could put it all behind her and move on. But if he had backup the way she had at first feared, it could go from a problem to a disaster. She would eventually have to tell Teddy.She could only pray, if it came to that, that he would understand. “When did you get here?”
“Just arrived. And not a moment too soon. What was that about? You okay?”
She nodded, although he could see the stress. “I am now.”
“I saw you knock out Driessen.” He smiled again. “It was beautiful, Nikki. Did he come on to you or what?”
That was always Teddy’s go to ask anytime she had a disagreement with a man. He just knew every one of his men wanted her. They didn’t. She had too much junk in her trunk she heard one of them say. But Teddy would never believe it. They wanted her too, let him tell it.
“He was talking a lot of smack about how he was in charge,” she said, “and how I didn’t know what I was doing, and he called me a host of offensive names. But he wouldn’t say any of it to my face.”
“Coward.”
“I know right? But I still demanded he say it to my face. That’s all I was asking. He decided to shove me out of his way than own his shit.”
Teddy’s jaw tightened. The level of disrespect she had to endure! All this time she’d been onboard and it still wasn’t getting any better. “I hope you fired his ass.”
“I fired him,” she said, “and Sammy too.” She looked to see Teddy’s reaction. She knew she could fire capos who messed up. But Sammy was a made man. He was a higher-level lieutenant. She was curious how Teddy would take it.
And her suspicion was right: She would have gone too far firing Sammy. Because as soon as she said it, Teddy lifted his shades and sat them on top of his head. And his face went from smiling to frowning. “YoufiredSammy Linzarta? What the fuck you mean you fired him, Nikki?”
“I’m in charge. So I fired him.”
“You had no business firing him.”
“So I’m not in charge?”
“Don’t pull that shit on me. You know you’re in charge.”
“Then why are you getting on my case about firing Sammy? I’m the underboss of this organization. When you were your father’s underboss you hired and fired at will!”
“Your ass ain’t me!” Teddy shot back.
It was a verbal shot that felt like a body blow to Nikki. Because he said the hidden part out loud. Because that fact alone, that she wasn’t Teddy T, was the real reason she would never be fully accepted by their men or anybody else in the underworld. There was a hierarchy in the mob world. Mick Sinatra was at the top of the mountain. Sal Gabrini was behind him. And Teddy, though not a boss at that time but as Mick’s underboss, was third on that chain. Frankie “The Monk” Paletti was fourth. That was the pecking order.
When Mick gave Teddy the title of boss of his syndicate so that Mick could separate himself from most of the day to day, that pecking order didn’t change one bit. Mick, though not even running the day to day, was still number one. Sal Gabrini was still number two. Teddy was still number three. Monk Paletti was still fourth. And even though Nikki was the underboss of the most powerful syndicate in the world just like Teddy had been, and should have been ranked high based on that fact alone just like Teddy had been ranked, she wasn’t give the respect her title demanded. She was no Teddy T. That was a fact that would always undermine her with their men. That was a fact that landed her so far down the pecking order that she wasn’t sure if she was ranked at all. She was just another underboss to the mob world, and in its entire savage history Teddy was the only underboss that had ever been accorded a rank.
And because she could do nothing about that fact, she didn’t argue the point. “I had good cause to fire Sammy. He’s a problem. He dismisses everything those workers do. He treated Mike Driessen’s insubordination like it was no big deal at all and I should just suck it up and ignore it. He’s no longer dock supervisor. I ordered him to get off the docks and stay off.”
“But why your ass had to fire him? You come to me. You talk to me. I’ll handle him.”
