Page 37 of Nikki Sinatra: For Her Lover
Teddy got back on his phone. “I need you to find out if an Emilio, what’s his full name, Nikki?”
“Emilio Cabrera. Everybody calls him Mill. He’s from Miami, but he went into hiding so I don’t know where he’s been living all these years.”
“I need to know if an Emilio Cabrera from Miami is dead. He was here in town when it happened. It supposedly happened tonight inside a parking garage. He was at a dentist appointment. I also need intel on a Jackson . . .”
“Reeves,” Nikki said. “R-E-E-V-E-S.”
“Reeves.” He spelled it out too. “He’s locked up on an L-WOP. Which prison, Nikki?”
“I have no idea.”
“We don’t know that. Go through our pipeline and find out yourself. See if you can get somebody inside to talk to him. See what he knows about Emilio Cabrera. And also check out Juda Gavin. Yeah that guy from that trailer park where our cleanup crews should be processing as we speak. See what Reeves can tell us about him too. When?” Teddy frowned. “What do you mean when? Yesterday. I want it yesterday. This is urgent,” he added, and then ended the call.
But Nikki knew her husband. And when he looked at her, she spoke. “Let me have it,” she said.
Teddy didn’t want to go there, but he knew he had. “Your ass should have never agreed to be anybody’s drug mule I don’t care how much you were in love with him,” he said to her firmly. “We can agree on that?”
“We can absolutely agree on that,” Nikki said with that genuine look on her face Teddy adored.
“That drug mule shit is on you. That was your mistake. Not allowing yourself to go to prison for life for that fool wasn’t on you. That was on that idiot that sent you on that run. You did the right thing in that moment. The death of Emilio’s family and those other children too are on Emilio and the rest of those bums that worked for him. None of that’s on you,” Teddy said. “I understand why you didn’t want it to come out. I would have wanted it buried too. But it’s out now. I know about it and Pop is going to have to know about it.”
“Not him too, Teddy.”
“He has to know, Nikki. This shit may be bigger than we think.”
She knew it too. “He’s probably going to fire me from a job I love.”
“Maybe he will. Maybe he won’t. But he has a right to make that decision for himself.” Then Teddy added: “I’ll stand by you.”
Nikki smiled. “Thanks, Teddy.” Then she looked at him. “You’re disappointed in me though. Aren’t you?”
“Yes I am. But that’s my fault. I’m treating the kid Nikki like the grownup version I know. I wanted you to be this Nikki back then. But you weren’t.”
Nikki shook her head. “I wasn’t, no.”
“You should have come to me the first time you saw Emilio in this town. You should have come to me. That’s my biggest disappointment. You have a tendency to want to figure it out for yourself.”
“Don’t you?”
“I’m not your wife. I’m your husband. It’s my job to figure it out for both of us. That’s not your job. But that’s the job you were trying to do.” Then he gave her that hard look he was known for. “That won’t happen again.”
Nikki nodded. “No it won’t,” she said. “I guarantee you it won’t.”
“I got this ball now. I’m running with it now. You understand?”
“I understand.” She nodded. “I understand.”
The way Teddy explained the situation did help her. It didn’t lessen her load, nothing was going to do that, but at least it didn’t add to her burden. At least he was trying to get a handle on it. But she could still see the disappointment in his eyes. He glossed over it, but she knew the truth. She had let him down.In every single way. And that was as hurtful to Nikki as what she did in her past. If she lost Teddy, she’d lose everything.
And before she could break down again, because the tears were already coming, he pulled her into his arms.
He laid her down. And he laid down with her. And held her all night.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The next morning Roz was on top, riding Mick hard, as he watched her the entire time. Her eyes were closed, and her head was leaned back in a serene tilt of her smooth, slim neck and elegant, high-cheek-boned regal face, as she seemed to be completely immersed in him and how much she enjoyed the way he was doing her.
He was holding onto her hips and moving her supple black body in the exact way he wanted her to ride. He was enjoying her too. But all he could think about was how devastated he would have been had something happened to her last night. He still couldn’t get over what went down. He couldn’t get it out of his mind. The idea that this woman, thathiswoman would be caught up in a gunfight in a neighborhood he wouldn’t be caught in after dark himself, and all because of some Teddy and Nikki shit. That still had him burning with fury.
