Page 60 of Nikki Sinatra: For Her Lover
But Mick’s only focus was Nikki. He thought they had lost her. He didn’t care what it looked like as he held her, even though it did look strange to Reno and Sal especially. They knew Mick was the most unemotional man they’d ever met. But Mick’s public display of affection for Nikki only proved to him and them just how relieved he was.
It proved it to Nikki, too, who wasn’t accustomed to this side of Mick either. But she welcomed his embrace. The sudden appearance of those two gunmen had thrown her. She couldn’t lie. Not that she was rattled. She wasn’t. She couldn’t afford to be rattled. But she was shaken.
“Who do you think you are going it alone?” Reno asked her. “Wanna be some she-woman?”
“How’s Teddy?” Nikki asked anxiously. “He’s still okay?”
“He’s fine,” said Monk. “He’s still in Recovery.”
“Which is where we thought your ass still was,” added Reno.
“Why did you leave?” asked Monk.
“Jackson Reeves is holed up on a property a couple miles up this road.”
Sal frowned. “How do you know that?”
“The night I went to see Juda Gavin at his trailer, I attached a GPS tracking device to his car so I could monitor his activities.”
“So you were suspicious of him all along?” asked Mick.
“He didn’t give me a reason to be suspicious, but it was ajust in casekind of thing.”
Even Reno had to nod at that. “Good instincts, Nikki. Good instincts.”
But Mick wasn’t ready to congratulate her. He didn’t like to be blindsided and her sudden absence from that hospital blindsided him. He grabbed her by the arm and took her out of earshot of the others.
“Shouldn’t one of us go with them to make sure Mick don’t brutalize the child?” asked Sal.
“What child?” asked Reno. “Her ass had no business going it alone. She’ll get what she deserves.”
“You saw how Uncle Mick ran out of that hospital,” Monk said to Sal. “Ain’t no way he’s hurting Nikki.”
But when Mick flung her around to face him, and they all saw it, they had their doubts.
Mick looked Nikki dead in her eyes. “Don’t you ever pull this shit again,” he warned her. “You got information to share you share it with the family. You don’t take off without telling anybody anything! You hear me?”
“Yes sir.”
“You scared the shit out of me, Nikki. And when I saw those two gunmen approaching the car and you seemed to be unaware, I thought I was going to lose it. Teddy first. Now you too? I couldn’t bear it!”
Nikki had never heard Mick share his emotions with her to that extent. She didn’t know how to handle it.
“Don’t pull this shit again,” he said to her.
“I won’t,” she said to him. Nikki was genuinely sorry that she had worried him, but she wasn’t sorry that she left them behind. “I just didn’t want anybody else harmed because of me.”
Mick understood her. He would have felt the same way. That was why he let it go as Reno, Sal, and Monk came on over.
“What’s the plan, Uncle Mick?” Sal asked him.
Mick looked at the woman he allowed to become the underboss of his entire syndicate, a decision he didn’t take lightly. “How do you want to handle it, Nikki?” he asked her.
Reno and Sal glanced at each other. Was this their Uncle Mick handing over power? And to a woman no less? They were astounded.
But Nikki didn’t hesitate. She pulled out her phone. “My tracker has a live stream customization that allows me to observe what’s going on at that property,” she said as she opened her phone and showed Mick what she was talking about.
Mick leaned in, as did Reno and Sal. But Monk Paletti kept his eyes on their surroundings just in case some other robbers or carjackers or whatever those two gunmen were decided to take some potshots at them too.
