Page 8 of Nikki Sinatra: For Her Lover
That was why, as soon as he pulled beside her, she swerved her car and clipped his car, causing the Porshe to spin out.
Nikki kept going, still flooring it, and still looking through her rearview to make sure he didn’t stop spinning and decide to continue the pursuit.
He flipped several times, but landed on his tires. When he landed he seemed to decide to go back the way he had come rather than to push his luck again and continue the pursuit, she exhaled a sigh of relief. But when she looked away from her mirror at the road in front of her, she realized she had steered across the line and was within inches of running into another car on the opposite side of the road. She swerved wildly to avoid the head on collision and was speeding across the side of the road. Her momentum caused her to lose traction and fly straight into a waterless ditch that trapped her car front and back. Her airbag deployed, knocking her against her seat. But she was okay.
And as testimony to Nikki’s ironclad nerves, that wreck didn’t bother her at all. Because her mind was back on her pursuer. Her mind was back on racking her brain over how she was going to handle this mess. Because she knew, unlike the pursuit, he wasn’t going to drop it. He wasn’t going to let it go. He didn’t track her down all the way to Philadelphia just to change his mind. Heneverchanged his mind.
All she could think about, as she heard sirens in the distance, was what in the world was Teddy going to think of her if he found out? It could crush him if he found out. It would forever change how he saw her as a wife and as his underboss. She doubted if she would still have either of those roles if Teddy found out.
And Mick Sinatra? Her ultimate boss? He was going to kick her ass, and probably kill her too, if he found out.
Her job, she knew as sure as she knew her name, was to never let that happen.
CHAPTER FIVE
Half an hour before midnight the security gate opened and Teddy drove his Corvette all the way up to his horseshoe driveway. When he didn’t see Nikki’s car parked outside he was disappointed. He had been hopeful she would get in before dark: which was always his preference. Whenever she was out at night it bothered him, even when he knew exactly where she was: which he rarely knew. Nikki was one of thosedon’t fence me inkind of girls. She didn’t like him or anybody else keeping tabs on her. Because he was the same way, he understood it.
But that didn’t mean he liked it.
Especially because she didn’t use to be that kind of girl.
He sat in his car a few moments longer as he looked up at their suburban home in their upscale gated community. To their neighbors they were hardworking, upwardly-mobile professional-type people who always waved and were always courteous, but who also never once participated in any of the various HOA activities they often held.
Not that they didn’t want to participate. They just couldn’t find the time. Both of them worked constantly putting out fires and making sure shipments arrived on time. Pop’s syndicate was a billion-dollar business that required billion-dollar time.
But they both knew their lifestyle wasn’t sustainable. Teddy was already suffering from burnout and Nikki was on her way. And they had a child to raise! They talked about it and made plans to do something about it. But nothing permanent had ever been done.
He got out of his car and made his way to his front door. In his jeans and button-down, tucked-in shirt, and with his muscular physique turning ladies’ heads no matter what he wore, he knew his life could have been so much easier if he hadn’t decided to have a family. Now he worried incessantly about Nikki and their baby girl Kimmie. And the fact that he pulled Nikki into the syndicate with him, believing he could protect her better if they worked together than apart, seemed like a bad joke to him now. She was in far more danger being his underboss than she would have ever been as his wife only, and that guilt rode hard with him too.
Because there was no getting out of it now. Small mobs existed for the power, but mainly for the money. The massive syndicates like Mick Sinatra’s crime family began with power and money as the goals too. But all of that was achieved long ago. Now they existed mainly to stay alive. They ever decided to get out, it would be viewed as total surrender and weakness. They would become target number one for every plot and scheme their enemies could cook up to torment them for the rest of their lives. It would be payback time on an international scale. They would settle every beef they ever had with Teddy T and Nikki and Mick Sinatra too.
When Teddy made it to the front door, he entered the code but stood there, his hand on the doorknob. Sometimes, like this time, he wondered what it would be like to just walk away. Just stop the world and get off. Never to be heard from again. All the burdens he bore of running the most powerful syndicate in the world would be off his shoulders. He would be free again. Men did it all the time. They abandoned their families as if they were commodities traders, and unpacked all those burdens and started over. But Teddy abandoning Nikki? Abandoning his baby?
He ran his hand across his tired face. There was no way. It was just guilt, he decided, that even put those thoughts into his head. Because he should have seen it coming. When his father stepped back from the day-to-day running of his syndicate and made Teddy the boss, it was Teddy who wanted Nikki by his side. His father was apprehensive, but ultimately gave in to his request. It seemed perfectly logical to Teddy back then. He knew she would have his back, and he would have hers. And by her working with him side by side, he felt he could protect her even more so. But at what cost? He didn’t count up the cost! Now it was too late.
Once in, always in.
There was no getting out.
And that was the cost Teddy should have considered more thoroughly. As he turned the knob and entered his home, that was the cost he wasn’t sure if he considered at all.
When he entered his home, he headed straight for the bar, made himself a drink, and guzzled it down with one long swallow. It had been another long, exhausting day. He had to put out more fires than firemen did.
Once he allowed the whiskey to give him that kick he was looking for, he went down the hall and entered the nursery. The baby was in her bed fast asleep, looking like an angel he thought, and he didn’t disturb her. But it was uncanny to him how every single day she was beginning to look more and more like Nikki. From her flawless brown skin to her huge eyes, they could be twins. Although he looked like his father and girls considered both of them to be great-looking guys, they would make horrible-looking girls. He was pleased to know that his precious Kimmie wasn’t taking after him.
Her nanny was asleep in her separate bed as well. The nanny before her was a pretty young woman who came on to Teddy the first week of her employment, as if she just knew, likea lot of women thought, that she could easily steal him from the likes of Nikki. Teddy pulled her aside, cussed her ass out as if he was cussing a sailor, and fired her on the spot. And although this new nanny, a dark-skinned beauty in Teddy’s view, was even prettier than her predecessor, she was a devout Christian young lady who had no interest in taking anybody’s man. She was there to do the job she was hired to do, and she did it extremely well. He, Nikki, and Kimmie who loved her, could not have been more pleased.
But the fact that she was there that time of night only reminded him that Nikki wasn’t at home and Nanny therefore had to stay overnight. Which she understood would be required often given that Teddy nor Nikki worked traditional 9-to-5 jobs. But it also meant that he wasn’t going to get any real sleep at all until Nikki was safe and sound and in his bed.
He left the nursery and made his way to his winding staircase. His feet felt as if he was dragging a ton of lead on top of them as he climbed those stairs. But as he made it higher and higher up, he suddenly could hear the shower running. Which had to mean Nikki was home after all?
Despite the lead feeling, he took those remaining stairs two at a time and hurried across the landing into their bedroom. When he saw through the bathroom door that it was indeed Nikki in the shower, his heart soared. He flung his shirt over his head and tossed it aside, stepped out of his shoes and then his jeans and briefs and kicked them aside, and made his way into their ensuite bathroom.
He could see Nikki’s voluptuous outline through the shower glass. From her huge breasts to her flat stomach to her gorgeously curvaceousness, he began fondling his dick just watching her.
But when he walked over and opened the door of the shower stall, and Nikki jumped and seemed so startled by hispresence, he frowned. That was so not likenerves of steelNikki at all. “What’s wrong?”
The effects of that car chase, and especiallywhowas chasing her, still had her badly shaken. But she knew she couldn’t let Teddy know anything about that. She picked up the soap she had just dropped. “Nothing’s wrong. You surprised me. I didn’t realize you had made it home.”
