Page 15 of Teddy Sinatra: Go Your Own Way
He was much older than Roz, but she let that slide. They were having fun. That was all that mattered to her.
But after she and Mick got out of the pool, dried off, put on their bathrobes, and relaxed in side-by-side loungers as Mick’s butler served them wine and cheese and then left, a moroseness overcame both of them.
“They’re growing up so fast,” Roz said as they watched Duke and Jackie race each other, with Jackie winning every time and Duke insisting if she only raced him one more time he’d win. “Before you know it they’ll be gone far away and we’ll be empty nesters.”
“Duke’s not going that far. He’s too much like me.”
Roz looked at Mick. “You’re talking about the corporate you, right? Not the gangster you.”
Mick didn’t respond.
“Mick?”
“It can’t be helped, Roz. It’s not something you can turn on or off. He’s got too much of me in him and not enough of you. That’s just the truth. He’s just like me. He’ll try to do his own thing, but he’ll stick around to stay around me.”
“Like Teddy did,” Roz said.
A look of regret crossed Mick’s often unreadable eyes. “Yep, like Teddy,” he said.
“What about Jackie? She kisses the ground you walk on. My money’s on her sticking around.”
But Mick was shaking his head. “Not Jacqueline. She’s going to take the world by storm. She’s going places. She’s more like you. She’ll be back though. She’ll end up running the corporate side of our empire someday. But Duke,” Mick said, shaking his head. “He’s too much like me.”
Roz found it to be a stinging indictment against Duke. Who would want to be like a man with the weight of the most powerful syndicate in the world on his shoulders? And on top of that, a man who heads a corporation in the top one percent of corporations in the world? Who would want all that responsibility? Roz certainly didn’t want it for her only biological son. But she knew, deep down, Mick was calling it exactly right. Duke was his father through and through. “Is that why you allowed him to carry your name?”
Duke’s real name was Michello Sinatra, Junior, an honor Mick didn’t give to his deceased oldest son Adrian, nor to Teddy, his second oldest, or even to his deceased son Joey. But he gave that honor to the son he had with Rosalyn. A fact that Roz knew stung Teddy to this day.
But Mick, being Mick, didn’t answer that question. And then his phone was ringing and that was that.
Mick had a special ringtone for Teddy and Nikki, so he knew it had to be one of them. He answered the phone. “Yeah?”
It was Teddy. “We’ve got problems, Pop.”
Mick didn’t like the plural-ness of it. He waited for Teddy to continue.
“There’s been an explosion.”
Mick frowned. “What did they hit?”
Roz looked at Mick.
“The Panther.”
Mick frowned. The Panther was his largest cargo ship. “Any fatalities?”
“Thirty-three so far and counting.”
“Damn,” said Mick. “Where was it hit? Was it still in Brazil?”
There was a pause on Teddy’s end, which Mick knew meant he wasn’t telling him the full story. “Where was it, Theodore?”
“It was still dockside. All the ships have been dockside all week.”
Mick leaned up, his face a mask of anger. “What the fuck are you talking about? What do you mean all of my ships have been docked all week?”
Roz knew it was big by Mick’s reaction alone. “What happened?” she asked him.
But he was singularly focused on that phone call. “The Panther should have been in Brazil packing up my most expensive shit. And you mean to tell me it never left the port?”
