Page 16 of Teddy Sinatra: Go Your Own Way
“We’d been getting threats all week, Pop. And I’m not talking willy nilly stuff. Serious threats. I made the call to put them in a holding pattern until we could investigate.”
“And your ass didn’t think to let me know about this? You’ve got me over here vacationing while I’m losing twenty million dollars a day?!”
Mick spoke so loud that Duke and Jackie heard him and stopped their cavorting in the pool and watched their father.
But Teddy, on the other end, was offended. “I told you we’ve been hit, and that we have casualties, and all you’re worried about is money? Fuck you!” Teddy yelled out over the phone.
Mick was so enraged that had they been face to face it would have been a fight to the death. “You, Nikki, at my house ten tonight,” Mick said, and angrily ended the call.
Mick sat there momentarily, attempting to recompose himself, and Roz didn’t interfere. Teddy had said theFword so loud to his father that Roz heard it even though Mick’s phone wasn’t on Speaker. Nobody but Roz spoke to Mick that way. And even she knew when not to speak to Mick that way. Him enraged that he was losing twenty million dollars a day for multiple days would have been one of those times.
Mick got up. “Let’s go,” he said to Roz and the twins.
“Go where?” Duke asked.
“Home,” Mick said without turning around as he began heading toward the main house.
Jackie was upset. “But Daddy, we just got here!”
“We haven’t had a vacation in years,” Duke argued too.
“What if we wanna stay and you can go?” Jackie asked.
When Mick stopped, turned around, and began hurrying back toward them, his anger unleashed again, Roz stood up as the barrier between him and their children. “What did you just say?” Mick asked his daughter.
Duke nudged Jackie not to speak, but Jackie wasn’t built that way. “I said why don’t you go back to Philly and let us stay a little longer.”
Roz could see the regret come over Mick’s eyes. But the rage was still there too. “There is no world where I’m going to leave my wife and my children in a foreign country without me with them. I said let’s go!”
And this time, they both knew the drill. “Yes sir,” Duke said.
“Yes sir,” said Jackie.
Mick hated interrupting their first family vacation in such a long time, but when duty called a Sinatra had to answer. They were Sinatras. They knew better. He turned back around and headed to the house.
Jackie and Duke looked at each other, and both of them were upset, but they knew their father did not play, not even a little bit, when he gave an order. And if their mother wasn’t objecting, and she was the only one that could, they knew their feelings didn’t mean a thing. They got out of the pool.
CHAPTER TEN
After the carnage they had witnessed and that phone call with Mick, Ted and Nikki made it their business to have dinner with their daughter before going anywhere. Now Kimmie was sitting on Teddy’s lap at the dinner table and talking nonstop about all that was going on in her young life. But she missed those moments with her father and wanted to fill him in. Although both Teddy and Nikki were subdued because they knew that storm called Mick the Tick was on its way, they appreciated the lightheartedness of the moment. And how happy their child was just to be in their presence.
But then it was getting late and the Nanny came to take her away. “It’s bath time,” she said to Kimmie.
“Daddy, do I have to?”
“Yes, you have to,” Teddy said.
“But when will I see you again?”
“How about in the morning at breakfast?”
“You mean it?”
Teddy smiled, although Nikki could see the strain in his eyes. “I mean it.”
Kimmie kissed him, got down and went and kissed her mother, and then the Nanny took her away to her nighttime rituals of bathing, reading, and bed. Then Ted and Nikki ate in silence.
Until Nikki couldn’t hold out any longer. “Teddy?”
