Fully dressed in a Donatella Versace business suit and ready for what was expected to be a busy day at the office, Roz Sinatra took another sip of her coffee just as her toddler thought she wasn’t looking, and snatched his sister’s Eggo.  Just as he put it to his tiny mouth and was about to bite, his instincts told him to look at his mother.  Roz was certainly looking at him.  “I dare you,” she said between clenched teeth.

Even a little boy like Michello, Junior, better known as Duke Sinatra, knew a real threat when he heard one.  He gave Jacqueline, his twin sister, her Eggo back.  The nannies, who were standing in the kitchen with Roz, laughed.  “He’s got plenty sense,” said one.  “I’ll give him that.”

Roz smiled too.  “With his slick ass,” she added.

 

Outside, Mick’s high-powered Ferrari could be heard before the security gate opened, and he sped inside.  Deuce McCurry, his longest-serving employee, came out of the home and made his way downstairs to meet the boss.  He was a tall African-American man in his sixties, a man most would regard as over-the-hill to be anybody’s driver and bodyguard.  But Mick trusted Deuce with his life and, many times, the life of his wife and children.  Deuce was still his number one employee, as far as Mick was concerned.

It was early morning, and the onsite staff had not come out of the servant quarters on the property yet, and the offsite staff had not yet arrived.  But somebody had to open the door for the boss.  It wasn’t Deuce’s job, but he did it anyway.

“Hello, sir,” Deuce said as Mick stepped out of the car.

“Good morning.”  Mick buttoned his suitcoat.  “She left yet?”

“No, sir.”

Then Mick hesitated.  Looked at his employee and friend.  “Is she upset?”

Deuce nodded.  “Yes, sir,” he said.

Mick exhaled.  “Have the valet bring her car around.”

“Yes, sir,” Deuce said.  “Will you be needing yours again, sir?”

“Don’t know yet,” Mick said, and headed inside.

As soon as he entered his home and made his way into the kitchen area, a big smile appeared on the faces of both twins.  “Daddy!” Duke yelled, startling his sister as he usually did, as her already unstable head leaned back and looked at her wild brother.  But when she saw him, not just yelling, but making a move, she didn’t hesitate, either.  Both toddlers turned backwards and slid their small bodies out of their chairs.  Then they ran, or waddled, toward their father.

Roz’s heart was hammering when she saw that Mick had arrived.  And her anger began to rise.  Why did he always pull this shit?  She couldn’t understand why he kept doing it when he knew she hated it.  But that was Mick.  One day he was the best husband ever.  The next day he was a louse.

Mick had Roz on his mind, too, when he entered the kitchen area and saw her standing there, but quickly turned his attention to his two youngest children when they began running to him.  He would have preferred not to have those two nannies gawking nearby as his children ran to him, but that couldn’t be helped.  He wasn’t making the same emotionally-distant mistakes with the twins that he made with his grown children, he didn’t care who was watching.

That was why, as soon as the toddlers arrived at his side, Mick scooped both up into his muscular arms and held them tightly.  Duke was so happy to see his father that he was kicking him with his feet.  Jackie was happy, too, but instead of kicking, she laid her head on Mick’s shoulder.  Mick loved the twins equally, but Jacqueline, like Gloria, had a way of melting his heart.

“You’re home forever?” Duke asked as he affectionately kept kicking his feet, and therefore kicking Mick.  “I want you to be home forever.”

“I’m home,” was all Mick could commit to.  “Have you been a good boy?”

Duke continued to kick.  And then he glanced back at his mother.  When he saw that Roz had looked away to apparently wipe something out of her eyes, he turned back toward his father and nodded his head yes.

Jackie wanted to say that Duke hadn’t been a good boy at all, and had tried to steal her Eggo, but she couldn’t figure out how to say it so she didn’t bother trying.  But she didn’t have to say a word.  Mick knew Duke was lying.

“Tell me the truth,” Mick said, staring sternly at his son.  “Have you been a good boy?”

Duke looked down, at his father’s cleft chin.  He placed his tiny finger in that cleft, and then his big eyes looked up at him.  And shook his head no.

Mick let out an exasperated exhale.  “What did you do?” he asked.

Tears began to appear in Duke’s eyes, which was his routine whenever he was cornered.  Mick’s heart went out to his young son, but he knew he couldn’t let him get away with bad behavior.  He looked at the head nanny.

“He tried to take Jacqueline’s Eggo,” she said.

Mick looked at Duke.  “You took it?”

Duke quickly shook his head.  “No, sir.”

“Don’t do it again,” Mick said firmly.  “You understand?”

Duke nodded.  “Yes, sir.”

Mick exhaled again.  He knew he needed to spend more time with the twins.  But then he turned his attention to Roz.  She was the one he most needed to spend time with at this moment in time.  But he could tell, just from looking at her, that she was major-league pissed with him.

After talking a little more with the twins, and kissing them, he walked over to the breakfast table and deposited them back in their chairs.  He ordered them to finish eating, and then moved over to the center aisle, where Roz and the nannies were standing.  The nannies, knowing their roles well, immediately went over to attend to the children.

Mick opened his suit coat and placed his hands on his hips.  He looked his wife up and down.  He couldn’t help it.  She was wonderfully dressed, as usual, he thought, in a beautifully form-fitting business suit.  The bright fabric against her dark skin made her look stunning to him.  And it begged what was becoming that age-old question to him: why her?  He had so many women in his life; more women than he could ever count even if his life depended on it.  But why was it that none of them, not one of them, ever did those funny things to his heart the way Rosalind constantly did?  What was it about this particular woman?

He didn’t know the answer to that great question, but he knew this much was true: Rosalind Graham had too much power over him, and he didn’t like it.  Because Rosalind, unheard of to everybody who knew Mick the Tick, held his heart in her hands.  She could break it if she wanted to.  And that alarming truth, to a man like Mick, gave her far more power over him than an arsenal of machine guns pointed at his head.

That might be, he also realized, why he sometimes sabotaged their relationship without thinking, at the time, that that was what he was doing.  That might be why he sometimes felt a need to separate himself from her power.

“Good morning,” he said to her.

Roz poured the last of her coffee down the sink drain, gave Mick one of those chilling looks her exasperation with him had perfected.  Then she walked past him, with their clothes brushing, and over to the children.  His heart pounded with major regret when she swept past him.  He could kick his own ass for being such an asshole!

“Be good,” Roz said sweetly as she kissed Jackie.  “Behave,” she said sternly as she kissed Duke.  “And I mean it, Duke,” she felt a need to add to her son.  “Nobody’s going to be chasing your ass around this house just because you know they can.  Do what Nanny tells you to do.  You hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Duke responded as sweetly as he could.

“I don’t want any phone calls from them today.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Duke responded again.

Then Roz smiled.  Just as Jackie had a way of melting Mick’s heart, Duke melted hers.  She kissed him again, rubbed his thick, curly hair, and looked at the nannies as she grabbed her briefcase off of the table.  “Call me if you need me,” she said to the head Nanny.  “But I’ll be checking the monitors all day long.”

The head nanny smiled.  “Yes, ma’am,” she said.  Have a nice day, Mrs. Sinatra.”

Roz smiled back and, with her briefcase in tow, began to leave.  She gave Mick another one of her chilling looks, and then headed for the exit.

To hell with her! Mick wanted to say.  And would have said it easily if it was any other woman on the face of this earth.  But it wasn’t any other woman.  It was Rosalind.

“Wait,” he said, instead, before she could leave the kitchen area.

Roz could have easily kept heading for that front door.  Who would blame her, she felt, after that shit Mick pulled?  But it had been eating at her all night.  She needed this to get resolved.  And besides all of that, she loved him too much to just walk away.  She stood there, with her back still to her children, the nannies, and Mick, and waited.

When Mick walked up behind her, and placed his hands on her small shoulders, the tears that had been on the verge of escape for hours, finally betrayed her.  They dropped from her big eyes and rolled down her narrow brown face.  Mick heard her sniffle, and knew she was crying.  He also knew she was a proud woman and the last thing she wanted was for her children or her staff to see her in tears.

“My office,” he leaned down and whispered in her ear.

Roz hesitated again, because she could be as stubborn as Mick.  But at the end of the day, she knew they had to resolve this!  She walked to his home office.  He followed her.

The nannies looked at each other.  “My money’s on her,” the head nanny said, and the younger nanny grinned in agreement.

 

Once inside the office, Mick closed the door.  Roz angrily tossed her briefcase up on the desk and kept her back turned as she tried frantically to wipe away every tear.  She didn’t want him to see her crying over his ass when he didn’t even bother to so much as answer his phone!  But then she exhaled, put on her best strong face, and turned around and faced him.  She hated being emotional and vulnerable like this.  But Mick’s shit kept taking her there!

Mick knew she was more hurt and sad than angry, but he also knew that didn’t bode well for their relationship.  He hadn’t exactly been the model husband, although he’d been trying, and last night didn’t help.  But first he needed info.  “Who phoned you?” were the first words out of his mouth when she turned.

Roz couldn’t believe it.  “Really, Mick?  Really?  Your ass stayed out all night, and that’s what you’re asking me?  I’m in bed wondering, not just where my husband could be and what was he doing, but who was he doing it with!  And you’re worrying about who phoned me?  Get the fuck out of here!”

“Your anger means you received information.  Who phoned and gave it to you?” he asked again.

Roz knew his ways.  She knew he wasn’t about to answer any questions she might have until she answered his.  “I didn’t receive a phone call,” she said.

Mick looked at her doubtfully, although he knew for certain Rosalind was not a liar.

And she wasn’t.  That was why she exhaled, and amended her statement.  “I didn’t receive a phone call.  I received several phone calls,” she said.

Mick didn’t expect that answer.  He knew one of his children would phone her.  They all loved Roz and treated their stepmother with great respect.  Mainly because she treated them with love and respect, too, but also because they could relate to her.  But all three had phoned her?  He expected Joey would, if he had to venture a guess.  But Gloria and Teddy, too?  “What did they say?” he asked her.

“Look,” Roz said, her anger rising, “I’m not playing these games with you!”

“What did they say?!” Mick was angry now too, as his top lip curled and his rage began to reveal itself.

Roz knew then to get to the point.  “They said you left the office because you had to meet some female named Natalie.  They said it was most likely business, but they just wanted me to know.  They didn’t want me to be blindsided the way they felt their mothers had often been when they were with you.”

“And you just thanked them for snitching on their old man, and hung up?” Mick asked.

“I told them they were wrong,” Roz said firmly.  “I told them they’d better not call me with that shit again.”

Mick was pleased, even if he didn’t show it.

“I know better than to pit children against their father,” Roz continued.  “What do you take me for?  But when your ass stayed out all night, and didn’t even bother to call me, and didn’t tell me anything?”  She shook her head as if she was reliving the pain all over again.  “I wanted to phone each one of them and apologize to them.”

“It was business,” Mick said.

With a defiant, wide-leg stance that she didn’t even realize she had just taken, Roz folded her arms.  “Who’s Natalie?” she asked.

Mick stared at her.  She held the keys to his heart, but that didn’t mean he was going to let her twist it and turn it until it was no longer his own.  “I told you I was taking care of business,” he said.  “If that’s not good enough for you, and you’d rather turn it into something else, then to hell with it!  To hell with you!”

“Okay, fine,” Roz said, her heart breaking.  She turned, grabbed her briefcase off of his desk, and then made her way to the door.

He grabbed her arm as she was about to hurry past him, and he stared at her until she looked into his eyes.  He saw the pain in her eyes when she looked at him, and she saw the regret in his.  But they were two very strong, very stubborn people who hated vulnerability.  Roz looked down at her arm, which, Mick knew, was her way of telling him to leave her the fuck alone.  He released her arm, granting her wish, and she left.

Mick was so angry that he picked up the small, ceramic globe of the world that sat atop his desk, and threw it against the wall violently, shattering it into tiny pieces.

But then his cell phone rang.  He didn’t want to answer it.  All he wanted was his wife back.  But he had too many duties and responsibilities to not at least see who was calling.  He pulled it out and looked at the Caller ID.  When he saw that it was Bella Caine, Gloria’s mother, he exhaled.  He didn’t want to hear her shit right now.  But he answered.  “What is it, Belle?”

“That’s no way to answer a phone.”

“What is it?”

There was a small hesitation in her voice, as she could hear the anger in Mick’s voice.  “I’m in trouble,” she said.  “Big-time trouble.  I’m already in Philadelphia.  Will you come and see me?”

Mick leaned against the edge of his desk and pinched the bridge of his nose.  He needed Bella and her drama like he needed a hole in the head.  But she was the mother of his oldest daughter, and she said she was in trouble.  And her trouble could redound to his daughter.  He had to help.  There was really no two ways about it.