“Ah, shit!” said one of Mick’s men as he peered out of the front window.

“What are you harping about?” asked another one, as he walked over to the window, too.  When he looked out and saw his well-dressed boss heading for the entrance with a very well-dressed Hammer Reese at his side, he was just as astounded.  “Ah, shit!” he said.  “What the fuck is he doing with Hammer-fucking-Reese?”

He looked at the other guards in the room.  “Fed coming,” he said.

“What do we do?” asked one.

“I don’t know,” said the guard.  “He’s coming with Boss!”

The door to the safe house opened, and Mick and Hammer walked inside.

Even though his men were up in arms and unsure how to proceed, Mick had no such qualms.  He never explained himself to them in the past, he wasn’t about to start now.  “Where?” he asked.

“In the courtyard, sir,” one of the guards quickly answered.  And Mick and Hammer headed toward the French doors that led out back.

 

Out back, in the courtyard, Natalie Vichy and Bella Caine were walking around and talking as if they were at Sunday brunch.  To them, it did not seem like confinement at all.  Until they looked around, and saw the armed guards.

When they saw that Mick had come out onto the lanai, with another man with him, they hurried to his side.  Although Bella didn’t know who the other man was, Natalie knew.

Mick and Hammer stood at the patio table as the two women made their way toward them.  “So the other one is your ex?” Hammer asked.

Mick stared at Bella, too.  “Yes.”

Hammer smiled.  “You have very good taste,” he said.  “Your wife, and now her.  Very good.”

Mick looked at Hammer.  “Now I know your ass isn’t fooling with my sister any longer,” he said.  “I know that shit’s over.”

“Over?” Hammer asked.  “I don’t know if it’s ever began.”

“And it won’t if it means she’s number two.” Mick gave him a hard look.  “She’s a Sinatra now.  She cannot be anybody’s number two.”

Hammer viewed Mick Sinatra as his equal:  a hood he came to respect despite the different sides they were on.  “Understood,” he said.

“From what I have been consistently hearing,” Mick said, staring at Hammer, “is that Reggie Dell is your number one.”  He needed to find out, for his sister’s sake.  “That true?”

Hammer wouldn’t respond, but Mick could see that flicker in his eyes at the mention of Reggie Dell’s name.  Mick knew what that meant because he had that same flicker whenever someone mentioned Rosalind’s name.

Then Mick nodded.  “It’s true,” he said, and looked at the two ladies approaching them.

“Who’s he?” Bella asked Mick as soon as they made it onto the terrace.  She was giving Hammer an assessing look.  It was obvious even to Mick that she liked what she saw.

But Mick wasn’t there to answer her questions.  He, instead, looked at Natalie.  Her blonde hair looked almost orange, he thought, in the sunlight.  “Why did you two-time Santo, Nat?” he asked her.

Natalie stared at Mick.  “Why did I what?”

“Why did you two-time him?”

“What are you talking about, Micky?  You know I wouldn’t do any such thing to my husband.”  Then she looked at Hammer.  “And why did you bring this crooked-ass fucker here?”

The fact that she quickly changed the subject, choosing to go after Hammer, only confirmed Mick’s suspicion.  This bitch was guilty as sin.  “Why did you do it?” he asked her.  He stared at her.

But Natalie jumped defensive.  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.  I doubt if you know what you’re talking about!  Santo’s men turned on him.  That’s what happened.  They killed him.  And if you’re listening to Hammer Reese, stop listening.  Hammer Reese don’t know shit about it!  Santo was killed.”

“He was killed, alright,” Mick said.  “And you killed him.”

“Me?” Natalie was shocked that he would say such a thing.

“You snitched on him.  That’s what got him killed.”

“That is such a lie, Micky!  Why would you lie like that?  I would never snitch on anybody, let alone my own husband.  I’m no fucking snitch!”

Out of nowhere, Mick’s anger flared and he grabbed Natalie, flipped her onto the patio table, and put a knife to her throat nobody realized he had.  Bella gasped when he pulled out that knife, and Mick’s men on guard hurried toward the scene for backup.

But Mick had this well in hand.  And he was no longer playing around.  “Now you listen to me,” he said to Natalie as she tried to wiggle herself free from his grasp.  “Tell me what went down between you and Arianna, and you’d better tell me now!”

“What are you talking about?” Natalie asked.  “I don’t know any Arianna!  What are you going on about?”

But when Mick pressed that knife into Natalie’s neck, creating an impression in her flesh, she stopped all wiggling, and looked into Mick’s eyes.  And she knew, right then and there, that he was not fucking around with her.  This man was not playing.  She could die if she didn’t come clean.

She also was smart enough to know that Mick would not have come, with a fucker like Hammer Reese by his side, if they didn’t know far more than she thought anybody ever would.

“Talk,” Mick said to her, “or you never will again.”

Bella was amazed by this, and was staring at Natalie’s neck.  Surely Mick was just bluffing!  She knew he was ruthless.  She knew he could be the cruelest of men.  But she never really saw him in action.  Hearing about it, and seeing it for herself were two very different things.  But she kept her eyes on that knife on Natalie’s neck.

Hammer, however, kept his eyes on Mick the Tick.  Mick would never know it, but he was a legend in Hammer’s eyes.  The shit that man did to protect his own was astounding.  And that was why Hammer admired Mick: he knew for a fact that Mick Sinatra never picked fights with any one.  But any fucker that picked a fight with him was handled.  And handled decisively.  That was what he liked about Sinatra.  There were no gray areas.  This woman, this Natalie Vichy, didn’t stand a chance.  Hammer already knew that.

But Natalie didn’t know that.  All she knew was that a knife was a sneeze away from ending her life, and she had to come clean.  “I reached out to her.”

“In prison?” Mick asked.

“Yeah,” Natalie said.

Hammer’s cellphone began to buzz.  He pulled it out and moved away from the others to answer it, but he kept his eyes on Mick the Tick.

Mick kept his eyes on Natalie.  “Why would you reach out to her?” he asked.

“Santo told me about it.”

“About what?”

“About how you paid him to set up your brother’s ex-wife.  To set up Arianna Sinatra.”  Natalie’s voice became whiny, as if she was crying, but no tears were shown in her eyes.  “We were having so many problems then.  Things weren’t going so great for his crew and he was in that crazy way he gets sometimes.  You know how he gets, Micky.”

“Don’t tell me what I know.  Tell me what you did!”

“Santo told me she had this lawyer who handled all of her transactions.  Like I said we were having problems, and I needed some cash.  So I reached out to her, through her lawyer.  I told him to tell her that for the right amount of money, I’d tell her who set her up.  She agreed.  The lawyer paid me.  And I told him.”

“You told him what?” Mick asked.

Natalie began to hesitate again.  Mick pressed that knife deeper against her skin.

“I told him that you paid my husband to implicate Arianna.  I told him everything.  But I thought she’d go after you, Micky.  I never dreamed she’d go after Santo.  He was just doing his job.  I figured she’d understand that.  But she didn’t.”

“Why did you claim Santo’s men killed him?” Mick asked her.

“Because they did!” she insisted.  “Arianna, through her lawyer, hired Santo’s crew with nothing but Benjamins, and it was an easy hire because Santo was barely able to make payroll.”

“That’s a fucking lie,” Mick said.  “I paid him well for that job.”

“And it was eaten up in gambling debts as soon as he got it in his hands.  We had nothing, I tell you!”

“Why did you mention Teddy Stefani to me?” Mick asked.

“Because Higgs told me to.  Arianna hired Higgs and told him to take me out as well as Santo.  But Higgs decided to use me, instead.  When you couldn’t find me, I was under his protection.  He said I’ll live if I told you that Teddy Stefani was Santo’s Don.  I would live, Higgs told me, if I told you that Teddy Stefani wanted you dead.  I said how crazy is that?  Teddy Stefani is dead himself.  How fucked up is that?  But Higgs said that’s what that crazy prison bitch wanted, so that’s what they would give her.”

“But why Stefani?” Mick asked.

“She wanted you chasing ghosts,” Natalie said.  “Higgs told her he once worked for Stefani, and that one of your men had iced him, so she wanted you to feel as if you were being spooked.  She called it her inside joke.”

Mick’s jaw tightened at the thought that that bitch would be laughing at him.

“Why did Higgs say Hammer Reese was behind this shit?” Mick asked, and Hammer looked at her, too.

“To keep you guessing,” Natalie said.  “Higgs was never going to tell you the truth.  The truth, Santo always said, was a weapon you never gave to nobody.”

Mick shook his head.  A dumb saying in a long line of dumbass Santo sayings.

But Natalie had Natalie on her mind.  She looked Mick in the eyes again.  “Now will you remove that knife, Micky?” she asked him.  “I don’t want you to have an accident on my neck.”

Mick did remove the knife, and he stood erect.  Natalie felt as if she had been given a reprieve.  But then Mick looked at Bella.  “Go inside,” he said to her.

Bella didn’t hesitate.  Mick had never been this violent around her before, and she wasn’t about to stick around to see it now.  She hurried inside.

Mick looked at Hammer.  “Your ass crooked as a curve,” he said to him, “but you still used to be Fed.  I need you to go inside too.”

Hammer smiled.  “Plausible deniability?” he asked.

Mick would have smiled, but he never did on a job.  “Yeah,” he said.

Hammer continued to stare at Mick the Tick as he went inside.

Then Mick looked at Natalie with a stormy look in his chilling eyes.  She knew that look too well.

“We go back too far, Mick,” she pleaded.  “For old times’ sake, we go back too far!”

But old times didn’t mean shit to Mick.  “Your decision to go to that bitch almost cost me everything.  My children.  My sister.  My nephew.  My wife!  And you want me to think about old times?”

Then he regained his composure.  “You said I must avenge Santo’s death.  You said I was the only one who could.  You were right.  But the vengeance begins with you.”

She began to plead for her life; to get him to remember how it used to be, but Mick slit her throat as if he was strumming a violin.  Her mouth and greed started this shit to fly.  She started it, he finished it.  He shut her up.

 

After giving Bella the all-clear to leave the safe house, and reminding her not to mention to Gloria the fact that she had been detained to begin with, he and Hammer left the safe house, too.  They got back into the SUV under heavy guard, and Mick leaned far back in his seat as if he wanted to fall through it.  The SUV took off.

Hammer was pleased to see that he, at least, didn’t take the fact that he had to be a part of such viciousness lightly.  But that was always what he’d heard about Mick the Tick.  If you leave him alone, he’d leave you alone.  If you crossed him, he’d kill you.  Simple, and complex, as that.

“She’s out,” Hammer said to him.

Mick looked at Hammer.  “Arianna?”

“Your brother’s ex-wife, yes.  I had my people look into it.  That’s what those phone calls were about.  She was released a few days ago, just in time to finish what she started from prison.”

“Motherfuck,” Mick said.  “Where is she?”

“Jericho, Maine,” Hammer said.  “To be near her sons.”

Mick frowned.  “Why wasn’t my brother notified of her release?”

“Why would he be?” Hammer asked.  “Her incarceration had nothing to do with him.”

Mick realized that was true, too.  And he leaned his head back once again.

“Where do you go from here?” Hammer asked.

“Looks like me and my wife will be paying Jericho, and my brother, a visit,” he said.