BIG DADDY SINATRA 2: IF I CAN'T HAVE YOU, Book 2 (10 page)

Charles
couldn’t believe what he heard.
 
He
frowned.
 
“Let me get this
straight.”
 
He moved around in his seat.
 
He was trying with all he had to keep his
composure.
 
“You’re saying to me that my
wife can only come to the club when I’m there.
 
A club that we pay full membership to.
 
But she should never show up there without me.
 
Is that what you’re saying?”

Aaron
nodded.
 
“That’s exactly what we’re
saying,” he said.
 
“Yes.
 
That’s what we mean.”

“And
your wife, Aaron, does she only come to the club when you’re there?
 
What about you Joe, and Matt, and Billy?
 
Does your wives come to the club only when
you’re there?”

The
men looked at each other.
 
They were
hypocrites and they knew it.
 
But they
also knew what they wanted.
 

“That’s
beside the point,” Aaron said.
 
“She’s
not our wives.
 
Every single solitary one
of our wives was born and raised in Jericho.
 
They are bona fide Jerichodians.
 
Jenay is not.
 
So let’s not try to
pretend that she is.
 
She is not.
 
So what we’re saying to you is that we’ve got
to resolve this matter, Charles.”

“She
not only came without you one night,” Matt said, “but she had the nerve to
bring this flapping around gay person with her, and this young girl that was so
loud and rude that it became a very disruptive situation.”

Charles
frowned.
 
They were talking gibberish as
far as he was concerned.
 
“Disruptive?
 
They went there for
dinner.
 
I showed up later.
 
But they were there for dinner.
 
How was that disruptive?”

“You
know what we mean, Charles,” Aaron said.
 
“It didn’t look good, okay?
 
It
did not look good.
 
We have sponsors to
deal with.
 
We have people who are
threatening to resign their memberships if we don’t resolve this matter.”

Charles
had had enough.
  
He stood up, prompting
all of them to stand up too.
 
“Okay,
fine,” he said.
 
“I’m out.
 
You can take that club and shove it up your
asses.
 
I’m no longer a member of the
Jericho Yacht and Country Club, my wife and her friends will no longer make you
uncomfortable, and I’ll no longer have to put up with this bullshit.
 
I’m out.”

The
men all looked at each other.
 
That was
not what they had expected to hear.
 
Charles Sinatra resigning because they put his wife in her place? It was
inexplicable to them.

“Now
hold on for a moment, Charles,” Aaron said.

“And,”
Charles added, ignoring Aaron, “since I’m out, so is my property.
 
It goes where I go.”

Aaron
frowned.
 
“What are you talking
about?
 
What goes where you go?”

“The
property.
 
You don’t want my wife in the
club, therefore you don’t want me in your club.
 
Then fine.
 
I don’t want to be in
your club and I don’t want you on my land.”

They
all stared at Charles.
 
“What land?’
Aaron asked.

“Oh,
you forgot that little detail, did you?
 
I own the land that club happens to sit on, and I own every structure on
the land that club happens to sit on.
 
The only part of the Jericho Yacht and Country Club that you, the
governing board, actually own, is the name.
 
The Jericho Yacht and Country Club.
 
That’s it.
 
Everything else I
own.
 
So you take your name and get the
hell off of my property.”

“Wait
a minute,” Aaron said, moving up to the desk.
 
The other men moved closer too.
 
This news had floored them.
 
“What
are you saying?”

“There’s
an old adage,” Charles said.
 
“‘I don’t
want to be in a club,’ the old saying goes, ‘that would have me as a
member.’
 
Well I say just the
reverse.
  
I don’t want to be in a club
that would have you as members.
 
Now get
the fuck out of my office!”

The
men could not believe it.
 
They had
walked into it and didn’t realize how knee-deep they really were.
 
Until now.

Aaron
actually tried to smile.
 
“Charles,” he
said, as if he was going to insist they were only joking.

But
Charles was not the man to joke with.
 
“Get out,” he ordered.

Aaron’s
smile was gone.
 
He was in a fighting
mood now.
 
But he got out.

Quince
Franklin looked through the window of his motel room, and then back at Ash and
Carly, his two young daughters.
 
“Be on
your best behavior,” he said to them.
 

“Yes,
sir,” they responded to him.
 

They
loved their father above any human being alive, and they would do anything he
told them to do.
 
Everybody else had
abandoned them, including their own biological mother, who stopped taking their
calls, or coming around to see them nearly two years ago.
 
Their father, even now in his reduced
circumstances, was all they ever had.
 
Their loyalty was now and always would be with him.

Quince
rubbed his kinky hair back with a brush of his big hands, and tried his best to
look dignified in his wrinkled suit and tie.
 
But even his youngest daughter, Carly, knew that was impossible.
 
Between his bloodshot eyes and all of the
needle marks in his arms, he looked as if he would fit right in with the bums
and the homeless people on the streets of Richmond.
 
He was a mess, his life was upside down, and
his daughters knew it.

He
opened the door before anybody could knock, and then Arianna Sinatra and her
investigator, Ed Anderson, the man who had tracked Quince down, entered the
shabby room.
 
Ed closed the door while
Arianna took in the room itself, and the pretty black girls sitting on one of
the two double beds.

“It
stinks in here,” she said flatly.

Quince
immediately took umbrage.
 
“Now wait a
minute!
 
It doesn’t stink in here.”

“It
doesn’t stink in here to you because you’ve been in this monkey house for days
on end.
 
I just got here.
 
It stinks.”
 
Then she looked Quince up and down.
 
“And I see why.
 
Your official
photos, before the fall, showed an elegant man.
 
But my how the mighty have fallen.”

Quince
looked at Ed.
 
“When I agreed to this
meeting, I wasn’t agreeing to be disrespected.
 
I’m no slouch, you know.
 
I’m a
reputable attorney---”

“You’re
a barely working attorney,” Arianna said.
 
“And you’re on the verge of being disbarred.
 
So let’s not play the game of pretense.
 
This is serious business.”
 
She looked at the daughters.
 
“What are their ages?”

Quince
hesitated, but he remembered how Ed said this meeting just might make him
rich.
 
“One’s fifteen, almost
sixteen.
 
My baby girl is fourteen.”

“And
Jenay still loves them, no?”

“Jenay?”
Carly asked with hope in her voice.
 
“You
know Jenay?”
  

Arianna
smiled.
 
Those girls certainly still
loved Jenay.
 
“Tell them to wait
outside,” she said to Quince.

“Why
do they have to wait outside?” Quince asked.
 
“I don’t keep anything from them.”

Arianna
looked at Quince.
 
He was pretending
again, and he knew it.
 
“Wait outside,”
he said to his daughters, and they jumped at his command.

“You
wait outside with them,” Arianna said to Ed, and he and the girls left the
room.

Arianna
began pacing the small space.
 
“They
still love her, it is obvious.
 
But what
about her?
 
Do you think she would still
love them?”

“Yes,”
he said.
 
“Jenay was devastated when
Vernita, that was my girlfriend at the time and later my wife, forced me to
break off all contact between her and the girls.
 
She still loves them, I’m certain of it.”

“Good,”
Arianna said.
 
“I’m depending on that
love.
 
They will be our bargaining
chips.
 
She can have the girls in
exchange for the divorce.”

Quince
frowned.
 
“I don’t know if you realize
this, but she’s married to a very wealthy man.
 
Why would she give him and that lifestyle up?”

“I
know what she has.
 
She’s married to my
husband.”

“You
mean your ex-husband.”

“My
husband!” Arianna fired back.
 
“I was his
first, and I shall be his last.
 
She’s
nothing more than a gold digger he dredged up while he was on the rebound.”

Quince
looked at her.
 
Was she insane?
 
Ed told him the story.
 
She and that man were divorced well over a
decade ago, and she was still acting as if it was yesterday.
 
And on the rebound?
 
How could a man be on the rebound for over
ten years?
 
She was nuts!

But
she was also rich, according to Ed.
 
And
that was all Quince was interested in.
 
The money.

“She’ll
bargain, don’t worry,” Arianna said.
 
“There’s no prenuptial agreement.
 
She can take him to the cleaners and be free of his tyranny too.
 
And, in exchange, she’ll have those lovely
two little girls back to raise along with her new little girl.
 
And you’re be rich to do whatever the hell
you want to do.
 
Especially when you and
those girls make it clear to Jenay how much they need her.
 
She’ll want to adopt them when all is said
and done.
 
And you’re going to let
her.
 
You’re going to take your nice
little fortune, and let her.
 
Because
guess what?
 
They’re be rich.
 
And you, as their father, will always be rich
too.”

Quince
exhaled.
 
“I hear you,” he said.
 
“But there’s just one slight complication.”

“Their
mother?” Arianna asked.

Quince
nodded.
 
“Their mother.”

 
Who is she?”

“The
bane of my existence,” he said.
 
“She
doesn’t want to have anything to do with them, but she doesn’t want me to have
anything to do with them either.
 
She
figures they’re better off in foster care than with me.
 
She’s always calling child protective
services on me and lying about abuse.
  
Every time we turn around, it’s the same allegation.”

“What’s
the allegation?”

“She
claims I’m beating the crap out of them.
 
It’s all lies.”

Arianna
stared at Quince.
 
It was the truth, she
decided.
 
But that was beside the
point.
 
“So you think this mother will
stand in our way?”

“Oh,
yeah.
 
She wouldn’t mind strangers
raising our daughters, but she’ll have a problem with Jenay raising them.
 
She hates every woman I ever slept with.
 
My two ex-wives, Jenay and Vernita, are at
the top of her list.”

Arianna
nodded.
 
“We’ll have to take care of her
then.”

Quince
looked at her.
 
“Take care of her?
 
Financially you mean?”

“And
have that blackmailer keep returning to the well?
 
Oh, no.
 
I won’t be giving her a penny.”