Mick Sinatra: The Harder They Fall by Mallory Monroe

didn’t look gangster at all.   He
looked like the very proper CEO of Sinatra Industries most people in Philly
knew him as.   He wore the kind of
uber-expensive, dark gray pinstripe business suit that made him look so
conservative, so mainstream respectable, that each one of his children wondered
why he didn’t just go with that and leave the other business, the dangerous
business, alone.
    But then, as
he came closer and they saw that cold stare in his green eyes, and that
up-close smoldering look that encapsulated him, they knew why the dangerous was
necessary.   He bought the danger to the dangerous.   Not the other way around.   He was smart enough to go legit too, but they
knew, deep down, Mick Sinatra was as gangster as they came.
    But his
children were walking contradictions too.   Because, although they knew their father had that bad-boy-on-a-massive-scale side to him, they were unbelievably
proud to be his children.    He impressed
them unlike any other human being could.   They wanted his love and acceptance so badly that it pained them.   They felt that he was their connection.   They felt that they were special because they
knew he was.
    “Dad, hey,”
Teddy said as Mick arrived at their booth.   Sitting on the outside end, he actually stood up and shook his father’s
hand.   They might have had a father-son
relationship, but Teddy worked for Mick.   He was one of Mick’s men.   And
Mick’s men stood whenever he entered a room.   Joey’s heart was hammering so hard that he couldn’t stand even if he
wanted to.   Gloria smiled.
    “Hey, Dad,”
she said.
    “Come and
give me a hug,” Mick said before he realized he had said it, and all three of
his children were surprised.   But he
couldn’t help it.   Gloria had been in
Paris with her mother the last couple days.   He missed her.
    Gloria
gladly slid across the booth seat, stood up, and hugged her father.
    “Welcome
back,” Mick said as they stopped their embrace.   “How’s your mother?   Still upset
with me?”
    “Always,”
Gloria said with a smile.
    But before
she could sit back in her seat, Mick, to everybody’s shock, got in the booth
and slid over beside Joey, taking over where Gloria had originally sat.   Gloria smiled at Teddy with that WTF look they often shared, but she sat
down on the end where Teddy had been sitting.   Teddy sat across from his siblings and father gladly.   Because he knew how Mick’s mind worked.   He knew Mick’s decision to sit in the middle
had less to do with him and Gloria, and more to do with attempting to mend his
fractured relationship with young Joey.
    If Joey’s
heart was hammering before just because his father showed up, it was outright
pounding now that his father was sitting beside him.   He had such strong emotions when it came to
his father!
    Like now,
even Mick’s fresh, cologne scent, and the bigness of his body in the confined
space against Joey’s slender frame, where their arms actually touched, was a
heady feeling.
    And it made
Joey think.   Why should he want the love
of this man more than the love of his own mother?   His mother had always been there for him when
his father didn’t give a damn about him.   When he was a kid, he was always looking for Mick to show up when he
almost never did.   It was his mother who
nursed his wounded pride and picked up the pieces of his broken heart.   But yet it was Mick he wanted to please.   It was Mick he loved with all his broken
heart.
    Mick looked
at his son.   Although Joey was in his
early twenties, he often behaved even younger than that, a fact that often
infuriated Mick.   But Roz told him to
make an extra effort with Joey.   He was
the youngest of Mick’s grown children.   He still felt the sting of Mick’s absence in his earlier life more that
Teddy and Glo.   “Hello, Joey,” he said to
him.
    Joey attempted
to smile.   He wanted to reunite with his
old man too.   But he only managed a
barely