Big Daddy Sinatra: There Was a Ruthless Man (The Sinatras of Jericho County Book 1)
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Authors: Mallory Monroe
BIG DADDY SINATRA
THERE
WAS A RUTHLESS MAN
(The Sinatras of
Jericho County
)
BOOK ONE
By
MALLORY MONROE
Copyright©2014
Mallory Monroe
All rights reserved. Any use of the materials contained in this
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This novel is a work of fiction. All characters are
fictitious. Any similarities to anyone living or dead are completely
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PROLOGUE
1998
Jenay
Franklin knew she was running late, but she also knew she wasn’t so late that
Quince would need to be called.
But
there he was, coming out of the front office with Ash and Carly, Jenay’s
stepdaughters, by his side.
She smiled
and waved and slanted her bang across her forehead the way she was prone to do
when she was unsettled, and hurried to them.
She was always pleased to see Quince and the girls.
“Jenay!”
the girls yelled as soon as they saw her coming.
They broke away from their father and ran to
her, throwing their arms around her.
“How
are my two favorite little people in the whole wide world?” Jenay asked with a
grin, as she balanced her shoulder bag and wrapped them in her arms too.
Although they were only ten and eight, they
were almost as big as she was.
“We
built a castle today,” Ashley, the ten-year-old, informed her.
“You
did?” Jenay asked in that sincere, but overly-sympathetic voice Quince
hated.
“Was it very pretty?”
“It
was very big,” Carly, the eight-year-old, said.
“Bigger than the Empire State building!”
“Very
pretty too,” Ashley said.
“Just like
you.”
Jenay
squeezed them both, and then looked up at Quince.
But something wasn’t right.
She could tell by that faraway look in his
eyes.
“I would have gotten here sooner,
but Lynda was late again,” she said.
“Marta knew I had to pick up the girls so she told me to wait five
minutes and if Lynda didn’t show by then, I could leave.
My shift would be over.
I didn’t think I was so late that the school
would have called you.”
She
realized then that Quince wasn’t even looking at her, but was looking beyond
her.
She turned around and looked
too.
She saw a woman coming toward them.
She was a big woman, about twice Jenay’s
size, and very attractive.
“Girls,”
Quince said to his little ones, “I want you to go with Miss Vernita.
You remember Miss Vernita, don’t you?”
“But
we wanna stay with Jenay,” Ashley complained.
“You
remember Miss Vernita, don’t you?” Quince asked again.
Ashley
didn’t want to respond, but she knew her father.
“Yes, sir,” she said, her eyes looking down.
“Speak
to her then.”
“Hello
Miss Vernita,” the girls replied in unison.
“Hey
girls,” Vernita said with a grand smile, and motioned for them to come to
her.
Both girls looked up at Jenay, as
if even they knew this wasn’t right, but they obeyed their father.
And went to the woman.
Vernita pulled them into her arms.
And then she looked at Quince.
“Give
me a couple minutes,” he said.
Vernita
glanced at Jenay, nodded at Quince, and then began ushering the girls toward a
fancy sports car.
Jenay drove a beat-up
Ford that she shared with her husband.
She knew that sports car didn’t belong to them.
She looked back at him.
For some reason, after the girls left her
arms, she already felt alone.
“Who
is she?” she wanted to know.
“A friend
of their mother’s?”
But
Quince wasn’t answering questions right now.
He was giving answers. “It’s not going to work out, Nay,” he said to
her.
That
didn’t make sense to Jenay.
“What’s not
going to work out?”
“Our
marriage,” he said.
And as soon as he
said those two words, it felt like a punch in the gut to Jenay.
“You
and I,” he kept talking.
Another
punch.
“It’s not working out.
I’ve tried and you’ve tried, but it’s just
not working for me.”
The
suddenness of it!
It felt so out of the
blue that Jenay, at first, just stared at him. “What are you saying, Quince?”
she eventually asked.
“Are you telling
me . . . you want a divorce?”
They
had to step aside, as another parent entered the school’s front office
door.
“That’s what I’m telling you,”
Quince said.
“I think it’s time for us
to go our separate ways.”
“Separate
ways?
What separate ways?”
It felt like a thunderbolt kind of crazy to
Jenay.
She couldn’t begin to figure out
where it came from.
She couldn’t figure
out where it was going!
“I don’t
understand, Quince.
I know we’ve been
bickering a lot lately, but I assumed it was because of the stress of your
finals.
You’re always grouchy during
finals week.
How could that translate
into you suddenly wanting a divorce?”
“Because
it’s over.
All right?
Let’s just leave it at that.”
When
he made that statement, as if she had no right to even question his decision,
Jenay went from confused, to angry.
“Just leave it at that?” she asked with shock in her voice.
“You tell me you want a divorce and I’m
supposed to leave it at that?”
Quince
exhaled, and touched her arm.
“I don’t
want to hurt you, Jenay,” he said.
Jenay
snatched her arm away from him.
“Then
don’t hurt me!
You don’t want to hurt
me, then don’t do it!”
“That’s
up to you.
We can be adults about this,
or you can show your ass.
You show your
ass, there will be pain.”
He looked past
her again, toward that sports car.
“I’ve
got to go,” he said with a frown.
Jenay
knew where he had looked.
She knew he
had looked at that woman in that sports car again.
“Who is she?” she asked.
“You meet some skanky female, now you want a
divorce?
And how could you just turn our
children over to her?”
“They’re
not
our
children and you know it,”
Quince quickly pointed out.
“So don’t
even go there, Nay.
And she has nothing
to do with this. I want a divorce.
Me.
This is all on me!”
“But
why
?”
Jenay’s anger was turning into anguish now.
She knew Quince.
She knew when he meant it.
“You can’t tell me why?”
It
was obvious he didn’t want to go there.
But, to Jenay’s shock, he wasn’t above going anywhere anymore.
“Because you’re not on my level,” he
said.
“That’s why.
All right?
Satisfied?”
“Not
on your level?”
Jenay was frowning
now.
“What are you talking about?
I’m working my ass off to help make ends meet
while you finish law school.
Then you’re
going to put me through school.
And then
I’ll be on your level, if that’s the level you mean.
Why are you acting like you don’t understand
the plan, Quince?”
“That’s
your plan,” Quince made clear.
“That’s
not my plan.
My plan is for my girls and
I to go our way, and for you to go yours.
That’s the deal.
That’s the
plan.”
Jenay
had been warned.
Seven years ago, when
she first met Quince, her mother, her father, everybody she knew and loved told
her she was making a big mistake.
Her
mother was especially stern.
She
reminded her that she’d been in one bad relationship after another one even
before she graduated high school.
Now
she was looking to marry this Quincy guy?
She was far too young to saddle herself with a man with two babies, her
mother told her, she didn’t care how
nice
he seemed.
At twenty-two, she had too
much life to live to marry him and become his babysitter, and maid in essence,
while he pursued his dreams.
Live a
little, her mother had begged her.
Go to
college herself.
Pursue her own
dreams.
Do you
, her mother had said,
before
you don’t know you anymore!
But
she ignored every warning.
Because
Quince was supposedly so different.
He
was a single father raising his two beautiful daughters alone.
He was a special man.
He wasn’t super-gorgeous and self-centered
like those other guys that misused her.
He was a nerd for crying out loud!
A guy like him wouldn’t break her heart.
A guy like him wouldn’t be so self-absorbed that he couldn’t see her
wants and needs and desires.
They would
be a happy family together if people would only give them a chance.
Quince, she convinced herself, was so
different!
“I’ve
already gotten our things out of the apartment,” Quince went on.
Even
that infuriated Jenay.
“You did
what
?”
“I
already got our things,” Quince made clear.
“I did it while you were at work and the kids were at school.”
“Oh.
So you planned this shit.
This wasn’t some random act of weakness.
You’ve been planning this decision for
what?
Days?
Weeks?
Months
?”
I’ll initiate the divorce right away,” Quince
said, determined to keep his dignity intact, despite her anger.
“Since we don’t have anything to contest,
there won’t be any problems.
It should
be quite painless.”
Painless?
No problems?
Nothing to contest
?
“But what about the girls?” Jenay asked
him.
How could he say they had nothing
between them?
What about love?
What about their vows?
What about those precious children!
She was so overwhelmed that her heart was
racing.
She couldn’t understand her own
emotions.
But
Quince understood his.
“What about
them?” he wanted to know. “It’s over.
That means your relationship with my children is over too.
They’re too attached to you anyway.
I never liked that.
You’re not their mother, and given seven
years of marriage and you haven’t been able to get pregnant in any of that
time, you’ll never be a mother.
So
forget about
my
kids, you hear
me?
I’m not going to let their attachment
to you spoil a relationship they might have with anybody else.”
“Like
that bitch in the car?” Jenay asked.
“Anybody
else,” was all Quince would say.
“It’s
over, Jenay.
I’m sorry, but it’s
over.
You have got to go on with your
life, and accept that hard truth.”
And
just like that, he began walking away to that fancy sports car too.
Jenay watched him leave.
She watched the man she thought would be her
forever
man leave just like those
previous forever men left too.
A part of
her wanted to lash out.
A part of her
wanted to run to him, turn his spineless ass around, and scratch his eyeballs
out.
She wanted to run to that fat bitch
in the sports car, and scratch hers out too.
But
that wasn’t going to bring him back.
That wasn’t going to bring those sweet children back.
That wasn’t going to make any difference
whatsoever.
Because at the end of the
day, she still was going to be alone.
By
herself.
With nothing but seven long
years of waste and stagnation: bitterness, as her companion.
She wasn’t about to make a fool out of
herself too.