Monk Paletti: Taming Ashley Sinatra Read online

  MONK PALETTI

  TAMING ASHLEY SINATRA

  BY

  MALLORY MONROE

  Copyright©2020 Mallory Monroe

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  This novel is a work of fiction. All characters are fictitious. Any similarities to anyone living or dead are completely accidental. The specific mention of known places or venues are not meant to be exact replicas of those places, but are purposely embellished or imagined for the story’s sake. The cover art are models. They are not the actual characters.

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  BIG DADDY SINATRA SERIES

  IN ORDER:

  1.BIG DADDY SINATRA: THERE WAS A RUTHLESS MAN

  2.BIG DADDY SINATRA: IF I CAN’T HAVE YOU

  3.BIG DADDY SINATRA: THE BEST OF MY LOVE

  4.BIG DADDY SINATRA: CARLY’S CRY

  5.BIG DADDY SINATRA: PAPA DON’T PLAY

  6.BIG DADDY SINATRA: CHARLES IN CHARGE

  7.BIG DADDY SINATRA: BRINGING DOWN THE HAMMER

  TEDDY SINATRA SERIES

  IN ORDER

  1.TEDDY SINATRA: CHAINS FOR LOVE

  2.TEDDY SINATRA: HER PROTECTOR

  3. TEDDY SINATRA: A HOLD ON ME

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  EPILOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  It was billed as a birthday celebration for the retired don of the Bonaducci crime family, but it felt more like a ceremony of old men to Monk. He walked into the front parlor of the old mansion, where the senior leadership was gathered, and was greeted with a warm welcome by the Don himself.

  “If it ain’t the Monk,” the old man said cheerfully in his heavy Jersey accent. “If it ain’t Frankie Paletti! Come over here and give your godfather a hug, Frankie. Come give me a hug.”

  It was Bonaducci’s seventieth birthday, and although his physical health and mental faculties came and went with no discernible rhyme or reason, even Frankie the Monk Paletti could see that the Don was firing from all cylinders on his birthday. He was also in a wheelchair, the consequence of too many gunshot wounds down through the years, and that chair forced Monk to lean much further over to give his godfather a hug.

  “Sit beside me,” the Don said to Monk when they stopped embracing. “Move over Raymond and make room for your eldest, for the future leader of the Bonaducci family. Make room for Monk!”

  Raymond Paletti, Monk’s father, found it disrespectful the way the Don was always dismissing him whenever Frankie came around, but he held his peace and slid further down on the couch. Because Raymond knew that he, not the Don, not Frankie, was still head of the family. All the action still had to come through him. And no matter how much the Don hated it and would have picked Monk had it been left up to him, Raymond knew the Don could do nothing about it.

  Besides, Raymond felt, what did Bonaducci have to offer anyway? He had nobody in his own family to take over when his failing health and age forced him into retirement. Both of his sons had been killed in an ambush years ago, and Bonaducci’s nephew Max was too weak and feeble to head anything. But even before his boys were killed, and before he retired, all the capos were already consolidating around Raymond, who was the underboss then, as their chosen successor. The Don had no choice but to go along with it. But it was no secret even then: the Don preferred Monk.

  “You looking good, Frankie,” Bonaducci said as he squeezed one of Monk’s biceps. “Real good and healthy-looking. And the muscles on ya’ for crying out loud.”

  Monk smiled. “How you been feeling, Godfather?” he asked him.

  “Me? I’m up, I’m down, I’m happy, I’m sad, I’m crazy, I’m sane. I feel like a yo-yo, that’s how I feel!” Everybody laughed.

  “But you,” Bonaducci said, “what about you? I hear you been taking good care of business for the family. You been doing a good job, Frankie. Everybody says so. How you doing?”

  Monk nodded his head. He felt the way he always felt when he was around the guys: like crap. “I been doing,” was the best Monk could say.

  Bonaducci smiled. “That’s our Frankie. A man of few words.” Everybody laughed at that, too, although Monk failed to see what was funny about it.

  But Bonaducci was staring at Monk. He was sizing Monk up, as against Monk’s own father, the way he always did. Monk was leaned back on the couch, looking presidential, as Bonaducci used to call it for men who had that aura of being boss without any effort. By contrast, Monk’s father was nearly on the edge of his seat, leaning forward, looking too anxious and desperate for a boss. But Monk was a natural boss who didn’t want to be boss. Those kind of men who didn’t really want the power, it had been the Don’s experience, that made the best bosses of them all.

  “Back to the situation at hand,” Raymond said, and everybody looked at him. Still a handsome man well into his fifties, the Don saw Raymond as more of a playboy than a leader. “What are we gonna do about that city hall matter?”

  “What’s the guy’s problem anyway?” Bonaducci asked. “Tell me again. Why won’t he release the permits?”

  “He claim they ain’t up to code,” Raymond said, “but that’s a lie. Monk had two of our contractors check it and double check it. Everything onsite is up to code. It’s all good. But that fucking code enforcement officer keeps giving us a failing grade. He keeps saying we ain’t up to code when we know we are, like he’s trying to make a name for himself on the back of our name.”

  “I tell you what you do,” Bonaducci said. “You take a bucket of cement, see, and go to that fucker’s house. Sit that bucket on his doorstep and ring the bell. When he answers, you tell him, ‘you see this cement I got right here? It’s gonna be pieces of you and your whole family mixed up in it if you keep fucking with us.’ That’s all you got to say. He’ll get the message then.”


  “That’s what I said!” said Raymond. “But Frankie, he don’t wanna play it like that. He says it’s too risky. He says it ain’t civil.”

  “Ain’t civil?” the Don asked.

  “That’s not what I said, Pop,” Monk said.

  “Then what did you say?” Boozer Rome, a senior member of the organization, asked Monk. “What Boss just said sure sound like what you would have said, Frankie. Ain’t civil. That sounds just like you. None of us talk like that. Ain’t civil. Who gives a fuck? But they don’t call you the Monk for nothing.”

  Monk frowned. “Fuck you, Boozer!” he said to his capo, and Boozer quickly backed back down. They all loved Raymond, and could joke around with him anytime, but they didn’t respect Raymond. They respected and feared Monk, but they could never joke around with him, and they held no particular love for him either. He wasn’t one of them, they felt.

  But Bonaducci not only respected Monk, but he loved him. “You disagree?” he asked Monk. “Then tell me what would you do. We need those permits to get construction going again. How would you get it going, Frankie?”

  “I say we need to do whatever that inspector says we need to do,” Monk replied. “We need to make the corrections, even if we have to pretend we made’em, and move the hell on.”

  “Even if it don’t need correcting?” Raymond asked.

  “Even if it don’t need it,” Monk said. “Why should that bother us? Just do it anyway.”

  “That’s fucking insane!” Raymond said. “Why we gonna let some civil servant dictate to us? Have us running around like we got our tails between our legs. Why we gonna let some pipsqueak like him dictate to us?”

  “So what if the little fucker’s fucking around with us?” Monk said. “Let him! We can take it. Just do whatever he says. He’ll approve it eventually. But it’s worth the wait if it’ll keep the heat off of us.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Raymond said, moving even further to the edge of his seat, as if he was still fighting for some of that sunlight that always seemed to shine on his son. “We’re the baddest family in Jersey. What we look like bending to the will of some city inspector? Are you nuts? The Bonaduccis don’t bend!”

  “I have to agree with your father there, Monk,” Bonaducci said. “You got good ideas,” he added. “You got a good head on your shoulders. But those city people, they need to be taught a lesson. They gotta know fucking with the Bonaduccis is like fucking with their demise. I say my cement idea is better.”

  “I agree Don Bonaducci,” said Boozer, and the rest of the old men agreed too.

  Monk sat back and listened to them. He listened as they went on and on about burying people in cement like it was a sport, and about all of their mobster grievances. All kinds of grievances they had, as if they just couldn’t understand why some people weren’t corrupt enough to let them have their way all the time.

  Monk watched and listened as they couldn’t stop gabbing. It was depressing listening to them. Because he knew, if his life continued the way it was going, he was going to be them one of these days. He was going to be just like them!

  A capo opened the door of the parlor and peeped inside. “They’re here, Boss,” he said to Bonaducci.

  Bonaducci smiled. “Good. It’s about time!” But then he had a small coughing fit, which caused Monk’s father to nearly jump from his seat with what some would call concern. But Monk knew his old man too well. It was more like excitement. Old Man Bonaducci died and moved on, Raymond would fully take over and wouldn’t have to answer to anybody. Monk knew that would be a disaster, given who his old man was. His old man disagreed.

  But Raymond’s concern/excitement was overblown anyway. The Don was fine. “Send them in,” he said, wiping his mouth with his handkerchief.

  And the capo opened the parlor door wide and a group of beautiful women walked in. They were all Italian girls. They were all of various shades and shapes and sizes.

  Monk knew the drill. He knew that every man could pick a woman for his own pleasure. Forget that all of them, except Monk, were married men. Forget that their wives were downstairs, in that same mansion they were sitting in, having a ladies gathering in honor of the Don’s birthday even as the sex girls were being paraded around. But it was a mob thing, and their mob wives knew it. It was how it was done.

  The selection process began at the very top, and worked its way all the way down to the most junior of the organization’s senior leadership in that parlor. That meant the Don picked first, and he picked what looked like the youngest woman there.

  He was followed by Monk’s father Raymond, who had recently remarried a woman younger than Monk, and he picked what looked like the next youngest woman in that parlor too. Monk shook his head.

  But then, as underboss, it was Monk’s time. He was next in the line of power. But Monk waved it off, finding the whole process disgusting. “I’ll pass,” he said.

  But Raymond didn’t take a pass on criticizing him. “Ah, come on, Frankie,” he said, tiring of his son’s inability to go along with hardly anything they did. “Humor us for once in your miserable life and pick a broad! That’s all you got to do. Pick one of’em and have some fun.” Then he frowned. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Your father’s right, Frankie,” said Bonaducci. “You gotta get out of that monastery of a house of yours every once in a while, and live a little.”

  “Live?” Monk asked. He was the only one in the room not afraid to correct the Don. “You call this living? Married men cheating on their wives is your idea of living?” Then Monk began shaking his head. “Fuck that, “ he said. “No thank you. Not interested.”

  Don Bonaducci’s smile turned ice cold. “What the fuck are you interested in then? If it ain’t broads, what is it? Dudes?”

  When the Don made that sly remark, everybody in the room laughed, including Raymond.

  Because he wasn’t old like them, Monk took a lot of bull from the guys down through the years. He took a lot of insults from them too. But those guys, and that life, he wasn’t feeling it anymore.

  He rose to his feet, buttoning his suit coat. “Happy birthday, Godfather,” he said to Don Bonaducci. “I wish you many more.” And then the Monk walked out of the parlor. He just walked right out.

  When Monk left, they all looked at each other. Nobody walked out on the Don. Then they all looked at the Don.

  Even Raymond could see Bonaducci’s demeanor slowly change from going-along-to-get-along smiles and laughter, to rage. And it angered Raymond because no matter how disrespectful Monk could be to the Don, Bonaducci would never say a word against Monk. He always let him get away with that shit.

  And he did it again. He tried to smile it off. “That Frankie,” Bonaducci said, as if Monk’s leaving was meant as a joke in and of itself, and they all laughed.

  But Raymond didn’t find it funny at all. Monk had to be reigned in. Raymond knew his own son was getting out of hand and his little walking out display proved it once again. And if the Don wasn’t willing to stand up to Monk, then Raymond knew he had to. Or some of those men beneath Monk might start getting bright ideas and try to buck the leadership too. And before the Don knew what was happening, they’d take Raymond off of the throne, and put Monk up there.

  But that, to Raymond Paletti, wasn’t going to happen. That, to Raymond Paletti, would only be over his dead body.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Ashley Sinatra laughed out loud as she sat on a stool behind the store counter, in her mini-skirt and halter top, filing her nails. “I’ll give him a two,” she said happily as she talked with Marina, a new friend she met at a bar. Marina sat on a stool alongside Ashley. They were in the convenience store/gas station that Ashley co-owned with her older brother Donald.

  “I wouldn’t go that low,” said Marina. “He’s not that bad. For a white boy.”

  Ashley looked at her. Although Ashley was African-American, she was adopted into a family where all of the guys were white. She didn’t cock to racism of
any form and by anybody. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked her friend.

  “You like a certain kind of man,” Marina said. “Usually a bad boy. Always cute. Never good for you.”

  Ashley laughed. “You got that right!”

  “And I like a certain kind of man too,” said Marina. “But unlike you, I don’t go by how he looks or anything like that. I like guys with the right equipment. The kind of equipment the brothers tend to have in spades.”

  Ashley couldn’t disagree with that, and they both laughed.

  “That’s what I mean,” Marina said. “We like what we like. So for me, he’s okay for a white boy. And since I heard he has the right equipment, I can’t give him a two. I’d give him an eight.”

  “Not me!” said Ashley. “An eight? Him? Girl, you crazy.”

  “What’s crazy about it? He’s got what it takes. And, if truth be told, he’s cute too.”

  “So what if he’s cute?” asked Ashley. “He’s not my type in any way, shape, or form. Looks like a little nerd to me.”

  “He is,” admitted Marina. “But nerds make good husbands.”

  “No, they don’t.” Ashley was quick to dispute that assertion. “They make boring husbands, which some women think means they’re good. But not me. I gots to have my excitement, or what’s the point?”

  “You’re in your twenties still,” Marina said. “Wait until you get to be a little older like me. You’ll be glad he’s boring.”

  “Not me!” Ashley said again, still filing her nails. “He can’t spice up my life, then I don’t need him in my life. Point blank period.”

  The bell clanged outside, signifying that a car had driven onto the property. Ashley glanced out. But it was only her brother Donald.

  “Anyway, girl,” Ashley said, standing to her feet. “Donny just drove up. We better break it up or he’ll declare I haven’t done anything all morning except sit around and run my mouth with you.”

  “Which would be accurate,” Marina said, standing too. “With his cute self.”