What Hammer Wants Read online

  AMELIA SINATRA

  WHAT HAMMER WANTS

  BY

  MALLORY MONROE

  Copyright©2020 Mallory Monroe

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  AUSTIN BROOK PUBLISHING

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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 is depicted by models and are not the actual characters.

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  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

  EPILOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  His baby sister.

  That was Amelia.

  His baby sister.

  Big Daddy Charles Sinatra sipped from his beer mug when he saw her get out of her car, hand her keys to the valet, and make her way toward the entrance. High-stepping as usual, in her stiletto boots and mink coat, she reminded him of those sophisticated movie stars of old, who thought the world revolved around them. Amelia wasn’t vain like that in any sense of the word, but she had that air of vanity about her. People who didn’t know her decided they didn’t like her, just by the way she carried herself. And she was a Sinatra too? And had that Sinatra swagger and toughness they all had? Bitch was probably her middle name to many. But to Charles, she was just his baby sister.

  And he understood Amelia, he thought, as he watched her make her way inside the restaurant. She was born in violence and could never seem to shake that unceremonious beginning. Charles was there. So was his younger brother Mick. Born in a basement in the family home in Jericho, Maine, as soon as she came out of his mother’s wound and Charles saw her, he knew she was in trouble. Not because of who she was. She was a sweet, beautiful baby. Just beautiful, he remembered thinking as soon as he laid eyes on her. But she was in trouble because of what it meant.

  Amelia came out black.

  Mick, Charles, their mother and father, all were white.

  Charles remembered how he and little Mick looked at their mother in shock.

  And right then and there, he and Mick understood that she was going to be their responsibility. They both knew they had to move heaven and earth to protect that brand new baby girl and get her out of that basement alive.

  But first they had to get her away from their horrible mother, who wanted her dead because of her skin color; because their mother knew she couldn’t lie her way out of that one. She would finally have to admit she had an affair. That baby was all the proof their father would need.

  And then their already drunk, always sadistically abusive father decided to bring his sorry ass home. And all the clichés of shit hitting fans and hell breaking loose came true that day in that basement in Jericho. And that was her beginning. Nobody, Charles knew, should have to begin life that way.

  “Charlie!”

  Amelia Sinatra, with her Prada gift bag on her arm, hurried happily to her big brother as he smiled and stood on his feet. He was barely able to button his suit coat before she thrust herself into his arms.

  They kissed and hugged vigorously, as if they missed each other deeply in the months since they last met. It felt great to be together once again.

  When they stopped embracing, they looked at each other, kissed each other again, and then they both sat down. “What’s that?” he asked as she sat in the booth across from him.

  “For you,” she said as she handed him the bag.

  He smiled. “Prada? You sure? I thought that was a ladies’ brand.”

  Amelia smiled and rolled her eyes. “You need to get out of Maine more,” she said with a grin. “They make men’s stuff, too, boy!”

  Charles smiled and hunched his shoulder as he pulled out a beautiful green cashmere sweater. “Oh, this is lovely,” he said, feeling the softness of the material. “But for me? I don’t know, sis. Looks like something Tommy Gabrini would wear.”

  “Isn’t it adorable?” asked Amelia. “And no, I did not think of Dapper Tom, I thought of you as soon as I saw it. It matches your eyes.”

  Charles smiled that smile Amelia just loved. In truth, both of her brothers were wonderful to her, but it was Charles who was like a father to her. Like everybody else in the family, he was the one she ran to whenever she needed somebody to remind her that she wasn’t some total failure her life seemed to always suggest she was. She’d do anything for him.

  “I shall wear it back to Maine,” Charles said, removed his suit coat, and put it on.

  Amelia smiled. “Now that’s what I call handsome,” she said.

  Charles smiled and sat his suitcoat and the now empty Prada bag on the seat beside him. “How are you, kid?” he asked her. “Other than gorgeous.”

  Amelia smiled. “Stop exaggerating,” she said.

  Charles was always amazed at how Amelia sold herself so cheap. She was one of the most beautiful women Charles had ever seen, but you couldn’t tell her that. But that was that basement life. It was hard to break out of that mentality.

  “But I’m good,” Amelia said, answering his original question. “I’m glad you could take some time out of your busy schedule and come and see me,” she added.

  “Oh, I would have come many times before,” said Charles. “It was your ass that was too busy.”

  The waitress arrived at their booth in the loud, crowded, Baltimore restaurant, took Amelia’s drink order and then their food orders, and walked away.

  “How’s Sinatra Solutions working out so far?” he asked after the waitress left.

  Amelia hesitated. Sinatra Solutions was a legit business. She had no worries there. But she also did side jobs too. It was those side jobs that kept her in mink and money. It was those side jobs that she knew Charles and Mick, and Hammer, too, could never know about. “I’ve got a full slate of clients now,” she finally responded. “So, yes, it’s working out well.”

  “I’m pleased you decided to go legit,” Charles said. “Having the law breathing down your neck is not a good feeling. Going to prison is even worse.”

  “How would you know? You’ve never been to prison before in your life.”

  “And you’d better never step foot in one either,” C
harles said firmly.

  Amelia never liked to discuss her business in detail because she knew, if Charles or Mick or Hammer were to find out about her additional business interests, she wouldn’t hear the end of it. And it would probably be the end of her. Because despite the fact that, as far as Charles knew, she did indeed have a legitimate company, she still had to hear it anyway. “Do you give that same lecture to our brother?” she asked Charles.

  “To Mick? Hell yeah,” Charles said forcefully. “Ever since he was knee-high to a grasshopper I was on his ass. Did he listen? Hell no!”

  Amelia laughed. And then she leaned forward. Charles could see the strain in her eyes. They were close, but he also knew nobody could ever get too close to Amelia. She would never let them all the way in. Not even him. “How’s life been treating you, Mandy?” he asked her.

  Amelia smiled. It was a running joke. Some of the kids in the family took to calling her Aunt Amanda, or Mandy, because it seemed easier for them to remember than Amelia. And it stuck. Now, along with Millie, Mandy was her nickname too. “Life’s okay,” she said as the waitress brought her drink. “Thank you.” The waitress glanced at Charles as she walked away.

  Charles saw that assessing look that waitress gave him, too, but he didn’t give that young woman a second thought. But Amelia laughed. “What?” he asked her.

  “She’s barely twenty-one and she wants you too,” Amelia said and lifted her glass. “You’ve still got it, my brother.”

  “I’ve still got it? You make me sound ancient. My ass ain’t that old.”

  “Your ass older than her.”

  “But not by much.”

  “Ha!” Amelia said, and they both laughed.

  Then Amelia exhaled. “I got a text from Jenay just before I got here,” she said. Jenay was Charles’s wife. “She called you Big Daddy in the text.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “I thought that was supposed to be a negative name. Because you’re the richest man in Jericho County and buys up all the available land and businesses, they view you as big brother. As in Uncle Sam. As in Big Daddy. I thought it was meant to be a put down.”

  “It was. But it has evolved,” Charles said with a smile. “Now everybody calls me that foolish name, friends and foe alike. What did she want?”

  “She wanted to make sure you made it to Baltimore okay.”

  Charles shook his head. “She’s been doing that a lot lately. I told her to cut that shit out. Just because a couple of her closest girlfriends recently got divorced, she acts as if she has to know my every movement. As if I’m going to leave her ass like her girlfriends’ husbands left them.”

  “Oh, I think it’s sweet,” Amelia said as she took a sip of her beer. “And I doubt if Jenay’s that insecure. She knows how much you love her. It’ll shock the world if you ever left Jenay. I think she’s just worried about her man.”

  Charles glanced at her as he sipped from his mug. “Speaking of men,” he said. “How’s yours?”

  “You mean JoJo? He’s great.”

  “I mean JoJo’s father.”

  Amelia raised her eyebrows and sipped more beer. “Not so great.”

  “Him, or your relationship?”

  “That’s usually one in the same,” she said. Then she exhaled. “He wants me and Jo to move there.”

  “To Canada?”

  Amelia nodded. “Yup.”

  “Did this request to make that move include a ring?”

  A sad look appeared in Amelia’s eyes. “No.”

  “The promise of a ring?”

  “No.”

  “But yet in still he wants you to completely uproot your life and move to Canada?”

  She exhaled. “That’s what he wants.”

  “If it’s not for an impending marriage,” Charles said, “did he say why he wanted you to make this move?”

  “He said long distance relationships never work out,” Amelia responded. “I guess he wants ours to work out.”

  “Then his ass should marry you!” Charles was upset, but he settled back down. He could see Amelia closing that door right back in his face. “But he does have a point, you know,” he said.

  He could see Amelia interested again. “He has a point about what?” she asked.

  “Long distance relationships. Jenay and I had one when we first met, too, and I knew that wasn’t going to work pretty quickly. And you and Hammer aren’t just long distance, you’re in two different countries! So, he has a point. What did you tell him?”

  “Nothing yet. I thought I’d go to Montreal this weekend, and we’ll talk about it.”

  “What’s there to talk about? Either you’re going to move or you aren’t.”

  “But like you said, I’m not just going to uproot my kid and move to another country without some assurances from him. At least that.”

  Charles knew what assurances she meant. And he nodded his agreement. “It’s long overdue,” he said.

  Amelia sipped from her drink. “Yes, it is.”

  “It’s so long overdue that I stopped asking you about it. I assumed it wasn’t going to happen.”

  Amelia looked at him with a sudden distressed look in her beautiful eyes. “Why would you say that, Charles?”

  “A man like Hammer Reese, with his background as the former head of the CIA, as the head of whatever shit the government’s got him doing right now, is a complicated man. I understand that. And I’m sure he’s hesitant to bring you and JoJo so officially into his complicated lifestyle. But at some point he’s got to make a decision. Either he’s in it for life with you, or he’s not.” Then he looked at Amelia. “And at some point, you’ve got to make a decision too, babe. You can’t remain in limbo with that man. There are too many fish in the sea.”

  “Plenty of fish, alright,” Amelia said. “For him too.” She said this and looked at Charles.

  Charles looked at her. He’d heard the rumors. “Do you still love him?”

  “That’s the problem,” she said. “Yes.” Then she looked away. “Maybe too much.”

  “He loves you. That I know,” Charles said. “But love isn’t all it takes, babe. Commitment is equally as important. That takes work. And it’s not like you have forever.”

  Amelia tried to smile. “What are you saying? My black ass ain’t getting any younger?”

  Charles laughed. “That’s exactly what I’m saying!” Then he turned serious, and leaned forward too. “What I don’t want to happen,” he said sincerely, “is for you to give Hammer the best years of your life, and he goes out and get himself some fresh meat.”

  Amelia’s heart squeezed in agony. That was her fear too. “Then it wasn’t meant to be, Charles. Point blank.”

  “But what if, instead of wasting your best life waiting on Hammer, you could have been with somebody else? Somebody who’ll be thrilled to make you his number one?”

  Amelia knew that was the risk. “I know,” she said. “But do I play it safe and go with a guy who loves me? Or do I take a risk and go with the guy I love?” Then she frowned. “And love so much,” she said and looked at Charles.

  Charles’s heart sank for his kid sister. Why didn’t Hammer see what he easily saw? Why couldn’t Hammer realize the catch he had? “Did he tell you to come this weekend to talk about it,” Charles asked Amelia, “or was that your idea?”

  Amelia nodded her head. “My idea. He never wants to talk about much of anything, to tell you the truth. So, no, he doesn’t even know I’m coming. But I’ll be there. Like you said, I can’t keep living in limbo like this. Either we’re going to go all-in together, or we’re over. But I need to know. For real.”

  Charles couldn’t agree more. He lifted his glass to her, and took another sip too. But as he sipped, he looked at the sister he adored so much. The same sister he literally had to kick his own father’s ass to protect, while Mick had to hurry her away from that basement where she was born. Their white father was going to kill that black baby; a baby he saw, not as a human being, b
ut as evidence of his wife’s infidelity.

  And then, as if to twist that already twisted knife, and after the midwife who delivered her was able to get her safely away from their dysfunctional household, Charles and Mick were told the baby had died a few days after her birth. They thought Amelia was dead. Only to find out, many, many years later, that it wasn’t true. But they’d lost so many years in between. He didn’t want her to lose any more fooling with Hammer Reese!

  And he had to prepare her for what looked like the inevitable. “What if he tells you he’s not all in,” he said to Amelia. “What if he doesn’t want to commit to you forever? What will you do then?”

  Amelia exhaled. She wished she could have said then I’ll move on like any normal woman would have said. But with Hammer, throughout their entire relationship, it had never been that easy.

  “I don’t know what I’d do then,” was the only honest answer she could give.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “It’s time.”

  He tossed the already cold coffee from out of the tin cup and threw down the cup too. Then he jumped onto the front passenger seat of the Jeep. His driver, and two body men in the back, were all he had to greet the chopper. And General Shandling was worried. They were in Peru, after midnight, in the middle of a godforsaken jungle so dense it would take darn-near a miracle for the pilot to find the helipad.

  One of the body men, who also happened to be a lieutenant colonel, looked at Shandling. “Who are they sending?”

  “Hammer,” the general replied. “Who else?”

  “Does Bellamy know?” Gus Bellamy was the American Secretary of Defense. “He doesn’t like his golden boy caught up in unwinnable battles, you and me both know that.”

  “He didn’t want him involved, that’s for damn sure. But it couldn’t be helped. Cordoba won’t deal unless Hammer’s in charge. And we’ve got to make a deal.”

  “If Hammer doesn’t like the terms, he’s not going to deal. You know that, right?”

  The general nodded his head as he held onto the jeep’s window frame through bouncy, rough terrain. “I know,” he said.