Page 2 of Memento Mori
Alessandro’s carefree attitude was something I longed for, but I knew it wasn’t possible for me. It was my title and position as Underboss that prevented it from happening. Every aspect of my life, every action I took, had an impact on the family, including this situation. It didn’t matter if it was a lie.
We’d gotten word that one of the local gossip rags, Exposé, was in the process of printing a fucking exposé on my supposed relationship with some model I boned more than a year ago, and her upcoming birth of our love child. Normally, shit like that didn’t piss me off. I let the lies roll off my back, because someone will always lie to get ahead, especially in our world. But I couldn’t ignore it this time.
All kinds of stories had been printed about me. From secret weddings to women, I’d never met, to me having mistresses on the side during each of those fake marriages. A few months ago, there was a front page spread on the cover of Exposé about some woman I vaguely remembered from college saying she was involved in a few orgies with me. While I had my fair share of women, sometimes more than one woman at a time on several occasions, orgies weren’t my thing, and I never participated in one. Apparently, this woman was one of those ladies who I had my fun with, then tossed to the side and now she was bitter.
However, now was not the time for any lie to be front page news in some magazine especially about a woman and a child—a story she confirmed to be true. We were in the middle of some shit with the other families. Namely whose daughter I’d marry, sealing another bond between families, just as my father, grandfather, and his father before him had done.
“It’s not true, is it?” he asked.
I glared at my brother, and he smirked. “We’re not about to have a little Tony running around, are we?”
The humor lacing Alessandro’s voice made me angrier. I wanted to pull my gun and put a bullet in his head. I stared daggers at my little brother. While he taunted me, this shit wasn’t a laughing matter. Sure, I fucked a lot of women in my young life, a lot of women, but I always wore a condom and disposed of them myself. I made sure to do that with every sexual partner and never slipped up. Not one time since I started fucking. Having a child with someone I could give two shits about was a crippling fear of mine. Me and Alessandro were both products of that kind of relationship and I never wanted that for my children.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I snapped. “Of course, it’s not true. I strap up, bro.”
“I’m sure you don’t need me to explain the birds and the bees to you, big brother,” he slapped me on the back, “but strapping up isn’t always full proof. Unless you got your shit snipped,” he said, doing his fingers in a cutting motion, “anything could happen.”
“I’m not a fucking idiot.” I pushed him away from me. “But trust me, that kid isn’t fucking mine. The timeline doesn’t add up. Marisol and I had one night. One fucking night, well over a year ago. There’s no way that kid is mine.”
“Maybe she isn’t pregnant.” Alessandro shrugged. “Maybe she’s just after your attention. You have been in the news a lot with the company lately. Maybe she wants you more than you thought.”
Marisol just wanting my attention would be the best-case scenario. It would save a lot of time and money rather than trying to disprove her baseless claims with DNA tests.
“To me, it doesn’t matter why she’s doing it, Alessandro. It’s not mine.”
“Well, what do you want to do about the story?”
“I don’t fucking know. Burn that bitch to the ground before they have a chance to print it.”
“That’s possible.”
“That fucking story cannot run, bro. It’ll draw too much attention to me, which means too much attention on the family. We already got that shit happening in Georgia with Chantal. We’re having to walk a fine line.”
A chime sounded when we reached the twenty-fifth floor. The door to the private elevator slid open directly into my office,which was a good thing because right now, I didn’t need to be around anyone. Even Alessandro’s presence irritated me.
The large back wall of windows in my office boasted an expressive view of downtown Chicago. Although cloudy and rainy today, the view of the city still brought a sense of calm over me.
Chicago was always home. No matter where I was in the world, no matter how beautiful the place, this city always tugged at my heart. I could never stay away too long.
After gazing out the rain covered windows for a minute contemplating my next move, I sat behind my desk. Alessandro sat in one of the two chairs sitting in front of it.
“Well, let’s burn the place to the ground,” he suggested.
“I’ve already talked to Amy Montero about her bullshit revenge story. If that happens, the first place they’ll come is to me. I can see the headline now. Businessman and mob boss’ son, Antonio Rizzo Jr. tries to hide the truth about affair and love child by burning Exposé to the ground. A bunch a bullshit.”
I rubbed my temples, a massive headache slammed my brain. Why people believe the shit in those papers was beyond me.
“We have to do something. There’s no way that story can run, because if it does, reporters are going to start digging even more into the family,” Alessandro warned. “And there’s no telling what they’ll uncover.”
“Don’t you think I know that!” I flung my hands in the air in frustration. “Papa’s already on my case about the Evangeline shit. This would send him through the fucking roof. He’d accuse me of not marrying her because I had some fucking love child on the way.”
“Tony, you’ve got to admit,” Alessandro chuckled, “it was fucked up what happened.”
I scoffed. Evangeline knew what she was getting into. I wasn’t husband material, and she most definitely wasn’t wife material. Mistress yes, wife no.
She wanted to video our night together with one of her friends, and that was what we did. Just so happened it ended up in the hands of a reporter who put it all over the internet. Photographs pulled from the video made front page news across the country, dousing any chances of her marrying me. She blamed me for the leaked footage, but her real enemy was her friend, not me.
“While I happily took part in its creation, I had nothing to do with that video surfacing. But I can’t deny I was overjoyed when Papa saw it for himself. You’d think after the shit he went through with Chan’s mother, he wouldn’t be pushing this on me.”
