The Boss's Son | ✅

20

"Rizzoli asked you to marry someone or die?" I asked. I knew what the choice was, Stan had been given. The same that Mike had heard that night, I was sure – work with Rizzoli's organization or die. Irrationally as it was under these circumstances, it bugged me that just because they were men, they were offered membership in the secret club, while I had been offered kids and kitchen duty.

Mike's fork fell with a clatter onto the table. "You agreed to marry someone? Again?"

My lips protruded like a duck beak in disgust. "No. I was told I had to marry Rizzoli's son. I declined the offer, even though it was most kindly put forward to me by the father of the groom with a gun to my head."

"You did what?" Stan exclaimed. Mike was too busy, coughing his last bite up, to do more than wave his arms.

"I told him that I was already engaged and had no intention to break my word to that man," I explained with a shrug. As it didn't lighten the mood in the room, I revealed my reasoning. "Look, Rizzoli had gone on about being a man of his word. I was pretty sure he would understand."

Mike was done suffocating and had enough air again to explode. "You were pretty sure? Gosh, Tess, what were you thinking?"

I spread my arms wide. "What should have done? Agreeing to marry his son? It's not just that I happen to love Adrian. For all we know Rizzoli might have killed my stepfather."

"Tess," Stan started out. Pushing his plate away, he propped up his elbows on the table and tried his best 'I am calm and perfectly handle this situation' – voice on me. "It has been nearly ten years now. And despite all our efforts we still don't know what Luc's hidden notes meant. Yes, they mention Rizzoli. Yes, they mention mafia organizations. Yes, they mention ties in the city establishment and to projects. But without knowing Luc's intent for them, they don't make much sense." He rubbed his hands, searching for the right words between them. "We don't even know if Luc ran with Rizzoli or against him. We always assumed that he must have worked against him, because he died suddenly, but remarkably prepared for the moment. What if he got himself involved? We managed that now. What if he had an equally stupid idea like Gio and Henry and that got him killed?"

"Why are you suddenly questioning my stepfather's intention?" I blurted out. It wasn't like I hadn't thought about the same things while lying awake in Adrian's arms, unable to sleep, unwilling to close my eyes for fear that the memories would return. Hearing it though, from the mouth of someone else was different.

Stan held his raised, open hand out to me. "For the record, I always questioned Luc's sanity to leave you these notes. He must have known that you'd be like a bloodhound with a scent in its nose. You were 16, goddamn. This is dangerous territory and it was sheer luck that we made it to last night all alive and undiscovered. Now, I try to cope with the fact that I have a new master demanding of me to crook a murder investigation while threatening the only kind of family, I have – you morons and the rest of our gang. Hearing that you challenged Rizzoli with a gun to your head doesn't particular help."

Mike refilled Stan's coffee cup and pushed it into his hand. "I think we all need to take a moment and consider what last night means for us. What do we actually know about Rizzoli's organization? Not our assumptions, I mean facts."

For a minute, we sat, digging through our heads for things we might have noticed. It was Stan who broke the silence. "The photo they sent me, the arm with the gun had a phoenix tattoo. Rizzoli's sign?"

"Which group is that?" Mike asked and reached for his notebook. In it he kept a spread sheet with all the mafia organizations, we had learnt about, and whatever information, we had been able to find about each group. It was in code in case someone should accidentally stumble over it, an appropriate code for a historian.