Paradise Ridge
Great Neck
Long Island, New York

I’ll admit, I’m having a wonderful time in professional wrestling right now.  Being a champion in a rising company while overseeing the biggest, baddest, best promotion on the planet is so personally ridiculously satisfying.  I’ve had the chance to resume my in-ring career in AAW while staying out of the spotlight in the XWF.  AAW is getting stronger by the week.  The XWF has grown exponentially since I took a seat in the big chair vacated by my Uncle Theo.  Sure, there are naysayers and doubters, there are people that hate me just to hate me, there are even folks that have made things up inside their own head as to what my motivations are.

Like me, love me, or hate me there has been one thing about me that has remained consistent since my return to wrestling in 2020: the survival of the XWF is paramount to all things business.

I’d love for nothing more than to put my gear on and step between the XWF ropes again.  I have bled the black and blue practically since the day I was born.  Anyone that knows me, knows that I love tough competition.  Win or lose, having an incredible match with another incredible talent gets my juices going like nothing else.  That isn’t my role anymore.  I’ve been approached several times by several different XWF stars wanting to do something but at every turn, I veto it on sight.  It’s not that I wouldn’t love to.  It’s that my focus is on growing this company, and me stepping back into XWF competition is counterproductive to our goals as the head of the company.

It’s a bad look.

I’m very good at being a pro wrestler.  People resent that on its own, but now add the caveat that the guy running the company is also actively competing and collecting a multitude of wins and championships?  You’re just asking for a fractured roster.  You’re begging for people to make a mass exodus from the promotion and that’s not why I took this job.

Instead, I stay in the sky box and only come down to the ring on special occasions.  My job is to see, to watch, to promote, to hire, to give direction to one of the longest tenured promotions in existence.

15.

Since Theo Pryce left and Thaddeus Duke slid into the big chair, that’s how many new faces we’ve signed.  So, even when I’m “off”, like today, I’m still at work in my office at home, reviewing and approving finalized talent contracts.

knock, knock, knock

”Dad?” Frankie announced himself after a knock.  ”Are you busy?”

”You can come in,” I reassured him.  ”It’s just contract stuff.”

Frankie slowly made his way into my office with the aid of his crutches.  He’s still a work in progress on them, but he’s a fast learner and a strong kid.  He’ll get there.

”So what’s up?” I asked as he took a seat beside me.  ”You don’t normally like to bug me when I’m workin’ on stuff.”

”I-I-I just have something on my mind that I-I-I-ve been wanting to tell you,” he said with a stammer.

”Stuttering?” I said as I laid some paperwork down.  ”This can’t be good,” I laughed uncomfortably.  ”You now have my undivided attention.”

”Yeah,” he said aloud.  ”That’s what I was afraid of,” he said under his breath.

”Frankie, whatever it is, just…”

”I’ve been talking to Mom,” he interrupted quickly like he was ripping off a bandaid.

”Oh,” I said quietly.

”Are you mad?” he asked.

”No, I don’t think so,” I replied.  ”How long?”

”Since before I left the hospital,” he replied.

To be honest, I have mixed feelings about it.  Yes, he should have a relationship with his mother even if I don’t.  On one hand, he should be absolutely furious with her for leaving and abandoning him the way she did.  On the other… I’ve tried to raise him better than I was raised.  Being able to forgive people for their mistakes is something I preach to him often, yet I have a much harder time of that in practice.

Baby steps, I guess.

”She was all alone on Thanksgiving,” Frankie shot me a look.  ”Did you know that?”

”Frankie, she made that choice on her own,” I said curtly.  ”I won’t be guilt tripped into feeling bad for her when she made these choices that cost her everything.”

”I’m not trying to guilt trip you,” he argued calmly.  ”I’m just trying to tell you that I want to spend Christmas break with Mom in Chicago.”

There it is.

I’m torn here.  Yes, I want Frankie and his mother to have a relationship.  But no, I don’t want it to interfere with mine!  Perhaps it’s somewhat selfish of me.  The holiday was always so important to Lauren, but it was doubly for me because Christmas Day is also my birthday.  It was always important to me to spend that day with those I created (or adopted) because most people are busy with their own families that day.  Which, I mean, I get that, but still.  It’s so dang unfair.

”Dad?” he interrupted my thought processing.  ”So can I?”

”I can’t answer that right now,” I admitted because it was the truth.  Outwardly, I was stoic and unemotional about the whole thing.  Inwardly, I’m screaming out in anger at the top of my lungs.  Not at Frankie, mind you, but at his mother.  Lauren, I don’t think, has as much interest in spending time with him as she does trying to hurt me.  She’s tryna kill two birds.

”But Dad, I…”

”You’re just gonna have to give me time to think about this,” I interrupted.

I want so badly to tell him, to show him what Lauren, his precious mother, says about me on social media.  The lies she spews in order to show herself in a more positive light and me negatively.  I want so badly to show him the letter she left behind when she took off that called him a parasite.

But I’m his dad.  My most important job is to protect him.  If that means hiding from him the things Lauren has said and done since she left in order to protect his little heart, then that’s what I’ll do.  Maybe she didn’t mean any of it and it was her way of cutting the cord.

”Fine,” Frankie said as he started to get up.  ”But don’t think this is over.”

”No, I know it’s not,” I admitted as he started making his way from my office.

Once Frankie left, I was angry.  Instead of finishing up the one or two outstanding contracts I still had on my desk, I went upstairs.  Well… more appropriately, I stomped up the steps and slammed my bedroom door like a petulant child and threw myself on the bed.

Despite appearances, I’m a complicated man that makes many mistakes.  Allowing Frankie to choose Lauren as his adoptive mother was a mistake I’ll have to live with until one of us dies.

knock,knock

”Whaaaaaaaaaaaat?” I replied to the knock with exasperation.  ”I don’t want anybody.”

”It’s me,” Lucy said from the other side of the door.

”’Cept you, come in.”

Lucy entered, but I didn’t lift my head from the bed.  She sat beside me and eventually wiggled herself beneath me so that my head laid in her lap.  Like the loving girlfriend she is, she stroked the curls in my hair.

”Frankie told me,” she admitted.

”So I guess you’re here to double team me,” I joked.

”No,” she chuckled.  ”I’m just here to help you make the right decision.”

”There is no right decision,” I said with my cheek pressed against her thigh.  ”Just all wrong ones.”

”If I were you, I don’t think I’d like it either,” Lucy admitted.  ”But don’t you think this was gonna happen eventually?”

”She called them parasites,” I sniffled.  ”I just wanted her to have what she couldn’t have on her own and she turned around and called three innocent kids that never did anything but love her- parasites.

“They don’t even know that’s what she thinks of them, but that hurt me.”

”Well, I know their dad loves them very much…”

”More than anything,” I interrupted.

”But at least he’s talking to you about it instead of hiding it and going behind your back,” she offered.  ”That’s something isn’t it?”

Saying nothing, my only response was a shrug.

”Maybe the best gift you can give him is his mom back,” Lucy suggested.

”The best thing I could give him is to wipe his memory so he forgot he ever knew her,” I joked but only sorta.  ”Do they still do lobotomies like that Kennedy girl?”

Lucy laughed in response.

”You think I’m kidding, but I’m not,” I said in response.  ”Plus, I think she’s only doin’ it to hurt me, not love him.  That just pisses me off.”

”What do you mean?” Lucy pressed.

”My whole life I spent my birthday alone because mom was dead, my dad was my dad and my grandfather didn’t care,” I started to explain.  ”Any friends I had outside the Compound, they were with their family for obvious reasons.  So, until Frankie and Liz, I never spent my birthday with anyone.

“Like Harry Potter when he draws a happy birthday cake in the dirt on the floor because nobody cared and nobody acknowledged.”

”Awww,” Lucy chimed in.

”I didn’t tell you that to make you feel bad, it’s just the truth,” I said to Lucy.  ”As much as I’d love to believe that Lauren’s motives are good and true and she just wants to have her son back, she also knows how ridiculously mad I get because I have to share my birthday with a major holiday and she’s just using Frankie to hurt me.”

”That does suck,” Lucy agreed.  ”But maybe you should let Frankie come to that conclusion on his own if that’s what his mother’s doing?” she questioned.

”It’s my job to not tell him those things,” I agreed in a roundabout way.  ”I want to believe her intent is real, but all she does is try and hurt me.”

”But isn’t it also your job as his dad, to sometimes be the sacrificial lamb- so to speak?” she asked.  To which I merely sighed.  ”I know you hate it, but maybe the right thing to do is just give him this one.”

---

By the next evening, the dark had fallen over Chicago.  I watched from the window of the plane as the snow fell over the Windy City.  Making a wide pass across the Chicago skyline before landing, I felt sick to my stomach even being here.  My intent was to confront Lauren face to face.  While I wasn’t sure of what exactly I wanted to accomplish, I knew one thing was certain.  If I was gonna agree to send my son to Chicago for Christmas, I needed to know it was safe to do so.

Upon landing, Lucy and I jumped into the GMC Sierra aboard and rolled down the cargo ramp.

”Where to?” Lucy asked.

”I have no idea yet,” I said as I pulled out my cell and started flipping through apps.  Pulling up the tracker app, I clicked in on one I never thought I would: Brandon Small.

Brandon was a guy I thought I was falling for just before I met Lauren.  His father worked for me and Brandon then became my personal assistant.  I knew he’d been doing stuff in Chicago, but I didn’t know exactly what.  After talking to his father a few weeks back, I knew he was involved with Lauren in some way.  If I was gonna find my future ex-wife, Brandon would lead me right to her.

”Back of the Yards,” I spoke into my phone as I steered the massive pickup truck onto the interstate outside the airport.  Seconds later, my phone dinged and a map appeared leading me to Chicago’s Southside.