A Better Kind of Hate by Beau Johnson

Author:Beau Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Down & Out Books

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Size Matters

Go big or go home. This is what I remember most about my father. He was other things as well, but that motto is what sums him up most whenever he enters my mind.

“Jimmy? What the fuck?” Nicky said.

From the couch I respond—holding up a hand now a couple digits shy of what used to be the norm.

Nicky’s face contorts in an instant, the concern I’d seen as he came through the door gone and replaced by a rage that matched my own. It was Dad-rage, round and bold, minus any type of middle ground. Go big or go home indeed.

“Bastard said it was you, Nicky. What I owed for the guns fuck-up. Said I should be grateful you were letting me live at all.”

Nicky stood there breathing hard, clenching and unclenching his fists. His father’s son alright. A sight Nicky and I had been privy to many times growing up, receiving end or otherwise.

“And Lime was there?”

“Big man did the deed himself. Couple of prospects holding me down as he did.” Buck Lime was the man in question, Nicky’s second in command. You really sure about this, Jimmy? I mean, Nicky’s the only family you got left.

I was sure then and I am more than sure now.

I take a drag of my smoke and then chug the rest of my beer. The hand hurts doing this, but the loss of bone would be worth the price of admission once things played themselves out. If Nicky was the reflection of our father then I was the personification of our mother: methodical, patient, and aware of all the angles presented in any given situation. It’s how I got to where I now stood—number three in terms of position in spite of my age. Only reason I wasn’t one better was because of the very same thing, and that Nicky and Lime had come up together, thick as goddamn thieves, each of them present when Dad first formed the Club. I was about to usurp this—to show that cooler heads would always prevail.

“I didn’t sanction this, Jimmy. I want you to know that.” I was counting on Nicky going there. Angles, you see. Angles. Angles. Angles.

“Your call, bro,” I say and hold my hands up and out, little runs of blood still seeping from my bandaged left hand. Nothing more needed to be said, not then. Nicky’s anger would take care of the rest. It would get me to where I wanted to be. A sit-down called by Nicky himself.

The deal was mine and mine alone. Ever since I found out it was them and not McNauly who’d taken out Dad. For months I’d been working on Buck, planting the idea of running the show inside his meathead brain. It didn’t take much. Not at first and certainly not now. Nicky on the other hand—I would need to give something up in order for what I wanted to come to pass. The last two fingers of my left hand seemed as good a tool as any.

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