JR
When I come to, I’m groggy and confused. My head is throbbing, and my body feels like it was hit by a Mac truck. It was a tree trunk, but all bruises eventually end up feeling the same.
Wounds are like trust. On the surface, they appear identical. It’s only when you scratch beneath them do you realize how different they can be.
I trusted Agent Tobias Brahn when he said I was safe from my father.
He broke my trust, then I did the same thing to a man who learned the hard way you cannevertrust a Petretti…
When Old Man Stephens enters the workshop of a rural property three clicks out of Hopeton, I tug off the earmuffs that are meant to protect my hearing from the industrial equipment producing such high-quality pieces, its customers have no clue its crew has only been three men strong the past six months.
“What is it?” I ask after swallowing down the urge to stutter like I wasn’t born with a speech impediment.
I’ve learned to control my stutter the past fifteen years, but it’s not always accomplished when I’m thrown into situations I can’t control. Since that happens more times than not in my family’s industry, my stutter rears its ugly head more often than I’d like.
I transfer the sawdust on my hands to my jeans when I notice how white Old Man Stephens’ face is. I’ve been working for him since I dropped out of college at the end of last year. The bullet that whizzed past my head a mere second after one ripped through my mother’s six-month pregnant stomach caused significant hearing loss to my right ear.
Doctors were hopeful the reduction to my hearing would get better with time, but regretfully, it got so bad, I struggled to hear my professors even when they enhanced their voice via the PA system wired throughout the lecture halls.
I could have sucked it up and used the assisted-hearing implements offered at my university, but since that would mean I’d have to admit I have a problem, I decided college wasn’t for me before dropping out halfway through the second semester.
Hearing loss in one ear is a small price to pay for what occurred that night. My mom didn’t fair nearly as well. She died that night, and so did my relationship with my siblings. They didn’t see what happened, so even to this day, they have no clue our father pulled our mother in front of him to protect himself from a bullet earmarked for his heart. They believe his claims that her death is the Bureau’s fault, and they’ve spent the last decade doing everything they can to make them pay.
Dimitri is still a teen, yet his criminal record is longer than the plank of wood I’m contorting into the leg of an armchair some rich schmuck in Ravenshoe is paying out the eye for.
I’ve tried to tell them the truth multiple times the past fourteen years, but when my efforts doubled the loudness of the constant dull ring in my left ear, I gave up. My father doesn’t want them to know, and I was sick of being beaten by him and his goons to ensure I knew he wasn’t joking about his demands for me to keep my mouth shut.
I’ve done precisely as asked the past three years, which makes me even more shocked to discover the cause of Old Man Stephens’ white face and massively dilated eyes.
No one likes being visited by the reaper, not even when he’s your father.
After gesturing to Old Man Stephens that I’ll take care of his unwanted visitor, I signal for my father to follow me outside. My steps out of the almost derelict property are sluggish and slow. I wasn’t aware my father knew I worked here. Old Man Stephens agreed to keep my employment off the books so we’d avoid exactly this. I don’t get paid as much as his other two employees, but since no one in this town would give me the time of day when they learned my last name, I took what I could get.
Don’t get me wrong, I like what I do, but the promise issued to me the night my mother died had me convinced I’d be doing more with my life than hiding from my father and building furniture that costs thousands of dollars to buy but only nickels to make.
Tobias tried to keep his promise, but there’s only so much bureaucratic tape one agent can cut through before his resources eventually run dry. I don’t blame him for backpedaling on his promise. I’ve wanted to do the same for years, and it’s my flesh and blood I’m referencing.
Old Man Stephens only mixed things up because the furniture I restored on the sly during closing hours showcased my talents before I was halfway done with its restoration. On the agreement I kept his workshop location on the down-low from anyone in my family and that his clients referred to me by my middle name—JR for short—I can use the tools in his workshop in return for a seventy percent cut of the profits I make. The other restorers get a fifty-fifty share.
I’ve been called CJ since the day I was born, but the name cited on my birth certificate is Colum Junior. Although JR isn’t technically a part of my name, it maintains the two-letter theme my mother fought for when she succumbed to my father’s often unvoiced demands to have a son named after him, so JR doesn’t bother me.
It’s even the name I used to book a room at a Motel Six two miles from here. That’s why I’m so shocked my father found me. CJ Petretti is practically a ghost, not to mention the fact he came to pull me into line himself. He usually sends his henchmen to do his bidding.
“W-what are you doing here, Pa?” After having a quiet word with my head to get with the fucking program, I wipe off the sweat coating my hands with my wood chipped coated jeans, then lock my eyes with a pair identical to mine in every way. All the Petretti boys have the same murky blue eyes. “I haven’t seen Roberto or Dimitri in mont—”
“I’m not here about them.” His snapped voice startles me, but I don’t let my bewilderment be seen on my face.
We’re in public, I remind myself.I’m safe here.
I can’t say the same thing for the home I walked out of with no intention to return the day I turned eighteen.
My wish to expand my wings outside the ‘family’s brethren’ is another reason I dropped out of university. The tuition was more than I could afford, and although I have handyman skills and a face that could help pay the bills each week, my budget couldn’t stretch far enough to add the equipment needed for a student with a hearing disability.
When my father’s thin, aloof lips part, I slant my good ear his way so he isn’t forced to repeat himself. I’ve grown accustomed to lip reading the past three years, but since he communicates more with grunts and mumbles, testing how good my skills have become on him could end disastrously.
He doesn’t take well to ignorance.
“I’m here about this.” He thrusts a piece of paper into my chest, his push so forceful, I’m shoved back two spots.
