AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He looks at me, vacant. “Hey,” he rasps, following it up with a shallow cough that makes his skinny body jerk a little.
“Don’t talk,” I say, truly torn apart seeing him so weak.
“Since when has it been acceptable for you to tell me what to do?”
“Since you can’t shoot me,” I reply, and he chuckles, the sound so welcome, until it turns into another cough and a struggle for air. “Lay still.”
“Fuck you.” He weakly squeezes my hand. “You come to say goodbye?”
I swallow once again, forcing myself to hold up the front expected of me. “Yeah, and I’ve ordered you a sending-off present.”
“What’s that?”
“A nice piece of arse to ride your dying cock into heaven.”
“It’s ass, not arse, you British piece of shit. All these years . . . been with me. You still talk like . . . like you fell out of Buck . . . ing . . . ham Palace.”
“Asshole,” I mutter in a lousy American accent.
Another chuckle, this time louder, therefore the cough is even more strained. I shouldn’t be making him laugh. But this is us. Always has been. Him delivering tough love, and me accepting it. Every single thing this man has done for me has been because he loves me. He’s the only person in this fucked-up world who ever has.
Gazing up at me, he smiles that rare broad smile. I’ve only ever known him to use it on me. “Never trust anyone,” he warns, not that he needs to. He’s one of only two people I’ve ever trusted, and here he is dying, leaving only Brad. But Brad doesn’t love me like Pops loves me. “Don’t hesitate to kill,” he whispers.
“Never have.” He knows that. After all, I learned from him.
He takes a moment, trying to fill his lungs. “No second chances, remember?”
“Of course.”
“And f . . . fuck’s sake, learn how . . . to play poker.”
I laugh, the sound pure joy, despite my eyes filling with tears. The sensation is alien. I’ve not cried since I was eight years old. My dire poker skills have been a bone of contention to my father all my life. He’s a pro. Wins every game. No one wants to take him on, but no one has ever refused. Not unless they wanted a bullet in their skull. “If you can’t teach me, I think I’m beyond help.” I really am. The only reason I win is because the poor fuckers playing me have an invisible gun pointed at their heads. Over the years, my father’s reputation has proceeded me.
“True,” he rasps, his weak grin wicked. “My world is yours to rule now, kid.” He pulls my hands to his mouth and kisses my knuckles, then proceeds to remove the serpent ring off his pinky finger. Even the emerald eyes of the snake look dull. Lifeless.
“Here,” I say, leaning in to help him, the gold and emerald ring loose, coming off with ease. I slide it onto my little finger, but I don’t look at it. Don’t want to see it on me. Never have. Because that will make it too fucking real.
“Do me proud.” His eyes close, and he inhales, like he’s taking his final breath.
“I will,” I vow, letting my forehead fall to the pillow. “Rest in peace, Mister.”
As I’m pulling the suite door closed behind me, I run into Uncle Ernie, my father’s cousin. I have no fucking clue why I call him uncle, but Pops insisted, and I always listened to Pops. Ernie is the polar opposite of my dad, and by that I mean he’s a law-abiding citizen. He makes his millions legitimately on the stock market, and is an upstanding, respected member of the public. I always wondered how he and Pops gelled so well, given their contrasting ethics and morals. Maybe because Ernie is the only living relative of my father. Their relationship has always been an easy one, but that’s only because they had a mutual understanding to never discuss business. The respect and love Ernie had for my father was probably misplaced, given Pops’s dealings, but I have many fond memories of them laughing together on the veranda over a Cuban and brandy.
“You’re too late.”
His shoulders drop, as well as his heavily wrinkled cheeks. Death is embedded into every crevice on his face. “I’m sorry, son. I know how much you adored that barbaric fucker.”
I give him a meek smile, and he slips his arm around my shoulders, giving me a half hug.
“You know what your old man always told me?” he asks.
“That you’re wasted as a saint?”
Uncle Ernie laughs and releases me, pulling out an envelope from his inside pocket. “Wasted? This saint saved your father’s skin more than once.”
I smile, remembering a couple of those times. Once in New York when a small-time gangster thought he could jump up the ladder of power if he took out my father. Ernie saw him pulling his pistol and alerted Pops, who ducked in the nick of time. The culprit was tortured slowly by my father’s men. I was twelve years old. I watched it, every second of them plucking his nails from his fingers like they could have been tweezering unruly eyebrows. Then I watched them carve out my family emblem on his chest and pour acid into the wounds. I smiled my way through it. The arsehole had tried to kill the only human who’d ever looked out for me. So, yeah, he deserved every second of his time chained to that metal chair before he was electrocuted. It was me who turned on the power.
