Page 107 of Jesse

“Apparently,” Johnny says, “I am.”

“What?” Zach says, taking the card from Joey. “A hundred million dollars? Jesus.”

“Every one of those cards promises the same amount,” Johnny says.

“Why?” Emma asks.

Johnny looks at her, then Zach, then Joey, then me. “Because… I’m the boss?” He says it like a question.

“You’re the boss?” I say.

“I’m the boss.”

“Of what?” Joey says.

He laughs. “I have no fucking clue.”

“What do you mean?” Joey asks. “How could you be the boss of something like…” He looks back at the stairwell, then points to Johnny’s suit coat. “Something like that… shit show… and not even know what it is?”

Johnny takes off the suit coat, places it reverently back on the valet stand, then walks around to the other side of the large desk and takes a seat. He leans back in his chair and smiles. “I have looked through every fucking file in the upper-floor vaults.”

“Wait,” I say. “What vaults?”

Johnny sighs. Like he doesn’t want to talk about any of this and now that he started, he realizes there’s even more to explain than he realized. “All our floors have an inner vault filled with documents that chronicle the… business, I guess you’d call it. The Way. But it’s just accounting. All those files down on my floor. That’s five years of searching for answers. And I have none, you guys.”

“So wait,” Emma says, holding up a hand. “You don’t kill people for a living?”

“What?” He laughs and leans forward.

“All those fucking guns,” Zach says.

“Well. Call me paranoid. But if you were me and every month you went out into that banquet hall and collected twenty billion dollars and you had no idea why, you’d collect guns too.”

Truth.

“Where does the money go?” Joey asks.

We all look at Johnny. He shakes his head and lets out a long, tired breath.

Then he says, “Us. It all goes to us.”

There’s a long moment of silence as we all think about that statement.

“Wait,” Joey says. “I don’t understand.”

Johnny swivels his chair to the right to face Joey and says, “I don’t either, Joe. Dad came to me after Uncle Chuck died and he made me watch, just like I made you. We’ve been up there before. Do you remember?”

“I do,” I say. “Barely, but I do.”

“It was after Mom disappeared,” Joey says.

“He told me that day too, but I was what? Four?” Johnny shakes his head. “It didn’t make any sense. I knew the ceremonies happened every month because he made sure I knew. But I didn’t do anything other than sit up in the loft where you guys were and watch until Dad died.”

“And then what happened?” Zach asks. “Did someone come and tell you to take his place?”

“No,” Johnny says. “I just… put the fucking suit on and carried on.”

“Why?” Joey asks. “Why the fuck would you do that?”