Page 26 of Johnny

I get lost on the internet sometimes just looking this shit up. Trying to find meaning in my life.

Trying to make the pieces fit together in some reasonable fashion.

I justify it though. Because I feel like I’m a part of it. I’m someone in the grand scheme of things,

I’m just not sure who.

I have seen shit. I have done shit. I know shit. All those seductive secrets inside me have to mean

something, right? They have to.

My father and I are alike in more ways than I want to admit. I’ve seen him roughed up many times

by the Way. He was a thinker too. He’s the one who plastered newspaper articles on the windows and

did deep-dive searches on the internet about the conspiracy theories. He threw his power back in

their faces plenty of times.

So did my uncle. I’m not sure what kind of team they were, but I know they were close. I know they

did things together, and made big plans that had nothing to do with being a Way banker, and I know

they were both killed for it.

First my uncle when I was twenty, then my father when I was thirty-one.

I might not have figured everything out about the Way in the last five years since I took over, but

I’ve figured out enough. They want me to be scary. They want all my contributors to think I’m insane.

They use me to keep everything running smoothly. Disruptions at the banker level mean disruptions at

the contributor level, and that—that they cannot have.

That money’s gotta flow.

I don’t know how or why Joey came to live with us that night. I don’t know what that argument was

really about. All I knew was this: From that day on Joey was the middle Boston boy.

I liked him. I still like him. Hell, he was barely two when he came to live with us, but I was only

three. It was like I got a best friend. And we were best friends for a long, long time. After a year or

two the age difference barely mattered. We did everything together. And soon after that, Jesse was old

enough to join in.

It was pretty good for a while.

We were a team.

The Boston Brothers.

And now what are we? Just three guys who share a last name. It’s my fault. I get that. I did this to

us. But what choice did I have? Telling Joey to fuck off and never come back was the best thing I could do for him. Everything I did to ruin Jesse and make Joey an outcast was done with one goal in