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He appeared at my door, his hulking figure filling the doorway. His eyes were sad for once. I had never seen my father sad. He was always angry, but while he had beaten my mother at least twice a week for as long as I could remember, he had never touched me.
At times, I begged him to hurt me instead of her, but he never listened.
“You’re a man,” he would say. “Men dole out the hits; they don’t take them. Always remember that.”
I nodded, understanding his words but secretly promising never to put my hands on a woman. It was the same promise I had given my mother just a week before she died.
“Let’s go. We have to hurry.”
He grabbed my arm and tugged me out of my safe space and down the long hallway where I knew my mother lay. He snatched his keys from the hook by the door and pulled me through the living room. My eyes connected with my mother’s, and tears filled my eyes.
My life changed forever the minute we walked out the door. I would never see her again. I mouthed, “I love you,” to her lifeless form seconds before we breached the front door and ran through the rain-soaked grass to my father’s truck.
He cranked the truck and took off toward the airport. However, we didn’t make it far. Everyone knew what was happening inside our home, and when our neighbor saw us fleeing, she went to check on my mom. She called 911 when she saw Mom dead on the floor.
Police cars surrounded us, but my father pulled out a gun instead of surrendering. Once he pointed it, the bullets flew, tearing into the truck, my father’s chest, and my arm.
I passed out, and when I woke, my life was altered so completely that I no longer knew who I was.
I was deep in despair over my angelic mother when I felt a shove against my shoulder, shaking me from my memories and pulling me into the moment. I sucked in a breath I didn’t realize I held, and my brain spun with the sudden burst of oxygen, leaving me dizzy and blinking away black spots.
“Saint? What the fuck, man?” Joker’s voice broke through.
He snapped tattooed fingers in my face and appeared before me as my vision cleared. My eyes settled on the single teardrop tattoo beside his left eye, symbolizing a murder he had committed for us and a reminder of his loyalty.
I knocked his hand away and shook my head. “I’m good. What’s up?”
His rare, worried expression cleared before his signature creepy grin replaced it.
“You fucked up, bro?” he asked with a chuckle.
I wished I was fucked up. If I were drunk or high, I wouldn’t feel the despair ripping through my body.
“Nah, just thinking.”
“About pussy?”
I snorted and pushed at his shoulder. “Not everything’s about pussy, Joke.”
His dark laughter echoed around us, blending in with the roar of an excited crowd and racing cycles. “You sound like a bitch when you talk like that. You know that, right?”
“Fuck you.” I chuckled before I reached out and snatched his bottle of Everclear.
The fucker would drink it straight until his face went numb and he passed out. I took a small sip, and the tasteless, transparent liquid slid down my throat and settled in my stomach, igniting the embers simmering from my run-in with Tori.
“No, thanks. Your dick’s too small for me, and I like my ass to be ransacked.”
My friendship with Joker had held me together for many years. Once we freed ourselves, we conquered the streets together—some nights going to bed hungry and some nights as full as kings on anything we could swipe. He had a sick sense of humor and a twisted way of life, but I never questioned his loyalty.
Joker’s father was a piece of shit who wouldn’t keep his hands off his son, but I always wondered if he did more to Joker. No matter the situation, Joker’s lack of emotion told me more than beatings were involved. Vile things happened to my boy—terrible stuff, so he had no choice but to shut down all feelings. I never asked. Joker escaped a dark place; I didn’t want to be the person to make him revisit.
All I knew was Joker rid the world of two disgusting men the night he murdered his father and framed Lorne Walsh, Tori’s father, and the man my aunt planned to marry. That was how I ended up under the same roof as Tori when I was younger. Once my mother and father were gone, my aunt was the only person left to take me in. People thought I was lucky to end up in such a luxurious home, but Tori was the only thing good about that place.
The saying goes, kill two birds with one stone, but it was two men with one bullet the night Joker pulled the trigger. One man was six feet under, and the other would spend the rest of his life in prison for a murder he didn’t commit. Still, Lorne Walsh was no innocent man. The man deserved what he got. He might not have murdered Joker’s father, but he had destroyed the future of many, including my own.
At fourteen, I had been through so much. I had dealt with the murder of my mother and the move from Hawaii to Georgia. I survived living with my aunt, who wanted nothing to do with me, and a cousin who loathed me for no reason. But Lorne Walsh ruined me.
With the pull of a trigger, my best friend, Joker, had taken it all away for me. If I had doubts about his loyalty to our friendship, those doubts vanished the second he told me I was free. Even if Joker’s father deserved to die, knowing Joker had saved us by doing something as terrible as taking the fucker’s life meant he had my loyalty always. Having a friend who killed for you meant you had the purest form of trust and respect. So even though Joker was a crazy fuck with his head screwed on wrong, I trusted him with my life, and I knew he trusted me the same.
