When a grizzled ex-con and a street-smart teen team up to settle a debt, the holiday spirit takes a dark, dangerous turn.
Prompt
Harvey lit his last cigarette like a man lighting a fuse and said, “Kid, Christmas ain’t about giving—it’s about payback done with a bow.”
Eighteen-year-old Dante had been in trouble since he could crawl, but this time the trouble wore a Santa hat. His grandma’s life savings were gone—snatched by a loan shark who smiled while she cried. Harvey, a seventy-year-old relic from a different kind of crime, decided that was one sin too many. The kid reminded him of himself before life got heavy, before the bottle, before the regrets.
Now they sat in Harvey’s rusted Ford pickup outside the shark’s neon-lit “pawn shop,” the December wind howling through cracks in the door. The plan wasn’t perfect—it never was—but it had heart. A little misdirection, a fake police scanner, and a duffel bag full of IOUs written in blood and nerve.
Tonight wasn’t about revenge. It was about redemption—gift-wrapped, with Grandma’s name on the tag.
Question for Readers
If you were in Harvey and Dante’s place, would you go through with the plan—or find another way to deliver Christmas justice?