Justice Served

18 | Slowly, Slowly, Gone...

Chapter Eighteen
Rhys Chandler

"Jayce, I need you to do be serious right now," I said.

"I am being serious, Rice." She urges, I narrow my eyes at her.

"It's not Rice, it's Rhys." I correct her.

She shrugs her shoulders indifferently. "What's the difference?"

"The difference is that they do not sound even remotely the same," I state.

"Yes they do," She argues.

"No, they do not." I deny adamantly.

She hums for a little bit then replies with, "Rhys, rice, Rhys, rice, Rhys, Rhys, Rhys, rice, rice, rice. Sounds the same to me. Without the 's,' in your name, it would sound like rye, you know, like rye bread."

I lick my lips as I pinch the bridge of my nose, and release a long sigh. Taking my hands away from my face, I begin to crack my knuckles to release the tension I feel building up inside of me. One by one, I hear each knuckle crack and the satisfaction I feel from doing so begins to restore my patience. I begin to roll my shoulders and grunt as I hear the muscles crack, the knots in my upper back lessening dramatically. Now that my muscles are no longer tense, I place my intertwined hands back onto the silver table. This newfound patience that envelops me allows me to look back into Jayce Mirella's eyes with tranquility.

"Jayce, what happened that night?" I ask her.

The way she shifts in her seat, her right leg bouncing in rhythm to whatever sound is going on inside her head and the way the first finger on her left hand absentmindedly begins to drum against the table tells me all that I need to know. She does not want to relive the memory of what happened that night and it is heavily apparent.

The look on her face at this moment is completely different from how she appeared before, and it tells the tale of a scared little girl who had the misfortune of witnessing something devastating. It reminds me of what my face might've looked like at that moment when I was a child, seeing what happened to my mother. I swallow, my throat feeling dry as I shake my head and exhale.

"I already told that Dimitri guy so shouldn't you be asking him?" She mutters in question, her posture upright, her attention directed towards the table as if it were the most interesting thing in the world.

"No, I'm asking you." I insist.

"Why?" Her head whips up to look at me as she barks out the question in irritation, the glare on her face disguising her discomfort. Her anger slowly morphs into disbelief, and I watch her eyes narrow. "It's not like you'd believe me anyway."

"Try me," I urge her.

She hesitates at first, her eyes darting to each part of my face in her attempt to gauge whether or not to speak, to tell her story, to see if I am to be trusted. As I look at her, unlike every other person that I have encountered, I am unable to read her fully which leaves me to wait for her to either attack me with more of her 'witty' retorts or tell me about the sole thing that may change my decision regarding her case.

She releases a breath, looks down at her hands that have been placed onto her lap, and opens her mouth as she begins her story. "My plans that night were to break into the house, that's it. I was running low on money, and I was going to be evicted so the only thing that I could think of was to break into that house and maybe steal some valuables, that was the plan. I brought a duffel bag that was empty to keep whatever I could find inside the bag. Inside the car —"