Jax by E. M. Moore
2
For whole minutes, no one talks. It’s as if the world needs to catch up to this defining moment. I have no right to see him again. No claim on his time, but fate—or at least the pretentious bullshit of a maniacal, powerful con man—had other plans.
This go-around, though, Jax and I aren’t going to be on the same side. No Bonnie and Clyde. Or Johnny and June. Or Beyonce and Jay-Z. It won’t be us against everyone else. It will be me against them.
As if he already knows, Jax regards me with a malicious look. Dark eyes, creased forehead. Hate practically wafts off him in waves. He never could hide his emotions well, and that’s still the case.
Confliction tears at me. I’d rather stand here and shoot the shit with him but I can’t do that. Not this Sadie. Not the girl who turned out to be his nightmare.
I open my mouth to speak but Jax rushes ahead. “Finn’s right. There’s nothing for you here.”
The growl in his words spark something to life inside me. Something I’d all but forgotten was there because I’ve taken every precaution to tamp it down. A hot flash of need warms my neck. “I have no intention of making this a happy reunion,” I sneer back, hiding the bubbling up of emotions. He’s not the only one who has more darkness in him now. The Heights ruined me. It flattened me into a shell of a girl and even more of a skeleton of a woman. My only instinct is to survive.
“Why?” Finn asks, glaring at me. “Why are you here?”
“It doesn’t fucking matter,” Jax intercedes. “She’s fucking trash and a liar.”
His whole body vibrates with unsaid words. It’s not like him to hold back, so my being here must have truly surprised him. In truth, I don’t envy his next sparring partner. That guy’s fucked. “Well, this trashy liar is here on business,” I say, sticking to the plan as best I can. The scorned look in Jax’s gaze ratchets higher but I trudge on with my story. “I have a proposal from colleagues of mine.”
I may as well be spitting tar out of my mouth but he did just call me a liar, and he’s spot on. This is my show though. Psycho doesn’t care how I get the job done as long as I do.
“Not interested,” Jax deadpans.
The longer we’re out here, the angrier he’s getting. The shock is wearing off incrementally. I’m trying to read him to see how this more mature Jax operates but in my estimation, all he sees is blind fury. He certainly hates me, a fact I knew coming in.
“Listen, I know you despise me, and you have every reason to, but don’t be dumb. I work with some influential people, and they’re interested in something you have. They’ll pay handsomely for it.”
Finn narrows his gaze cautiously. At this point, Jax can’t see past his own wounds to hear what I’m saying. I never expected the initial meeting to go anywhere. It had to be done only to get Jax used to seeing me again. I can’t back out of this no matter how badly I want to. Psycho always gets what he wants. By any means.
“The only thing we have—” Finn starts.
“—is the Ring,” I end for him, laying it out there.
“Not for sale,” Jax growls. “Tell your colleagues to go fuck themselves.”
I certainly will not be doing that. I have to pretend I at least got somewhere today or my ass is on the line. A bead of sweat starts at my hairline, prickling my skin.
“And while you’re at it…” Jax crosses his arms. “…you can go fuck yourself too, Sadie.”
My name on his lips has an impact I didn’t see coming. I flashback to whispered sentiments while we were wrapped in his sheets and curled in each other’s embrace.
We were so young, but I knew without a doubt that he was my forever. Even then.
He steps forward, and I mirror him by taking a step back. “Do you hear me?” His vicious, sharp growl is at odds with my longing. “I don’t ever want to see you again. I won’t work with anyone who’s attached to something you are. What made any of them think sending you was a good idea? I don’t think of you, Sadie. But if I do, I always think of the selfish girl who stood in front of everyone and lied. Who sat back in a courtroom while I was being walked away in handcuffs. Who watched idly by with no emotion like I meant nothing. I vowed then you would become nothing to me, and that still stands. I can look at you now and not give a fuck. I suggest you do the same…far away from here.”
His sharp tongue stings my already-bared wounds. I’m usually a master of my emotions, stacking up walls upon barricades upon soundproof barriers. But those words hit in a dark place, wilting even more of the decay growing inside me.
At this moment, I know it’s the best I’ll get out of Jax today. Hell, it’s the best I’ll get out of myself. He’s already found a way to hurt me, and I need all my defenses intact to face him again and when I crawl back to Psycho.
Reaching into my back pocket, I take out the bullshit paperwork I brought with me. It’s on fancy, made up letterhead, addressed to Jax and Finn. It talks about wanting a meeting to discuss business opportunities even though that’s not what Psycho wants at all. He wants to take what Jax has. He wants the notoriety and the money and the respect. He’ll use me to get it. Or try to, anyway. I already explained to Psycho that Jax hates me, but he doesn’t care. He thinks pussy is currency and that I can use my whorish ways to win Jax back, placate him, make him pliable so that Psycho can come in and take everything he has. He certainly doesn’t care that I told him it wouldn’t work. He has no respect for me.
If I don’t get Psycho access, he’ll make me pay.
He’s never put me on a job I knew I couldn’t do before. Right now, I’m even more convinced I’ll fail, but fuck if I wish all of this didn’t exist and this meeting of gazes right now was just about me seeing Jax again. A reunion without our pasts mixed up in it.
I hand the papers over, hiding the tremble of my fist. “My colleagues will look forward to hearing from you.”
Before I turn, cutting my losses, Jax does the worst thing he could possibly do. He rips the papers in half, his muscles tightening and flexing as he continues to shred the paper before dropping them to the ground like confetti.
My eyes shutter closed. He’s just fucked me. Psycho has eyes everywhere, I know he does. I’m never really alone. I’m his property more than anything else. He’ll know about Jax’s defiant act before I even get back to the storage facility. I’ll pay for what Jax just did.
Turning, I shudder at what’s in store for me when I return. The life drains from my face, and I have no doubt I’m pale as a ghost right now. A knot forms in my stomach. To take my mind off it, I turn my emotions off and study the spiderweb cracks in the sidewalk that lead me back to the bus stop down the street. I don’t look back, telling myself there’s no way they’re still outside watching me leave. It isn’t until I get on the very next bus that I allow myself to peek. Jax is the only one remaining, standing amongst the tattered, bullshit papers.
He’s glaring, as if he waited all that time to make sure I left so he would know the very moment he wouldn’t have to think of me anymore. The sad part is, he may believe he’s just gotten rid of me but he hasn’t. Psycho doesn’t let jobs go, and right now, the Ring is his priority.
The bus I hopped on ends up traveling in the complete opposite direction I need to go in, so I get off at the next stop and get on the correct one. This bus ambles toward the Flats, a part of town that borders Heights proper but actually isn’t in the Heights at all and certainly isn’t under Crew control. I fled there after Big Daddy K kicked me out of the tower. I needed to be anywhere but in a Crew controlled area. Plus, it felt good to get out of a town that held so many terrible memories.
However, I didn’t know I was walking from the fire into the flames.
I get off at the last stop and walk the rest of the way to Psycho’s headquarters, or at least the place we’ve been living for the last ten months or so. As the Flats aptly describes, the roads all slope downward until the land levels off like we’re in a big trough. You ever heard the saying shit rolls downhill? So true. If it’s even imaginable, the Flats is far worse than any rough area in the Heights. It’s dirty, rundown, and the smells that come out of this place are nausea-inducing. It’s the shit aromas that always get to me. You can’t ever escape the feeling that there’s no hope here because the perfume for the neglected seeps into your pores. The people who live here are so downtrodden, they can’t even gather up the courage to be angry about it. There are no drugs or businesses. It’s literally just a place for poverty-stricken people who are only making enough to keep themselves alive.
Hence why Psycho is obsessed with money. Imagine looking up to a hellhole of a city your whole life and thinking that’s the better option.
It takes me a half hour to walk the couple of miles to home base, and that’s with pushing the pace. If I don’t get fed tonight because of my failure to deliver, I’m going to be up all night with a growling stomach. Usually, I exercise as little as possible to ward off the hunger pains, but I can already tell this might be a long night of suffering.
Eventually, the one-story corrugated steel building looms into view. It looks like a shithole on the outside, matching the rest of the Flats, and that’s exactly how Psycho wants it. With the money we’ve conned people out of, he’s done things here and there to the interior to make it nicer but to everyone on the outside, we’re as poor as them, and in reality, we are. Whenever we complete a job, Psycho spends the money on the wrong things. He doesn’t stock up on food or necessities, he spends it on frivolous shit. The latest gaming system graces the makeshift living room but we’re still sleeping on shitty mattresses on the floor. Or he’ll splurge and buy everyone catered food for a week but when it’s gone, it’s gone, and we’re eating expired food out of cans. But his most favorite thing to spend money on is his fight room.
That’s why the Ring is our target. And actually, it’s not only the fight club, but Elite Boxing, too.
What can I say, I mixed in with what I knew. I went from one fighter to another, and in the beginning, Psycho wasn’t so bad. He helped me. He got me off the streets. He got me a place to stay and food to eat. In return, I did what he wanted. It’s only now, after so many years have passed, that I realize he suckered me into a debt I could never repay on purpose.
My nerves jump all over the place as I approach the plain, white door littered with neon graffiti. Nothing about this building says home. For all I know, we could be squatting. Psycho doesn’t go into business particulars with me. He only shares enough so that I can do my part, telling me who I need to be for my target then sending me out to trap people for him.
I can’t blame him. It actually works.
Sometimes I’m the damsel in distress. Sometimes I’m the ditzy girl. Sometimes I’m the smooth, suave, loose slut. Psycho says the best things about me are my holes. I have three of them, and I put them to use for whatever he deems necessary.
The door opens easily, revealing a large common/living room hidden in shadow. Cold, uninviting concrete floors greet me. A single window in the corner brings in the barest of light yet we don’t ever turn on the overhead lamps due to Psycho’s orders. Therefore, the only light to see by is artificial and coming from a video game being played on a big screen TV purchased a couple of months ago. He upgraded when he bought the latest gaming system because he wanted to make sure he was getting the full graphics effect. Meanwhile, the worn, brown sectional facing the TV is ripped and oozing out stuffing. It’s also the only seating in this room.
Against the right wall, a small kitchenette sits with an even smaller refrigerator. It always holds cheap beer, whether we’re riding high off a score or poor as shit. Whatever else is in the refrigerator will tell me how good of a week it’s been in the thievery department.
Currently, we’re living off an old man’s life’s savings from a month ago. Just thinking about that job makes me queasy. It was an easy one on paper. Psycho spotted Mr. Matthews from a mile away. He always picks out the most susceptible targets. It’s a knack he has. The elderly man had Alzheimer’s, and my role was to convince him that I was his only granddaughter so we could con him out of his paltry retirement. We got the ten thousand dollars, handed to me in wrinkling, aged hands. The man’s watery eyes peered at me with so much love that when I walked away with the check in my pocket, I threw up.
Psycho never let me visit him again, but I kept tabs on him when we were searching for our next target. He died a week later. I cried myself to sleep for two weeks straight because he was the only man I’d ever met that wanted nothing to do with my holes. He only wanted someone to talk to.
I shake off the horrible memories and steel my shoulders for what’s about to happen. Whoever was following me this afternoon will have already told Psycho that Jax ripped up the papers. He won’t be getting a call from the two business owner brothers, which means I failed. It won’t have mattered that I’d already told Psycho using me for this con wasn’t going to work. Still, he thinks tits and ass are the best bartering chips known to man when it comes to men Jax’s age—and I’m his prime evidence. My body hasn’t failed him yet.
With Jax, I knew it would be different. I hurt him too much, and that’s not even taking into account his hot-headed stubbornness. Psycho thinks every guy is like him though. He would welcome someone who scorned him right back as long as she’d put out. Plus, he’d think of it as a feat to once again gain control over her. With Psycho, I’m pretty sure sex and power go hand-in-hand, and I’ve been his good little whore for all these years.
“Is that you, Sade?” Psycho asks as he mashes controller buttons. He’s still sitting exactly where I left him this morning.
“Yeah,” I respond, pulling the door shut behind me. It squeaks closed, making me cringe but I pull my shoulders back to make sure I’m ready for anything he decides to throw at me.
Walking toward the couch in slow, easy steps, I take him in. This vantage point shows off Psycho’s greatest features. I can see the cut of his muscles from over top of the couch. He has a long, defined neck with a tattoo cascading up the side and into his hairline. You can’t see the depthlessness of his eyes from here. Or his hard features. Or the sickness he holds inside. When he first took me in, I counted myself lucky. He was my new Jax, or at least I’d thought.
I didn’t know I was getting into the ring with the devil.
He holds his hand up and beckons me forward. My feet feel as if they weigh a hundred pounds each as I move around the side of the sectional, stepping for a moment in the rays of the sun the single window lets in and lower to my knees. I’m supposed to greet him in this manner, and it always serves its purpose. I lower my gaze, feeling like the dirt under his shoe.
As usual, whatever lackey he has around him grins and chuckles like he thinks my subservient manner is the funniest thing in the world. I guess if you were also a petty man with a micro penis, you’d find enjoyment in this.
A finger moves under my chin, tilting my gaze upward. Looking into his dark eyes now, I have no idea why I ever thought he would be anything like Jax. The differences between them are soul deep. Sure, on the outside, they’re both considered handsome. Though, seeing Jax for the first time in a while, I can clearly say that Psycho doesn’t hold a candle to him. However, they have that same type of build—a fighter’s body. If there’s one thing Psycho makes sure he spends money on when we have it is a little roid help to add to his gym routine.
Something I know Jax would never do.
Psycho’s lackey huffs and leans back, letting the controller drop to his lap. Must be my master has paused the game to deal with me. I refrain from closing my eyes even though I’d love nothing more than to shut this all out.
“What happened in the Heights today?” His easy voice is a trap.
I wet my lips, stomach bottoming out. “I met with Jax. He wasn’t happy to see me.”
Psycho sighs, looking away briefly but it’s not because he’s going to forgive what happened. No, he’s just contemplating what hell to put me through.
Finally, he huffs. “I’ll be happier with this conversation if you’re topless.”
