Justice Served

26 | Dammit, Jayce Mirella

Chapter Twenty-Six
Rhys Chandler

I feel as though I've been spending an uncanny amount of time not only in the office but with Jayce Mirella, something I never would have anticipated in my wildest dreams. I was fully aware that I would be spending a decent amount of time with her, but it felt as though my life was beginning to revolve around her very being. Initially, it unnerved me, I began reconsidering my choice to take her case but was I to blame?

The girl would spend her days annoying the daylights out of me. If she wasn't mocking me she was either poking fun at the things that I did, bothering me as I tried my best to accomplish whatever task I was to be working on, bantering with me about the most trivial things, or sleeping on the couch by my coffee table. It did not help in the slightest that when she was asleep she began to softly snore, though it wasn't thunderous or anything close to Dimitri, it was still a nuisance.

I felt like I had gone back into the past when Luna and Dimitri were first brought my way and began their tactics to annoy me. I'm sure being a bother to me had not been their intentions, but to me, it felt like their goal was to get under my skin in any way they possibly could. Down the line, I realized that that was just their personality and I began to consider if I was just a prickly individual to which I deemed myself normal and those two the problem. A good problem.

Jayce Mirella on the other hand is a completely different kind of problem, one that I want out of my life as soon as possible. Moments like the day we went out looking for dash camera footage are the ones that allow me to regain back my sanity, it's only when she's well behaved that it becomes easy to work with her. On the other hand, when she has made it her goal to terrorize for me the day it makes me lose it but I have learned to keep my explosion inside.

Like the child she is, she thrives off of my reactions so if I refuse to give her what she desires her mocking will eventually subside. Another hack in the Jayce Mirella code is being able to have the perfect retort back to her jabs at me. When I can navigate through her words, choose how I wish to respond carefully, and create a retort of my own that makes her flame up I have successfully achieved a conversion with Jayce Mirella.

Sometimes as I'm speaking with her, I have to question if I've lost it. I'm doing all of this because of her when I could have just as easily chosen to ignore her. There's just something about Jayce Mirella that makes you want to speak back, makes you lose her cool despite how much of a calm domineer you possess, and makes you want more like some kind of craving. It's as if I developed an aversion to the disease that she is and now I'm merely thriving off of the pleasure of teasing the very thing that used to bother my very being. In some way, it's fun.

I shake my head, running my fingers through my tousled hair as I continue my way down the hall. My steps come to a halt when I see Verena walking towards me with a smile. With a pleasant look on her face, she walks over to me with her heels clicking against the hardwood floors.

"Can we talk?" She asks.

As much as I wanted to say no, I forced myself to nod instead. She's the assistant of prosecutor Kyo Midori, it was best I remain professional as this is my job. There is no room for me to take my personal feelings into account when I am supposed to remain platonic. My job includes occasionally meeting prosecution though whenever Kyo is a prosecutor on a case with me, he never failed to send Verena. I would not be surprised in the least if it was her doing.

Wordlessly, I begin walking to the lounge with Verena in tow right beside me. Verena does not neglect to stand a little too close to me on our way to the room, her eyes trained on me. I ignore the look on her face and push the door open, stepping inside and waiting for her to follow suit. She enters the room with me, and I allow the door to close shut. I walk over to the coffee machine, grabbing two clear Irish coffee cups out of the granite cabinet that is hung up more than six inches to the right side of the machine.