Chapter 29 - 0029: There’s Always A Choice, Buddy

Chapter 29: Chapter 0029: There’s Always A Choice, Buddy

Jaxx’s Point Of View

The basement air smelled of copper, stale dampness, and cheap motor oil, the kind of smell that clung to the back of the throat and refused to leave, no matter how many times a person tried to swallow it away.

A single overhead bulb swayed on a frayed black cord, casting long, erratic shadows across the concrete floor every time the draft from the rusty ventilation shaft kicked up, as if the room itself were breathing, exhaling old secrets into the dark.

I stood near the edge of the yellow light circle, letting the silence stretch a moment longer than it needed to. Silence, I had learned long ago, did more work than any threat ever could. I raised the dark Cuban cigar to my lips, taking a long, slow drag until the tip burned a bright, violent orange.

Smoke drifted up, stinging my eyes, but I didn’t blink. There was something satisfying in that small discipline, in refusing to give even my own body the reaction it wanted.

Control, after all, started in places nobody else could see. I lowered the cigar, looked down at the glowing cherry for half a second, savoring the tiny heat of it, then dropped it onto the stained floor, crushing it beneath the thick lugged sole of my heavy leather boot with a deliberate, grinding twist.

I let out a quiet sigh that sounded almost fond, the kind of sigh a man might give while watching an old friend make the same mistake for the hundredth time, equal parts exasperation and affection.

"Still not talking, huh, Dalton?"

A low, wet whimper rattled out of the dark corner beyond the arc of light.

Dalton was trussed up in an old cast-iron dentist’s chair, his knees bound together with thick industrial zip-ties that were cutting so deep into his jeans the denim was soaked dark. He wasn’t just sitting there because he made a mistake with a couple of offshore deeds.

That was the cover story he wanted to stick to, the comfortable lie that he was just a bumbling, over-worked tax attorney who got confused by county charters. I almost admired the persistence of it, the way a drowning man still tries to breathe air a foot below the surface, lungs burning, refusing to accept the water has already won.

I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out a small, nickel-plated pair of heavy-duty wire-strippers. I flipped them open with one hand, the spring-loaded metal making a sharp, clean clack that seemed to echo far longer than it should have in a room that size, the sound settling into the walls like it belonged there.

"I’m not asking for the money back, Dal," I said, stepping fully into the light, my voice shockingly pleasant. A broad, easy grin stretched across my face, dimpling my left cheek like I was about to tell a joke over a beer at a backyard barbecue. "I mean, the warehouses are gone. The feds took ’em. It’s fine. Cost of doing business, right? Accidents happen."

Dalton dragged his chin up, his eyes bloodshot, his lips split and crusted over with black scab tissue, and for a moment I saw something in his face that might have once been pride, now curdled into pure desperation, the kind that made a man’s whole body seem smaller than it was. "Boss... please. I checked the filings. The county clerk buried the deed under the old port authority charter... I swear to God I didn’t know the state had a back-door lien..."

"I know you didn’t," I interrupted softly, my smile widening until my eyes crinkled at the corners. I leaned down, placing both hands on the arms of the iron chair, bringing my face six inches from Dalton’s sweat-slick forehead, close enough to smell the fear souring on his skin, sharp and sour beneath the cheap cologne he still bothered to wear.

"That’s the whole point, buddy. You want me to think you got lazy. You want me to believe you signed the papers without reading the sub-clauses because you wanted to hit the golf course by four o’clock on a Thursday."

"I have a family, Boss..."

"Everybody’s got a family, Dalton. Even the guys whose trucks just got impounded because your paperwork had more holes in it than a block of Swiss cheese." I tapped the dull metal blade of the wire-strippers against Dalton’s nose, real gentle, like a father teasing a toddler. Tap. Tap. "Now, do you know what wire-strippers are actually designed for?"

Dalton began to shake violently, his knees knocking against each other inside the binding, the zip-ties creaking under the strain, the small sound almost lost beneath his ragged breathing. "No... Boss, don’t. Please. Just let me pay for the warehouse loss..."

"They’re made to bite down on the rubber insulation of an electrical line," I explained, ignoring him completely, my tone bright and educational, the tone of a teacher who genuinely loved his subject and had waited years for a student worth teaching.

I grabbed Dalton’s right hand, which was pinned flat against the wooden armrest by a steel C-clamp, and carefully pulled the index finger straight out, feeling the small tremor running through his whole arm, a current that seemed to originate somewhere deep in his chest. "It grips the soft outer layer without cutting the copper wire inside. But if you press a little too hard..."

I clamped the notched jaw of the tool right at the first knuckle of his pointer finger. I didn’t snatch it down. I did it slow, smiling warmly into Dalton’s terrified, wide eyes as the dull teeth dug through the top layer of skin, watching the way his pupils dilated with each passing second, as if his body already knew what his mind refused to accept, some ancient animal instinct screaming louder than reason.

Dalton sucked in a wet, ragged gasp. "Wait, wait, wait!"

I squeezed the handles together.

The sound was like a green branch snapping under a heavy boot. Dalton tore his throat open on a high, shrieking scream that bounced off the damp concrete walls, his heels kicking uselessly against the floorboards, the whole chair rattling against the concrete with each spasm, iron legs scraping thin grooves into old stains that had long since dried black.

I didn’t flinch. I didn’t even blink as a thin spray of crimson speckled my cheek. I just kept that easy, relaxed smile on my face, my eyes bright and completely clear, watching the blood well up over the nickel tool with quiet, curious interest, like a kid observing an ant under a magnifying glass, fascinated by the small mechanics of suffering, by how easily a body could be made to betray its owner.

I released the handles, pulled the tool back, and casually wiped the wet metal blade on the front of Dalton’s ruined linen shirt, taking my time, as if cleaning a fork after a meal shared among friends.

"See?" I said, nodding approvingly. "Good tool. Clean cut. Didn’t even hit the bone straight through, just stripped the meat right off the joint. Much less messy than a saw."

Dalton was blubbering now, his chin resting against his collarbone, hot tears washing tracks through the dirt and dried blood on his cheeks, his whole body folding in on itself like something collapsing from the inside, the last of his composure draining out along with the blood. "You’re fucking insane... you’re a fucking maniac..."

"I’m really not," I laughed softly, a short, genuine chuckle that sounded entirely human, utterly normal, which only made the dark room feel ten times smaller. "A maniac wouldn’t have brought you down here to have a conversation. A maniac would have just shot you in your driveway in front of your wife while you were getting the mail. I brought you here because I respect your mind, Dal. You’re brilliant with numbers. You just need a little recalibration."

I straightened up, rolling my shoulders back until my spine popped, savoring the small release of tension, the satisfying click of a body that still, despite everything, answered obediently to its owner.

I reached into my back pocket, pulled out a clean white linen handkerchief, and carefully wiped the tiny red specks off my own cheekbone, checking the fabric afterward the way a man checks his reflection, mildly curious, entirely unbothered.

"See, Dalton, what really hurts my feelings isn’t the four warehouses," I murmured, tossing the stained cloth onto his lap. I stepped back over to the folding table, resting my hip against the edge as I looked down at him, my expression thoughtful, almost hurt, as though he were the one who owed me an apology and not the other way around. "It’s the sheer disrespect of it all. I didn’t keep you on my payroll for five years so you could turn around and snitch on me, Dal."

Dalton froze, his bloody hand trembling violently against the armrest, his eyes widening in pure horror, the realization settling over his face like a shadow falling across a room. "Boss... no, I didn’t..."

"Oh, come on, don’t insult us both," I said, my voice dropping into a chiding, gentle tone as I shook my head at him, the way one might scold a child caught in an obvious lie. "I don’t pay you seventy-five thousand dollars a quarter to leak confidential shipping routes to the DEA task force. I pay you so my books stay clean and my cargo stays invisible. I bought your house in the hills, Dalton. I paid for your daughter’s private horse-riding lessons in Vermont. I paid for your wife’s third nose job! And how do you repay my generosity? By selling my manifests to the highest bidder because you thought the feds would give you a golden parachute?"

"They... they threatened my family, Boss!" Dalton sobbed, the truth finally bursting out of his chest like a dam breaking, years of guilt collapsing into a single ragged confession that seemed to cost him more than the finger had. "They had bank records! They knew about the Cayman accounts! They were going to seize everything! I didn’t have a choice!"

"There’s always a choice, buddy," I said, a soft, sympathetic chuckle escaping my lips as I took a step closer, towering over him, letting the silence after his outburst hang heavy in the room, thick enough to taste. "You could have come to me. I would have handled the feds. I would have buried the agent in charge under six feet of marsh soil, and we’d all be eating lobster at the yacht club on Sunday. But instead, you sold me out. You took my money with one hand and signed my death warrant with the other. You turned my trust into cheap currency."

I set the wire-strippers down on the metal tray beside the chair with a sharp, echoing clink that seemed to punctuate the end of one conversation and the beginning of another. Then I reached down into my leather doctor’s bag sitting on the floor and pulled out two objects.

On one side, a heavy, rusty pair of flat-nosed fencing pliers. On the other, a sleek, custom-engraved Montblanc fountain pen with a gold nib, incongruously elegant against the filth of the room, a small, gleaming artifact from a world Dalton would never see again if he chose wrong.

I held them both up at Dalton’s eye level, my grin returning - warm, inviting, completely devoid of heat or malice, as though I were offering him a choice between two flavors of ice cream on a hot summer afternoon.

"So here’s where we’re at, buddy. You’ve got two hands, but only one good career." I leaned in closer, my voice dropping into an intimate, cheerful whisper. "Choice A: You pick up this pen with your good hand, sit at that folding table over there, and read every single line of the new customs contracts until your eyes bleed, fixing every leak you opened and feeding those federal agents enough fake intelligence to keep them chasing ghosts for the next five years."

Dalton’s breath caught in his throat, his chest heaving as his blood-slicked fingers twitched on the armrest, some last flicker of hope crossing his ruined face, fragile and small, like a candle guarded against wind. "And... and Choice B?"

My smile broadened, my eyes sparkling under the harsh hanging bulb as I tapped the heavy jaws of the rusty pliers together with a quiet, metallic snap that seemed to answer his question before I spoke, the sound final in a way words rarely managed to be.

"Choice B is we stay down here for another twenty minutes, and I use these to make sure you never have to worry about signing a contract again."