Chapter 46 Jace
JACE
“What’s with the long face?” Axel questioned. “Did your stock portfolio drop a whole percent today?”
My mind wasn’t here, in this room of the mansion, with my fellow Sinners and Saints brothers.
I’d known it the second I pulled up to the gates, the gargoyles looking down at me like I was someone new.
The brick, the luxury of it all, ignited guilt within me.
Here we were, using a goddamned mansion as a club of sorts, while other people like Scarlett were probably out there right now, struggling financially.
“Hello,” Axel repeated, snapping his fingers in front of my face. “Earth to Jace. Are you going to play or sit there, looking like someone keyed your favorite car?”
I glared at him. He sat with his usual confident demeanor next to my other chosen brothers, Blake and Ryker.
“I just …” I paused, looking at my cards without really seeing them.
“He’s calculating how many companies he can buy before lunch tomorrow,” Ryker joked, tossing chips into the center. “I’ll raise fifty.”
“I see your fifty,” Blake said, tossing his chips into the center.
Blake didn’t grow up with privilege. He’d grown up in the foster care system, and Ryker grew up middle class. Axel’s family were business owners who had oscillated between poverty and upper middle class. These guys weren’t handed privileges like I’d been.
“Let me ask you something,” I said, absently folding my cards down in front of me.
“Are you folding, as in you’re out?” Axel asked.
“When you guys grew up,” I continued, ignoring him, “if you got in trouble, what would happen?”
“Is this your version of Never Have I Ever? Because we need more tequila for that,” Axel said, reaching for his drink.
“Let’s say a”—I hesitated, thinking of the pervert boss Scarlett had mentioned—“teacher had done something inappropriate. What would have happened?”
“Dude, we’re playing poker. What the hell?” Axel snarled, throwing his cards down. “Did you get into some kind of philosophical edibles?”
“Where is this coming from?” Blake wondered, studying my face. “You’ve been weird since you walked in. Usually, you’re trash-talking Axel’s receding hairline by now.”
“My hairline is not receding, asshole,” Axel retorted, running a hand through his hair self-consciously. It wasn’t receding, but Blake loved to make him think it was. He even cited (fake) medical “evidence” to goad him.
“Did a teacher do something to you, but you waited until your mid-thirties to tell someone?” Ryker asked with a smirk. “Should I get my doll so you can point to the parts?”
“Just answer the question,” I said, my tone sharp.
The guys looked at each other like I’d lost my mind.
“Is this about a woman?” Ryker asked, his eyes narrowing. “You actually look like you give a damn about something other than the next acquisition.”
“He’s got that look my parents’ dog used to get when they left for work,” Axel chimed in. “Complete confusion and existential dread.”
“Okay … in your strange hypothetical question,” Ryker answered, steering us back on topic, “if a teacher did something like that when I was younger, I’d probably just want to shut my mouth.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because I’d want to pass the class. It would be pretty foolish, pissing off the teacher responsible for my grade by ratting them out.”
“I’d get my ass beat if I brought trouble home,” Blake added casually, arranging his chips. “Foster dad number three wasn’t big on ‘making waves.’ ”
Jesus. Scarlett was right. I knew she was right, of course; everything she had said to me made complete sense. But it was still hitting me in waves, the unfairness of it all.
“If the teacher had done something inappropriate to me, my family would’ve made one phone call and gotten them fired,” I said quietly.
The guys exchanged a look.
“Can we please get back to poker? I raise you twenty,” Axel said, pushing chips forward. “And, Jace, if you play that sad puppy face as a bluff, I swear to God …”
“Dude, what is up with you tonight?” Blake asked, studying me.
“Privilege,” I said, the word tasting strange in my mouth. “Power. And all the things that it impacts. But, specifically, how it affords me the opportunity to hold other people accountable for their actions while simultaneously letting me off the hook for my own.”
“Jesus, dude, I didn’t come here for a therapy session,” Axel groaned, reaching for his drink. “I came here to take your money and make fun of your designer shoes.”
“If I wanted to feel bad about my life choices, I’d call my mother,” Ryker added, downing his drink.
“Jace, what is going on?” Blake asked, his tone shifting to genuine concern.
“I’m falling in love with Scarlett.” There … I said it out loud.
Another look was exchanged.
“That’s what this is about?” Axel said. “You’re ruining poker night because you have feelings? God, you’re worse than Ryker when he discovered poetry in college.”
“That was a phase,” Ryker defended. “And I still say my sonnet about beer pong was underappreciated.”
“She’s making me realize that we come from two different worlds,” I continued, ignoring them.
“When I want something, people help me get it. And when I speak, I’m believed.
And if I do something wrong, people will be there to try and clean up the mess.
All while she’s afforded none of those things. ”
My God, did that make me respect this woman even more than I already did. Fully understanding what she’d had to go through to get where she was in life, to see what she’d overcome, it made my feelings even deeper for her. Respect. Admiration.
“Jace, you didn’t ask to be born into a wealthy family,” Blake said seriously. “It’s not your fault. It’s not something you should be ashamed of. She’s making you feel ashamed—”
“She’s not.” At least, she wasn’t trying to. “She’s just trying to help me understand the differences between us. It’s pretty pathetic that it took me this long to see it.”
“So, what, you’re going to start feeling guilty every time you use your platinum card?” Axel asked. “Should we meet at McDonald’s next time instead of the mansion? Will that help your conscience?”
“This isn’t about money,” I said, frustration rising in my voice. “It’s about consequences.” No, my life hadn’t always been easy … but it’d been a helluva lot easier than Scarlett’s and many others’ who had to pay for consequences that my privilege enabled me to avoid.
Before that conversation, I had convinced myself that Scarlett’s aversion to powerful people was confined to her experience with her father who had abused that power. But now, I realized it went much deeper than that, and it was a huge roadblock that we might never be able to overcome.
Here was someone who was already grappling with the power dynamics between us, who didn’t want to be with someone who would never be held accountable for his own hypothetical actions simply because he came from a place of privilege.
And here I was, a man who’d done something unspeakable, something I had gotten away with.
If she found that out, she would never talk to me again, let alone ever consider a relationship.
“Jace, you’re a good guy,” Ryker said, his joking tone gone. “You literally acquire companies to save the employees. You’re like a white knight in a Mercedes.”
“People like me don’t suffer the penalties of our actions,” I said, my voice low. “Scarlett didn’t even do anything wrong, and she’s facing consequences that could destroy the rest of her life. Meanwhile, I’ve done something repulsive, and I never faced a single consequence for it.”
The room went quiet. The joking atmosphere evaporated.
“What are you talking about?” Blake asked cautiously.
“You respect me because I’ve taken my business skills and done something good with it,” I said, looking at each of them.
“I buy companies and save people from unemployment and hardship. People commend me, put me on the covers of magazines, but do you want to know why I’ve always been on the mission to save as many jobs as I can? To save as many people as I can?”
They waited. They had asked me this so many times through the years, and I had never answered. Until now.
“To ease my guilty conscience,” I said finally. “Because I killed someone, and I was never held accountable.”