Page 29 of Honorable Convictions
Pierson’s heart sunk. Two thin files were not going to keep him busy for an entire week. “I don’t want to complain, but everyone at the table was given a bigger stack than I.”
“The only cases I’m willing to assign to you are non-urgent ones as you’re on loan from the Vegas office. The entire DC office is aware of the short nature of your stay here with us. I suggest you take it up with the RKs if you have complaints. Anyone else?”
While Pierson had certainly wanted less work to do so he could focus on his social life, it suddenly made sense why no one was engaging with him. Everyone understood his stay was temporary. They were friendly but not overly so, and he sat there as the other JKs hurried off to their desks once dismissed by Ella. After taking a moment to gather himself, he trudged to his small space. Whoever had been kicked out to make room for him probably hated him for his insistence on getting assigned to DC.
Behind his desk, Pierson opened the slim files and grew further discouraged. The last time he was asked to handle petty crimes was his first year after graduating and even then, they weren’t the entirety of his assignments. If he took it glacially slow, it would still not constitute more than a day’s work to complete them. Perhaps his attention should go toward exploring the idea he had of refining the process between Juris and fallen knights.
If he was able to put something together to show the RKs, they might be willing to allow him to test the project for viability. Wondering if he should bounce his idea off someone else before he set it as a goal, he had no idea where to turn because he spoke with Mitchell and no one else. There were acquaintances at best. However, he had to concede that Mitchell was intelligent and unlike Pierson, had developed friendships with people. Mitchell could tell him whether he’d happened upon a true need in the Order of the Fallen Knights or if he was simply trying to keep himself occupied.
Vowing to work on his theory in the afternoon, Pierson sighed and dutifully tackled the first folder. It was a simple theft by a teenager, and Pierson couldn’t fault the work of the fallen knight. There was no urgency as the young man in question was already in a facility for young offenders. After a stealing spree, yet another shop owner wanted to be sure the boy paid the price for his actions.
The kid had a long sheet of previous offenses, and Pierson wondered how the fourteen-year-old had squeezed in so many arrests in so few years on earth. When he got to the back of the folder, the fallen knight’s work in building his case lacked flaws. All that was left for Pierson to do was add to the boy’s sentence. His file stated he’d come from a foster home, and Pierson ached for a kid with no one.
Instead of heaping onto his incarceration, he chose to add to the monitoring the teenager would get after release. Mandated weekly therapy was a must, and Pierson made himself the contact person to ensure that it was followed through. Pierson often oversaw those types of punishments, and he hoped the kid would be able to rebuild his life. Unlike the Circle of Mages, who notoriously refused to pay for therapy for many of their kind, the boy was a shifter, so Pierson had no worry that the cost would be authorized. Although the road ahead was tough, Pierson would assist—he understood all too well what it was like to go at things alone.
Chapter 16
When Pierson announced that he had an idea the moment Mitchell’s ass hit the couch, he had totellhis dick to calm the hell down. They were still tentatively building a friendship; there was no way his mate was ready to climb between the sheets, no matter how bad Mitchell’s cock wanted to come out and play.
“What’s your big idea, Blondie?”
Mitchell listened carefully and grew more interested as Pierson spoke. There were often complaints about the Juris Knights having no voice of their own. Since the inception of their role, they were dumped onto the VKs with the fallen knights. The VKs were fair and did their best to listen to issues, but they didn’t always grasp the way it affected Juris Knights. It was the fallen knights who were always granted the first office space, the last voice in how cases should be handled, and it was irritating to have to constantly go back to hardworking officers with tons of cases to tell them they hadn’t filled out forms correctly.
There was always an undercurrent of animosity between Juris and the rest of the fallen knights, and it annoyed Mitchell. The Juris Knights often kept to themselves in offices, and even at the annual retreat they were rarely found in a mixed group. Without an advocate who understood them fully, they were left as outcasts. Their numbers were small, and they were considered book-toting nerds who could barely handle the physical tasks that fallen knights on the streets faced every day. It was a stereotype Mitchell hated, and his superiors hadn’t intended to create a rivalry between the different factions.
If there was a way to fix the process and herald in some way of improving the communication in the way fallen knights sent over their files, Mitchell was all for it. Perhaps if they understood exactly what was sufficient to a Juris Knight and the appropriate criteria to determine guilt, they’d be concise and complete in their write-ups.
“I think you should pick a few cities as tests and let them know that you’re looking for feedback. We need to come to the table with the same goals,” Mitchell remarked. “In Vegas, we get files from everywhere, and each office has different standards because of their supervisors. The goal would be to get those supervisors to have uniform standards, right?”
Pierson did an interesting wiggle in his chair, and his beautiful green eyes were lit with excitement. “Yes. There are two VKs, and they can’t be everywhere. Supervisors are rotated, and let’s be honest, things fall between the cracks. The population of JKs is small, and those offices where there aren’t any are always the ones that we must send back. No fallen knight wants to be told their work is incomplete. Some of them don’t respond kindly and might even take their sweet-ass time complying because they’re understandably upset. The VKs send out the recommended list every year of our demands, for lack of a better word, but it’s suggested, not mandated.”
“Is your plan to be appointed the permanent liaison between FKs and JKs?”
“No way, that decision is not mine to make. I want to figure out if this is something viable and what kind of reaction it’ll get.”
“DC, Vegas, and New York as test cities?”
“No, I’m not involving Vegas. DC, New York, and perhaps Atlanta or Chicago.”
“Vegas has the largest concentration of JKs.”
“I know, Mitchell, and that means they have the loudest voice and work with the best FKs on the planet. Think about how often you return a Vegas file. It rarely happens.”
“I did today.” Pierson stared until Mitchell laughed. “Okay, you made your point. What do you need from me?”
“Nothing, this is my project. I wanted to bounce it off someone to see if this is something needed or if I’m way off base.”
“If this got off the ground, I think it would benefit the entire Order of the Fallen Knights. I’m not surprised that once you had less work to do, you’d land on something like this. You’ve always been smarter than the rest of us.”
“I guess we’re back to the idea that I’m an elitist asshole who thinks I’m better than everyone.”
“You’re damn sensitive about that big brain of yours. I wasn’t trying to insult you. It’s a fact; you’re incredibly intelligent. I often wonder what it must be like to read something and retain the whole file, book, or whatever in one go.”
Shifting in his chair, Pierson gaze’s left Mitchell and he was silent for several minutes. “I can’t forget things. I’ve tried, but it doesn’t go away. It’s very useful for work, but everywhere else, completely unnecessary and often unwanted.”
“Pierson,” Mitchell said, and he waited patiently for their eyes to lock. In Pierson’s, there was wariness and sorrow. “I’m sorry. I hope you know I’m sincere when I use those words. I hate the way we met. I hate it so much. Neither one of us is ever going to forget it, but we can’t let it define us. It started a war between us, which we allowed to go on for one hundred and fifteen years. Why did we do that? Why did we allow a few seconds to ruin us for so long? Dammit, I get so mad thinking about it. That’s probably why we wound up fighting so much. The first thing we think of is that horrible moment that hurts us both. It’s that pain which makes us lash out. What I need you to do is tell me how we fix that. How do we cast that aside and pull ourselves together to move on? We should be fighting for us. That’s what we forgot. Tell me, what do we need to do?”
Pierson rubbed a hand over his mouth. “I don’t know.”
