Chapter 2: The Serpent in the Shop

Chapter 2: The Serpent in the Shop

The storm had passed by morning, leaving the air washed clean and the asphalt gleaming under the early sun. But the cold front that had settled inside Jax Ryder hadn’t moved an inch. He bypassed the main garage and walked directly to Peter’s private office, the one attached to the classic car showroom. He needed to hear it from the man with whom he’d shaken hands.

He found them both there, standing beside a cherry-red Corvette Stingray. Peter was polishing an already immaculate chrome bumper with a soft cloth, while Karen leaned against the car’s fender, arms crossed, a sour look on her face as if the vehicle’s very existence was an inconvenience. She saw Jax first, and her expression tightened further.

"Peter," she said, her voice sharp enough to cut glass. "Your mechanic is here."

Peter looked up, a flicker of discomfort in his eyes before his practiced, salesman smile clicked into place. "Jax! Morning. Everything alright out in the shop?" He was trying to pretend yesterday hadn't happened.

Jax didn't move from the doorway. He held Peter’s gaze, ignoring Karen entirely. "We had a deal, Peter. Two hundred a day."

Peter’s smile faltered. He glanced nervously at Karen, who was now staring daggers at Jax. He cleared his throat, setting the polishing cloth down on a nearby workbench. "Right, well, about that. Things are... tightening up a bit. Karen's been going over the books, and we need to run a leaner operation. More professional."

"So the deal is broken," Jax stated, his voice flat and devoid of emotion.

It was Karen who answered, pushing herself off the car. "The 'deal' was inefficient and frankly, ridiculous. From now on, you're on the clock like everybody else. Twenty-five an hour. You work, you punch in. You leave, you punch out. Simple."

Jax's eyes finally shifted to her. He saw the smug satisfaction in her face, the pleasure she took in tearing down the simple, respectful arrangement he’d had. He looked back at Peter, who refused to meet his gaze, focusing instead on a non-existent smudge on the Corvette's hood. The man was a ghost in his own business, a puppet whose strings were held by the brittle, manicured hands of his new wife.

There was a long, tense silence. Jax weighed his options. He could walk. He could drive away from Harmony Creek and find another quiet town, another simple job. But the thought of letting them win, of letting this woman's casual cruelty go unanswered, left a bitter taste in his mouth. It was a violation of principle. And for a man who had lived by codes his entire life, principles were not easily discarded.

"Fine," Jax said, the single word hanging in the air like a threat. "Hourly it is."

He turned and walked out without another word, leaving a stunned silence behind him. Peter looked relieved. Karen looked furious that he hadn't begged.

Jax became a machine. If they wanted hours, he would give them hours. He was the first to arrive each morning, an hour before the shop officially opened, using the quiet time to prep the bays. He was the last to leave, long after the sun had set, cleaning and organizing not just his station, but the entire work area. He took on the jobs no one else wanted—the rust-bucket restorations, the finicky electrical diagnostics, the greasy engine rebuilds. He worked through his lunch breaks, eating a sandwich with one hand while consulting a technical manual with the other.

His quiet intensity was a stark contrast to the chaos Karen was creating. She was a constant, unnerving presence. She berated a young apprentice for leaving a wrench out, calling him "useless" in front of customers. She followed Sue Miller into the breakroom to complain about the cost of coffee filters. She instituted a new rule that all scrap metal had to be sorted into five different bins, a time-consuming task that served no purpose other than to assert her authority. The other mechanics started calling her "The Serpent" in hushed tones when she was out of earshot. They walked on eggshells, the morale of the shop plummeting with each passing day.

Jax documented everything. Every hour he worked, he noted in a small, black notebook he kept in his locker. He saw the fear and frustration in his coworkers' eyes and logged that, too, in his own way. He was gathering intelligence, just as he'd been trained to do.

By the end of the week, he had logged exactly eighty hours. A grueling, punishing week that would have broken a lesser man. On Friday afternoon, he wiped the last of the grease from his hands and walked to the office.

Karen was at the desk again, a small, triumphant smile on her face. She’d seen him working, seen him run himself into the ground. She thought he had learned his lesson.

"Here," she said, sliding a familiar, unsealed envelope across the counter.

Jax picked it up. Inside, he saw six one-hundred-dollar bills. Six hundred dollars.

He didn't move. He simply held the envelope, his thumb resting on the crisp edges of the bills. He’d worked eighty hours. At twenty-five dollars an hour, the math was simple: two thousand dollars. Even by his old deal, a six-day week would have been twelve hundred. This was an insult wrapped in an absurdity.

"There's a mistake," he said, his voice dangerously low.

Karen rolled her eyes. "There's no mistake. It's six hundred a week. That’s your rate."

"You said twenty-five an hour," Jax reminded her, his calm beginning to fray.

"And you believe that?" she laughed, a short, ugly sound. Peter had emerged from his office, drawn by the confrontation. He stood behind her, wringing his hands. "You're contracted labor, sweetie. That means you get a flat weekly rate. The hours you work are up to you. If you want to kill yourself working eighty hours for the same pay as forty, that's your business."

It was a stunning piece of hypocrisy. They had forced him off his fair day-rate under the guise of a 'professional' hourly system, only to twist that system into a cap that benefited only them. It was blatant, manipulative, and fundamentally dishonest.

Jax looked past her to Peter, who was now actively avoiding his gaze, staring at the floor like a chastened child. The man's spinelessness was almost more infuriating than his wife’s venom.

Jax felt the last thread of his patience snap. But the anger that rose in him was not hot and explosive. It was cold. It was precise. It was the chilling calm that descends on a battlefield just before the shooting starts.

He slowly, deliberately, folded the six bills and slid them into his pocket. He gave Karen a look—a long, steady look that made the smirk on her face falter for the first time. It was a look that promised consequences.

Then, he turned and walked away, the silence in his wake more potent than any shout. The war had escalated. They hadn't just cheated a mechanic; they had played a soldier for a fool. And that was a mistake they would learn to regret.