Chapter 11
I kill the engine but remain frozen, studying this alien patch of suburban perfection that's somehow replaced Legion's familiar broken-down trailer.
Mercy skips down the porch steps, all wild energy and pure delight in ragged cutoff shorts and what must be Legion's ancient t-shirt, the fabric drowning her tiny frame, carrying his presence like a lingering shadow.
"Come on! We got actual furniture and everything!
" Her voice quivers with the kind of raw excitement that makes my chest tight.
The three-carat diamond weighing down my left hand might as well be shackles when I step out. The soles of my riding boots crunch against fresh gravel as I gently close the Range Rover's door.
"I like your pants. You look like you like you do on socials," Mercy says, studying my four-hundred-dollar breeches and five-thousand-dollar custom boots.
I blow out a breath, instant regret about coming here. And I would leave… but I can't. Not with this new trailer staring back at me.
"It's nice, right?" Mercy asks.
I nod. "It is. Where did it come from?"
"Come on! Come inside," she says, not answering my question as she takes my hand and starts pulling me towards the porch.
I follow her up the fresh-built steps, cross the small, but ample porch, and get blasted with air conditioning the moment I cross the threshold.
Inside, it's open concept—kitchen melting into living room, everything immaculate and untouched. There are no staged corners or meticulously arranged scenes like my Instagram feed demands. Just clean, functional space with furniture meant for real life, not harvesting engagement metrics.
"Look at this!" Mercy yanks me toward the kitchen, practically levitating with joy. "Dishwasher AND automatic ice! No more gas station runs!"
I almost mention the designer countertops—that ingrained social media reflex—but she's already pulling me down the hallway, her small fingers warm and eager between mine.
"My room!" She flings a door wide with theatrical flair. "I see your house on Instagram all the time. Yours is gigantic, but look—sage walls! Just like that one guest cabin you guys have on your property!"
Something breaks quietly in my chest. This precious, untamed little girl follows my carefully constructed lies. Not only that, she has opinions about them.
The charity events, the couture outfits, the picture-perfect moments with my politically groomed fiancé—all of it as artificial as my follower demographics.
"Legion got me this too!" She gestures proudly at a cork board plastered with equestrian magazine clippings—some torn from publications featuring my sponsored content.
"Says maybe I can take riding lessons. Like in your stories!
I've always wanted a horse. You have one, Cassia, right? I want one like yours."
I blow out a breath. My horse cost half a million dollars as a barely-broke three-year-old. I got her when I was seventeen, one year before I took her to college with me. She came from Germany. Like… has-an-EU-passport came from Germany.
The guilt I feel about all that hits instantly.
I have too much.
She has so little.
Mercy continues her enthusiastic tour, treating each modern fixture and organized closet like buried treasure.
I've never known Legion in normal spaces. Only secret places—the grain silo, the hidden creek, anywhere we could pretend reality didn't exist. But this is real. His world. His sanctuary. His baby sister who follows my filtered fantasy life and dreams of horses she's never been allowed to touch.
"Want to see Legion's new room?" Mercy asks, bouncing with anticipation. "He got a new bed too."
I peek into Legion's room, unable to stop myself. But quickly turn away and go back down the hallway to the living room. He and I aren't dating. Hell, I'm engaged—the whole idea of dating Legion is ridiculous.
We're hookups.
Hookups that have never happened in this trailer, or the last, actually.
And I don't know what he does while he and I aren't together—have never known, aside from posing suggestively for my mother, that is. And there could be evidence in that room of some other woman who meets his needs while I sit up in my castle lookin’ out on my kingdom.
As I’m thinking all this, I’m also studying the pristine living room sofa—tan fabric with throw pillows that match the curtains. It looks like it came from a catalog, like someone tried to stage the perfect middle-class home.
"Legion's not here," Mercy announces, flopping onto the couch with the kind of comfortable abandon I haven't felt in my own body since I was her age. "He's at work."
"Work?" The word feels foreign in my mouth when attached to Legion. "What the hell does he do for 'work'?" I don't know why it comes out like that—prickly. But it does. Have I ever known Legion to have a 'job'?
Well, I’m pretty sure he did have jobs as a teenager.
He always had money. Not a lot, but he bought that dirt bike with his own money, I do remember him saying that.
So he did work. I just… never asked where, I guess.
Then, as adults, I just assumed it was something… illegal. Something to do with the club.
"I dunno where he works," Mercy shrugs. "The Club, I think. He leaves early. Comes back late. It pays the bills."
Pays the bills. It's a phrase straight out of his mouth, not Mercy's. She's just repeating him.
I perch on the edge of an armchair, keeping my posture straight like Mama taught me. My diamond catches the light, throwing prisms across the wall. I notice Mercy staring at it, then quickly looking away.
I've been here plenty of times over the past three years. To help Destiny. Then Mercy, once Destiny left. To drop off food, or pick up laundry and bring it back, once cleaned.
But all those times—every single one of those times—Legion was in prison.
I have never been inside his space.
And now here I am. And I don’t know how to process it, so the manners kick in. "The place is really nice, Mercy," I say, when I realize she's looking at me, waiting for… words.
"I know!" She bounces up, energy crackling through her small frame. "When school starts again in the fall, I’m gonna go to school every day. No more skippin’. I will have new clothes and the new supplies. Kids won’t make fun of me no more.
And I’ll bring my own lunch too!” She pauses her excitement here to give me a serious look.
“We have real food in the fridge, not just beans and soda. "
"Beans and soda," I say softly. Yep. That was all that was in there the first time I brought food.
"Wanna see something cool?" Without waiting for an answer, Mercy darts down the hallway and returns with a brand new backpack—purple with silver stars.
"All my school stuff is new. And look—" She pulls out a lunch box with horses on it.
"Legion says I need to eat actual food, not just whatever kids give me. "
"It's super cute," I tell her. "I love it."
"Oh! And I have all kinds of new friends at the Club."
"New... friends?"
"Oh, you haven't met them yet!" Mercy's eyes light up.
"They're super nice. Brick looks really scary—he's got this face like thunder—but he gave me this cool knife block for the kitchen.
" She points to a wooden block on the counter filled with gleaming kitchen knives.
"And he always brings me candy, but he checks with Legion first 'cause sometimes I lie and say I already brushed my teeth. "
She says this so casually, like it's perfectly normal to have a biker gang as your BFF. I force a smile. "That's... thoughtful."
"His bike is the coolest thing ever. It's got these skulls on the handlebars that light up red at night. He let me sit on it once when Legion wasn't lookin’."
“Ummm… OK.”
"Roach is super twitchy, like this—" Mercy demonstrates by wiggling her fingers rapidly and blinking fast. "But he's super smart too. He taught me chess! Says I have a 'tactical mind,' whatever that means."
She hops up and moves to the window, demonstrating. "He showed me how to check if someone messed with our locks or windows. See these little bits of tape? If they're broken, someone came in while we were gone."
I feel sick. "That's... an interesting skill."
"He has like ten different phones, but never takes pictures. I asked why once and he said 'plausible deniability' which sounds made up." She laughs these words out, moving to the kitchen to get a juice box from the fridge.
"Ledger wears glasses like my teacher, but way scarier.
He brought me these math workbooks 'cause I'm behind in school.
" She takes a long sip. "He taught me to count money the right way.
Says I need to know if someone's shortin’ me.
I don't know what that means, but I can count really fast now. Twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, one hundred. Twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, two hundred. That’s how you do it. "
I try to keep my expression neutral. "Math is important."
"Diesel is my favorite though. He's HUGE!" She spreads her arms wide. "Like a bear! But he's super nice. Taught me how to shoot better—says my aim was good but my stance was garbage."
"He taught you to… shoot?" My voice rises despite my effort to keep calm.
"Yeah! At the range behind the clubhouse. I'm really good now." She says this with such innocent pride. "He checks on me when Legion works late. Brings me ice cream sometimes."
Again with this 'job' thing. I can't help asking. "What does Legion do again? For work?"
Mercy scrunches her face. "I told you, I dunno. Club stuff? He comes home smelling like gasoline sometimes. Or smoke." She shrugs. "Chains drew me these cool pictures—wanna see?"
Before I can answer, she's pulling a folder from her backpack, showing me intricate drawings of flowers and animals—clearly done by someone with serious artistic talent. But they all look like tattoo sheets.
"And Butch is teaching me to make a fist the right way. See?" She demonstrates, tucking her thumb outside her fingers. "Says girls need to know how to throw a punch that won't break their hand."
"Mercy—" I start, not sure what to say.
"Oh! And Ratchet showed me how to check tire pressure and oil. Says everyone should know basic maintenance." She mimics turning a wrench. "His hands are always dirty but he's good with engines."
I sit there, stunned by how thoroughly the Badlands MC has integrated themselves into this child's life. I was here, dropping off food and clean clothes just a couple of weeks ago. She didn't know any of them. They never came with food. They never came with clean clothes.
They were not here. I was.
These men are criminals, drug runners, violent enforcers. They're teaching money math and bike maintenance to a nine-year-old girl. How to shoot and make a fist.
This is not a life for a child.
"They sound... interesting," I manage.
"They're the best!" Mercy flops back onto the couch. "Way better than those kids at school. They say mean things about Legion sometimes. Call him Demon Kane." Her voice drops. "I punched Jimmy Larson for that. I got suspended, but Brick said I did good."
The realization hits me like cold water: This is Legion's world.
Not the silo where we meet in secret.
Not the photos in the book.
This is the part of him I never saw.
The part of him he never let me see.
This trailer, this child, these dangerous men who bring math books and teach a little girl to shoot—this is his reality.
And I have absolutely no place in it.
And now that I think about it, neither does Mercy.