Chapter 3
Ripley
I can still feel his hand on my throat.
It's been twelve hours since the parking lot.
Twelve hours since I felt the pressure of Cain's fingers cutting off my air.
Twelve hours since I looked up and saw Leviathan standing there, watching, his face carved from stone.
The bruises are already forming.
I checked this morning, standing in front of the bathroom mirror with the door locked, tilting my chin up to examine the damage.
Four distinct marks on the right side of my neck, one on the left.
His thumb and fingers, mapped out in purple and yellow.
I've gotten good at covering bruises.
Concealer, foundation, a strategic scarf.
But these are harder to hide.
These are visible. These tell a story I can't afford to let anyone read.
I wind a silk scarf around my neck—pale blue, one of the few nice things I owned before Cain—and check my reflection.
It looks natural enough, like a fashion choice, not a necessity.
No one will question it. No one ever questions it.
Cain left early this morning.
He didn't say where he was going, just grabbed his keys and walked out, slamming the door hard enough to rattle the windows.
He's been in a strange mood since we got home last night.
Quiet. Brooding.
He didn't hit me—didn't even yell—just sat on the couch drinking until he passed out, leaving me to clean up the bottles and wonder what was coming.
The waiting is almost worse than him hurting me.
I know something's wrong.
I saw it in his eyes when Leviathan told me to go inside.
That flicker of fear beneath the bravado.
Cain's scared of very little in this world, but he's scared of the President. Everyone is.
And the President saw.
I don't know what that means. Don't know if it means anything at all.
Men like Leviathan don't interfere in other men's business.
That's the code, isn't it?
What happens between a man and his woman is private.
Sacred. None of anyone else's concern.
But the way he looked at me...
I shake my head, pushing the thought away.
It doesn't matter.
Nothing's going to change.
Leviathan might have seen, but seeing isn't the same as caring.
He's got a club to run, a hundred problems more important than some brother's girlfriend.
I'm nothing to him. I'm nothing to anyone.
You'd be nothing without me.
Cain's voice echoes in my head, and I close my eyes against the familiar sting of tears.
He's right. He's always right.
Three years of hearing those words, and I've internalized them so deeply they feel like truth.
Like gospel. Like the fundamental law of the universe.
I am nothing. I have nothing. Without Cain, I would disappear entirely.
So why can't I stop thinking about the way Leviathan said my name?
The morning passes slowly.
I clean the apartment—again—even though it's already spotless.
I do the laundry, fold it precisely the way Cain likes.
I prepare ingredients for dinner, chopping vegetables into perfect uniform pieces, losing myself in the repetitive motion of the knife.
This is my life. These small tasks. These tiny acts of service designed to keep the peace.
I used to have dreams—big, colorful dreams about standing in front of a classroom, about watching kids fall in love with words the way I did.
Now my dreams have shrunk down to nothing.
To survive. To make it through another day without setting him off.
Around noon, my phone buzzes.
I jump—I always jump—and grab it from the counter.
A text from my mother:
Hey sweetheart. Just checking in. Haven't heard from you in a while. Call me when you get a chance? Love you.
My throat tightens.
I want to call her. Want to hear her voice, her loud Pittsburgh accent, her no-nonsense advice about everything from football to relationships.
I want to tell her what's happening, what's been happening for years now.
I want to ask her to come get me, to take me home, to make everything okay.
I don't.
Instead, I type out a quick reply:
Hey Mom. Sorry, been busy. Everything's fine. I'll call soon. Love you too.
Everything's fine. The biggest lie I tell.
I set the phone down and go back to chopping vegetables.
The knife moves in steady, rhythmic strokes.
Carrots. Celery. Onion.
The familiar sting of tears—from the onion this time, I tell myself.
Just the onion.
I'm halfway through a bell pepper when I hear the motorcycle.
The sound of Cain's engine is distinctive—a low, aggressive rumble that I've learned to recognize from blocks away.
My body reacts before my mind catches up: shoulders tensing, stomach clenching, heart rate spiking.
I set down the knife. Wipe my hands on a towel. Check my reflection in the microwave door—scarf in place, face neutral, nothing to criticize.
The front door slams open.
Cain stands in the doorway, and I know immediately that something is very, very wrong.
His face is white.
Not angry-red like I expected, but white.
Pale. Bloodless.
His jaw is clenched so tight the muscles stand out like cords, and his hands—his hands are shaking. I've never seen Cain shake before.
"Cain?" My voice comes out small. Tentative. "What happened?"
He doesn't answer.
He walks past me to the kitchen, grabs a bottle of whiskey from the cabinet—the good stuff, the expensive stuff he saves for special occasions—and pours three fingers.
Downs it in one swallow and pours another.
I stay very still.
Whatever this is, it's bad.
The kind of bad that could explode at any moment.
"That fucking bastard," Cain says finally. His voice is low. Controlled. But underneath the control, I hear something I've never heard from him before.
Fear.
"Who?" I ask, even though I already know.
"Leviathan." He spits the name like a curse. "That cold-blooded piece of shit. He had no right. No fuckin’ right."
My heart is pounding now. Pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat, right where his fingers left their marks.
"What did he do?"
Cain turns to look at me, and for a moment, I don't recognize him.
The charm is gone. The swagger is gone.
There's nothing left but rage—pure, white-hot rage—and beneath it, that unfamiliar fear.
"He stripped my patch."
The words don't make sense at first. I hear them, process them, but they don't compute. "What?"
"My patch." Cain's hand goes to his chest, to the spot where the Saint's Outlaws logo should be. "He took my cut. Stripped it right off me in front of everyone. No vote. No church. Just walked up to me and said I was out."
"I don't understand." My voice is shaking now. "He can't do that. Can he? Don't they have to vote?"
"That's what I said!" Cain hurls the whiskey glass across the room.
It shatters against the wall, amber liquid dripping down the paint.
I flinch but don't move. Don't run. Running makes it worse.
"I said, you can't do this without a vote. It's not how it works. And you know what he said? You know what that bastard said to me?"
I shake my head, mute.
"He said, 'I just did.'" Cain laughs—a horrible, broken sound. "Three words. Three fuckin’ words, and everything I built is gone. Eight years I gave that club. Eight years of blood and sweat and loyalty. And he takes it all away because—"
He stops. His eyes focus on me, and something in his expression shifts. Hardens.
"Because of you."
The words hit me like a punch to the gut. "What?"
"Don't play stupid, Ripley. You know exactly what I'm talking about." He moves toward me, and I back up instinctively, my hip hitting the counter. Trapped. "Last night. In the parking lot. He saw us."
"I didn't—I didn't do anything—"
"You didn't have to do anything. You just had to stand there looking pathetic, looking like some kind of victim, and he—" Cain's face twists. "He said I violated the code. Said we don't hurt women. Like I was hurting you. Like I was doing anything wrong."
My hand drifts to my throat. To the scarf hiding the bruises. To the evidence of exactly what he did.
Cain sees the gesture. His eyes narrow.
"Don't," he warns. "Don't you dare. Everything I do is because you push me. Because you can't follow simple fuckin’ instructions. Smile. Be polite. Don't embarrass me. That's all I ask, and you can't even manage that."
"I tried—"
"You didn't try hard enough!" He's in my face now, close enough that I can smell the whiskey on his breath. "And now look what you've done. You've ruined everything. Eight years, Ripley. Eight years gone because you couldn't keep your shit together for one night."
I'm crying now. I can't help it.
The tears spill over, hot and shameful, tracking down my cheeks.
I hate crying in front of him. He sees it as weakness, as manipulation, as one more thing to punish me for.
"I'm sorry," I whisper. The words are automatic. Reflexive. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean—"
"You're always sorry. You're always so fuckin’ sorry." He grabs my chin, forcing me to look at him. His grip is hard enough to bruise, but I don't flinch. Don't pull away. "You'd be nothing without me. You know that, right? Nothing. And now look what you've done. You've destroyed me."
He releases me with a shove.
I stumble, catch myself on the counter, watch through blurry eyes as he grabs his keys from where he threw them.
"Where are you going?" I ask.
"Out. I need to think. I need to figure out how to fix this." He pauses at the door, looking back at me with something close to disgust. "Don't wait up. And clean up that glass before I get back."
The door slams.
The apartment goes silent.
I stand there for a long moment, not moving, barely breathing.
Then my legs give out, and I sink to the kitchen floor, pressing my back against the cabinets, and let myself fall apart.
I don't know how long I cry.
Long enough that my eyes are swollen and my throat is raw.
Long enough that the afternoon light shifts from bright to golden to dim.
Long enough that my body aches from sitting on the hard floor, hunched over my knees like a child.
But eventually, the tears stop. And in the silence they leave behind, something else emerges.
A thought. Small at first. Barely a whisper.
He's gone.