Chapter 5
Ripley
I can't sleep.
The room they've put me in is small but clean—a bed with faded sheets, a dresser with a cracked mirror, a window that looks out over the parking lot.
It smells like cigarette smoke and leather, like every other inch of this clubhouse. Like safety.
I should feel safe.
The door is locked.
There are a dozen armed men downstairs who've been told I'm under their protection.
Cain doesn't know where I am.
But every time I close my eyes, I see his face. Feel his fists. Hear his voice telling me this is my fault, that I deserve this, that I'm nothing without him.
I curl into a ball on the bed, pulling my knees to my chest, and stare at the wall.
The bruises throb with every heartbeat.
My ribs ache where he kicked me—I didn't tell anyone about that, didn't lift my shirt to show them the boot-shaped mark on my side.
It hurts to breathe. Hurts to move. Hurts to exist.
But I'm alive.
That feels like more than I deserve.
A knock on the door makes me jolt upright, heart pounding.
"It's Tawny," a voice calls through the wood. "I brought food."
I hesitate, then uncurl myself from the bed and pad barefoot to the door.
My hands shake as I turn the lock—everything makes me shake now, every sound, every shadow—but I manage to get it open.
Tawny stands in the hallway, a plate in one hand and a bottle of water in the other.
Behind her, Paige hovers with a small smile.
"You need to eat," Tawny says, pushing past me into the room without waiting for an invitation. "I know you probably don't feel like it, but trust me. Your body needs fuel."
I open my mouth to protest—my stomach is a knot of anxiety, the thought of food makes me nauseous—but she's already setting the plate on the dresser.
Scrambled eggs, toast, a few strips of bacon. Simple. Manageable.
"I'm not hungry," I say weakly.
"Didn't ask if you were hungry." Tawny turns to face me, hands on her hips.
Up close, I can see the sharpness in her eyes, the bleached blonde hair with dark roots showing, the hard line of her jaw.
She looks like a woman who's seen some shit. "Eat. Even if it's just a few bites."
Paige slips into the room behind her, closing the door softly.
She's the opposite of Tawny—soft where Tawny is sharp, quiet where Tawny is loud.
Her brown hair falls in gentle waves around a face that looks too kind for this world.
"How are you feeling?" Paige asks, and the genuine concern in her voice makes my throat tighten.
"I'm okay," I lie.
"Bullshit." Tawny snorts. "You look like you went ten rounds with a freight train. But that's fine. You don't have to pretend with us."
I don't know what to say to that.
I've been pretending for so long—pretending everything's fine, pretending the bruises are accidents, pretending I'm happy—that I don't know how to stop.
"Why are you being nice to me?" The question comes out before I can stop it.
Tawny and Paige exchange a look.
"Because we've seen that look before," Tawny says quietly. "The flinching. The apologies. The way you make yourself small, like you're trying to disappear." She shrugs, but there's nothing casual about it. "We know what it's like to be with men who hurt. Maybe not the same way, but... we know."
Paige nods. "You're not alone here, Ripley. Whatever you need, we've got you."
The kindness is almost worse than cruelty.
Cruelty I know how to handle.
I've built walls against cruelty, learned to absorb it without breaking.
But kindness—genuine, unconditional kindness—slips through the cracks in my armor and finds all the soft places I've tried to protect.
Tears spill down my cheeks before I can stop them.
"Hey, hey." Tawny crosses the room and pulls me into a hug. She smells like cheap perfume and cigarettes, and her arms are strong around me. "It's okay. Let it out. You're safe here."
I cry into her shoulder while Paige rubs my back, and for the first time in three years, I don't feel completely alone.
They stay with me for a while.
Tawny bullies me into eating half the eggs and a piece of toast.
Paige fills the silence with soft chatter—nothing important, just talk about the clubhouse, the other girls, a funny story about Stark getting drunk and trying to fight a vending machine.
It's meaningless and mundane and exactly what I need.
By the time they leave, promising to check on me in the morning, some of the tension has eased from my shoulders.
The room feels less like a prison and more like a sanctuary, but sleep still won't come.
I lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to the muffled sounds of the clubhouse below.
Music. Laughter. The rumble of motorcycles coming and going. Life continues on like nothing's wrong.
I think about Cain. About where he is right now. What he's doing. Whether he's looking for me.
He'll come. I know he will.
He'll find out where I am, and he'll come, and no amount of protection will stop him.
He's relentless. Obsessive.
He won't let me go—not because he loves me, but because I belong to him.
Because letting me go would mean admitting he lost.
You're mine. You're fucking mine.
I shudder, pulling the blanket tighter around myself.
The hours crawl by. Midnight. One a.m. Two.
Somewhere around three, I hear footsteps in the hallway.
My whole body goes rigid.
The footsteps are heavy, purposeful, coming closer.
I sit up in bed, heart hammering, eyes fixed on the door.
The lock is flimsy.
It wouldn't hold against a determined kick.
If it's Cain—if he found me—
The footsteps stop outside my room.
I can't breathe.
Can't move.
Can't do anything but wait for the door to burst open, for his face to appear, for the nightmare to start all over again.
A soft knock.
"Ripley." Leviathan's voice, low and rough. "You awake?"
The relief is so intense I almost sob.
I scramble out of bed, cross the room on unsteady legs, and open the door.
He stands in the hallway, still wearing the same clothes from earlier.
Jeans. Black t-shirt. Leather cut with the President patch. But something's different. Something's—
His knuckles.
I stare at his hands, at the blood crusted across his knuckles, the split skin, the bruises already forming.
He's been in a fight. A bad one.
My eyes travel up to his face.
His expression is carved from stone, cold and hard, but there's something in his eyes.
Something that looks almost like satisfaction.
"Can I come in?" he asks.
I step back, letting him enter.
He moves past me into the room, and I catch his scent—leather, smoke, something metallic that I realize with a start is blood.
Not his blood.
The door closes behind him.
We stand there in the dim room, the only light coming from the parking lot outside, and I know.
I know without him saying a word.
"He's dead," I whisper. It's not a question.
Leviathan meets my eyes. "Yes."
I wait for the horror to come. The guilt. The grief.
Something—anything—to tell me I'm still human, that I haven't been so broken by Cain that I can't feel anymore.
Instead, I feel relief.
It crashes over me like a wave, so powerful my knees buckle.
I grab the dresser for support, gasping, and suddenly I'm crying again—not the quiet tears from earlier, but deep, wrenching sobs that tear their way out of my chest.
The monster under the bed is gone.
I keep waiting for the guilt to follow.
For the voice in my head that sounds like Cain to tell me I'm terrible, that I wanted this, that I'm responsible for a man's death.
But the voice is silent. For the first time in three years, the voice is silent.
"Ripley."
Leviathan's in front of me now.
I didn't hear him move.
His hands hover near my shoulders, not quite touching, like he's not sure if contact is welcome.
"I'm okay," I manage between sobs. "I'm okay, I just—"
"You don't have to be okay."
The words are so unexpected that I look up at him.
I really look, past the cold exterior, the stone-carved face, the reputation that makes grown men afraid.
What I see underneath makes my breath catch.
He's tired. Bone-deep exhausted in a way that has nothing to do with tonight and everything to do with a lifetime of carrying weight that would crush most men.
And he's looking at me like... like I matter. Like my pain is something worth acknowledging.
"Why did you do it?" I ask. "Why do you care what happens to me?"
He's quiet for a long moment.
I watch him struggle with the question, watch him try to find an answer that makes sense.
"I don't know," he finally admits. "I saw him hurting you, and something in me... broke. I don't do that. I don't lose control. But with you—" He shakes his head. "I can't explain it."
"You killed a man for me. A man you've known for years."
"He wasn't a man. He was a monster." His voice hardens. "And monsters need to be put down."
You'd be nothing without me. Cain's voice, echoing from somewhere deep in my memory.
But Cain's dead now. And I'm still here. Still breathing. Still existing without him.
Maybe I'm not nothing after all.
"You have blood on your hands," I say softly, reaching out to touch his knuckles.
He flinches—actually flinches—at the contact, and I realize this might be the first gentle touch he's felt in a long time, too.
"Not the first time." His voice is rough. "Won't be the last."
"Does it bother you?"
"No." He pauses. "Should it?"
I think about that.
Think about the man who beat me, terrorized me, made me believe I was worthless.
Think about the relief I felt when Leviathan told me he was dead.
"No," I say. "It shouldn't."
We stand there in the dim room, my fingers still resting on his bloody knuckles.
The silence stretches between us, but it's not uncomfortable.
It's... weighted. Electric. Full of something I can't name.
"You should get some sleep," he says finally, but he doesn't move away.
"I can't sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I see him."
"It'll get easier."
"Will it?"
He doesn't answer. Maybe he doesn't know. Maybe he has his own ghosts that visit him in the dark.