Putting everything back where it belongs. The clothes in the drawer. The toothbrush by the sink. The photo in my nightstand, hidden beneath a book he'll never read.
I clean up the broken glass, sweeping the shards into a dustpan, wiping the whiskey from the wall. I finish chopping the vegetables. I start dinner.
This is my life. This is all my life will ever be.
But even as I fall back into the familiar routine, I can't stop thinking about what Cain said.
He stripped my patch. No vote. No church. He just did it.
Leviathan broke protocol. Broke the rules of his own club. For what?
Forme?
That doesn't make sense. I'm nobody. I'm nothing.
There's no reason for a man like Leviathan to risk his position, his authority, his reputation, for a woman he's barely spoken to.
But he did.
He saw Cain's hand around my throat, and he acted.
Not with a vote, not with discussion, but immediately.
Decisively. Like it mattered. Like I mattered.
I think about the way he looked at me last night.
Not with pity—I've seen pity before, and this wasn't that.
Something harder. Sharper.
Something that saw through all my careful masks and recognized what was underneath.
Something that was angry on my behalf.
No one's ever been angry for me. Not like that.
My mother doesn't know what's happening.
My father doesn't care.
My friends—the few I had before Cain isolated me—drifted away years ago.
I've been alone in this for so long that I forgot what it felt like to have someone in my corner.
Leviathan doesn't know me.
Doesn't owe me anything, but he looked at me like my pain was personal.
Like my fear was an offense he intended to address.
For the first time in three years, someone saw what Cain does to me and didn't look away.
I don't know what to do with that. Don't know what it means or where it leads.
Maybe nowhere.
Maybe Leviathan stripped Cain's patch and considered the matter handled.
