He nods and moves behind the bar. The other man, older, maybe early forties, with gray threading through dark hair, pulls out a stool for me. The gesture is so casually polite that I almost cry.
I sit, keeping my back to the wall out of habit. Always know where the exits are. Always keep the room in view. Small lessons learned over two years that have become instinct now.
Eli sets a glass of water in front of me, and I notice his knuckles are scarred. Old fighting wounds, the kind that come from bare-knuckle brawls, not the kind you get from hitting someone who can't hit back.
Not like Cole's hands. Cole's knuckles were smooth except when he'd just hit me.
"This is Judge," Eli says, nodding to the other man. "My VP. Anything you tell me, you're telling him too. That okay?"
The fact that he's asking permission again does something strange to my chest. I nod, not trusting my voice.
Judge doesn't smile, but his expression softens slightly. "Ma'am."
"Ivy," I correct automatically, then wonder if I should have. Cole hated when I corrected anyone. Said it was disrespectful, said I needed to learn my place.
But neither of them reacts like I've done something wrong. Eli just nods.
"Ivy," he repeats, and somehow it sounds different in his voice. Safer. "Tell us what happened."
Where do I even start? With Cole? With the Vipers? With the slow realization that I'd walked into a nightmare, and the door had locked behind me?
I take a sip of water, buying time. The glass is cold in my hands, grounding. Real. This is real. I'm here, I'm out, I'm asking for help from the one man the Vipers feared enough to mock constantly.
That has to mean something.
"I was with Cole for two years," I start. My voice is steadier than I feel. "Engaged for three months. The wedding was supposed to be three days ago."
"Supposed to be," Eli echoes. He's leaning against the back of the bar, arms crossed, giving me space. I appreciate that more than he knows.
The memory makes my hands shake. I set the glass down before I drop it. "He was drunk. Passed out. I'd been saving money for eight months, small amounts, nothing he'd notice. I had three hundred dollars and one change of clothes. I walked out the door at midnight and didn't look back."
Judge makes a sound low in his throat. Not quite approval, not quite anger. Something in between.
"That took guts," he says.
I almost laugh. It didn't feel like guts. It felt like terror, desperation and the certainty that if I didn't leave that night, I never would. That I'd marry Cole and spend the rest of my life being whatever he decided I should be, enduring whatever he decided I deserved.
"It took fear," I correct. "He would have killed me eventually. Maybe not on purpose, but eventually he'd go too far, and I'd just be another accident. Another woman who fell down the stairs or walked into a door or drove off a bridge."
Eli's expression doesn't change, but something flickers in those dark eyes. Something cold and violent that should scare me but somehow doesn't.
"He put his hands on you," Eli says. It's not a question. He can see the bruises, can probably guess at the ones hidden under my clothes.
I nod anyway. "Often."
"In front of other members?"
"Sometimes." The shame of that still burns. Men watching while Cole backhanded me across the face, while he grabbed my wrist hard enough to leave marks, while he shoved me into walls. Men who looked away not because they were uncomfortable but because they didn't care. "No one ever said anything. No one ever stopped him."
"No," Eli says, and there's something in his voice that makes me look up. "They wouldn't. That's who the Vipers are now. That's what Demon's made them."
Demon. The president. The man Cole worshipped, the man who runs the Vipers like a kingdom and treats everyone in it like subjects. I've only met him a handful of times, but eachencounter left me feeling dirty, like I needed to scrub my skin raw just to feel clean again.
"You know him well," I say. It's not a question either.
The Vipers talked about Eli and his brother Carter like they were traitors, deserters, men who couldn't handle the real work. Which meant they knew them once. Knew them well enough to hate them.
"Yes. Unfortunately. Until I left the Vipers"
