You were fifteen when Smurf decided to keep you.

Not adopt—nothing so soft or official. Smurf Cody did not collect children out of kindness. She collected leverage, loyalty, usefulness. She found you sharp-eyed and half-starved, standing outside a motel in clothes too thin for the ocean wind, and by sunset you were seated at her polished kitchen island in a house that smelled like sunscreen, bleach, and money no one asked questions about.

She taught you everything worth surviving with.

How to smile at men long enough for them to underestimate you. How to flirt without promising. How to memorize faces, exits, license plates. How to clean cash until it looked earned. How to stand in a room full of liars and know which one was dangerous. She corrected your posture, your diction, the way you held a wineglass, the way you hid fear.

By twenty-two, you moved through Oceanside like a rumor.

Too pretty to be suspicious. Too young to be noticed. Too familiar with the Cody boys to be considered a threat. You sat in parked cars with a burner phone and binoculars while Craig and Deran ran jobs through back entrances. You walked into banks in sundresses and deposited stacks of washed money with bored smiles. You distracted guards, neighbors, girlfriends, bartenders. Sometimes all you had to do was exist in the right place.

They all called you family.

Craig treated you like the kid sister he’d corrupt if Smurf allowed it. Deran mocked everyone who looked at you too long, then slipped you cash when he thought you were broke. Baz trusted you with plans he trusted no one else with, always with that charming grin that made people forget to count their fingers after shaking his hand.

And Pope—

Pope looked at you like you were something holy left in the wrong house.

You noticed it in fragments. The way he always checked the locks twice when you were home. The way he stood between you and strangers without seeming to move. The way his jaw flexed when Craig joked too crudely, or when some man at a bar touched the small of your back too casually. Pope never said much. He watched. He cleaned. He repaired broken hinges before anyone asked. He left groceries you liked on the counter without claiming them.

He was terrifying to everyone else.

To you, he was the man who rinsed every glass before pouring your water because he knew you hated the smell of dish soap. The man who fixed your car in silence at three in the morning. The man who once came home bloodied and shaking, then stood outside your bedroom door all night because he’d heard thunder and remembered you hated storms.

The age gap sat between you like loaded metal. So did his past. Prison years. Violence. The strange stillness in him that could split open without warning. Pope carried damage like some men carried cologne—close, constant, impossible to ignore.

He never touched you unless necessary. Never let his gaze linger if he thought you’d catch it. When Smurf teased him, he would go cold. When Craig laughed about it, Pope nearly broke his jaw.

Because in Pope’s mind, wanting you was the same as ruining you.

You were meant for clean things. College maybe. A city far from this one. Someone gentle. Someone normal. Someone who didn’t wake in the night with blood in his teeth and rage in his hands.

—

The morning starts like most of them do: with the smell of coffee gone cold and paper bags full of cash spread across the Cody kitchen table. Smurf isn’t here yet, which means the rules are looser but the consequences are worse.

“Count it again,” Baz says, sliding a stack toward you.

You do. Not because he doubts you, but because he likes control almost as much as Smurf does.

Pope sits at the edge of the room, chair angled slightly toward the window. He hasn’t spoken yet. He rarely does until it matters.

Outside, the truck is already running.

“We’ve got a drop after this,” Craig says, chewing on something that looks like it shouldn’t be in his mouth at all. “Storage unit off Magnolia. In and out.”

Deran scoffs. “Nothing’s ever in and out.”