Richter sat across from Jacket in the dimly lit cell, his voice low, weary, and almost apologetic. He admitted that he didn’t really understand what was happening, that the endless cycle of bloodshed and strange phone calls had forced his hand more than his own will ever had. When he confessed to shooting the girl, his tone carried no malice—it was “nothing personal,” just another order he couldn’t disobey. He revealed to Jacket that he too had been receiving the same cryptic phone calls, bound to the same invisible leash that had been tugging Jacket along from the start. For the first time, Jacket could see the threads of manipulation tying them both to the same puppeteer.

The silence between them was heavy, but Richter’s words made Jacket hesitate. In Richter’s explanation, Jacket glimpsed not an enemy, but another man caught in the same labyrinth of violence, another victim swallowed whole by the designs of 50 Blessings. Richter had not wanted to kill her—Jacket’s girlfriend—but had been cornered, threatened, and forced into a role he despised. The similarity was striking, mirroring Jacket’s own forced war against Biker. To snuff Richter out now would be to extinguish someone who, like himself, had been weaponized by unseen hands.

When Jacket finally turned his back on Richter, leaving him bloodied but alive, it was not mercy in the soft sense but an acknowledgment of kinship. He saw in Richter the reflection of his own entrapment, his own lack of choice, and in sparing him, Jacket was silently defying the will of 50 Blessings. If they intended to pit victim against victim, then letting Richter live was Jacket’s quiet rebellion. It was a bond born of violence and manipulation, twisted yet humanizing, that would echo into the next chapter of their lives.