CHAPTER 4 — THE ONE HE OWES

Sable

The divorce papers were ready.

Sitting in my inbox like a quietly ticking bomb.

I stared at the subject line—Petition for Dissolution of Marriage – Sable Arden & Luke Jones—and felt both sick and free.

It had only taken Rebecca two days to pull everything together. Fast, clean, airtight. No joint accounts. No shared property. No kids. Just a name and a legal shackle that never meant what it should’ve.

I clicked d******d. Watched the little spinning wheel blink and blink until the file landed with a soft ding. My hand hovered over the mouse as the printer kicked on across the room.

I didn’t shake.

Didn’t cry.

I just… waited.

When the pages were finished, I gathered them like they might burn me. But they didn’t. They just sat there in my hands—ordinary paper laced with the promise of finally breathing again.

The only problem?

Luke Jones wasn’t going to sign that easily.

He wasn’t in love with me. Never had been. But keeping me around served his purposes—on paper, we looked tidy. Married. Respectable. Something the MC could show off to smooth over old tensions. Something that let him keep his grip on the Arden name and the neighborhood it still controlled.

But I was done playing the pawn.

Done being the placeholder wife with bite marks and bruises tucked beneath my sleeves.

The question now was: how do you trick a man like Luke into signing away the last piece of control he has over you?

That question kept me up the night before. But not anymore. Now I had a plan. A clean, quiet, legally binding escape hatch with just enough teeth.

I slid the papers aside and sank into the armchair by the front window. The breeze through the half-open curtain smelled like rain and motor oil.

And for the first time in a long time… I let myself remember a version of Luke I knew before we were married. A version I actually once even had a crush on.

It was five years ago, two years before he forced this marriage upon me. Spring party season. The kind of warm, tequila-soaked night where everyone laughed too loud and drank too much.

Luke had thrown a party at his place—more like a flex, really. Members from multiple chapters showed up. Half-naked girls leaning over the pool table. Music blasting. Red Solo cups multiplying like roaches.

I wasn’t drinking. Wasn’t mingling either. Just slipped outside for a minute of air conditioning and quiet.

That’s when I saw him.

Not in the party. Not in the crowd.

Outside. Alone. Pacing the far edge of the pool, shirt unbuttoned, a bottle in one hand, phone in the other.

His voice was raised—arguing with someone. I couldn’t hear what. But he was pissed. Animated. Drunk. His feet tangled with a pool float someone had left by the edge. He stumbled—

—and vanished.

One second he was upright. The next? Gone.

The splash was deafening.

I ran.

By the time I reached the water, he wasn’t moving. Face-up, eyes open—but unfocused. There was blood at his hairline where he must’ve hit the edge going in.

I dove without thinking. Shoes still on. Dress still dry. I just hit the water and hauled him out with everything I had.

He was heavy. So damn heavy.

I got him to the concrete. Checked his breathing. Pulse was slow, but there. He groaned once, still dazed.

“Hold on,” I whispered, coughing up chlorinated water. “I’ll get help.”

I ran for the back door.

But it was locked.

No one heard me pounding over the music, so I bolted to go around the house to the front door. As I reached the corner of the house to round to the side…

She was already there.

Cassandra.

Kneeling beside him, putting on a show. Stroking his wet hair, calling out his name like some concerned angel. And just behind her, someone else came along watching the scene with wide eyes.

“She saved him,” they said.

And she didn’t correct them.

Not once.

I saw the moment she realized she could own it. That the story already suited her better.

I just stood there.

Soaking wet. Shaking. Forgotten.

And then I left.

I got in my car and drove home in silence. Never said a word.

Now, five years later, I stared down at the papers in my lap.

And she’s been using that moment ever since—leveraging it for power, for sympathy, for access.

Letting him think he owed her his life.

But I’m the one who pulled him out of the water. I’m the one who checked for his pulse. I’m the one who ran for help.

And she—like always—just stepped into my silence and made it hers.

The thing is, I didn’t save Luke that night because I loved him.

I saved him because I could. Because I was there. Because no one else would have.

But I never imagined the man I once had a crush on would turn into the monster I’ve come to know after getting married to him.

Rebecca told me once, “Sometimes the only way out… is through.”

And I thought I could survive through.

I was wrong.

That night, I made my move.

I went to the desk in the back office and pulled out the papers Luke was expecting. Club logistics, shipment schedules, end-of-quarter balances. All the shit I’d handled quietly for the past three years.

I printed the summary. Slid a few vendor receipts in behind. Neatly aligned the pages.

And then… I slipped the last page of the divorce petition right in the middle.

No header. No bold text. Just a clean signature line. A date.

And one little yellow sticky flag—like the dozens I’d used before. Routine. Familiar. Unnoticed.

He wouldn’t read it. He never did.

He’d sign it. He always did.

And this time, it wouldn’t just be a club doc or a logistics report.

It would be my freedom.

The end of his ownership.

The beginning of mine.