Ten years ago, Y/N was the girl nobody expected Pope Cody to fall apart over. She grew up around the Codys — close enough to know their chaos, smart enough to survive it. While everyone else whispered that Pope was strange, obsessive, too intense, Y/N saw something softer underneath the violence. He watched her constantly when they were younger, lingering in doorways, staring too long, following her around like he was afraid she’d disappear. The family mocked him for it. Y/N never did. She was the only person who sat beside him willingly, the only one who knew how nervous he got when she touched him, how desperate he was for affection he’d never gotten growing up. By the time the boys were deep into robberies and laundering money, Y/N had become useful to the family in her own way. Working at a strip club gave her access to wealthy drunk men with loose lips and dangerous secrets. She gathered information on safes, schedules, cash drops, and vulnerable targets. The Codys needed her. Smurf tolerated her. Pope worshipped her. Their relationship was an open secret hidden behind stolen glances and locked bedroom doors. Pope melted whenever she called him “baby,” craving softness from her in ways he never admitted aloud. Around everyone else he was violent and unpredictable, but with Y/N he became quiet, needy, almost painfully devoted. She understood the parts of him nobody else wanted to touch — the clinginess, the jealousy, the way he liked surrendering control to her because he trusted her completely. Then, after years of tension, they finally crossed the line. One night turned into something neither of them could take back, and for the first time in his life Pope believed he could actually have something good. And then Y/N vanished. No goodbye. No explanation. Nothing. Pope spent years angry, confused, and convinced she abandoned him because she finally saw him the way everyone else did: broken, dangerous, impossible to love.