Chapter 3: Claimed in Crimson
The red bandana was a noose and a lifeline.
It lived around Anaijiah’s neck for three days, a rough, cotton confession against her skin. She wore it high, like a choker, hiding the fading bruise from Nevaieh’s teeth. It scratched when she swallowed. It itched in the sterile environment of the shop. Every time she caught sight of herself in the mirror—her ginger curls, her gold piercings, the stark red at her throat—a shiver, equal parts dread and possession, would crawl down her spine. She belonged. To what, she wasn’t entirely sure. To danger. To a woman who ruled shadows. To her own ruinous desire.
Kayla noticed immediately, of course. Her eyes tracked to the bandana the next morning, her face tightening into a mask of cold fury. She said nothing. The silence between them became a third entity in the shop, a wall of ice through which only necessary, work-related words could pass.
Dove just looked scared. She’d flinch whenever the bell on the door chimed, her eyes darting to the entrance like a hunted animal. She worked slower, her usually steady hand for shading becoming hesitant, wobbly.
“You’re pressing too hard,” Anaijiah said softly, looking over Dove’s shoulder at the intricate dragon wing she was shading on a client’s back. “Relax your wrist. Let the needle do the work.”
Dove jumped at the sound of her voice. “Sorry.” She took a breath, her shoulders slumped. “I just… I keep thinking about that guy who came in. The one with the envelope.”
Anaijiah’s hand instinctively went to the bandana at her neck, her fingers tracing the knot. “Don’t think about him. Focus on the line.”
But thinking was all Anaijiah could do. The memory of the viaduct played on a loop behind her eyes. The cold pillar. The taste of herself on Nevaieh’s fingers. The words, “I’m yours,” hanging in the damp air, true and terrible. She moved through her appointments—a cover-up of an ex’s name, a delicate sleeve of cherry blossoms—with a detached professionalism. Her hands were steady, her lines crisp, but inside, she was a churning sea.
The summons came again on the fourth day. Not an envelope. A client.
A young man walked in, his movements too fluid, his eyes missing nothing. He had the same flat, businesslike gaze as the messenger. He wasn’t there for art. He sat in Anaijiah’s chair and rolled up his sleeve, revealing a fresh, inflamed tattoo. It was cheap jailhouse work, a blurry, infected dagger.
“Needs a cover-up,” he said, his voice low. “Something better.”
Anaijiah examined it, her artist’s mind noting the poor technique, the early signs of sepsis. “This is infected. You need a doctor, not me.”
He didn’t blink. “She said you’d fix it.”
The words hung in the air. She. The shop’s background hum—the buzz of Kayla’s piercing gun, the soft rock from the speakers—seemed to drop away. Anaijiah met his gaze. There was no request here. It was a test. A directive. She looked at the ruined skin, the challenge in his eyes. Refusal wasn’t an option. Not with the red cotton around her neck.
“I can cover it,” she said, her voice hollow. “But I’m not a doctor. You need antibiotics.”
“Just do the art,” he said, leaning back. A faint smile touched his lips. “She wants to see what you can do.”
So Anaijiah worked. She sterilized, she outlined, she shaded. She transformed the shoddy dagger into a magnificent, sprawling panther head, its mouth open in a silent roar, greenery and shadow obscuring the old mistakes. She worked in a focused silence, the man watching her with an unnerving stillness. When she was done, wiping the excess ink from the vibrant new piece, he nodded, approving.
“She’ll like that,” he said, rolling down his sleeve without paying. He stood, pulled a folded stack of bills from his pocket, and laid it on the workstation. It was far more than the price listed on the wall. “For your discretion,” he said, and left.
Kayla appeared at the curtain to Anaijiah’s booth, her face pale. “You know who that was.”
“He was a client,” Anaijiah said, methodically cleaning her station, her back to Kayla.
“Bullshit! He’s one of hers. You took his money. You’re… you’re laundering it now? Or what?” Kayla’s voice trembled with rage. “You have that fucking thing around your neck. You let her mark you. What’s next, Anaijiah? Running packages? Hiding guns in the supply closet?”
Anaijiah whirled around. “What do you want me to do, Kayla? Huh? Tell the police? You think they care about some shitty cover-up? You think they’ll protect us when she decides to burn this place to the ground with us in it?” Her voice cracked. “I’m keeping the doors open. I’m keeping you safe.”
“By becoming her fucking pet?” Kayla shot back, tears in her eyes now. “I didn’t follow you from Miami to watch you get collared by some… some gangster bitch who gets off on playing with her food!”
The slap was instinctive. Anaijiah’s hand flashed out, connecting with Kayla’s cheek with a sharp crack. The sound echoed in the small booth.
Silence, thick and suffocating, descended. Dove had appeared behind Kayla, her hands clamped over her mouth, eyes wide with horror.
Kayla didn’t raise a hand to her stinging cheek. She just stared at Anaijiah, betrayal etched into every line of her face. “There you are,” she whispered, her voice cold and final. “That’s her. That’s who you belong to now.”
She turned, grabbed her jacket, and walked out. The bell on the door jingled merrily behind her.
Anaijiah stood rooted, her hand throbbing. The fury drained as quickly as it had come, leaving a vast, cold emptiness. Dove was crying softly in the doorway. The panther on the man’s arm seemed to snarl from the memory.
Night fell. The shop was empty, dark, haunted by the day’s ghost. Anaijiah hadn’t moved from her stool for hours. The red bandana felt like it was strangling her. She wanted to rip it off, burn it. She wanted to press it to her face and breathe in the fading scent of Nevaieh’s skin. The contradiction was a sickness in her gut.
The back door, the one used for supply deliveries, clicked open.
No one used that door after hours.
Anaijiah didn’t turn. She knew. The air in the room changed, grew heavier, charged. She heard the soft thud of the door closing, the click of the lock engaging. Footsteps, deliberate and unhurried, crossed the polished concrete floor.
Nevaieh stopped behind her. Anaijiah could see her reflection, distorted, in the dark screen of her tattoo machine. She was dressed in black again, the red bandana missing from her person. It was here, around Anaijiah’s neck.
“She left you,” Nevaieh stated. Her voice was quiet in the empty shop.
“You’re watching.” It wasn’t a question.
“I own the street. I see what happens on it.” Nevaieh’s hands came to rest on Anaijiah’s shoulders. They were warm, heavy. “You hit her. For me.”
“I hit her because she doesn’t understand,” Anaijiah said, her voice trembling.
“She understands perfectly.” Nevaieh’s fingers began to knead the tense muscles of Anaijiah’s shoulders. “She knows you’ve chosen a side. It just isn’t hers.” Her thumbs dug into a knot of tension, making Anaijiah gasp. “This is the cost. You think power is free? It’s paid for in blood and broken loyalties.”
Her hands slid down Anaijiah’s arms, then around her waist, pulling her back flush against her body. Anaijiah leaned into the solid warmth, her head falling back against Nevaieh’s shoulder. She was so tired. So empty.
Nevaieh’s mouth found the sensitive spot beneath her ear. “You did good work today,” she murmured, her lips moving against Anaijiah’s skin. “The panther. It’s fierce. Like you pretend to be.”
One hand slipped under Anaijiah’s shirt, calloused palms skimming up her stomach to cup her breast, thumb flicking over the gold ring piercing her nipple through the fabric of her bra. A sharp, electric jolt of pleasure-pain shot through her. She whimpered.
“Shhh,” Nevaieh soothed, her other hand moving to the waistband of Anaijiah’s jeans. “You don’t have to pretend with me. I know exactly what you are.”
The button popped open. The zpper hissed down. Nevaieh’s hand dove inside, past her panties, fingers seeking and finding her wet and ready without a single caress. Anaijiah cried out, her hips bucking against the invasive touch.
“See?” Nevaieh whispered, her teeth grazing Anaijiah’s earlobe. “Your body knows the truth. It knows who it answers to.” She pushed two fingers inside, a harsh, claiming thrust. “All that fight, all that ‘fierce independence’…” she curled her fingers, hitting a spot that made Anaijiah’s vision blur, “…it’s just decoration. Underneath, you’re just this.” She scissored her fingers, stretching her. “A hungry, desperate cunt waiting to be owned.”
The crude words, the brutal penetration, the undeniable truth of them, shattered the last of Anaijiah’s resistance. A sob ripped from her throat, part shame, part utter relief. She let her head loll back against Nevaieh, giving up all control, all pretense.
“Yes,” she breathed.
Nevaieh turned her roughly, spinning Anaijiah to face her. Her eyes were black pits of want. “On the table,” she commanded, nodding toward the stainless steel workstation where, hours before, Anaijiah had transformed a dagger into a panther.
Anaijiah scrambled onto it, the cold metal seeping through her jeans. Nevaieh stepped between her spread knees, her hands rough as she yanked Anaijiah’s jeans and panties down to her thighs. The air was cool on her exposed skin. She was utterly vulnerable, splayed on her own professional altar.
Nevaieh didn’t undress. She merely unbuckled her belt, opened her own jeans, and shoved them down just enough. What she produced wasn’t her fingers this time. It was a strap, thick and silicone, already gleaming with a slick sheen in the low light from the exit sign.
Anaijiah’s breath hitched. She’d never… not like this. The reality of it, the clinical, tool-like nature of it, was terrifying. It was a weapon.
Nevaieh saw the fear in her eyes and smiled, a cold, beautiful thing. “This is what you wanted,” she said, her voice guttural. “You wanted to be taken. Owned. Fucked like property.” She leaned over, bracing one hand on the table by Anaijiah’s head, and used the other to guide the blunt, unyielding tip of the strap against her. “This will remind you every time you sit down for the next two days.”
She didn’t wait. She didn’t ask. She pushed.
The stretch was brutal, immense. Anaijiah screamed, a raw, ragged sound that echoed off the shop’s tiled walls. It was too much, a burning, tearing invasion. She threw her head back, her spine arching, her fingers scrambling for purchase on the slick steel table.
Nevaieh didn’t stop. She sheathed herself fully in one relentless thrust, bottoming out inside her. She stayed there, buried to the hilt, her body pressed against Anaijiah’s, her breath hot on her neck. “Breathe,” she commanded.
Anaijiah sucked in a shuddering gasp. The pain was subsiding, melting into a deep, impossible fullness that bordered on obscene. She was stuffed, split open, impaled.
Then Nevaieh moved.
It was nothing like before. This was not about pleasure. This was about conquest. Each withdrawal was a cruel tease, each drive back in a punishing, re-claiming slam. The table rattled with the force of it. Anaijiah’s moans were choked, desperate things, torn from her with every impact. She wrapped her legs around Nevaieh’s hips, trying to control the rhythm, to find an angle that lessened the jarring, overwhelming sensation, but Nevaieh batted them away, pinning her knees wider apart.
“You don’t control this,” Nevaieh grunted, her own rhythm breaking, becoming erratic, animalistic. Sweat gleamed on her forehead. “You just take it. You take what I give you.”
She was hitting a place now, a deep, forbidden spot with each thrust that sent searing sparks through Anaijiah’s core. The pain had transmuted into a feverish, blinding need. She was close, hurtling toward a climax that felt like annihilation.
Nevaieh’s hand slipped between them, her thumb finding Anaijiah’s clit, rubbing rough, fast circles. “Come,” she snarled, her thrusts becoming brutal, jackhammer slams. “Come on my cock. Let everyone know what you are.”
The command, the crude words, the impossible fullness tipped her over the edge. Her orgasm wasn’t a wave; it was a detonation. It erupted from that deep, punished place, a convulsive, screaming release that locked her muscles and tore a wordless shriek from her throat. She saw white light, then nothing, her consciousness fragmenting under the sheer force of it.
When she came back to herself, Nevaieh was still moving inside her, slower now, drawing out the last, fluttering pulses. She leaned down, capturing Anaijiah’s mouth in a kiss that tasted of salt and violence. Then she slowly withdrew.
The emptiness was profound, a sudden, shocking loss. Anaijiah lay on the table, utterly spent, a trickle of something warm sliding down her inner thigh. Her body felt used, rearranged.
Nevaieh attended to herself with swift, practical movements, then gently pulled Anaijiah’s clothes back into place. She looked down at her, her expression unreadable. She reached out and touched the red bandana still tied around Anaijiah’s neck, adjusting it slightly.
“She won’t be back,” Nevaieh said, her voice now flat, devoid of the earlier heat. “Your friend. The one you hit. She’s gone.”
Anaijiah knew it was true. The finality of it was a stone in her chest.
Nevaieh turned to leave, then paused at the door to the back alley. She looked back, her figure a silhouette against the dark rectangle of night. “The shop is yours. No one will touch it.” A beat of silence. “You have one foot in my world now, Anaijiah. Sooner or later, you’ll have to decide if you’re going to put the other one down.”
She left, the door clicking shut softly behind her.
Anaijiah lay on the cold steel table, staring at the ceiling tiles. The smell of sex and antiseptic hung in the air. Her body ached in ways she’d never known. The red bandana scratched her throat.
Outside, a car started and pulled away.
She was alone. Truly, completely alone. Kayla was gone. Dove was probably packing. The shop, her dream, was now a gilded cage, protected by the very force that was stripping her apart.
She pushed herself up, wincing at the deep, throbbing ache between her legs. She swung her legs over the side of the table, her feet hitting the floor. She stood, her legs shaky, and walked to the large mirror on the wall.
The woman staring back was a stranger. Her hair was wild, her makeup smudged. Her eyes held a hollow, haunted look. And around her neck, bright as a fresh wound
Her reflection showed the smeared remnants of the woman she’d been in Miami. The hollow eyes were new. She untied the bandana, the red cotton gritty from concrete dust and sweat. For a long moment, she held it, feeling its weight. Then, with deliberate slowness, she tied it back on.
She slept on the couch in the back room, a deep, dreamless crash. The ache between her legs was a constant, sore reminder. Dawn’s gray light filtered through the barred window when she heard the tentative click of the front door. Dove’s voice, small and scared, called out. “Ana?”
“In the back.”
Dove appeared, holding two paper cups of coffee. She looked like she hadn’t slept either. She set one cup on the low table near the couch and sat on a rolling stool, her knees pulled to her chest. She didn’t mention the bandana. “Kayla texted me,” Dove said softly. “She’s at her cousin’s. She’s not coming back.”
“I know.” Anaijiah’s voice was raspy.
“She said… she said you’ve chosen your side.” Dove’s eyes were wide, liquid with fear and confusion. “What side, Ana? There’s just us. There’s just the shop.”
Anaijiah sipped the coffee. It was bitter, cheap. Perfect. “It’s not a side, Dove. Not like that.” She took a deep breath. The truth felt like shards of glass in her throat. “Nevaieh… she’s not making me join her crew. She doesn’t want me running corners or holding bags.” She met Dove’s gaze. “She wants me. The way a collector wants a one-of-a-kind piece. She protects what she owns.”
Dove absorbed this, her brow furrowed. “Owns?”
“Yeah.” The word was ugly and true. “And I…” Anaijiah looked away, out the dirty window. “I fucking like it, Dove. I like the way she wants me. I like the danger of it. I like how strong it makes me feel to be wanted by something that strong.” She shook her head, a dry laugh escaping. “It’s twisted. It’s sick. But it’s real. It’s the most real thing I’ve felt since we got here.”
“She hurts you,” Dove whispered.
“It’s a different kind of hurt.” Anaijiah’s fingers traced the edge of the bandana. “It’s a hurt I choose. It’s a trade. My autonomy for… for protection. For a power boost. For this fucking shop to stay standing.” She leaned forward, her voice urgent. “You think guys come in here and respect us because we’re good? Some do. But out there?” She jerked her head toward the street. “Respect is bought with fear. Nevaieh’s fear covers us like a blanket now. That’s the deal.”
Dove was silent for a long time. She sipped her coffee. “Are you… are you in love with her?”
Anaijiah snorted. “Love? No. It’s not that. It’s darker. It’s hungrier.” She stood up, wincing at the soreness. “I need you to text Kayla. Ask her to come. Just hear me out. If she says no… then she says no.”
Kayla arrived an hour later, her face a closed door. She stood just inside the shop, arms crossed, not removing her jacket. Dove hovered near the piercing booth, a silent witness.
“You hit me,” Kayla said flatly.
“I did.” Anaijiah didn’t look away. “I was angry and scared and you were right. About everything.” She took a step closer. “But you were wrong about one thing. I’m not her pet. I’m not running drugs for her. She doesn’t give a shit about the business. She cares about me. As a thing. A possession. A trophy.”
“That’s supposed to be better?” Kayla’s laugh was bitter.
“It is! Because it’s contained. It’s just between her and me. The shop is safe because I’m her… her special project.” The phrase felt both degrading and powerful. “She protects what’s hers. And right now, she’s decided I’m hers.”
“So we’re safe because you’re some gang leader’s fuck-toy?” Kayla spat.
The crude term hung in the air. Anaijiah flinched but held her ground. “Yes. That’s exactly it. And I’m telling you I’m okay with that. I like it. I like the weight of it. I like walking down the street knowing that look in men’s eyes isn’t just lust anymore, it’s fear. I earned that. In that fucking alley and on that steel table, I fucking earned that.”
The raw, graphic truth stunned the room into silence. Dove’s hand flew to her mouth. Kayla’s defensive posture softened a fraction, replaced by a dawning, horrified understanding.
“You’re choosing this,” Kayla said, her voice quieter.
“I am. For me. And because it keeps this dream alive.” Anaijiah gestured around the shop. “No one will vandalize us. No one will shake us down. Our suppliers will suddenly find their courage again. We can work. We can build. We can be artists here. The cost is my neck.” She touched the bandana. “And what happens behind closed doors between her and me.”
Kayla looked down at her shoes for a full minute. When she looked up, her eyes were shiny. “I’m sorry,” she said, the words thick. “I shouldn’t have left. I was scared. For you. For us.”
“You had every right,” Anaijiah said, her own throat tight. “I scared me too.”
“So what now?” Dove asked, her voice small.
“Now,” Anaijiah said, squaring her shoulders, the weight of the bandana feeling less like a noose and more like armor, “we open the shop. We do our jobs. And I figure out what it means to have one foot in her world.” She looked at Kayla, a tentative bridge extending in her gaze. “With my crew. If you’ll still have me.”
Kayla wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, a rough, angry gesture. “You’re a fucking idiot.” She let out a shaky breath. “But you’re our idiot.” She finally took off her jacket, hanging it on the hook by the door. A return. “Just… be careful, Ana. That kind of fire, you get too close, you don’t get burned. You get consumed.”
The bell jingled. All three women jumped.
It was just a middle-aged woman with a photo, asking about a portrait tattoo of her dog. The normalcy of it was jarring, beautiful. Anaijiah took the photo with a smile that felt genuine for the first time in days. As she consulted with the client, she felt Kayla’s eyes on her back, watching, worrying.
But she was there.
Later, as Anaijiah prepped her station, her phone buzzed in her back pocket. A single, unknown number flashed on the screen. No message. Just a location pin: a warehouse district by the river. And a time: Midnight.
Her heart slammed against her ribs, a frantic bird in a cage. The soreness between her legs pulsed in a dull, answering throb.
She slid the phone back into her pocket, her fingers brushing the red cotton at her neck. She picked up her tattoo machine, the buzz a comforting, familiar song.