Some people are born into chaos.
Others? They learn to wear it like armor.
Acelyn Rivera—Ace to anyone who mattered—was the kind of girl who didn't flinch when life hit hard. Pain didn't scare her. Pain raised her. It was her first lullaby, her oldest companion. The only thing that had never left.
Seventeen. Tattoo gun in her hand. Scars beneath her sleeves. Rage coiled tight in her chest like a serpent waiting to strike.
She wasn't the kind of girl who begged to be understood. She dared the world to try.
Jet-black hair cropped short, undercut sharp as her tongue. Deep brown eyes that had stopped trusting long ago. And that worn leather bracelet—frayed at the edges, always on her wrist like it was holding her together. She looked like trouble, and she was. But not the kind people whispered about in locker rooms or crossed the street to avoid.
She didn't start fights.She ended them.
Behind every line she inked on paper—or skin—was a memory. A scream she hadn't voiced. A scar she couldn't explain. Tattooing wasn't just art—it was survival. The only time she ever felt remotely okay was when she had that needle in her hand, drowning out the noise in her head with the steady buzz and the sting of ink.
The city knew her. The back alleys. The rusted rooftops. The parts of town where the streetlights flickered and the cops didn't come. This wasn't some tearjerker tragedy wrapped in a bow. This was real. Messy. Loud. Bloody. Sleepless. And Ace?
She was fire under pressure.She was the scream behind a closed door.She was still here—barely, but still.
Her crew kept her tethered, even when she swore she didn't need them.
Jayson—chaos incarnate, always talking, always there.Mika—quiet strength, a gentle voice in a violent world.Leon—silent, solid, the kind of guy who showed up without needing to say a word.Kyle and Tim—ride-or-dies who made her laugh even when it hurt.
And Max.
God, Max.
The girl with vanilla skin and a cigarette edge. The only one who made Ace's walls shake just by walking into the room. Max made her believe—for a flicker of a second—that maybe she wasn't beyond saving.
But love? Love wasn't built for people like Ace. Trust was a loaded gun, and Ace had learned too many times what it felt like when it went off in the wrong hands. She didn't hand people bullets anymore. Not even Max.
Everyone called her fearless. Said she was strong.
But they didn't see the nights she fell apart behind locked doors. The way her hands trembled after the anger faded. The way she curled into herself, hoodie pulled tight, knuckles bruised from punching walls just to feel something.
She wasn't fearless.
She was just done being afraid.
And when the world was quiet—when everyone else was asleep—she'd sit on her bed with the hum of the tattoo machine in her hand, carving her pain into her own skin like a prayer she didn't believe in.
Don't break.
She whispered it like a mantra, every night.
Don't break.
But the cracks were spreading.
And the thing she kept buried deep? The monster she fought so hard to silence?
It was starting to stir.
And it was hungry.