Like many bikers, Cain didn't much truck with shrinks and their gibberish. But in this case, he figured she'd pretty well hit the nail on the head.
Cain's father had worked nights as a security guard. Whenever he was home, he was almost always drunk and in a foul temper. Cain didn't necessarily blame him for being sloshed and furious all the time. He could see that his father hated everything about his life—every bad choice he'd made that had led to unwanted kids, an unhappy marriage, a lousy house he couldn't stand living in, and a low-paying job he loathed. Cain reckoned that if he fucked his life up flatter than hammered shit like his old man had, he'd want to spend every waking moment in a booze-soaked haze too, lashing out at anyone within arm's reach.
So he watched, dead-eyed, as his father routinely heaped verbal and physical abuse on his mother. And when Cain got old enough and it was his turn to endure the curses, threats, and smacks, he quietly accepted them.
He didn't feel sorry for his mother, even though he knew he probably should—she had tricked his father into marriage by going off her birth control without saying anything, then surprising him with an unplanned and unwelcome pregnancy. And he didn't feel sorry for himself either, though the anti-abuse posters and public service announcements at his school clearly wanted him to. He mostly felt sorry for his dad, knowing that no amount of yelling or hitting would ever really chip away at the avalanche of anger and self-pity he was buried under.
But on Cain's fourteenth birthday, his father had gotten even drunker than usual and decided to take out his rage on Cain's 5-year-old sister Jill, smacking her in the mouth for interrupting him. Cain went to the garage, picked up a wrench, carried it back to the kitchen, and swung it at his father's head as hard as he could. The heavy tool struck his father squarely in the temple, and he spent the next week and a half in a coma before quietly dying.
Cain was sent to the Hepplewhite Juvenile Correctional Facility. His mother and sister wrote to him many times, but he threw their letters away without reading them. As far as he was concerned, that part of his life was over.
While he was at Hepplewhite, Cain realized that he felt more comfortable in that environment than he had in his own home. The rules were simple. He found that he had an instinctive knowledge of when to stand up and when to back down, when to demand respect and when to show it.
There were plenty of boys there who were older and tougher, but Cain had an aptitude for entering their circles seamlessly, earning their trust and protection. He didn't drink much or do drugs—again, he had no intention of repeating his father's mistakes—but he had no problem helping his new friends smuggle these things in and sell them to the other kids.
During a brief riot his first year there, Cain saved one of the gang leaders from being shanked by a rival, breaking the attacker's jaw in three places and blinding him in one eye. The guards never found out who did it, but from that point forward, Cain was considered one of the most hardcore kids in juvie.
Cain heard about the Blood Eagles from the nephew of one of their members, who he shared a cell with. Every night, he'd listen to stories of hijacking, drug running, wild parties, long rides under a wide-open sky, and other adventures, and he resolved to join them as soon as he got out of Hepplewhite. When he turned 17 and his sentence was up, he set off to make his dream come true.
His cellmate had told him that no one could join the MC without a bike, so he stole his first one. Technically, he stole two—the first had been a canary-yellow Kawasaki, and the Eagles had laughed him out of the clubhouse when he showed up with it, telling him to “steal something American next time.” That night, Cain ditched the noisy Japanese bike, boosted a sleek black Boss Hoss from a roadhouse parking lot, and returned to the Lost Knife defiantly.
Within a year, he was a fully-patched member. Nine years later, he was celebrating his new role as the Eagles' VP when he saw Missy haul Marian out of an overturned port-a-john and beat her like a gong.
Cain had admired that, and it had even given him quite a few lustful thoughts that night which had made it difficult for him to focus on the hot, willing girls who were throwing themselves at him. He'd briefly considered walking over to Missy and tossing a flirt or two her way. But the most he could offer her would be a night or two of no-strings fun, and indulging in something so cheap and tawdry with the sister of the MC's president seemed like something that could lead to trouble later on.
He knew Hunter wouldn't have a problem with Missy dating one of the Eagles—in fact, it seemed like this was what he hoped for, to keep her around the club even more—but he was pretty sure that hope didn't extend to letting MC members pass her around casually like some kind of fuck toy, so he kept his distance.