Den of Vipers

Roxy begins shutting down her bar, Roxers, for the night. As she ponders how to hire more people in her rough neighborhood, four men enter her bar. They try to forcibly take her with them, but Roxy beats them all unconscious with the baseball bat under her bar. One of her only employees, Henry, arrives and helps her drag the men to the back alley. Roxy anonymously calls the cops and goes to bed.

Ryder informs Garrett that the men he sent after Roxy are now in jail. Both are impressed, and Ryder decides they’ll take her personally the next day. Kenzo to review information he’s found on Roxy. Ryder and Kenzo feel an indisputable attraction to her. They discuss who will “have her” first, both agreeing she should be kept away from Diesel since he might kill her. They wonder if Garrett will take an interest in her. As Kenzo leaves, Ryder makes plans to visit the Triad, a rival Chinese criminal group, before taking Roxy with Kenzo and Garrett.

Roxy groggily opens her bar the new morning. Her cook, Cook, agrees to make her breakfast. He comments on how Rich, the bar’s previous owner, would have been proud of her for defending it. Fred, a policeman and acquaintance of Roxy, comes to warn her to lay low, as the four men who’d attacked her have been bailed. He suggests she leave the city, but Roxy chooses to stay, and later that day, another four men who don’t fit with her usual crowd appear in her bar.

That morning, Garrett, Kenzo, and Ryder have a meeting with one of the Triad leaders, as the Triad have been stealing their shipments. Ryder offers them a chance to return their imports, but the meeting devolves, and the Triad leader insults them. Garrett knows Ryder will work to destroy them fully because they dared to insult them. The brothers head to their apartment in their company skyscraper to collect Diesel, who is in the middle of torturing a man. He kills him quickly, and they leave to collect Roxy and settle their debt. As the others debate how they’ll treat her, Garrett knows she’ll be safe from him since he hates women.

When the men arrive, the bar patrons quickly leave, and, sensing danger, Roxy sends Cook home. They introduce themselves as the Vipers, and she understands she’s dealing with the heads of the city’s mafia. Ryder tells her they’ve come to collect on her father’s debt, which infuriates her. Ryder sends Garrett to collect her things in her apartment behind the bar, but she knees him in the groin. She’s about to fight Diesel when he punches her, and she loses consciousness.

Kenzo is impressed that Roxy bested Garrett, the so-called Mad Dog of their group. He goes with Diesel to her apartment and collects as much of her things as he deems necessary. Diesel pockets her underwear. Kenzo spies only one photograph in the apartment, one of Roxy and an older man, and takes it with him. Diesel considers Roxy being violent with him. When they return, Kenzo is surprised to hear Ryder asking for the guest room to be made ready for her since he doubts she’ll survive for very long.

Roxy wakes up in a room she does not recognize. As she replays the events of the day before, she canvases the room and promptly destroys it. Ryder arrives in her room, unimpressed with the mess she’s made, and advises her to get used to belonging to them. She attacks him with a piece of broken mirror, but he stops her, reiterates his suggestion to get used to her new life, and leaves. Alone, Roxy feels trapped, and her mind drifts to childhood memories, where her father would find her in a drunken state and beat her while her mother lay unresponsive from her drug use. She remembers being envious of other children with happy families and soon falls asleep. When she wakes, she stares at the city, shaken from the memory. Diesel appears behind her and asks her what she dreamt about.

Diesel watches as Roxy is having a bad dream. When he calls out to her, she jumps him, and he feels aroused by her violent response. As he pins her down, he promises to have sex with her. He comments on her tattoos, asking if she was aroused from the pain of having them done. When her answer isn’t a denial, he envisions a sadomasochistic relationship with her. He plays with a cut on her hand, just as Garrett arrives and tells him to go play with someone else.

Roxy is left confused by her body’s interest in Diesel while Garrett warns her to stay away from Diesel. She briefly considers fighting Garrett to escape, but she knows she wouldn’t be able to win against him in a proper fight. He treats her wounds with a medical kit. She appeals to him to let her go, but he refuses. After a sleepless night, she resolves to continue fighting against them until she can reclaim her life. Kenzo retrieves her for breakfast. There, Ryder informs her that Kenzo will be watching over her since she cannot be trusted alone. When she asks after her bar, Ryder tells her they might sell or destroy it. She pleads with him not to, and he agrees to keep it running for now. She says they know nothing about her, but Ryder gives a detailed rundown of her whole life. He announces that he’ll be leaving that day, and the next day with Garrett.

Ryder silently appraises Roxy and mentally reviews the information he knows about her, especially as it relates to her childhood, how much of a survivor she is, and how beautiful he finds her. He warns her to behave before leaving for the day, and while he doesn’t know what he’ll do with her, he decides to ignore his interest in her for the time being.

Garrett, Diesel, and Ryder leave, and as Kenzo deals with business, Roxy is left to explore the Vipers’ apartment on her own. She comes across the men’s individual rooms. In Ryder’s room, she shreds his clothing with a pair of scissors. In Garrett’s room, she finds a wedding ring. Before she finds Diesel’s room, Kenzo warns her to stay away from their rooms, offering to play a game with her instead. She declines, as she is suspicious from the dice he plays with constantly and the cards he keeps in his room. He confirms that he controls all the casinos and gambling dens in the city. He wonders aloud why she’s not more scared of them but warns her to stay away from Garrett, who hates women. They watch TV together, and Roxy falls asleep. When she wakes, she asks when the others will return, as she plans to hide from them, Diesel especially. She calls him crazy to Kenzo, which angers him. He tightly informs her that the renovations in her room are finished, and she quickly leaves.

When Garrett and the others return, he notices Roxy’s smell in his room. Infuriated, he feels inexplicably aroused for the first time in years and masturbates to the thought of her. As he steps out of the shower in a towel, Roxy runs to his room and hides behind him because Ryder is furious about his destroyed clothes. Garrett closes the door on Ryder and confronts her. When she asks about all the scars on his chest, he is reminded of another woman and instinctually grabs her by the throat. He threatens to kill her, and Ryder intervenes. Roxy dares him to kill her, and when she’s freed from his grasp, she vows to make them regret taking her. Garrett leaves for the pits, an illegal fighting ring. After a fight, a woman comes on to Garrett, but not only is he repulsed by her, he finds her lacking compared to Roxy. He pushes her away and goes for another fight.

Roxy feels conflicted as she struggles with her need to egg the Vipers on. She tiptoes out of her room and overhears Kenzo worrying about Garrett to Ryder. Ryder believes having Roxy close will help Garrett confront his demons. Kenzo, however, sees their father in Ryder’s machinations and warns him not to end up like him. Upset, Ryder counts to four repeatedly until he calms down. Diesel finds Roxy snooping and promises to punish her for it. She hides in her room, reminding herself not to be attracted to her kidnappers. That morning, Ryder goes shopping, leaving Roxy with Kenzo and Diesel. She has an opportunity to escape and bolts for the stairs when Diesel takes an elevator down. She finds herself in a garage and tries to race her way out with a stolen car—only for a barrier to descend and cut off her exit. Furious, she destroys the car. Kenzo and Diesel appear, with a furious Ryder soon after. Roxy realizes she destroyed Ryder’s car and goads him about it. He threatens to sexually assault her in the elevator, then gives her over to Diesel to deal with before storming off.

Diesel brings Roxy to his dungeon to make her watch as he tortures a man named Declan. Diesel explains Declan tried to kill Garrett. As he cuts Declan with a knife, Diesel tells her the man is a monster who sexually assaulted his stepdaughter. Declan begs for his life. Roxy takes Diesel’s knife and confronts Declan herself, demanding to know the truth and lightly stabbing him for it. When Declan finally says his stepdaughter had “asked for it” (104), she instructs Diesel to do as he likes. Roxy eventually asks Diesel each Viper’s role in the organization. In exchange for the information, Diesel asks for her surrender the part of her that she’s closed up. But as she is visibly troubled, he asks for a kiss instead, which she gives him. Though alarmed at the passion behind the kiss, Roxy listens while he explains how Kenzo controls the finances with all the gambling, Garrett is the enforcer, and Ryder is the face and brains of the company. Diesel then tortures Declan until he dies.