Chapter 3 #2
I know better than to romanticize a stranger in a club.
I’m not stupid, even if everyone here occasionally treats me like I am.
He didn’t know me. He didn’t see my childhood or my grief or the ledger-shaped hole where my place in the Rogues should’ve been.
But for a little while, he saw the part of me I’ve spent years hiding in plain sight, and he didn’t flinch.
That shouldn’t matter as much as it does.
I stack the Obsidian folder with the rest and shut down my laptop.
My apartment is three blocks away, and every practical part of me wants to go home, lock the door, crawl under a blanket, and pretend I don’t know my sister is being traded into an alliance like a crown jewel.
Instead, I gather the folders into my arms because Canon will want them tonight, and if he has to ask where they are, the inconvenience will somehow become my fault.
The clubhouse reveals itself the moment I head down the stairs.
Smoke hangs under the lights in a gray film.
Men crowd the bar in cuts and leather, their voices rough with whiskey and the kind of confidence that comes from never wondering whether a room was built for them.
The whole place smells like beer, sweat, gun oil, and wet denim.
I move through it, body angled slightly to avoid shoulders, eyes lowered just enough not to invite conversation.
Nobody stops me. A few men glance over and away again once they realize it’s just me.
Canon’s son, but not the one anybody worries about.
The bookkeeper. The soft one. The one they learned to file under necessary and harmless.
By the time I reach the staircase to the private offices, Varina’s voice is already cutting through the hallway above.
“Tell him yourself.”
I frown, slightly curious. Canon says something too low for me to catch.
Varina lets out a laugh with no humor in it. “That’s exactly the fucking problem.”
Every instinct I have says to leave the folders outside the door and disappear before whatever fight is happening decides to include me. But Canon hates people hovering in hallways almost as much as he hates being interrupted, and I’m already close enough that retreating would look like fear.
So I climb the rest of the stairs and knock twice before stepping inside.
Canon’s office is dim except for the desk lamp, which throws warm light across scarred oak, old smoke, and the framed newspaper clippings lining the walls.
The Rogues appear in most of them only as rumor or implication, which is how Canon prefers it.
Suspected. Questioned. Never convicted. His whole life arranged as proof that power is only useful if nobody can quite pin it down.
He doesn’t look up when I enter. “Leave it.”
I cross to the filing tray and set the folders down in the order he likes.
“Actually, stay.”
Fuck.
Varina is stretched across the cracked leather couch by the window, one boot braced against the coffee table while she rolls a glass of whiskey between both hands.
She looks furious in a contained way, which is worse than when she yells.
She glances at me once, and whatever I see in her expression is gone before I can name it.
Canon leans back in his chair and studies me with the detached patience of a man deciding how much information something deserves.
My father has the kind of face people survive instead of forget: broad, weathered, silver coming through the dark of his beard, eyes cold enough to make grown men rethink their decisions halfway through speaking.
He built the Rogues from almost nothing, and he’s spent the rest of his life making sure nobody forgets that.
“Alliance goes live next week,” he says.
I keep my face still. “With Obsidian.”
His eyes narrow a fraction, not because he’s surprised, I know, but because he’s deciding whether to be annoyed by it. “You saw the paperwork.”
“You gave me the financials.”
“I gave you numbers,” he says. “Not opinions.”
I lower my gaze because that’s usually the safest place to put it around him. “I didn’t offer one.”
Varina snorts softly into her glass, but Canon ignores her.
“Obsidian needs bodies for corridor security,” he says.
“We need revenue. Their XR3 pipeline is expanding faster than they can protect it, and our last two runs got hit hard enough that pretending otherwise would be stupid. We give them enforcement, they give us a cut of distribution and access to their network. Everybody gets stronger.”
Everybody except whoever has to be turned into the symbol holding it together, but I don’t say that. Canon’s attention shifts toward Varina for half a second. “Your sister will represent the Rogues on-site.”
Varina’s jaw tightens, but she says nothing.
“She’ll step up publicly as my heir for alliance purposes,” Canon continues. “The Obsidian table needs to know they’re dealing with our future, not just a temporary arrangement.”
I already know where this is going because I read the file, but hearing it out loud makes the room feel smaller.
“She’ll marry into Obsidian,” Canon says. “That seals it.”
I look at my sister before I can stop myself. She doesn’t look back this time. Her eyes are fixed on the opposite wall with so much hatred in them I almost feel sorry for the plaster.
Canon continues like he hasn’t just rearranged her life in one sentence. “You’ll go with her.”
My stomach drops.
“For logistics,” he adds. “Obsidian’s operation is larger and cleaner than ours.
More structure, more money, more risk. They need somebody who understands movement, books, inventory, and route coordination without needing every number explained twice.
You’ll keep your head down, follow Varina’s lead, and make yourself useful. ”
Useful. The word is so familiar that it should be dull by now, but it still finds soft places to cut. Not trusted. Not valued. Not chosen. Useful, the way duct tape is useful, the way spare keys are useful, the way something kept in a drawer becomes useful when somebody else has a problem to solve.
Canon reaches for the cigar cutter on his desk, turning it once between thick fingers.
“You’ll stay out of political conversations unless someone speaks to you directly.
You’ll handle ledgers, route assessments, supply coordination, and whatever else Varina needs.
Obsidian’s VP controls most of the XR3 infrastructure, so when he gives you instructions, you follow them. ”
Saint Solomon Masters.
Everybody knows the name, even people who pretend they’re too important to pay attention to other clubs. Sol’s son. Obsidian’s monster. The man people describe with a lowered voice and a careful glance toward the nearest door, as if saying his name too casually might make him appear.
I’ve never met him, but the thought of being handed from Canon’s authority to another man’s makes something bitter rise in my throat.
Varina drains the rest of her whiskey in one swallow. “Can we be done with this?”
Canon doesn’t look at her. “We’re done when I say we’re done.”
Her mouth curves up into a sharp, humorless smile. “Of course we are.”
The air between them is ugly enough that I almost disappear out of habit. Stand still. Stay quiet. Let the storm pass around me. I know how to do that better than almost anything. Then Canon looks back at me.
“Do not embarrass this club,” he says.
Something inside me twists at the command.
I’ve never once done anything to make him think I would, but I’m over it.
Maybe it’s just that I’m twenty-seven years old and still standing in front of my father waiting to be told what shape I’m allowed to take.
Whatever it is, it slips loose before I can stop it.
“I’m not your fucking pet.”
My sister goes completely still as Canon’s eyes lift to mine very slowly, and the child in me recognizes the danger before the man in me can pretend not to.
I’ve seen that look end arguments. I’ve seen men twice my size stumble over apologies when he turns it on them.
Every instinct I have tells me to take the words back and make myself small enough to survive the room.
But I’ve already started, and for once, disappearing feels worse than being hit.
“You don’t get to move me around whenever it suits the club,” I tell him, my voice quieter now, but it doesn’t break. “I’m not furniture. I’m not some extra piece you send along with Varina because the real heir needs someone to keep the files organized.”
Varina mutters my name under her breath, half warning and half plea.
My father just stands, unhurriedly, rounds the desk and stops in front of me, close enough that I can smell cigar smoke and whiskey and the leather of his cut. Even now, grown and patched and technically a man, my body still remembers being a boy under that stare.
His voice stays calm. “You’ll be whatever the Rogues need you to be.
” A chuckle bubbles up from his throat. “You think I care whether you like it?” he asks.
“This club fed you. Protected you. Put a patch on your back when plenty of men said you didn’t deserve one.
You don’t get to grow a spine now because your feelings are bruised. ”
Heat climbs my neck and face so fast my eyes sting with humiliation because some awful, starving part of me still wants him to look at me and see more than an obligation he found a use for.
Canon leans closer. “You’re not Varina. You were never going to lead this club. That doesn’t mean you’re useless. It means your value is elsewhere, so stop acting like a spoiled fucking child and do your job.”
The room blurs at the edges, just enough that I have to focus on the lamp behind Canon’s shoulder and the soft amber ring it casts across the wall. “I understand.”
Canon steps back immediately, already finished with me now that compliance has been restored. “Good. You’ll have the updated files ready before the meet. Varina will brief you on anything else you need.”
Varina’s expression hardens at being dragged back into it, but she still doesn’t speak.
I turn before either of them can read whatever is happening on my face and head outside, attempting to disappear from this fucking place. Canon’s words follow me.
You’re not Varina.
You were never going to lead this club.
The worst part is that he’s right. I don’t want what Varina wants.
I don’t want men to move because they fear me.
I don’t want a room to go quiet when I walk into it, and I don’t want power badly enough to carve myself into something brutal just to hold it.
What I want is smaller than that, softer than that, and somehow more impossible because I don’t even know how to say it without sounding pathetic.
I want to be seen without being corrected.
I want to be wanted without being useful first.
I think about Varina, trapped into a marriage she didn’t choose because she’s valuable enough to trade.
I think about myself, sent along behind her because I’m useful enough to include but not important enough to ask.
Then I think about him again.
I try not to, but the memory rises anyway, warm and humiliating and impossible to kill.
That stranger’s voice. His certainty. The way his attention had wrapped around me until the rest of the world went quiet.
I don’t let myself replay the details because that way lies stupidity, but I remember how it felt afterward, standing in the wreckage of my own want with my heart beating too hard and my whole body gone loose with a kind of peace I didn’t know I was allowed to have.
I’d spent years making myself smaller so men like Canon wouldn’t notice the wrong things about me.
That night, someone noticed them and wanted more.
I know I won’t go back to the club.
I can’t.
One night can be buried. Two becomes a habit.
A habit becomes a pattern, and patterns get noticed.
If Canon ever found out how I spend my nights when I’m desperate enough to become honest, whatever fragile place I still have inside the Rogues would vanish.
Varina would look at me differently. The men downstairs would laugh until laughter became permission.
My father wouldn’t rage, which would almost be easier.
He’d just stare at me with that same flat disappointment and decide, finally, that usefulness has limits.
So I won’t go back.
But God help me, I miss the way he made me feel.