Chapter 4
Saint
Canon Ward has been talking for nearly half an hour, long enough that Moth has checked his watch twice, Bricks has started tapping two fingers against his knee, and the ash on Sol’s cigar has burned down to a stubborn gray inch he hasn’t bothered to knock loose.
My father is sitting at the head of our side of the table with his silence laid out in front of him like another weapon, letting Canon fill the room with all the words men reach for when they’re trying to make need sound like choice.
Across from me, Varina Ward hasn’t touched the glass of water someone put in front of her.
She’s just there with her shoulders squared and her dark hair pulled back from her face, eyes fixed somewhere between my father and hers while Canon talks around her like she’s already been signed over with the corridor routes and revenue percentages.
Her jaw has been locked since the first mention of marriage, but she hasn’t interrupted him once.
That restraint tells me more than her expression does.
Canon thinks he’s offering Obsidian a weapon wrapped in family blood, but Varina looks like someone who’s spent her whole life becoming sharp enough to survive being handed over.
I don’t want her in my house, my bed, my business, or close enough to mistake proximity for influence.
She’ll come into Obsidian with Rogue pride under her nails and Canon’s training in her spine, testing every line she finds because people like her don’t trust boundaries until they’ve made them bleed.
I can already picture the conversation after the ink dries: me telling her which doors stay shut, which rooms she doesn’t enter, which men answer to me no matter what ring sits on her finger.
She can smile when optics require it and stand beside me when the alliance needs proof of unity, but she won’t touch XR3, won’t ask for lab locations, won’t go around Moth, and won’t bring Rogue habits into my clubhouse expecting me to find them charming.
Canon spreads one hand over the contract packet.
“Corridor pressure has increased on both sides. Pretending otherwise would insult everyone at this table. The Rogues have held territory along the eastern routes for eighteen years. We know the roads, the county sheriffs, the bars where loose mouths start moving before men with badges do. Obsidian has product worth protecting. We have bodies built for that work.”
Bricks lets out a low sound that almost becomes a laugh. “That’s a fancy way of saying you need cash.”
One of the Rogues near Canon’s left shoulder shifts forward. Rook, if I’m matching the file to the face correctly. “Watch your mouth.”
Bricks looks at him, a wiry smile creeping onto his face. “Found it just fine.”
“Enough,” Sol grounds out.
Bricks settles back, still smiling, and Rook stays tense until Canon cuts him a sideways look.
The rest of the room breathes around the interruption, every patched man recalculating how far a joke can travel before it becomes an insult worth blood.
I don’t move. I let the Rogues feel how little their tension changes my pulse.
Canon turns his attention back to my father. “We need revenue, and you need security. There’s no shame in a clean exchange.”
“There’s shame in pretending it’s equal,” I say.
The room stills enough for everyone’s breathing to be heard again. Canon’s eyes move to me, irritation tightening the skin around them, and Varina finally looks directly at my face instead of through me. I lean back in my chair and let the silence sit a moment longer than necessary.
Canon says, “That a concern, or are you just getting tired of listening?”
“I was tired ten minutes ago. My concern is whether your men can protect a corridor that’s already leaking.”
Rook’s chair scrapes. “You calling us weak?”
“I’m calling you hit.” My gaze moves across the Rogue side of the table slowly enough to make every man there feel inventoried.
“Three shipments in four months. Two federal seizures. A warehouse fire blamed on wiring because saying sabotage out loud would make your lower ranks nervous. I don’t care about your pride.
I care whether you can keep Obsidian product out of federal evidence lockers. ”
Varina’s interest sharpens as her father’s mouth tightens because he knows I’m right and hates that I’m saying them in front of his people. “You’ve done your homework.”
“Moth did the homework. I read it.”
Moth doesn’t look up from the tablet in front of him. “Their internal losses are consistent with route exposure rather than incompetence. The corridor still has value if we restructure escort patterns, restrict information flow, and limit handoff visibility to designated riders.”
Bricks snorts. “That’s Moth-speak for they’re fucked but useful.”
Varina’s eyes slide to him. “You always let him translate business like a bar fight?”
Her voice is lower than I expected, rougher too, with a controlled edge that’s probably made plenty of men mistake her patience for weakness right before she proved them stupid. Bricks turns his grin on her like he’s found a new toy.
“Only when I’m bored,” he says.
“And are you?”
“Less now.”
The exchange gives me something to measure. Varina doesn’t look away from Bricks until he looks away first, and he only does because Sol taps ash into the tray with one quiet click. She has presence. She has nerve. She’d make a good problem for another man.
Canon clears his throat. “Varina understands the seriousness of this arrangement.”
Varina’s attention cuts to him. “Don’t speak for me like I’m not sitting here.”
The Rogue side goes still in a different way, the kind of stillness family creates when an old argument steps too close to strangers. Canon looks at his daughter for a long second, and something ugly moves behind his eyes before he puts it back under control.
“Then speak,” he says.
Varina sets both hands flat on the table.
“The Rogues need the alliance. Obsidian needs the corridor covered. I’ll do what’s required to keep my club breathing, but I’m not coming into this like a fucking hostage dressed up in white.
If Saint wants a wife who smiles and keeps quiet, he can find someone else to disappoint him. ”
Bricks makes a pleased sound. “I like her.”
I don’t take my eyes off Varina. “I don’t want a wife at all.”
“Great,” she says. “We already have something in common.”
Canon’s face darkens. “Varina.”
“What?” She turns on him, the first true flash of anger breaking through. “You want me honest or decorative?”
Sol’s mouth curves faintly around his cigar, though Canon doesn’t appreciate it. “I want you disciplined.”
“You want me useful,” she says, and the bitterness in that word has teeth.
Something about the word pulls my attention past her shoulder.
A man is back near the wall behind Varina with a folder braced against his chest. I don’t notice him all at once, but in the moment recognition starts as a wrongness at the edge of my vision, a quiet shape that doesn’t match the rest of the room.
Everyone else in here is arranged to be seen.
Presidents at the heads, officers at the table, enforcers at the walls trying to look heavier than the guns under their cuts.
Even Demo, nervous as he is, keeps his chin lifted like posture might turn him into someone older.
This man is positioned differently, close enough behind Varina to pass her documents if she needs them, far enough back to become part of the wall if nobody looks closely.
His stillness isn’t a threat. It’s survival. Then he lifts his head and I catch all too familiar hazel-green eyes.
Recognition punches through my irritation as the memory of the club comes back in pieces.
The worst part is knowing that man gave me something no one else did.
.. the quiet after, the absence of static inside my skull, the strange clean silence that followed me out of that room and made the night air almost breathable.
Sín did that.
This man standing at the back of a Rogue delegation, dressed like support and blushing under my gaze, did that.
My fingers tighten against the edge of the contract before I make them stop. Canon keeps responding to Varina, but his voice moves around me without meaning now. “This alliance doesn’t survive if we walk in acting like children.”
Varina laughs under her breath. “You mean if I do.”
“I mean if anyone forgets what’s at stake.”
“What’s at stake is you need Obsidian’s money.”
“What’s at stake,” Canon snaps, “is the future of this club.”
Their argument keeps the room’s attention forward, which gives me a few seconds to study the man at the wall without everyone noticing the shift.
He’s trying hard not to look at me now, and that tells me as much as the blush.
His gaze lowers to the contract folder, but his face has gone red from the throat up, and his fingers have tightened until one corner of the paper bends.
The last time I saw him, he didn’t know my name.
He knows it now, and the knowledge is written all over him in panic and shame and something beneath both that makes my mood change so fast even I feel the violence of it.
Five minutes ago, I was staring down a political marriage I intended to tolerate, contain, and eventually weaponize.
Now the contract in front of me has an open clause, the man who shut my head off for the length of a cigarette is standing behind the intended bride, and Canon Ward is still talking like he has any idea what he’s brought into this room.