Chapter 13
Saint
I sleep for four hours with Oisín pressed against my chest and wake up less murderous than usual, which should probably bother me more than it does.
Rest is too generous a word for what I get.
My body comes awake the way it always does, all at once, taking inventory before my eyes fully open.
Door shut. Window locked. Gun in the drawer.
Hallway quiet except for the faint knock of old pipes and someone moving down the hall too early for a clubhouse that runs better after noon.
Oisín is warm against me, curled close with one hand resting near my ribs like he reached for me in his sleep and didn’t know what to do once he found me.
His hair is tucked under my jaw, soft enough to irritate me, and his breathing moves slowly against my chest. Daylight has started to press around the curtains, but it hasn’t reached us yet.
In the dark, he doesn’t look like Canon’s son, the Rogue blood tie, the logistical asset Moth keeps trying to steal for longer briefings, or the quiet little problem Sol keeps circling like he’s deciding where to put a blade.
He’s just Oisín, asleep and defenseless in my bed, and the static in my head sits farther back than it usually does in the morning.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand before I can think too hard about that.
Oisín frowns at the sound but doesn’t open his eyes.
I reach across him carefully, already annoyed by the care, and grab the phone.
Moth’s name lights the screen with a message short enough to mean the morning is already fucked.
Complaint from new buyer. XR3 quality issue. Sol’s study. Now.
I read it twice because quality issue and XR3 don’t belong in the same sentence unless someone made a mistake that should have been impossible or someone wants us reacting like we did.
Obsidian doesn’t move dirty product. We don’t cut, dilute, mishandle, or let unstable batches anywhere near buyers.
Quality is the moat. Quality is why men with money and reputations come to us instead of some gutter chemist pushing glitter poison out of a basement in Jersey.
One complaint from one new buyer won’t break anything by itself, but the wrong whisper in the wrong circles can do damage faster than a bullet if the market starts wondering whether Obsidian’s clean miracle is slipping.
I slide out of bed without waking Oisín, though his hand curls faintly into the sheet where my body had been.
I ignore the desire to crawl back in and dress quickly.
At the door, I look back to see he’s rolled onto his side, the fading mark under his jaw shadowed by the pillow.
He looks younger asleep, less guarded, like the whole world hasn’t taught him to brace before a voice gets too sharp.
Resisting the growing urge to stay, I stalk down to Sol’s office. I can’t even muster up a laugh when I step inside and see that he’s already smoking. It’s barely nine am, I mutter to myself.
My father leans against the front edge of his desk with a cigar between two fingers.
Moth is just off to his right with his tablet tucked against his side, expression composed into the kind of stillness that means the situation has offended his sense of order.
Bricks occupies the lounge near the window, one arm thrown along the back, ankle hooked over his knee, face loose enough to look casual if someone doesn’t know him.
Moth starts before Sol can turn the room into theater.
“New buyer out of Buffalo claims six vials from the Friday handoff produced inconsistent onset, visual distortion, and neurological tremor within ninety minutes. No hospitalization, no law enforcement, and no direct contact. Complaint came through Harlan’s brokerage line at 6:12 this morning. ”
“Batch number?”
“Fourteen-C.”
My jaw tightens. “Fourteen-C cleared twice.”
“Yes.”
“Warehouse transfer?” I ask.
“Pike’s crew from storage to staging. Ash verified seal integrity. Broker pickup occurred within the scheduled window. Temperature stayed within tolerance the whole time, and there are no gaps in custody on our end.”
I move to the desk and hold out my hand.
Moth gives me the tablet without a word.
The chain of custody is clean at first pass, every timestamp where it should be, every handler listed, every seal confirmation checked, and counter-checked.
No missing minutes. No substitution point.
No delay long enough for exposure or tampering unless somebody had access after the warehouse, which means either the buyer is full of shit, the vial was swapped, or someone wants our attention pulled to the idea of contamination.
Moth answers the next question before I ask it. “Everything went to plan on our side. If something happened after the warehouse, it wasn’t ours.”
Sol exhales smoke toward the ceiling. “That’s comforting.”
“It’s accurate.”
Bricks leans forward, forearms braced on his thighs now, the lounge creaking beneath him. “Buyer new enough to think he can shake us down?”
“New to direct purchases, not new to the product,” Moth says. “He came through Harlan’s brokerage line, paid full price, and passed background on liquidity and discretion. There are no known law-enforcement ties.”
“The symptoms don’t match degradation,” I say, scrolling through the report again.
“No. They match contaminated product or a counterfeit vial being passed off as ours.”
Sol taps ash into the tray on his desk. “Or someone wants the market whispering that Obsidian’s clean little miracle isn’t so clean.”
That’s the part already working under my skin.
XR3 is valuable because it doesn’t behave like street garbage.
Clean onset. Clean euphoria. No slop, no collapse, no seizure rumors attached to our name.
Rich users don’t pay for risk; they pay for the illusion that risk has been engineered out of the experience.
If somebody wants to hurt us without hitting a truck, quality is the right pressure point.
Sol looks at me through the smoke. “Why don’t you grab your toy and ask him what he thinks?”
My fingers tighten around the tablet, and for half a second I see myself breaking the screen against the edge of his desk.
Instead, I set the tablet on the desk before my grip cracks it.
“My ‘toy’ wouldn’t know shit about why a new buyer is lying about their goods.
What we need to ask is what the buyer thinks he gains.
Refund, discount, access to a higher-volume line, or cover because someone handed him a counterfeit and told him it came from us. ”
Bricks rubs a hand over his beard. “Are we sure the Rogues don’t have shit to do with this? I know we’re in an alliance and all that, but undermining product quality would—”
I glare at him and he immediately shuts up. “Oisín isn’t doing shit,” I tell him.
Sol’s mouth curves around the cigar. “You sound sure.”
“I am.”
“Because you’ve had him here a week and he’s pretty when he falls apart for you?”
Sol has always enjoyed this part, the fine needlework of provocation. As a kid, I thought his calm meant he wasn’t angry. Later, I learned his calm meant he’d already decided what kind of pain would teach best.
I step closer to the desk. “Careful.”
Sol laughs softly. “There he is.”
I hate that he sounds pleased.
Moth clears his throat. “There’s no evidence tying Oisín to the complaint. The timeline doesn’t support it, and he hasn’t had access to outbound product, broker channels, or handoff seals. He’s seen route structures and board-level inefficiencies, not batch handling.”
My attention shifts to him but Moth doesn’t apologize for the depth of his monitoring. He probably knows exactly which floorboard outside my room creaks when Oisín gets up in the night and which mug he uses when Tally makes him coffee.
Sol keeps his eyes on me. “Ah, yes. Access. He met Varina the other day, didn’t he?”
Bricks’ head turns slowly in my direction.
Moth says nothing.
I feel my jaw lock. “It’s handled.”
“Is it?”
“It’s not him.”
Sol takes the cigar from his mouth and studies the burning end like he’s bored of the conversation, which means he’s enjoying it too much. “You keep saying that like repetition makes faith sound like intelligence.”
“It isn’t faith.”
“No? Then what is it?”
I don’t answer immediately because every answer available tells him something I don’t want him to have.
Oisín gave me Varina’s angle. He knelt at my feet and put the shape of the Rogues’ intended takeover in my hands when silence would have served his blood better.
He could have softened it, delayed it, fed Canon little harmless pieces until the map formed on the wrong side of the line.
He didn’t. That doesn’t make him harmless, but it makes this complaint the wrong kind of danger to hang on him.
“The complaint doesn’t match his access,” I say. “He hasn’t touched product or buyer lines. If the vial was swapped after handoff or the buyer is lying, Oisín isn’t the vector.”
Moth nods faintly. “That’s accurate.”
Sol gives Moth a look mild enough to be insulting, then returns to me. “Keep your dog on a leash anyway. For that matter, the marriage becomes official in the next day or two. I’m moving the paperwork up before Canon decides to do something stupid.”
My hands curl at my sides.
Dog.
Toy was deliberate. Dog is worse. Sol may not know all the details of Oisín’s damage, but he knows enough to smell the handle. He knows a man who’s been made small by the wrong mouths, and he knows exactly how to test whether I’ll react to hearing him named that way.
“They don’t even fucking care about him,” I push out, trying and failing to rein in my anger.
Sol’s expression flattens into something closer to the truth. “No, they don’t. But they care about his brain.”