Chapter 14
Oisín
I’m sitting in Saint’s office when Bricks finds me, halfway through a route sheet that no one actually asked me to review.
The office has become familiar in a way I don’t fully trust. I know which drawer Saint keeps locked, which floorboard creaks near the cabinet, which file stacks belong to Moth and which ones Saint has touched because the edges sit slightly less neat after his hands have been on them.
The chair near the wall has somehow become mine, though no one has said that out loud.
I sit there with my notebook open across my lap, trying to decide whether the discrepancy in the Buffalo complaint is connected to the supply distortion I found or only wearing the same shape.
The more I stare at the numbers, the more they feel like a hook waiting beneath the water.
Bricks knocks once and opens the door before I answer. “You’re up.”
I look at him over the top of the notebook. “I’m what?”
He steps inside far enough to close the door behind him, and that alone makes my stomach tighten. Bricks fills space even when he isn’t trying, but today he looks less amused than usual, shoulders set beneath his cut, beard shadowing a mouth pulled into a hard line. “Up. Grab your shoes.”
I glance toward the desk phone, as if it might ring and provide a version of this that makes sense. “Where’s Saint?”
“Already gone. He’s dealing with the buyer who says we fucked up his shipment, and Sol decided you’re going too.”
The notebook shifts against my lap because my fingers have gone stiff around it. “Why would I be going to that?”
“Because Sol overrode everything Saint said and wants you at the meet. His logic is that if your information is part of how we’re moving product, you can stand there while it gets tested.
” Bricks watches my face as his voice loses some of the roughness.
“Don’t look at me like that, kid. I’m just the asshole sent to collect you. ”
Being collected has become a recurring theme in my life.
Canon collected me when he needed numbers.
Saint collected me when the contract gave him room to maneuver.
Now Sol is collecting me because some buyer complained, and apparently my body in the room will make a point no one cared enough to explain to me first.
I set the notebook on Saint’s desk. “Why wouldn’t Saint come tell me himself?”
Bricks exhales through his nose and looks away for half a second, which is more answer than I want.
“Because Saint asked me to. He gets into a headspace for these things, and when he’s there, he’s better pointed at the problem than he is explaining the problem to someone he doesn’t want standing anywhere near it. ”
“He doesn’t want me there?”
“No.” Bricks looks back at me. “And that’s exactly why Sol wants you there.
So do yourself a favor and don’t say shit unless Saint or Moth asks you a direct question.
These rooms aren’t like the ones you’ve been watching from the edges.
Smart men die in them when they mistake knowing something for needing to prove it. ”
I put on my shoes, then follow him into the private hall, where the clubhouse noise reaches us in muffled waves from the other side of the locked door.
Demo is near the bar when we come through, carrying a crate of bottles with the anxious concentration of a man defusing a bomb badly disguised as beer.
Tally is behind the counter, a towel in her hand and her eyes already narrowed on Bricks.
“You taking him out?” she asks.
“Sol’s orders.”
Her mouth tightens. “Of course they are.”
Demo sets the crate down too fast, glass clinking sharply. “Is Saint there?”
“Already there,” Bricks says, not slowing down enough for anyone to turn the answer into a discussion.
The ride takes twenty minutes but feels longer because Bricks is quiet for the first half of it.
Riding behind Bricks is different than Saint, thought the sheer size of this man’s back keeps the wind from hitting any part of me.
The city thins into industrial lots, chain-link fences, old brick warehouses, and wet asphalt shining under a low gray sky.
Eventually, Bricks disturbs the silence as he pulls to a stop, “Canon ever bring you to one of these?”
I throw a leg over the bike, Bricks dismounting after me and holding his hand out for the helmet. I hand it to him and shake out my curls. “No. I handled the numbers after.”
“Lucky you.”
I look at him properly then and catch something in the set of his jaw that makes my mouth go dry.
“What happens if this goes wrong?”
“Stay behind Saint.”
“What if I can’t?”
“Get behind me.” He says it like an instruction, not reassurance, and maybe that’s why I believe him. “If I’m not close enough, get behind Moth. He looks like paperwork, but he’s meaner than he dresses.”
That only makes the bit of anxiety growing in my chest worse but I fall silent anyway, taking in the old service warehouse near the edge of a loading district, the kind of place with cracked pavement, rusted roll-up doors, and enough empty space around it to make any approaching vehicle feel guilty.
Two Obsidian bikes are already parked outside, Saint leaning beside the closest one, arms folded across his chest, his expression empty in a way that means every violent thing in him is organized and waiting.
Saint’s eyes move over my face, my shoulders, my hands, and something in my chest tightens because I recognize the inspection now.
He’s checking whether I’m intact before deciding how angry to be that I’m here.
He doesn’t apologize for sending Bricks.
He doesn’t explain. He reaches onto the back of his bike and drags a cut off the seat.
Then he holds it out to me.
It’s black leather, heavier than my Rogue cut, with the Obsidian skull stark across the back. There are no officer patches, no title, nothing earned beyond the symbol itself, and somehow that makes it worse. Wearing it won’t make me one of them. It will tell the room Saint wants me seen that way.
“If we’re making this believable, you need to look like one of us,” Saint says. His voice is even, but his gaze doesn’t leave mine. “You don’t have to like it.”
My fingers close over the leather, and for one second the weight of it feels like betrayal.
Rogue blood. Obsidian mark. Canon’s son wrapped in Saint’s colors in front of everyone.
Then I think of Varina telling me to do my job for my family, and I think of Canon saying useful like it was the best thing I could become.
I slide the cut on as Saint reaches forward and adjusts the front with a sharp tug, the backs of his knuckles brushing my chest through my shirt. The touch is brief, but my breath catches anyway. Bricks looks away like he’s doing me a favor.
Saint steps back. “Stay close.”
I pull the front of the cut straight. “Bricks said Sol ordered me here.”
“He did.”
“Why?”
“Because my father likes testing pressure points when he should be solving problems.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one that matters right now.” Saint glances toward the warehouse door. “A buyer claims the product was bad. We’re going to have a conversation. If it stays a conversation, Sol gets to leave bored and everyone lives. If it goes sideways, he’s going to be pissed.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with this.”
Saint looks back at me immediately. “I know, but my father likes to create issues for the sake of proving a point,” Saint says, gaze already moving toward the sound of tires outside the lot. “My father has other ideas.”
A black bike cuts into the lot hard enough to send water spraying from a pothole.
It stops crooked near the entrance, engine still growling, and Sol steps out like the entire world has been waiting for him and should be grateful he bothered to arrive.
His eyes pass over Saint first, then Moth, then Bricks, before settling on me.
A small, unpleasant smile stretches across his face. “Pretty.”
Saint’s shoulders shift by a fraction. It’s barely there, but I see it.
Sol walks past us toward the door. “Let’s go see who thinks my son’s product has a problem.”
Inside, the warehouse smells like damp concrete, old oil, and fear trying to cover itself with cheap cologne.
The buyer waits near a metal table with three men behind him.
He’s younger than I expected, mid-thirties maybe, dressed too well for the room and sweating too much for the weather.
His suit is expensive but not worn comfortably, the cuffs too stiff, the watch obviously out of place.
He has the look of a man who bought his way into dangerous rooms and still hasn’t learned money doesn’t make them safe.
On the table sits a small foam case open to show six vials.
I’ve never seen them up close and never had any desire to but the iridescent liquid is mesmerizing.
XR3 looks too delicate for what it does.
Almost beautiful. That’s part of the horror, though I doubt anyone in Obsidian would call it that.
The vials look clean enough to make people forget they’re buying a version of themselves they may not want to live without afterward.
The buyer’s gaze flicks toward me before settling on Sol. “I didn’t ask for an audience.”
Sol stops at the table. “And yet you complained about my product.”
“I reported an issue.”
“You reported that my XR3 was dirty.”
“I said the reaction was wrong.” Everyone shifts around the room, just enough to put the buyer on alert. The buyer’s mouth tightens. “My man had tremors. Visual distortion. Onset was irregular. That’s not what I paid for.”
Moth chuckles and blows out a heavy breath. “Batch Fourteen-C cleared internal testing twice. Seal integrity held through warehouse transfer. The temperature remained within tolerance until broker pickup.”
“Then maybe your internal testing is bullshit.”