Chapter 21
Saint
The first twelve hours after Oisín brings me Canon’s plan are clean. Men move because I tell them to move, and the ones smart enough to understand why move faster. The eastern corridor gets stripped down to its bones and rebuilt in layers Canon won’t see until he’s already stepped wrong.
Visible routes stay just unsettled enough to make the Reapers pressure look like the reason.
Internal response windows shift quietly.
Support teams move off the junction Oisín identified.
Two trusted crews stage cold outside the obvious hit zone.
Pike pulls camera footage from the last seventy-two hours, and by midnight, Moth has three blurry stills of Rogue scouts sitting where they shouldn’t have been.
Canon is moving.
That part is no longer theory.
Usually, this is where everything in me sharpens into something useful.
A threat, a route, a weak point, a name.
I can build around those. I can lock a system down, bait a man into showing his hand, and break a crew so thoroughly the next three think twice before breathing near my product.
Canon has given me exactly what men like him always give when pride makes them stupid: a pattern to exploit and a timeline too arrogant to hide.
For once, the work doesn’t quiet me all the way.
Oisín gave me the plan without hesitation. He chose Obsidian, and every part of the club is moving because of him now. The problem is that Oisín doesn’t look like a man who wants to be rewarded.
He starts pulling away the next morning. He simply stops reaching.
His hand no longer drifts toward mine when we stand close at the board. He doesn’t linger in my office after delivering a folder. Last night, he came to bed and let me pull him close, but the fierceness in him I’ve seen recently has almost changed into indifference.
By the second day, it’s under my skin.
I’m in the main room with Bricks and Moth when I catch Oisín at the bar with Tally, Demo, and one of Pike’s gate men.
He’s listening to Demo describe something with both hands moving, his coffee untouched near his elbow, his posture relaxed enough that no one else would call him distant.
Tally says something that makes him smile.
The smile is real. Soft, brief, warm enough to remind me of the first thing I noticed about him before I knew his name, before the club, before Canon, before rings and blood and logistics turned wanting into a territorial problem.
Then Demo says something else, and Oisín laughs.
My hand tightens around the route sheet. Moth stops mid-sentence. “That page is the revised support schedule, not Cade’s neck.”
Bricks looks over. “Same grip, though.”
I flatten the paper onto the table. “Continue.”
Moth glances toward the bar, then back to me. “The support schedule is stable if we keep the false adjustment visible through tomorrow evening. After that, Canon may realize we’re not moving enough personnel to match the supposed Maverick threat.”
“Then we let him think we’re understaffed,” I say. “Pull from the north only on paper. Keep bodies staged behind the mill.”
Bricks gives a low whistle. “That’ll make him feel smart.”
“That’s the point.”
Moth marks something on his tablet. “Oisín suggested the same staging position.”
“Of course he did.”
Bricks’ attention swings back to me with too much interest. “You say that like you’re annoyed he’s right.”
“I’m annoyed everyone keeps telling me he’s right like I didn’t notice first.”
The conversation moves on, though I can’t focus on anything other than Oisín’s smiles and soft laughter.
Oisín gave up blood for this club, and I’ve been treating the aftermath like another system to stabilize.
Keep him protected. Keep him busy. Keep the routes sealed.
Keep Canon away. Keep Sol from sniffing too close to the place where Oisín has become necessary.
I have done everything except ask what it cost him.
Shit.
The moment Oisín catches me looking, he pushes away from the bar and heads down the hall to our unofficial meeting place when everything goes wrong. I drag a hand down my face and then follow him, needing to know what’s changed.
The door is cracked open enough for me to step through, closing it behind me, confusion getting the best of me. “Talk to me, Sín.”
He tilts his head to the side, remaining quiet, his hands down by his side. I almost step up to him and pull him into something we both know he won’t let me finish. As much as I value submission and Oisín giving in, I don’t like coercion.
“You’re doing good. Moth really likes you,” I offer.
Oisín lets out a strained laugh. “That’s not what I need from you.”
I lean back against the door, arms crossing because my body reaches for defense before my mind decides whether there’s a threat. “Then tell me what you need.”
His eyes move over me, not with anger at first. Tiredness, maybe. Hurt worn down into something calmer and more dangerous. “I handed you my father’s plan.”
“I know.”
“I handed you Varina’s too.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t wait this time. I didn’t sit with it until guilt made the choice for me. I came straight back, and now everyone is moving because I did.” His voice stays even, but I can hear the strain underneath. “You know what that means.”
“It means you saved lives.”
“It means I chose.”
“I know that.”
“No,” he says quietly. “You know it operationally. You know what it means for the corridor, for Canon, for the Rogues, for whatever counterstrike you’re building. You know where to move crews because of what I told you. You know how to use it. I’m asking if you know what it means for me.”
The room feels smaller than it did a minute ago.
I push off the door. “Sín—”
“Don’t.” He shakes his head once, and the exhaustion in the gesture stops me more effectively than anger would have. “Don’t use that voice unless you’re actually going to answer.”
I close my mouth.
Oisín’s thumb moves over his ring. This time, he notices me noticing and doesn’t stop. “Tell me what I am to you.”
I can answer it a dozen ways. Mine. Husband.
Protected. Useful. Dangerous. Necessary.
The man who sees patterns other people miss.
The man who sleeps in my bed and quiets my head.
The man who made me let go once and didn’t use it against me.
The man who kissed me like wanting me belonged to him first. The man who walked away from blood and brought me the knife before it could reach my club.
Every word is true, and none of them are the answer he’s asking for.
Oisín watches my face change. “Say it without making it about the club,” he says.
I stand there with nothing in my mouth. The truth is locked behind Sol’s voice, behind my mother’s emptied face, behind every lesson that taught me needing someone gave them a handle and naming the need gave them a knife.
I can kill for Oisín. I can put my body between him and a bullet.
I can restructure an entire operation around information he brings me and burn down half the state if someone tries to take him. I can do all of that without flinching.
But he’s standing in front of me asking me to speak for him, and I can’t get a single word out that doesn’t sound like ownership.
His face shifts slowly as the silence answers.
I reach for him too late. “Oisín.”
He steps back before my hand touches him.
“I know you want me when it’s easy to turn me into something you can hold.
I know you want me when I’m in your bed, when I’m useful, when someone threatens me, when I give you peace.
” His voice shakes once, then steadies around the hurt.
“I needed to know if you wanted me when I’m just standing here asking. ”
“I do.”
The words come out too fast and even I hear the failure in them, as they did after the silence, after he had to watch me search for a version of the answer that wouldn’t expose anything vital.
His eyes close for half a second, and when they open, he looks quieter than before. “You don’t have to lie.” Oisín lets out a heavy breath. “I don’t think you know what you’re doing.” He runs his fingers through his curls before staring directly at me. “I need air.”
“You’re not leaving the clubhouse.”
He almost smiles, but there’s no humor in it. “I’m going to the courtyard,” he says. “You can have someone watch me if that makes you feel better.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Then don’t.”
He walks past me, moving close enough that I could stop him if I wanted.
Every instinct in me says to catch him, turn him around, put him against the wall, force the room back into a shape I understand.
For once, I understand that touching him right now would prove the exact thing he’s trying not to believe.
The door opens and closes behind him. I stay where I am, staring at the board while the room settles around his absence. Bricks appears in the doorway less than a minute later and I’m beginning to hate how routine his appearance is after Oisín leaves.
Some part of me knows that Bricks probably just waits outside, hearing everything I wished no one would.
He looks from the closed door to me. “Are we about to have an issue?”
I turn my head slowly. “Define issue.”
“The kind where you need an outlet and everyone else needs to be warned.”
I drag a hand over my mouth and taste the ghost of an answer that came too late. “I need to go shoot something.”
Bricks’ face lights with the kind of delight only a bad friend can get from useful violence. “You’re in luck.”
I look at him.
He steps into the office, already reaching behind his back. “We had someone trying to grab product from the south lockup. Halo was going to take care of it, but I’m sure the guys would love to see their VP in action.”
I hold out my hand and Bricks places a gun in it with ceremonial satisfaction. “There you go. Emotional regulation, Obsidian style.”
The weight of the weapon settles into my palm, something so painfully familiar and simple I don’t have to think. A language I understand.
“Perfect,” I say, checking the chamber. “Please tell me there’s more than one asshole.”
Bricks’ grin widens as he turns toward the hall. “Actually, there’s four.”
We walk out together, his shoulder brushing mine as the noise of the clubhouse rises ahead of us.
Men move when they see the gun in my hand and the look on my face.
Bricks says something about Halo being disappointed, and I answer without really hearing myself, because part of me is still in the office with Oisín’s question sitting between us.
Tell me what I am to you.
I know four men in the south lockup are about to have a very bad night. I know Canon is going to regret thinking the eastern corridor is soft. I know every piece of the operation that needs to move before dawn.
I still don’t know how to say the one thing that would’ve made Oisín stay.