Chapter 22
Oisín
I make it as far as the courtyard before the cold hits hard enough to make me realize I’m shaking.
The tremor is small, buried under my skin, easy enough to blame on the night air if anyone asks.
No one does. The side door shuts behind me, muffling the clubhouse noise into brick and bass and distant voices, and for a few seconds I let myself stand beneath the yellow security lights with my hands curled at my sides and the ring on my finger catching every slight movement.
I came out here because I needed air. Because Saint’s silence was still sitting in my chest like a stone.
Because if I stayed in that office one more second, I was either going to let him touch me or beg him not to, and I didn’t know which would hurt worse.
The courtyard is mostly empty, bikes lined beyond the fence, storage shed throwing a hard block of shadow toward the side gate. I kick at the loose gravel, trying to make sense of what’s in my head before deciding to find something to do with my hands.
I turn toward the door, tires softly rolling against the gravel.
Confusion morphs into fear as the side van door opens with a soft metal glide.
Two men come out of the shadow, one catching me from behind, forearm locking across my chest, while the other drives a fist low into my stomach and folds the air out of me.
I try to shout, but a hand clamps over my mouth hard enough that my teeth cut into the inside of my cheek.
Blood floods my tongue as I bite down, catching glove instead of skin, and the grip tightens until my jaw screams with pain.
“Quiet,” someone hisses against my ear.
I kick backward and hit a shin. The man behind me curses, his hold slipping just enough for me to drag in half a breath, but another blow lands under my ribs before I can turn that breath into sound.
A hood drops over my head, and the world becomes black cloth, stale sweat, and the awful calm of men who aren’t improvising.
They lift me while I’m still fighting, my shoulder slamming into metal as they shove me into the van. Plastic bites around my wrists. A knee pins my thigh and then the door slides shut before the clubhouse can notice I’m gone.
This was too coordinated too swiftly done to be anything but planned.
The van moves before my breath comes back properly. I twist under the weight holding me down, trying to scrape the hood off against my shoulder, and a hand catches my hair through the cloth and slams my head against the floor.
The man above me laughs, and that’s when I realize the voice is familiar, a cadence from the Rogue inner yard, smoke-rough and amused by pain.
“Little Ward always did think someone was coming when he made noise.”
The other men laugh with him. The ride is short, maybe fifteen minutes, though pain stretches every turn until I lose count twice and have to start over.
Left. Right. Long straight road where the tires smooth out.
Another right, then gravel. When the doors open, cold air rushes under the hood carrying the sour bite of bleach used badly.
Hands drag me out of the vehicle as my ankle twists when my feet hit the ground, but I swallow the sound and let them haul me through a doorway into warmer air, where voices echo off walls too close to be a warehouse and too hard to be a house.
It has to be one of the Rogue places where noise can be called work and blood can be called grease.
The hood comes off, and light stabs my eyes.
I blink until the room arranges itself, taking in the rugged open space.
Two Rogues are near the door, faces I know without names.
Rook is by the workbench, arms crossed over his chest and my father is near the center of the room in a dark shirt and open cut, looking at me like I’m late to a meeting I was always expected to ruin.
Varina is off to the side with one hand braced against the tool bench.
That’s what hurts first. Her eyes move over me, over the hood in one man’s hand, the zip ties around my wrists, and the blood trickling down my chin.
For one stupid second, I want her expression to mean something useful.
I want the pain on her face to be proof that this has gone too far, that she’ll step forward, that she’ll remember who held her hand after Mom died and who took the blame when she broke Canon’s favorite glass ashtray at fifteen.
She stays where she is.
“Varina,” I say, voice rough.
Her face twists. “Oisín.”
Canon steps between us before she can say more. “You always did say her name like she was the one who could save you.”
I force air into my lungs. “This isn’t the way—things… are done.”
Canon’s mouth curves. “You don’t even know what way this is.”
“I know enough. You’re going to hit the eastern corridor, and when Saint finds out you took me, he’ll come through every Rogue door between here and Albany.”
“Wow, beautiful,” Canon says softly, gently clapping his hands together. “Obsidian’s little warning bell.”
Varina moves half a step. “Dad.”
Canon doesn’t look at her. “Quiet.”
I stare at her, and something in me hardens. She can look horrified. She can cry. She can hate this and still choose not to stop it. The room doesn’t care what her face says while her feet remain planted on Canon’s side.
Canon circles me slowly, his gaze catching on the ring on my finger. “I should’ve known you’d fold for the first man who made you feel special.”
“You don’t know anything about him.”
“I know he gave you a ring and you handed him your bloodline like a wedding gift.”
“I handed him a plan to save the club.”
“The club,” Canon says, voice sharpening. “Listen to yourself.”
I look at Varina instead of him. “You knew?”
She opens her mouth, closes it, and something in her silence ruins the last clean piece of hope I had. “I knew there was a plan,” she says.
“That’s not what I asked.”
She looks away.
My chest tightens as I direct my next question to her anyway. “You knew they were going to take me?”
“No,” she says quickly, too quickly and maybe truthfully. “No, Oisín. I didn’t know that part.”
“But you’re here.”
Her mouth trembles, but no answer comes.
Canon sighs. “Enough. Family reunions make everyone stupid.”
Rook steps forward and cuts the zip tie from my wrists, but the mercy lasts less than a breath.
Another man catches my arms and wrenches them forward, forcing me into a metal chair bolted to the floor.
My shoulder screams from the angle, and leather straps go around my wrists, softened at the edges by use.
My ankles are bound next. By the time they step back, the chair has turned my body into something of a display. I look at Varina while they secure the final strap. “This isn’t how it’s done, Varina! Why would you let…” I trail off as she drops her gaze to the floor.
I almost take the movement for guilt but I know better.
Canon crouches in front of me. “You keep saying that like you know what the way is. You never did. That was always your problem. You watched, listened, wrote down numbers, and called it courage.”
“You ignored me until someone else didn’t.”
For the first time, his face hardens in a way that isn’t performance. Then he stands and turns the moment into business. “Give me the eastern corridor adjustments.”
“No.”
He nods to Rook. I glare at my father and then the Rogue I grew up around, unsure what he’s about to do.
The first hit catches my cheek before I can brace.
My head snaps toward my shoulder, pain bursting hot across my face, and for a second the room disappears under the ringing in my ear.
Blood thickens in my mouth. When I drag my head upright, the overhead light has gone blurry around the edges.
Canon steps closer. “Route adjustments.”
“No.”
Rook hits me again. My lip splits, blood running down my chin in a warm line that makes the humiliation physical. My body tries to turn away even though there’s nowhere to go. The chair holds me exactly where Canon wants me, unable to disappear into silence the way I survived him for years.
“You were always the weak one,” Canon says. “Do you know how exhausting that was? Looking at my eldest son and seeing nothing I could use.”
Tears gather before I can stop them. Pain does that, but so does fury. “You found a use eventually.”
Canon’s hand closes around my jaw, fingers digging into the bruised place Rook already struck. “Don’t get clever.”
“I thought that’s what you wanted.”
His grip tightens until my eyes water harder, but before he can answer, Varina says, “Dad, enough.”
Canon turns his head slowly. “Leave if you can’t stomach it.”
I try to laugh, but it comes out broken and wet, catching somewhere behind the blood in my mouth. “She won’t.”
Varina flinches as if I touched her with something sharper than truth. I hate that I said it, and I hate more that she proves me right by staying exactly where she is, one hand braced against the tool bench.
Canon releases my jaw and straightens. “Eastern corridor. Support pass. Response overlap. Handoff windows. Start with the one Saint moved after your little report.”
I breathe through my mouth because my nose has started clogging with blood.
The pain in my face spreads outward with every heartbeat, dull at the edges and sharp where Rook’s knuckles split skin.
The straps hold me too tightly to shift, and the chair is cold through my clothes.
I lower my gaze to the ring on my finger, silver smeared red where my knuckles scraped in the van, and hold on to the sight of it for as long as I can.
Saint will come.
Hope is a cruel thing in a room like this, but the alternative is Canon’s voice filling every empty place in my head. Rook takes a knife from the bench, and my breath catches before he even turns back toward me.