Chapter 26
Saint
Sol is waiting at the Rogue compound when I get out of the car, and for half a second, all I can think is that my father has the worst fucking timing of any man alive. I’m not even sure how he got in front of me but it doesn’t matter.
Demo climbs out on the passenger side with his gun already in hand, while Ash comes out of the back with the rifle case and the quiet focus Bricks promised me he had.
I barely register either of them because Sol steps away from the gatepost standing between me and the building where Oisín is either bleeding, unconscious, or still trying to survive men who’ve spent his whole life mistaking softness for permission.
My father shouldn’t be here. He should be back at the clubhouse, playing president in the chair he still thinks protects him from consequences.
“This is the worst possible option,” Sol says.
I hit him before the sentence has time to settle.
My fist catches him across the mouth hard enough to snap his head sideways and send the cigar skidding across the dirt.
Sol staggers once, catches himself against the gatepost, and turns back with blood already darkening the corner of his mouth.
For the first time in my life, I don’t care what my father sees on my face, because whatever he finds there belongs to me now.
“No,” I tell him, stepping past before the old fury in his eyes can become another sermon. “The worst possible option was standing in my way.”
If he speaks again, I’ll hit him again, and some part of him must understand that because he stays quiet while I cross the dirt toward the entrance.
The Rogue prospect by the truck reaches for his gun too late.
Ash drops him before his fingers close around the grip, the shot cracking across the yard and waking the compound all at once.
I kick the front door open and step into the main room with Demo at my left and Ash behind me.
The place turns toward us in a rush of motion: men at tables, men near the bar, two by the hallway leading deeper into the building, hands dropping to weapons, mouths opening around curses they won’t get to finish.
Their cuts blur together into one old, rotten thing. Bad leather. Bad loyalty. Bad blood. I don’t need their names because the room has already made itself simple. Every man in it is either going to tell me where Oisín is or become part of the floor.
“Someone needs to tell me where my husband is!” I shout it into the room.
A man near the bar laughs because some idiots can’t resist dying with noise in their mouths. “Why the fuck would we know where your Rogue bitch ran off to?”
I shoot him in the chest and he drops into the stools behind him, taking two down on his way to the floor.
The room locks around the shot, everyone now on alert.
They know I’m not here for posturing, apologies, or club diplomacy.
I lower the gun toward the next closest man and let the fear find its way into every corner.
“I know you’d know,” I say, “because I told Canon and Rook that if anything happened to Oisín, the Rogues would be my first suspect.”
The door behind me bursts open as more Obsidian pours in. Pike comes through with Ash’s second, two of Bricks’ garage men, and three riders Moth staged close enough to turn this place into a coffin if needed.
I smile because there’s nothing left in me gentle enough to do anything else. “Kill every one of them. Varina and Canon are mine.”
Gunfire tears through the first line of Rogues before they can arrange themselves into anything useful. Demo fires from beside the door, both hands locked around the gun the way Bricks drilled into him, his eyes wide but his aim steady enough to put a man down before he reaches the hallway.
Ash moves right with the rifle up, dropping the bastard behind the bar who thinks old wood will stop rounds better than his skull. Obsidian pushes in hard and fast, the way men move when they know the order isn’t to intimidate. It’s to erase.
The first man comes at me with a pistol half-raised, and I put two rounds in him before he clears his own shoulder. The second swings a pipe at my head, close enough that I feel the air move. I catch his wrist with my left hand, drive my gun up under his jaw with my right, and fire once.
Blood hits my face and I shove him aside before his body finishes realizing it’s dead. Another Rogue tries to come over a table with a knife, screaming something about blood and territory. I shoot him through the throat, and his scream turns into a wet choke that follows him down.
Everything is noise, but the noise doesn’t reach the center of me.
There’s gunfire, shouting, glass breaking behind the bar, Demo cursing when someone’s shot punches through the doorframe near his head.
Beneath it all, Oisín’s name moves through me like a command.
I see his face in my office, asking me what he is to me while I stood there with every answer trapped behind pride and fear.
I see him walking out because I let silence do my damage for me.
I see the tire tracks in the dirt behind the clubhouse, the drag mark, the blind camera looping an empty courtyard while my husband was taken.
A Rogue lunges from my blind side. Demo shouts my name, but I’m already turning.
The knife catches the outside of my sleeve instead of skin.
I catch the man by the throat and drive him backward into the brick wall with enough force to knock his head against it.
He tries to bring the knife up again, so I slam him harder, once and then twice, until his grip loosens and the blade hits the floor.
His eyes roll, but he’s still breathing, so I leave him gasping there and step over the knife.
Someone near the hallway shouts, “This isn’t how it works!”
I turn toward the Rogue. He’s older than the others, thick through the shoulders, gray in his beard, with a pistol shaking in his hand and enough rank on his cut to make him think his voice still matters.
I remember him from the alliance meeting, one of Canon’s table men, one of the bastards who watched Oisín stand in the shadows and didn’t think twice about why the eldest Ward son had learned to make himself invisible.
“What did you say?” I growl out.
His gun wavers, but panic makes men stupid enough to keep talking. “This isn’t how it works. You don’t walk into another club’s house and slaughter men over one fucking—”
I cross the room before he finishes. He fires once.
The shot goes wild, blowing plaster off the wall near Ash’s head.
I slam him backward into the wall beside the hallway hard enough to knock a framed Rogue charter loose from its hook.
Glass shatters around our boots as his pistol clatters to the floor when my forearm drives into his throat, pinning him high enough that he has to claw at my arm to keep his balance.
“You stole something of mine,” I hiss, close enough that he can smell the blood on me. “You had to know I’d come retrieve it.”
His face turns red under the pressure. “Oisín is our blood.”
I laugh, the sound so ugly it has the man’s face turning pale. “That stopped when his father discarded him in my lap.”
“He’s Canon’s son.”
“He’s my husband.”
I shove the barrel under his ribs and pull the trigger.
The gun clicks empty.
For one stupid second, relief flashes across his face.
It’s almost funny, the way men think a weapon running dry means violence has run out too.
I holster the gun at my back, pull the knife from my belt, and drive it into the side of his neck before he can turn that relief into air.
His eyes widen and his hands fly to my wrist. Blood spills over my fingers, soaking into his collar, running down the front of his cut in a dark sheet.
I keep him pinned while he chokes around the blade. “Where is my husband?” I demand, twisting just enough to make his body jerk. I lean closer. “You’ve got about three seconds before I stop caring whether you can answer.”
“West lot,” he rasps, blood bubbling over his lower lip. “Old auto barn. Canon took him there. Rook. Varina. They were asking him about the corridor.”
I pull the knife free and let the man drop.
He collapses at my feet, both hands clamped uselessly to his throat, but I’m already looking across the room at the others still breathing. There aren’t many. Obsidian has torn through the front line fast, leaving Rogues bleeding behind overturned chairs, broken tables, and the bar.
I wipe the knife against my pants and smile at the nearest wounded Rogue trying to drag himself backward with one working arm.
“Well,” I say, stepping toward him, “where oh where is my husband? I sure hope you didn’t lay a single fucking finger on him.”
He shakes his head before I even reach him. “I wasn’t there.”
I step on his hand, his scream cutting through the room as Demo flinches behind me. I crouch beside the Rogue slowly, keeping my boot exactly where it is while the bones shift under the pressure.
“Wrong answer.”
“I swear,” he sobs. “I swear I wasn’t there. Rook had him. Canon wanted him awake for the run. Varina was there too. That’s all I know.”
Varina. Oisín still loved her. If she stood in that room while they hurt him, I’m going to make her understand exactly what family costs when it becomes cowardice. Canon I understand. Rook I understand. Men like that are blunt instruments pretending to be people.
I stand as the Rogue curls around his ruined hand, sobbing into the blood on the floor. “Pike,” I call out.
“Yeah, VP?”
“Hold this building. Anyone breathing answers to Moth when he gets here. Anyone reaching for a weapon stops breathing first.”
“Got it.”
“Ash, Demo, with me.”
Sol is still standing outside like a fucking idiot when I exit the building. I almost get to him when my phone rings, Moth’s name rolling across the screen. Holding up a hand to my father, I answer the call, my smug smile fading into pure, unadulterated anger.
Moth debriefs me on the current status of the run but it’s the second piece of information that sets me on fire.
“Thanks,” I mutter before shoving my phone into my pocket and looking at my father.
I step up to him, inches from his face as I stuff the knife against his neck.
“Loyalty, my fucking ass. You see, my men aren’t stupid.
” Sol’s eyes widen a little as I start dragging the blade across his neck.
“And if I find out you fed the information needed for the Rogues to take what’s mine? I will gut you.”
Sol steps back. “Son…”
That’s all the answer I need but Oisín’s safety comes first so I just push past him. We hop back into the car and I dial Bricks. “West lot. Old auto barn.”
There’s a pause, just long enough for him to understand what that means. “Fuck. I’m five out.”
“Be three.”
He laughs once. “Yes, VP.”
Ash throws me a new gun just as we serve onto the gravel, Demo checking his and nodding before we get out.
I’m not surprised to find the barn door locked when we get there.
I kick it once near the latch. Wood cracks but holds so I kick it again, harder, and the frame gives with a splintering shriek that disappears beneath the roar already building in my ears.
Light spills through the opening, chaos erupting within as someone yells Canon’s name.
Then I hear a sound that stops me worse than a bullet could have.
Oisín.
Just a broken, hoarse sound from somewhere deeper in the barn, small enough that any other man might miss it under the chaos.
Everything in me goes still for one breath.
Then I step through the broken door with blood on my hands, a gun in one grip and a knife in the other, and there isn’t a man in that room who gets to leave untouched.