Chapter 31
Oisín
Varina arrives at Obsidian with one suitcase, two Rogue men, and a folder held tight against her chest. I know before Moth opens it that something is wrong.
She looks smaller than she did the last time I saw her, though not weak.
Varina has never been weak, no matter how much Canon liked to pretend strength only counted when it looked like his.
But she looks scraped down, all the old performance worn thin by the last few days.
Her hair is pulled back too severely, her eyes shadowed, her jacket bare of a Rogue cut.
The missing patch should make her less dangerous but it just makes her look like a blade someone wiped clean before laying it on the table.
The main room quiets when she walks in. Saint is near the head of the table, one hand resting against the back of the chair he hasn’t sat in since she arrived, everyone else carefully formed around him waiting for her arrival. And then there’s me, sitting to his right because he asked me to.
He didn’t make a show of it. He didn’t put his hand on my neck or move me there in front of the room.
He pulled the chair out before the meeting started, looked at me, and waited.
It had been a bit clumsy and visible enough that Bricks immediately found something fascinating on the ceiling.
But I sat down because Saint was trying, and because some part of me wanted to know what the room would do when I took the place offered.
No one told me to move.
Varina’s eyes go to me first. They catch on the Obsidian cut, then the ring on my finger, my public claim to my husband, then the bruising still fading along my face. Shame flickers there before she buries it beneath the hard little smile she learned from Canon.
“Oisín,” she says.
“Varina.”
Her smile trembles at the edges. “You look better.”
“That’s a low bar.”
Bricks coughs into his fist in a way that sounds suspiciously like a laugh. Saint doesn’t move, but I feel his attention sharpen beside me.
Varina looks away first. “I came with an answer.”
Moth’s fingers pause over his tablet. “And a proposal, I’m guessing.”
Her mouth tightens. “A route proposal. If the remaining Rogue members are going to be folded out or folded in, you’ll need a clean transition through the western corridor. I know the storage points Canon used. Some of them are old, but some are still viable. I mapped them.”
She sets the folder on the table and slides it forward.
No one reaches for it immediately. The two men behind her shift uneasily, and I recognize one from the garage.
Niall. He used to leave coffee near the side workbench when he knew I’d been there too long without eating, never saying it was for me.
The other is older, one of the men who kept to the kitchen door and listened more than he spoke.
Neither of them looks proud to be here. Neither looks ready to die for her either.
Moth finally takes the folder. The room waits while he opens it, pulls out the top sheet, then the second. His expression doesn’t change, which tells me more than a curse would have. If the problem were small, he’d look annoyed. If it were stupid, he’d look bored. Instead, he goes very still.
Saint notices at the same time I do. “What?”
Moth looks up at Varina. “This is a false route.”
Varina doesn’t flinch. “It’s old.”
“It’s bait,” Moth hisses. “The western corridor entry you marked as open was sealed six months ago after a state inspection. The bypass you listed would send our vehicles through a service road with no exit if the east gate is blocked. The storage site here”—he taps the paper once—“burned last year. There are public records.”
One of the Rogue men behind Varina mutters, “Jesus Christ.”
Varina’s face goes pale, but her chin lifts. “I was working with what I had.”
“You were working with what you hoped we wouldn’t check,” Moth says.
Saint moves before I can breathe, the man pressing his gun against Varina’s temple so quickly that both Rogue men stumble back, hands raised in defeat. Varina goes completely still. My chair scrapes back, pain flaring through my ribs as I stand too fast.
“Saint.”
His eyes stay on Varina. “Sit down, Sín.”
“No.”
The room freezes around us as his gaze moves to me and then back to my sister, his jaw tightening a little. “She walked in here and tried to hand us a trap. She tried to kill my men. She tried to do it in front of you.”
“I know.” My ribs ache hard enough that I press a hand against them, forcing myself to stay upright. “Please don’t kill her.”
Varina makes a small sound and Saint’s gaze cuts to me a second time.
What I see there hurts more than the gun.
Rage, yes. That’s familiar. But beneath it is the struggle, the thing he hates letting anyone witness as the old instinct drags him toward blood, new restraint grinding its heels into the floor.
“She doesn’t deserve you begging for her,” he pushes out, the veins in his neck starting to pop.
“I’m not doing it for her.”
I take one step toward them and Bricks shifts like he might stop me, then doesn’t.
“I know what she did. I know what she let happen. I know she came here today still thinking there was one more way to win. I’m not confused about her, Saint.
But if you kill her with me standing here begging you not to, you’re not proving anything except that my voice matters until it gets in the way. ”
His eyes darken and focus on the line I just drew between what he wants and what he promised to become. His breathing quickens a little as he reads my face, the war inside of him fighting for an end.
Varina whispers, “Oisín.”
“Don’t,” I say, my sister’s mouth clamping shut. I can’t look at her for too long. My anger is too tangled with old love, and old love is dangerous when someone has already learned how to spend it against you.
Saint keeps the gun against her temple for another few seconds. Then he lowers it. The room exhales as Varina’s knees nearly buckle, but she catches herself on the edge of the table. Saint steps close enough that she has to tilt her head back to keep his face in view.
“You’re leaving with cash,” he says, his voice barely above a whisper. “Enough to disappear if you’ve got the sense your father never had. You don’t keep a cut. You don’t keep a crew. You don’t keep a road, a storage site, a name, or a claim. You leave this state by morning.”
Her voice shakes. “And if I don’t?”
“Then the next time I see you, Oisín won’t be in the room.”
Her eyes dart to me.
Saint’s smile spreads. “Don’t look at him. He already saved your life once. I’m just not stupid enough to kill you in front of the man I’m trying to win back.”
The words hit me hard enough that I sit before my body decides for me.
Varina stares at him, then at me, and for a moment she looks like the girl who used to climb out onto the roof with me when Canon was yelling downstairs.
Then it’s gone. Maybe she buries it. Maybe I imagine it because I still want there to be something left beneath all the damage.
Bricks pushes off the bar. “I’ll get the money.”
“Demo,” Saint says.
Demo straightens. “Yeah?”
“Take Niall and Eamon to holding. Separate rooms. They get the real offer, not whatever bullshit she fed them.”
Niall’s face crumples in relief so quickly he turns away to hide it. Eamon only nods once. Demo moves them out without making the moment bigger than it needs to be, which might be the most impressive thing he’s done all week, leaving just Varina by herself.
She looks at me one last time. “You chose them.”
“No,” I say, tired enough that the words come out plain. “I chose me. They were just the first people who let that count.”
Bricks returns with a thick envelope and drops it on the table in front of her. “There’s a bus station thirty miles west and an airport twice that far. Pick whichever version of alive you prefer.”
Varina takes the envelope with stiff fingers. Her gaze flicks once more to Saint, and whatever she sees there sends the last of the fight out of her shoulders. She turns and walks out without another word.
For a few minutes after the door closes, the room doesn’t know what shape to take. No one’s exactly sure what to say to break the silence or even to move forward. Without Varina in the picture, the Rogues are finally absorbed into Obsidian.
There’s just one issue left I haven’t heard taken care of.
Saint falls into his chair beside me, but he doesn’t holster the gun until Moth’s eyes flick toward it.
“Right,” Moth says. “The western corridor is compromised as an idea, not an active route. If Varina had that map, anyone she spoke to might have the same false assumptions. We can use that.”
Saint nods. “We push a ghost line through the western approach and make it loud enough for scavengers to chase.”
“It would require decoy fuel logs and visible movement through the north yard,” Moth says. “It might also nip that Reaper issue. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure there was a Reaper issue or if the Rogues had placed the name in that buyer’s mouth.”
“And we can—” Saint starts, then stops so abruptly the room notices.
He looks at the map, then at me, and the pause costs him so visibly that my throat tightens before he even speaks. “Oisín,” he says, rough around the edges. “What do you think?”
This is the second time he’s corrected himself over the last few hours and as hilarious as it is, I love that he’s trying. He’s not just giving me a place to exist. He’s letting me flourish.
Though, the attention is something I’ll have to get used to.
I look at the map because if I look at Saint too long, I might not manage to answer.
“I think if you make the western line too loud, anyone smart will know it’s bait.
Varina’s proposal was bad, but it wasn’t random.
She wanted you to think she was offering outdated access.
That means she expected arrogance to do part of the work. ”