Chapter 31 #2
I lean forward carefully, tracing the edge of the route without touching the paper. “Use the north yard, but keep it messy. Not official logs. Prospects talking too much. A truck that shouldn’t be there parked where someone can see it. Let the rumor be the route, not the paperwork.”
Moth’s eyes sharpen. “Less structure.”
“Less visible structure,” I say. “The Rogues always trusted overheard chaos more than clean documents.”
Bricks grins. “That explains a lot.”
Saint ignores him about to propose the next several steps when the main door opens. This time, it feels like the temperature changes, everyone bracing for the worst. I twist to look at the newest person in the room, surprised to see Sol.
He hasn’t been here in days, at least not where I could see him.
His absence had become a presence of its own, lingering in the way men didn’t say his name too loudly and the way Saint’s jaw tightened whenever someone mentioned old policy.
Now he’s inside the main entrance in his cut, looking over the room as if measuring the damage done while he wasn’t there to call it discipline.
His eyes move from the maps on the table to the folder, to the gun Saint’s still got his hand on, to me sitting at his right.
“Interesting,” Sol muses.
Saint’s face goes still as Bricks mutters, “Here we fucking go,” low enough that maybe only I hear it.
Sol walks farther into the room. No one offers him a chair. It’s the first sign something has changed, though I don’t think Sol notices immediately. He’s too busy looking at the table as if it’s betrayed him by continuing to function without his hand on it.
“Imagine my surprise when I saw Varina Ward walk out of here alive,” he says. “And the remaining Rogues are being offered exit instead of burial.” A chuckle rumbles through him as he stops in front of the table. “You threaten to take over the club and this is how you’re running it?”
“Join or leave. Yes.”
Sol laughs once, the bitterness in the sound making my stomach churn. “You can dress weakness in policy all you want, Saint. It still smells the same.”
“The terms have been handled and agreed upon,” Saint says.
“Handled,” Sol repeats. “You’re dismantling what I built one sentimental exception at a time.
You let a Ward walk into my clubhouse with what I assume are more lies because that’s all they know how to do and leave with cash.
She even counted it in the lot. You let captured men who raised weapons against us breathe because your husband still thinks family is a word worth saving.
You stop mid-meeting to ask permission from the political theater sitting beside you. ”
I frown, confused on how he knows any of that until I remember he is still the club president. There’s no doubt in my mind that some of the older generation are loyal to him or at least loyal enough to feed him information.
Saint stands, the chair legs scraping against the floor loud enough to make Demo flinch near the wall. “Say that again,” Saint growls.
Sol smiles, and for the first time I understand how much cruelty can live inside disappointment.
“Political theater. That’s what he is. Rogue blood in Obsidian leather, useful because he makes you look merciful while you tear apart the club that fed him.
You think letting him soften the terms makes you different from me.
It doesn’t. It makes you easier to move. ”
Saint steps away from the table, anger radiating through him, his hand clenched a little too tightly around his gun. I reach for him but he’s just out of reach, horror exploding through my chest.
“You built a fortress and called it a club,” Saint says.
Sol’s smile thins. “I built the only reason you’re alive.”
“No,” Saint says, voice low enough that the room leans toward it. “My mother did that. You just taught me how to survive afterward.”
Sol’s face contorts with anger as Saint steps closer.
“You keep talking about what you built like the walls were the point. Fear dressed as wisdom. Control dressed as order. Men obeying because they’re more scared of disappointing you than dying for you. That’s not loyalty. That’s a room waiting for the first person brave enough to stop pretending.”
“You think this is bravery?” Sol gestures toward the table, toward me, toward the maps. “This is a boy throwing away the discipline that made him useful because he got addicted to being needed.”
Saint laughs, nothing soft in that sound. “No. This is me finally understanding why Mom left.”
The room goes so quiet that even the bar seems to stop breathing.
“You don’t get to speak about her.”
“I’m the only one here who should,” Saint says. “You buried her name under lessons because admitting she left you would mean admitting she looked at this place, looked at you, and chose the road. You told yourself love was weakness because it was easier than saying you loved badly and lost anyway.”
Sol stalks closer, closing the distance until he’s only a few feet from Saint. “Careful.”
Saint doesn’t back up. “No. You see, you made a fatal mistake, Dad. You built Obsidian to be a club loyal to the club, not to the man. In your head, you became the club so that the loyalty would also carry over to you. The problem is in the last several weeks, it’s been very fucking easy to see that you don’t stand with the club.
You have some agenda and it’s not working out for Obsidian. ”
Bricks steps forward, slow enough not to startle the room and deliberate enough that no one mistakes it for anything but a line being drawn. “I say we settle this right here, right now.”
Sol turns his head. “You have something to say, Bricks?”
“Yeah,” Bricks says. “I’m tired of watching a dead man argue with the future.
” He raises an eyebrow before twisting around to face the club.
Most of the men are gathered around in between drinks and just wanting to see what happens next.
“The vote to hand the club to Saint was always going to happen but I think it’s time now to bring in the new generation. What say you?”
It’s silent for a few moments and then hands start to raise. Some even move toward Saint, physically making a point of where they stand. Even the prospects shift toward the bar, closer to Saint than to the man who built the chair he’s losing.
Sol looks around the room, obviously disgusted before glaring at Saint. “Does this mean you want me to leave?”
Saint studies him for a long moment, the old answer trying to rise.
Strip the cut. Take the ring. Throw him out.
Make him feel every inch of the humiliation he taught other men to fear.
Then Saint looks at me, reminding himself of the man he’s become.
For the line he promised he would learn how not to cross.
When he turns back to Sol, his voice has changed, the rage no longer leading it by the throat.
“No,” he says. “I would never be so cruel. Someone told me that proving yourself matters more than punishing others,” Saint says.
“Kicking you out, taking your cut, making a show of it in front of the club would only prove I’m exactly like you. ”
The words hit Sol harder than a fist would have. For the first time since I’ve known him, the man looks old.
Saint reholsters his gun and reaches into his pocket, pulling out the ring he wears on a chain when he works, the one that matches mine.
He holds it briefly, thumb moving once over the metal before letting it fall back against his chest. Then he looks at his father’s hand, at the president’s ring Sol has worn so long it seems like part of him.
Slowly, Sol removes the ring from his finger. The motion is stiff, as if the metal has become part of his hand after all these years. He sets it on the table beside Varina’s false route and Moth’s terms, then looks at Saint as if waiting for one last punishment.
Saint gives him none.
Sol waits another few seconds, maybe for someone to speak, maybe for one man in the room to move toward him and prove he still has weight here.
No one does. Not even Bricks, who only watches him with a face stripped of humor.
After that, Sol turns and walks out under his own power, not exiled or stripped in front of the club, but finished in a way no ceremony could make cleaner.
The door closes behind him, the room falling into a stiffer silence. This wasn’t how things were supposed to move forward but I couldn’t have asked for a better one. Sol didn’t even fight but he’s a man who understands defeat even if it kills him.
I’m not stupid enough to think Sol won’t still try to rule but I’m hoping that this might be a new beginning, a new era where I can finally be… me.
I slowly reach for the president’s ring and then offer my free hand to Saint. He lets out a small sigh before giving me what I need, my hands trembling as I slide the metal onto the ring finger of his right hand.
The temperature shifts in the room again, heating a little as every member in the room bows their head to the new president. A smile spreads across my face as Saint bows his head to me and I do the same to him.
“What now?” Demo asks from somewhere near the bar, breaking the silence.
Saint keeps looking at me for one more second before letting his gaze walk around the room. “It’s time we get to work. We’ve got a club to run.”