Chapter Nine
SAGE
The Next Day
The clubhouse feels different this morning.
Not quiet, because the Defiance clubhouse is never quiet.
Koa is banging around in the kitchen, Deek is already arguing with someone about something that probably doesn’t matter, Marcus has decided sleep is for the weak, and somewhere in the clubhouse Victoria is laughing anyway.
But underneath all of it, something has shifted.
The brothers aren’t pacing.
They’re waiting.
That’s why I took the morning off work today to be here. Sin mentioned it a couple of days ago without making a production out of it—his mother is coming.
Chief Maria Moretti.
I’ve met her exactly once, briefly enough that I doubt she’d remember my name, but I’ve heard enough over the last few months to understand what today means.
Victoria gave birth on the clubhouse floor a little over a month ago.
Today, Maria meets her grandson.
Even Deek seems to have picked up that this isn’t a day for testing everyone’s patience, which probably won’t last.
Marley has her laptop open beside me, supposedly working through seating plans for the wedding. She has spent the last five minutes moving the same two names between tables, so I don’t think much planning is actually happening.
Ro found reasons to reorganize the kitchen three separate times.
Nitro is nursing a beer that’s long since gone warm, watching the front windows now and then like he doesn’t realize he’s doing it.
The whole clubhouse feels as if it’s marking time.
Victoria is now perched in the big armchair near the window with Marcus against her chest, one hand curved around his head, her other under his bum, and she keeps looking at the door with an expression I can’t quite place.
She isn’t anxious, but something quieter and more complicated than that lingers.
I sit at the end of the sofa with my coffee wrapped in both hands, pretending I’m not noticing every little thing.
The front door swings open.
Conversation doesn’t stop so much as fade around the edges.
Sin is already moving before Maria steps over the threshold.
I’ve only met her in passing, every conversation cut short by somewhere she needed to be or someone who needed her attention.
Today she is just… a grandmother, dressed in dark jeans and a gray shirt, with her hair loose around her shoulders instead of pulled back tight.
She’s holding a small parcel wrapped in brown paper, both hands around it like it’s something fragile.
Not expensive.
Not flashy.
But definitely carefully chosen.
Something about that gets me.
She and Sin stand in the doorway and look at each other, while the whole room seems to hold its breath.
I’ve been around Sin long enough to recognize the version of him that says the least. He stands just inside the doorway, hands loose by his sides, expression steady enough that most people would probably call it calm.
They’d be wrong. There’s a tightness around his mouth that wasn’t there five minutes ago, and he hasn’t taken his eyes off his mother since she walked through the door.
Whatever’s running through his head, he’s keeping it locked down so tightly it almost hurts to watch.
I look away before it starts feeling like I’m intruding.
Maria speaks first. Her voice is low, not quite steady. “He’s beautiful, Sin.” She stops and swallows. “He looks like—”
“I know.” Sin interrupts quietly, giving away almost nothing.
Almost.
His eyes soften for a heartbeat before he steps aside to let Maria in.
She pauses in the doorway, taking in the clubhouse with one slow look.
It’s quick but thorough, the sort of glance that tells me she’s already noticed more than most people would.
The little parcel in her hands crinkles beneath her grip, and suddenly nothing else in the room seems to exist.
Victoria lets the silence sit between them. She studies Maria for a second, Marcus tucked safely against her chest, her thumb absently brushing over his tiny back.
Whatever she needed to see, she sees it.
Her shoulders ease, and a small smile touches her lips. It’s the first one that’s reached her eyes since she walked through the door.
Maria’s fingers tighten around the little parcel for the briefest second before she hands it over to Sin.
“It’s nothing much, just some clothes and a blanket that you had when you were a baby.”
Sin smiles at his mother as he takes the parcel. “Thanks… I didn’t think you’d still have anything from when I was a baby?”
Maria reaches out and grips his arm, her eyes lighting up. “I have a lot. I’d like to show you sometime.”
Sin dips his head. “I’d like that. Now come meet your grandson.”
Maria inhales sharply and lowers herself onto the sofa as if she’s afraid one hurried movement might disturb the moment.
Victoria eases Marcus into her arms, and for a heartbeat, Maria stares at him, like she can’t quite believe he’s real.
Her thumb brushes lightly over the edge of the blanket before settling against his tiny back.
Marcus sighs in his sleep and curls a little closer, perfectly content to be wherever the warmth is.
Something shifts across Maria’s face, gone almost as quickly as it arrives. Her eyes shine, though she doesn’t seem to notice. Nobody says a word, the whole room giving her the silence instead.
Sin has drifted over to the window, close enough to Victoria that they don’t have to reach far for each other. She rests her fingers against the inside of his wrist. Without looking down, he turns his hand over and holds on.
I drop my gaze, suddenly feeling as though I’m standing in the middle of something that belongs to their family, not me.
When I look back up, Ghost is watching me.
Not with curiosity, just that steady look that somehow tells me he gets it.
It’s only for a second, but it’s long enough for my stomach to do that annoying little twist it’s been doing around him lately.
Then he looks back to Maria, and the moment slips quietly back into the room.
Twenty minutes disappear without anybody paying much attention to the clock. Marcus sleeps through all of it. Fair play to him. Maria barely moves. Now and then her thumb brushes across his tiny knuckles before settling again, like she’s reassuring herself he’s real.
I wonder how many times she’s imagined this.
How many times she convinced herself she’d never get it.
Holding her grandson, standing in her son’s clubhouse, being welcomed instead of tolerated.
She doesn’t say much because some things are written all over a person’s face if you’re paying attention.
I look away before it starts feeling like I’m reading something that wasn’t meant for me.
“Thank you,” Maria says. Not just for the baby, but for the whole morning. For the welcome that didn’t have to be a welcome.
Victoria meets her eyes and gives her a small nod. Maria nods back. Whatever passes between them belongs to them.
Maria hands Marcus back with the same care she picked him up with, smoothing one finger over his cheek before she lets go, then she turns to Sin. They stand there for a second, but neither of them says much.
He opens the front door for her, and Maria steps toward it before stopping halfway across the threshold. She turns, and her eyes find me. I’m still on the sofa, having not moved for the past hour, and I am aware of how obvious that probably is.
“Sage.” She says my name like she already knows it, which I suppose she does. Maria Moretti is a chief with connections and a thorough habit of doing her research.
She knows who I am.
She knows about Unsilenced.
She knows the work.
“Chief?” I stand because it feels right to.
She takes a few steps back into the room, not all the way, just enough to be closer to me without making it a thing.
“The group home inquiry,” she says, and her voice has shifted slightly, taking on something more deliberate.
“I’ve been watching the work you’re doing…
” She pauses, and what comes after isn’t quite a statement. “It matters.”
“It does,” I agree.
She holds my gaze for a second longer than most people would.
Long enough that I have the odd feeling she’s weighing something up—I’ve seen that look before.
Detectives wear it, and journalists do too.
It’s the look people get when they know more than they’re ready to put into words, when they’re turning a conversation over in their head before deciding whether this is the moment to have it.
Whatever she’s thinking, she leaves it where it is.
A small nod is all she gives me before she turns and steps through the front door.
Sin waits until she’s outside before pulling it closed behind her, and the clubhouse slowly settles back into itself.
Conversations start again, and somebody laughs.
Koa heads for the kitchen, probably to see if anyone’s finally hungry enough to eat his soup.
I lower myself onto the sofa and wrap both hands around my coffee, letting the warmth seep into my fingers while my mind circles back to Maria.
To the way she looked at me.
There’d been something in her eyes that hadn’t belonged with the rest of the visit. It wasn’t suspicion or concern, but it felt… unfinished. Like she’d arrived at the end of a sentence and decided the last few words could wait for another day.
One thing keeps scratching at the back of my mind—she never mentioned Calloway.
She knew who I am, and she knows the work. She was looking at me with something she decided against saying, and she didn’t mention his name.
I don’t have an answer yet.
Just a feeling I can’t quite shake.
Maria Moretti walked out of here carrying something she chose not to say.
Whatever it is, I don’t think it’s going to stay unsaid for long. And the way she looked at me in that doorway, more than politely interested, tells me that whatever it is, she’s decided it belongs somewhere near me.
I’ll know what it is when she’s ready to give it.
Until then, I stay where I am.
Marcus’ soft little breaths drift through the room. Sin moves back to Victoria’s side, placing his hand on her shoulder supportively.
Around them, the clubhouse slowly finds its rhythm again.
I don’t try to make sense of any of it, and it all settles somewhere low in my chest.
There are worse things than feeling the weight of something that matters.