Page 92 of Obsession
“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.
