Page 105 of Obsession
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 shiftuneasily, 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’sbait,” 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.”
