Page 104 of Obsession
Sol would call what we’re doing weakness but he’s not in this room. Some of the older members are still on the fence with the new direction but no one has outright asked for my father. I haven’t even seen him except in passing over the last few days and have no desire to change that.
Eventually, though, I will have to face him for the handover.
“Join or leave,” I push out, agreeing with Oisín.
The room shifts around us, everyone non essential leaving the room before I move back to Oisín, lightly gripping his shoulder. “Moth,” I say, eyes still on Oisín. “Draft the message.”
Moth’s fingers are already moving. “To Varina?”
“To Varina. She comes to Obsidian within the week with her answer, or the offer expires.”
“And the captured men?”
“Same terms. Screened by Moth. Sponsored by an officer if they stay. Marked if they leave. Anyone lies, runs product, contacts a hostile club, or tries to rebuild under Rogue colors, they stop being Oisín’s family and become my problem.”
Oisín’s gaze holds mine a second longer before nodding. Tally pushes her way into the room, eyes narrowed at me before moving in front of Oisín. “Sweetheart,” she says, looking only at Oisín, “Harlan said ten minutes in a chair, not a full constitutional convention.”
Bricks coughs into his glass.
Oisín sighs. “I’m fine.”
“Lie better.”
Demo moves from the door. “Do you want me to—”
“No,” Tally, Oisín, and I say at the same time.
Demo stops mid-step and lifts both hands. “Great. Love being useful.”
Oisín’s mouth softens with the beginning of a laugh, then tightens when his ribs punish him for it. I move before he can argue, offering my arm instead of taking his. He looks at it for asecond, then uses it to stand. Oisín makes it to the doorway with Tally on his other side.
I wait until he’s gone before facing the men closest to me, Bricks chuckling under his breath as he shakes his head. “You just let him overrule you at your own table.”
I glare at him, trying to sift through my own feelings. “He was right.”
Bricks stares at me for a long second before his mouth starts to curve. “Christ. You really are gone.”
I almost throw my normal retort at him, deflect, or even just lie but there’s something different. Something is changing. I glance at the door Oisín just walked out of, a smile creeping onto my face. “No, I think I’ve just started figuring out how to fall for my husband."
Bricks’ grin fades by a fraction, softening a little. “Good. About damn time.”
Oisín
VarinaarrivesatObsidianwith 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 chairhe 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.”
