Page 10 of Obsession
The exchange gives me something to measure. Varina doesn’t look away from Bricks until he looks away first, and he only does because Sol taps ash into the tray with one quiet click. She has presence. She has nerve. She’d make a good problem for another man.
Canon clears his throat. “Varina understands the seriousness of this arrangement.”
Varina’s attention cuts to him. “Don’t speak for me like I’m not sitting here.”
The Rogue side goes still in a different way, the kind of stillness family creates when an old argument steps too close to strangers. Canon looks at his daughter for a long second, and something ugly moves behind his eyes before he puts it back under control.
“Then speak,” he says.
Varina sets both hands flat on the table. “The Rogues need the alliance. Obsidian needs the corridor covered. I’ll do what’s required to keep my club breathing, but I’m not coming into this like a fucking hostage dressed up in white. If Saint wants a wife who smiles and keeps quiet, he can find someone else to disappoint him.”
Bricks makes a pleased sound. “I like her.”
I don’t take my eyes off Varina. “I don’t want a wife at all.”
“Great,” she says. “We already have something in common.”
Canon’s face darkens. “Varina.”
“What?” She turns on him, the first true flash of anger breaking through. “You want me honest or decorative?”
Sol’s mouth curves faintly around his cigar, though Canon doesn’t appreciate it. “I want you disciplined.”
“You want me useful,” she says, and the bitterness in that word has teeth.
Something about the word pulls my attention past her shoulder.
A man is back near the wall behind Varina with a folder braced against his chest. I don’t notice him all at once, but in the moment recognition starts as a wrongness at the edge of my vision, a quiet shape that doesn’t match the rest of the room. Everyone else in here is arranged to be seen. Presidents at the heads, officers at the table, enforcers at the walls trying to look heavier than the guns under their cuts. Even Demo, nervous as he is, keeps his chin lifted like posture might turn him into someone older. This man is positioned differently, close enough behind Varina to pass her documents if she needs them, far enough back to become part of the wall if nobody looks closely.
His stillness isn’t a threat. It’s survival. Then he lifts his head and I catch all too familiar hazel-green eyes.
Recognition punches through my irritation as the memory of the club comes back in pieces. The worst part is knowing thatman gave me something no one else did... the quiet after, the absence of static inside my skull, the strange clean silence that followed me out of that room and made the night air almost breathable.
Sín did that.
This man standing at the back of a Rogue delegation, dressed like support and blushing under my gaze, did that.
My fingers tighten against the edge of the contract before I make them stop. Canon keeps responding to Varina, but his voice moves around me without meaning now. “This alliance doesn’t survive if we walk in acting like children.”
Varina laughs under her breath. “You mean if I do.”
“I mean if anyone forgets what’s at stake.”
“What’s at stake is you need Obsidian’s money.”
“What’s at stake,” Canon snaps, “is the future of this club.”
Their argument keeps the room’s attention forward, which gives me a few seconds to study the man at the wall without everyone noticing the shift. He’s trying hard not to look at me now, and that tells me as much as the blush. His gaze lowers to the contract folder, but his face has gone red from the throat up, and his fingers have tightened until one corner of the paper bends. The last time I saw him, he didn’t know my name. He knows it now, and the knowledge is written all over him in panic and shame and something beneath both that makes my mood change so fast even I feel the violence of it.
Five minutes ago, I was staring down a political marriage I intended to tolerate, contain, and eventually weaponize. Now the contract in front of me has an open clause, the man who shut my head off for the length of a cigarette is standing behind the intended bride, and Canon Ward is still talking like he has any idea what he’s brought into this room.
I look down at the contract again because instinct tells me to check the language before I decide how badly I want toruin everyone’s plan. The marriage clause sits halfway down the page: to preserve continuity of alliance, a marital bond shall be established between Saint Solomon Masters, vice president and heir apparent of Obsidian MC, and a member of the Ward family, ruling bloodline of the Rogues MC, to be selected and confirmed at signing by mutual agreement of both club presidents.
A member of the Ward family.
The file Sol handed me said Varina. Canon has been speaking as if the matter were settled. Varina has been sitting across from me like a woman already fitted for a cage. But the contract itself leaves room wide enough to drive a truck through, and Moth doesn’t make mistakes like that unless he wants me to have somewhere to move. I glance at him. He doesn’t lift his eyes, but one finger rests beside the clause as if he’s already found the same opening and is waiting to see whether I’ll use it.
Canon’s voice cuts back through. “The Rogues stand by blood. My daughter represents that blood with strength.”
