Saint studies him for a long moment, the old answer trying to rise.Strip the cut. Take the ring. Throw him out. Make him feel every inch of the humiliation he taught other men to fear.Then Saint looks at me, reminding himself of the man he’s become. For the line he promised he would learn how not to cross.
When he turns back to Sol, his voice has changed, the rage no longer leading it by the throat. “No,” he says. “I would never be so cruel. Someone told me that proving yourself matters morethan punishing others,” Saint says. “Kicking you out, taking your cut, making a show of it in front of the club would only prove I’m exactly like you.”
The words hit Sol harder than a fist would have. For the first time since I’ve known him, the man looks old.
Saint reholsters his gun and reaches into his pocket, pulling out the ring he wears on a chain when he works, the one that matches mine. He holds it briefly, thumb moving once over the metal before letting it fall back against his chest. Then he looks at his father’s hand, at the president’s ring Sol has worn so long it seems like part of him.
Slowly, Sol removes the ring from his finger. The motion is stiff, as if the metal has become part of his hand after all these years. He sets it on the table beside Varina’s false route and Moth’s terms, then looks at Saint as if waiting for one last punishment.
Saint gives him none.
Sol waits another few seconds, maybe for someone to speak, maybe for one man in the room to move toward him and prove he still has weight here. No one does. Not even Bricks, who only watches him with a face stripped of humor. After that, Sol turns and walks out under his own power, not exiled or stripped in front of the club, but finished in a way no ceremony could make cleaner.
The door closes behind him, the room falling into a stiffer silence. This wasn’t how things were supposed to move forward but I couldn’t have asked for a better one. Sol didn’t even fight but he’s a man who understands defeat even if it kills him.
I’m not stupid enough to think Sol won’t still try to rule but I’m hoping that this might be a new beginning, a new era where I can finally be…me.
I slowly reach for the president’s ring and then offer my free hand to Saint. He lets out a small sigh before giving me whatI need, my hands trembling as I slide the metal onto the ring finger of his right hand.
The temperature shifts in the room again, heating a little as every member in the room bows their head to the new president. A smile spreads across my face as Saint bows his head to me and I do the same to him.
“What now?” Demo asks from somewhere near the bar, breaking the silence.
Saint keeps looking at me for one more second before letting his gaze walk around the room. “It’s time we get to work. We’ve got a club to run.”
Saint
Thepresident’sringisstill warm on my finger when I leave the main room. Still, when I run my fingers across it, I feel the warmth like the last stubborn proof that Sol was here, that he wore this thing for years and built himself around it until no one could tell where the man ended and the title began.
The hallway outside the main room is quieter than it should be. Voices stay low behind me, the club already rearranging itself around the absence Sol left behind.
I don’t know how to feel about that. I was bracing myself for more of a fight with Sol, a firefight, literally anything than the man just handing me the keys to the kingdom. Sol walked out under his own power. I didn’t strip him, didn’t throw him in the dirt, didn’t make the room watch him reduced to nothing so Icould call it justice. I left him his feet, his cut, whatever pride he could carry out the door with him, and somehow that feels heavier than if I’d taken everything.
A heavy sigh flows through me as I head down the hallway, ignoring the congratulations and pats on the back. Some part of me wanted this to be a monumental moment. I had dreamed so fucking long for it but even though I’ve fought for it, it feels… wrong.
I step into my office, running my fingers along the walls of maps and information we’ve gathered over the last few weeks since everything changed. The presence in here used to feel so stiff but with Oisín here, it feels warm.
My mind drags me into the office further down, into the place that’ll now become mine. I don’t feel the same need to take over what my father built, though. It needs change. It needs a new touch, a new perspective… maybe even a new direction.
Needing space from all of it, I head toward my bedroom, a place I haven’t slept in almost two weeks, catering to my husband in the full service guestroom. Oisín is sitting on the edge of the bed when I open the door.
He shouldn’t have walked all the way here without help. Harlan would have my head for it if he had any authority here beyond the kind Tally gives him by glaring at people until they comply. Oisín’s shoulders are slightly rounded, one hand braced against the mattress near his thigh, the other resting over his ribs beneath the loose dark shirt he must have changed into.
His cut is folded over the chair by the dresser. The lamp beside the bed is on low, softening the bruises still fading along his face and making him look younger than he is, though nothing about his eyes is young when they lift to mine.
I close the door behind me, crossing the room to drag Oisín into a kiss before I stop myself. As much as I need him right now,I have to show him I won’t revert to always taking. Unless he asks.
I walk to the bed and sit beside him, close enough that our knees almost touch, far enough that he can decide whether the distance closes. The mattress shifts under my weight. Oisín watches my hand when I open it.
Oisín’s gaze drops to the ring on my hand. “Are you all right?”
The question is absurd enough that I almost laugh. He’s the one still healing from a chair in a Rogue repair barn. He has no business asking if I’m all right.
“I don’t know,” I say.
Oisín’s expression shifts, just a little. He didn’t expect the truth, or maybe he expected me to dress it up as anger first. I pull the ring off and set the ring on the nightstand beside the lamp, staring at it for a second longer than I need to. Without it on my finger, I feel strangely lighter and exposed at the same time.
“I wanted to take everything from him,” I admit. “I wanted to strip his cut off his back in front of every man who ever feared him. I wanted him to feel what it’s like to stand in a room and know nobody is coming to your side because they love you, only because they’re afraid not to.”
