I wake alone in his bed with the sheets twisted around my hips, my entire body sore. I shower, dress, and put myself back together as much as the mirror allows. The mark near my collarbone is fading, though not quickly enough to spare me Tally’s eyes or Cade’s mouth if either of them bothers to look too closely. I tug the collar of my shirt higher, then stop because there’s no way to hide everything Saint has done to me, and trying only makes me feel like I’m helping him prove a point.
Slowly, I make my way into the main part of the clubhouse, already having mapped Obsidian’s natural rhythm. The front bar wakes late unless there’s a run. The kitchen belongs to Tally until noon, and anyone stupid enough to argue with that ends up fed badly on purpose. Demo gets assigned the worst jobs and performs them with the desperate devotion of someone who thinks usefulness might turn into approval if he earns enough of it. Bricks appears wherever violence might become necessarybefore anyone admits they’re expecting trouble. Moth is either everywhere or nowhere depending on what the room needs to believe.
Everyone else is mostly background noise, avoiding my presence so that Saint doesn’t ridicule them about it later. However, I try to make myself as useful as possible, working with Moth where I can. His intelligence is far larger than the Rogues’ ever was but my knowledge comes from an entirely different perspective, one Moth never accounted for.
Instead of trying to butt into conversations or start discussions, I justdo.And by the third day, I’ve successfully created an overlay of their maps with everything I’ve found ‘wrong’. My father would have killed me for it and I’m hoping Saint will see my usefulness and accept it.
The door opens slowly, Moth stopping in the doorway, tablet tucked under one arm, and looks at the board for a long time before he looks at me. I keep my hands visible because I’ve learned enough about Obsidian to know that calm men are often the most dangerous ones.
“I didn’t remove anything,” I tell him.
“I can see that.”
He steps inside, sets the tablet on the desk, and studies the changes without giving me any relief of expression. Moth’s silence isn’t like Canon’s, meant to make someone shrink. It’s quieter and worse in a way, because he doesn’t need intimidation to make a room feel examined. He follows the new pin structure from the quarry spur to the Fulton watch point, pauses over the blue-marked fallback, then reaches past me and moves one red pin two inches north.
“You missed this.”
I lean closer before I can stop myself. “I thought that point was inactive.”
“It was active again as of this morning.”
“Then your Wednesday redundancy is worse than I thought.”
For the first time, the corner of his mouth shifts. It isn’t a smile exactly, but from Moth it feels close enough to make my chest tighten. “Yes, I suppose it is.”
Moth then just takes a seat and starts studying my work, no more conversation passed between us. I remove myself from the office and wander into the main room before snagging a coffee. Tally finds me later at the bar with a coffee gone cold between my hands.
“You look like a man who’s either solved a problem or caused one,” she says, setting a plate in front of me.
I glance down at the sandwich. “Do those usually look different?”
“Depends who’s bleeding afterward.” She slides onto the stool beside mine instead of standing across from me. “Eat before Saint comes back and decides glaring counts as nutrition.”
“He does do a lot of glaring.”
“He considers it communication.”
I take a bite because Tally has the kind of presence that makes refusal feel childish. The silence lasts just long enough to get me through half the sandwich before Tally strikes up a conversation.
“You grew up in the Rogues’ clubhouse?” she asks.
“Mostly.”
“Your mama too?”
I go still around the next bite, because for once the question isn’t harsh. Most people ask about Canon first. President, bloodline, father, power. Men like him make gravity around themselves, and everyone assumes his orbit explains the rest of us. Tally asks about my mother like she already knows there are parts of me Canon didn’t build.
“No,” I say after a moment. “She wasn’t club. Not really.”
“What was she?”
“Irish.” The word comes out small, so I set the sandwich down and try again. “She was born there and came over when she was in her 20s. Married Canon before the Rogues became what they are now, I think. Or maybe before I was old enough to understand what they were. She spoke Irish at home when she didn’t want the club in the room with us.”
Tally leans her forearms on the bar, giving the answer the kind of attention that makes it harder to pretend it doesn’t matter. “Is that where your name comes from?”
My fingers tighten around the mug.
She sees the reaction and doesn’t rush to fill it. That’s one of the things about Tally that keeps catching me off guard. She knows when silence needs company and when it needs space. “No one’s asked you that in a while,” she says as I shake my head. “Alright, then I’m asking.”
