I force myself to breathe through the pain in my ribs. “You don’t know him.”
“I know men like him better than you do.”
“No,” I say, and the word barely reaches past the blood in my mouth. “You know men like you.”
Canon’s face tightens, and Rook’s fist curls, but Canon lifts one hand before he can strike. “Leave that one. I want him awake for the strike.”
The side door opens before Rook can answer. Varina comes in with two men behind her—I’m not even sure when she left, a phone in one hand and her hair pulled back so tightly it makes her face look sharper. She stops when she sees the screen. Her gaze cuts to the live feed, then to me, moving over my swollen face and the blood drying beneath my chin, and I watch her try to make her horror into anger because anger has always been easier for her than grief.
“You look terrible,” she says.
A laugh drags out of me before I can stop it, then turns into a cough that makes my ribs flare so badly the room spots black at the edges. “You always did know what to say.”
Her mouth trembles for half a second before hardening. “All you had to do was obey.”
“All I had to do,” I repeat.
Varina’s eyes flash. “Yes. You could have listened. You could have stayed where you were supposed to stay. You could have remembered what family means instead of letting Saint Masters put a ring on your finger and turn you against your own blood.”
I pull against the restraints without meaning to, and pain answers from every direction. “This is what family means to you?”
“This is what survival means.”
“No,” I say, and the word comes out stronger than I feel. “This is what he means.”
Canon’s eyes move toward her. Varina sees the look and bristles under it, anger finding her before the shame. “You thinkObsidian is different?” she asks. “You think Saint is different because he kisses the bruises after he puts them there?”
Something ugly moves through my chest, hot enough to cut through exhaustion. “He would never have wanted you.”
A slap comes fast across my face, her palm cracking across my already-swollen cheek, and pain floods my eye until the room blurs white. My head turns with the force of it, and for a second I can’t hear anything but the ringing in my skull and the wet sound of my own breathing. When I look back, she is breathing hard, and Canon is smiling faintly because he knows exactly where that sentence landed.
Varina steps closer. “What happened to the boy who listened?”
My throat tightens. There are tears again, and I hate that my body keeps producing softness for people who have never deserved it. “He learned he was never wanted by anyone in his family.”
“Saint doesn’t want you, either,” she muses. “He wants to own you. He put a ring on you because it pissed Dad off. He calls you husband because it makes his club look strong. He drags you around in his cut because men like him like everyone knowing what belongs to them. But after tonight?” She leans closer, voice low and shaking now, cruel because she needs it to be true. “After tonight, he’ll realize you’re just a fucking prop.”
The screen glows beside us while Rogues continue moving into position. I close my hand as much as the strap allows until the ring bites into swollen skin.
“You don’t believe that,” I whisper.
Varina’s expression twists. “I believe what I see.”
“Then look at me.”
She doesn’t.
“Varina,” I say, and my voice breaks in the middle of her name. “Look at me.”
She does, finally, and I let her see everything. The blood, the tears, the swollen eye, the shaking I cannot stop, the family she says I betrayed standing around the room where they tied me down and carved pieces from me.
Rook scoffs from behind Canon. “Jesus, he’s still doing it.”
Canon looks amused. “Doing what?”
“Making everybody feel bad because he’s soft.”
Canon’s smile thins. “That was always his only talent.”
