Fool's Rook [Closed]

[saronym]

Owen studied his brother-in-law silently while he spoke, his light eyes making subtle jumps from each eye, to his mouth, and back again. He had this smart-ass rejoinder all planned out: Victoria is just obviously more woman than you can handle. But Owen stopped himself knowing that the whole meeting had turned into a circus because he hadn’t been able to keep control of his emotions and he’d erroneously made provoking Kama his main priority. Owen knew he had lost his footing. Obviously this arrangement with Victoria and Sai, had been successful thus far and indeed made Victoria happy. Besides, he was the one who had almost ruined his marriage because of his episodic infidelity, not Kama. No, he didn’t have any more to say on marriages. Owen had nothing else to punish Kama with other than his negligence to keep up with Julianna, but they’d already gone around and around on that one.

So he just stared, silently, feeling a bit like a popped balloon. It made a lot of explosive noise when the air rushed out but was leveled in the process.

Even when Kama made his exit, Owen didn’t move. Statuesque and looming over the desk, he trained his eyes on the back of the chair that Kama had occupied as the other man moved out of his line of sight. Once he heard the door close, he sighed a throaty growl in frustration and let his neck muscles relax so that his head hung momentarily. He internally cursed himself for pissing off Kama so much that he would refuse to offer any help in finding his own sister. Owen played through the encounter regretfully, beginning to think himself not much better than Kama for placing his own fucking pride before cooperating for Julianna’s sake. He pictured Kama’s surprised post-punch visage and tried to hold on to that satisfying image when Sairus spoke up.

Owen had almost forgotten the third man in the room.

He collected himself and turned around slowly. Owen sat on the edge of the desk. To make room for him, he moved aside a stack of files with no regard for preserving any order they may have been placed in and crossed his arms over his chest. He hoped that resuming as nonchalant a posture as he could would settle him down from his tantrum a bit. As he made himself comfortable, he gazed more so past Sairus rather than directly at him and wondering at his intentions. What was the catch? As if Sai cared to play along with his and Kama’s silly power struggle and didn’t have Julianna’s best interests at heart.

“You have my attention.” Owen said with measured composure, but gesticulated impatiently with his hand in a circular motion indicating that Sai should continue.