The chapel, stripped of iconography, has been filled with folding chairs and a temporary altar—a blankness that feels more honest than any prayer.
I stop by the kitchen and nod to the chef, who's plating cold canapés with military precision.
Everything is timed, measured, kept on a short leash.
The press will be limited to a single pool photographer, no interviews, no coverage beyond the syndicate's own channels.
Control the narrative, control the war.
My brother is in the poker room upstairs, arguing with a man in a linen suit over the seating chart.
It's a security matter, not etiquette, and every placement is a bet on who might pull a trigger first.
It's only when I round the landing at the grand staircase that I see my bride.
She stands alone beneath her father's portrait, which someone had the sense to uncover for the evening.
The painting is oil and muscle, a face carved from old rage and bad luck.
Keira is nothing like him.
Where he was blunt, she is exact.
Her posture is architectural—back straight, chin set, arms at her sides in an echo of the old kings' funerary stances.
She wears a dress the color of unpolished steel, and the only adornment is a single chain at her throat, thin as piano wire.
I can see, in the way she holds herself, that she's memorized every exit in the house.
She doesn't see me at first.
Or maybe she does and chooses not to react.
I watch her for a full minute, unashamed, cataloging the details.
No tremor in the hands.
No flicker in the eyes.
She has perfected the art of looking without being looked at, and in this house, that's a rare breed of power.
I step forward, footsteps heavy on the runner.
She glances up, and for a second I see the calculation in her face—a quick, surgical mapping of threat, distance, and risk.
She's not afraid.
She's gathering evidence.
"Miss Donnelly," I say.
"Crowley," she replies.
Not my first name, not the assumed familiarity that everyone else tries.
Just the last name, thrown like a stone at a window.
There's a table near the landing, set with glasses and a decanter of something Irish and ancient.
