"So they watched me," I say.
"And watched Aoife. Planned a purge."
"They were going to wait," Niamh says, "let you stabilize the network again, take the bait seat, prove your usefulness, then kill you quietly. No spectacle. Just gone. You, Ruairí, and the babies."
I pace once, twice.
Then I stop.
"I want every single name that's signed off on this surveillance," I say.
Jack nods.
"We've started compiling. There's at least one insider on the council side. Likely Padraig O'Duinn."
"Of course it's Padraig," I murmur.
The man is a power-broker, and next-in-line for a seat on the Council of Seven.
No wonder they don't want to cross him.
Rory grimaces.
"The Council wanted the Donnelly and Crowley families united for one reason. To create a single, controllable axis of old blood and operational muscle. You were never meant to lead it. You were meant to seal it. That was the extent of your role."
I sit back.
"They thought a marriage would cool tensions. Keep the ports open. Let product flow under a single set of ledgers. Your name still holds weight in the north, Keira. Crowley muscle runs south from Galway to Cork. Together, on paper, you could re-stabilize a network that was slipping toward fracture after your father's death."
"But not truly together," I say.
Rory nods once.
"The arrangement was meant to expire before it became real. You would smooth over the funeral transition, carry out the wedding, provide a few staged photo ops at treaty tables, and then something quiet would remove you from the board. A car crash. An overdose if they got lazy. Ruairí would emerge as the bereaved but competentwidower, and the Council would crown him as the unifying figure. They thought they were buying a legend. One that didn't involve your actual survival."
I feel Jack's eyes on me, but I do not look away from Rory.
"They did not expect you to question shipping manifests. They did not expect you to re-open the message network. They did not expect Ruairí to hold off on consolidating power until he could trace the quiet theft of Donnelly assets back to their source."
"And they definitely didn't expect a child, let alone two," Niamh says quietly.
Rory continues.
"They underestimated both of you. They assumed Ruairí would take the marriage as a convenience and you would take it as penance. They thought he would spend the nights in Wicklow and you would play the dutiful shadow. They did not factor in the possibility that the union might actually hold."
"Because if it does," I say, "we are not just a power couple. We are the new center of gravity."
"Exactly."
Rory lays a small slip of paper on the table.
It's nothing, a printout of a customs ledger, the ink still fresh.
He taps the line that matters.
"That," he says, "is what Padraig O'Duinn is using to re-route containers from Spain through bonded warehouses tied to Moretti's holding firm. It has Donnelly signatures forged from two years ago. The volume of arms moving through those lanes tripled in the last three months. You're being framed for international trafficking. Slowly. Carefully. So that when they come to burn it all down, they have a reason."
"And with the pregnancy," I say, "they have a motive."
