Donnelly, once red, now a series of overstrikes and hollowed-out districts.
Aspreadsheet of port schedules, shipping manifests, and key-holder names.
Three safehouses listed, each one mapped to an address I know from the old days, all once Donnelly, now Crowley.
There are other files, too—PDFs of legal documents, scanned ledgers, snapshots of handwritten notes.
Everything is neatly organized, every rival's weakness documented in the ruthless taxonomy of modern warfare.
I scroll further, looking for the personal.
There is nothing—no photos, no texts, not even a hint of an outside life.
Just work.
Just the city, rendered down to assets and liabilities.
I close the phone and set it back on the bench, aligning it exactly as before.
In the mirror above the coat hooks, I catch my own face, expressionless, but with a flush of blood at the cheeks that gives me away.
I breathe out.
The wine glass is still half full.
A voice from the hallway.
I slip into a shadow, pressing my back to the wall as a man in a blue Crowley blazer enters, searching for his scarf.
He grunts, finds it, and leaves.
My heartbeat only slows after I count another full minute in silence.
I check the phone one last time, this time for fingerprints, but my hands are dry and careful.
I lift my own coat from the rack, return to the main hall, and blend in among the remaining guests.
If anyone noticed my absence, they do not mention it.
Ruairí catches my eye across the room.
His gaze lingers a moment, then moves on, as if already calculating the next three moves.
I replay what I have seen on his phone.
The speed of the takeover, the erasure of my family's footprint, the certainty with which he is building a new order.
This marriage is not an alliance.
It is a transfer of inventory.
I am here to be inventoried, and perhaps I was a fool for allowing myself to believe it could have ever been anything else.
My eyes sting as I return to my seat, sip the last of my wine, and smile at the nearest guest, who seems startled by the attention.
"It's been a long day," I say.
She nods, her relief at my ordinariness almost comical.
