But something has changed.
The more time I spend in these rooms, the more I feel something unfamiliar settle in my chest, something that tastes almost like purpose.
This is my house now.
My name may not be on the deed, but it echoes in every corridor, stitched to his by law and strategy and the fine thread of mutual restraint.
I was a daughter once, trained to speak when spoken to and smile like it meant something.
But now I am a wife, and not just any wife.
I am the wife of the man who may soon hold more power than any O'Duinn or Crowley has managed in half a generation.
I am not a footnote.
And yet, he does not trust me.
I see it in the way his gaze lingers too long when I walk into a room where I was not expected, in the subtle tightening of his jaw when I mention something I should not know.
He is still waiting to see what I will do with the space I have taken.
Whether I will soften into luxury or sharpen into threat.
I find him behind the desk that used to belong to his father, a ledger open, a pen held like a weapon.
He does not look up.
He has made an art of the non-reaction, the slow-blooded denial of the obvious, and so I wait exactly three seconds past the point of social acceptability before I break the stillness.
"Your office is a cliché," I say. "You know that?"
He tilts his head but does not look up.
"It's functional."
"I'm getting tired of the games," I reply.
He sighs, the pen hovering above the page.
"You're here. That was the plan."
I step forward, touch the edge of the desk.
"I mean the rest of it. There's hardly any cell reception. The cameras are pointed at me, not at the perimeter. I'm on display."
He finally lifts his eyes, but only to watch the fire.
"You're safer here than anywhere in the city."
"Safer is not the same as free."
He smiles as one would at an errant child.
"You know what's outside? O'Duinns with shotguns. Russians with better aim. Even your own men would kill you for a chance at this office."
He says it like he doesn't want it to matter.
But I see the twitch in the muscle along his jaw, the tiny tell that he is not as relaxed as he pretends.
