“He won’t be surprised,” Cayce says without looking away from the altar. “My teams run like a well-oiled machine. They’ve already presented him with all of the potential plans.”
“Good boy,” Aoife says, distracted as she scribbles. Someone else would get their throat cut for calling him a boy. Aoife gets a pass.
A low voice to my left distracts me. “You look lovely, Caterina.”
I don’t startle, but I do flick my eyes over.
Nico stands three pews back, hands in his pockets, hair in that cared-for mess that says he thinks girls will see it and wonder what it would feel like against their mouth.
“Thank you,” I say, neutral.
“Turquoise,” he continues. “Bold.”
“Aoife talked me into it.” I lie.
“I thought you didn’t need talking into anything.” His smile doesn’t look like kindness. “When I heard about the wedding, I wasn’t surprised. I did think you’d choose differently.”
“Differently how?”
“Differently from him.” He flicks his gaze toward Cayce’s back and then back to me. “You always struck me as the type to pick your own trouble. And I offered you a change.”
“I did,” I say.
“Is that what you’re calling it?” Nico murmurs. “Trouble?”
There’s a ripple along the left aisle. Heads turn.
An older woman arrives like a quiet storm. She’s small, in a dark coat, hair blunt and red and uncompromising. She nods at the usher who thinks he can show her to a pew, then chooses her own—end of the row, aisle seat, hands folded on her purse like she’s ready to use it as a weapon.
Cayce notices the shift in air and turns. His face changes for the older woman in the way that makes the hard men in the family pretend to look at their feet. He steps down and the rehearsal halts around us, willing or not.
“Nan, I’m glad you’re here.” He kisses Nan’s cheek, says something deliberately soft, and she hums approval like a woman who very rarely gives it.
Nico watches the exchange with a mouth that curdles at the edges. “He plays the room well,” he says.
“He doesn’t play the room,” I say. “He owns it or he leaves it. The fact that you don’t know that is astounding.”
“Big words,” Nico says. “We’ll see if he still gets to use them after the wedding.”
“Is that a threat?” I ask.
“A prediction,” he says lightly, as if we are discussing rain. “Families change when contracts and money gets involved. Old business comes up. Old alliances. You never know who owes who until the bills come due.”
“Gentlemen,” Aoife calls, making “gentlemen” sound like “children,” “if you’re done measuring yourselves, I need my bride and my groom to stand where I put them. We’re doing lines.”
Nico turns the smile back on. “Later,” he says, and slides away to charm an auntie.
I stand in my place. Cayce returns to my side. His attention brushes my cheek like the weight of a hand without the touch.
“What did he say?” he asks.
“Nothing I couldn’t handle.”
“I didn’t ask if you could handle it,” he says. “I asked what he said.”
“Paper changes families. Bills come due. He likes the sound of his own voice so I let him talk and corrected him about his nonsense.”
His mouth doesn’t curve. “He’ll keep it down during the Mass.”
