“I’m listening,” I say.
“My wife was my everything,” he says. “She laughed at me when I needed to be laughed at and prayed for me when I didn’t deserve it and she told me I could be more than a man who broke things for a living.” He looks at me then, straight. “I have put my hands around that girl’s life in ways she didn’t ask for, forced her into a bubble to keep her safe, because grief makes men greedy. I am trying to stop. I’m asking you to help me stop.”
I let my shoulders set around the weight of it. “How?”
“Protect what’s left of her mother,” he says, simple as weather. “The part that believes people are worth saving. You can keep her body safe. I know how you are. Keep the rest safetoo. The goodness in her soul.” His jaw works. When he speaks again, the voice is lower. “I am giving her to you. I know what that sentence means in our world. I am not giving up being her father. I am not giving up my right to kill for her. But I am telling you that you will be the first wall in her defenses. You will be the last, too.”
“Yes,” I say. No speech. No convincing. Just the word he asked for.
He studies me like he’s counting my bones. Then he nods once, short. “Good,” he says. “Now you’re family.”
“Already?” I ask, because I can’t help myself.
“Right now,” he says, mouth almost breaking into something like a grin. “The paperwork can catch up.”
The sacristy door opens a hand’s width. A server sticks his head in and says, “Ten minutes, sir,” eyes wide like he’s seen too many men in one room.
Don Marco touches my shoulder once and lets go. “She’ll be beautiful,” he says.
“She already is,” I say, and it’s truer than anything else I’ve said today.
He leaves, shoulders squared. Roisín steps in with the program. Tiernan ghost-walks back to his post. Somewhere in the nave, the organist begins to warm the air with notes that have made better men leak at the edges. I take a breath and hear Nan telling me not to be stupid and the ghost of my grandfather telling me not to be soft and my mother’s ghost telling me to be both when it counts.
Rafferty appears, gives me a quick nod. “Irish contingent secure,” he says in that deadpan of his. “Nan’s brother has accepted the seating plan as if it was his idea.”
“Excellent,” Roisín murmurs, tick-marking a line. “We’ll make him a place card for the next coup.”
I check one last thing—the inside pocket where Pop’s and Nan’s bands are kept safe.
“Time,” Tiernan says.
We go.
The nave is full the way a chest is full before you exhale—pressure and promise. The Shannon side looks like someone built a forest of black suits and asked it to behave. The Italian side has mastered pretending they own the place. Up front, Don Marco’s people sit like they can’t decide if they’re relieved or in trouble.
Nan is on the aisle, where she can stand first if she chooses and trip anyone who comes too fast. Her brother sits directly behind, wearing a tweed that probably knows secrets and a scowl that could bring down a government.
I take my place at the front with the priest. He nods once. We don’t need to pretend we like each other. We respect the rules—we both have them. Tiernan stands at my right, hands clasped, eyes on the room. Roisin standing at his side. Both Conall and Niall there, rounding out the remainder of my immediate family. The music shifts and the congregation stands.
The aisle is suddenly long. Too long.
I don’t see the flowers first. I don’t see the dress. I see her chin, a fraction higher than fear would place it. Then I see the line of white—not fussy, nothing to trip her, not a cloud to hide in. Clean. A fitted bodice, sleeves, a skirt that moves like it remembers she likes to walk fast. Every inch lining her perfect curves. Her hair is up in a way that made at least two women cry and one swear. A long plain, translucent veil falls from the crown and doesn’t try to do more than soften the edges of my future queen. The bouquet is green—herbs and leaves and white that isn’t sweet.
She looks like a decision, not a decoration.
My chest does something inconvenient. Tiernan steps half a toe closer like he’ll stop me from moving if I forget to wait.
Caterina’s eyes find mine at the halfway mark and doesn’t look away. Neither do I. Nico shifts in a pew on the left and pretends not to.
Tiernan will deal with that if he breathes wrong. Nan’s mouth curves the smallest degree. Don Marco stares at his hands like a man who has run out of prayers and found a new way to ask.
She reaches the step. We turn together, as Aoife rehearsed us. We stand shoulder to shoulder, facing the altar like we mean it. The priest begins. I don’t hear the first lines because I’m too busy counting her breaths. When I lean to tell her she looks dangerous, she flicks her eyes up and says, “I am,” and the corner of my mouth moves because she is.
Dangerous to my well-being and my sanity, and my entire fucking empire at this point.
We do the call-and-response. We do theI will, andI do, and I don’t stop atI want. The old man from Ireland says something under his breath in a dialect that should be dead. Nan socks his knee with her purse without looking. Somewhere behind us, Tiernan murmurs into the air and two ushers we own change positions without the church noticing.
“Rings,” the priest says.
