Chapter nineteen
Red, Resung
Siobhán
Afewmonthslater,themanor no longer feels like a tomb.
The scaffolding still clings to the stone like a skeleton, and the winter ivy hasn’t quite begun to grow back, but there’s life here now—bright, noisy, stubborn life. Children’s laughter spills out the broken windows as easily as the wind does. Paint-splattered volunteers move in and out of doorways carrying lumber and sheet music. Someone is tuning an old cello in the hall that used to smell like blood and whiskey. Now it smells like sawdust, lemon cleaner, and hope.
My hope.Ourhope.
I stand in what used to be my mother’s music room—what will soon become the small performance hall for the new school—and press my hand against the freshly refinished piano. It’s not hers, but it feels like her somehow. Like she’s tucked between the keys, humming warm approval under every note.
TheKelleher School of Music & Arts. Free. Accessible. A haven for children who grew up like I did—frightened, overlooked, pushed aside, unheard. Cillian insisted on funding everything. I insisted on fighting him about it. We compromised—meaning I lost, but in a way that made me smile.
He says the city owes me this. I say I owe the music this. Either way, the doors will open in the autumn, and the world I was terrified to revisit has somehow become mine to rebuild.
I run my fingers along the piano’s edge, imagining the future—tiny hands learning scales, teenagers composing their first heartbreak songs, parents sitting in the back row with tissues and too much pride. My mother would’ve loved this. Maybe… maybe she finally gets it.
I inhale, slow and steady, letting the moment settle into my bones.Thisis home now— Dublin’s air, these halls, this impossible second chance. And him. Always him.
Cillian is cleaning up the Red Hand. Not softening it—God knows Dublin would eat him alive if he tried—but reshaping it. Sharpening it into something that protects instead of destroys. He’s still the devil they whisper about in pubs, still the man whose name can silence a room… but he’smydevil. A good man with blood on his hands and goodness in his bones, a contradiction I understand better than anyone.
And I love him.
I love the way he walks the manor grounds with a ledger in one hand and a mug of tea in the other, barking orders at men twice his size while texting me reminders to eat breakfast. I love the way he kisses me before he leaves for meetings—quick, fierce, like a promise and a warning stitched together. I love the way he looks at the children in my classes when he visits, like he’s memorizing their names, their stories, deciding quietly which ones need extra coats delivered anonymously to their doors.
And God… I love the way he comes home. Worn. Bruised. Powerful.Mine.
Planning a wedding with a mafia king should be chaotic. Instead, it feels like destiny humming under my skin. We settle on next Christmas season. I’ll move my six-concert tour earlier in December, finish by mid-month, and then—two days before Christmas Eve—we marry.
A winter wedding cloaked in candlelight and snow. A chapel filled with music, holly, and half the city of Dublin elbowing each other for a glimpse. Rouge snorts every time we mention it.
“Yous do realise,” he tells me, flicking flour at my nose as if that counts as culinary contribution, “this’ll be treated like a bloodyroyal wedding, yeah? Dublin’s Duchess marryin’ its Devil? The city’ll lose its collective mind.”
Cillian only smirks, sliding his arm around my waist, lips brushing the back of my neck. “Let them,” he murmurs. “They’ve waited long enough for us.”
And I—God. I can almost see it already: Snow drifting around the chapel windows. My gown sweeping across the old stone aisle. Cillian waiting for me at the altar, dark hair, darker eyes, wearing devotion like armor. A Christmas wedding.OurChristmas wedding.
The kind little Siobhán from the ruined manor never dared to dream of.
Dublin is already buzzing. I hear the whispers when I walk through the market. Merchants asking about dates, florists booking out months in advance, old women clutching my hands and promising blessings as if they personally got Saint Brigid on the phone.
It makes me laugh. It makes me warm. It makes me… safe. For the first time in my life, I feel rooted. Not because of a place, but because of a man. And because of the life we’re building, note by note, brick by brick.
I think about the house—our house—as the car hummed down the lane this morning. The stable-turned-home Cillian built long before he had any hope I’d ever return.
He gave me a structure. Four bedrooms upstairs, clean and white and waiting. A kitchen he designed himself, all stone andcopper and old-world charm. Thick beams, warm light, and quiet corners made for peace. ButImade it a home.
There are framed photos now—us as children, tiny and bright, grinning on summer hillsides. A blurred one of my mother, tucked beside a vase of white roses Cillian buys fresh every Sunday. Candles burn on nearly every surface—my favorites, all soft citrus and vanilla, mingling with the faint cedar of his cologne. A bowl of fruit sits on the counter like something out of an old painting. Blankets drape over every chair, each one different—knitted textures, tartan weaves, fleece so soft it feels like a cloud.
My trinkets live everywhere: tiny carved birds, bits of sea glass, a chipped music box I’ve kept since I was nine. Cillian pretends to grumble at the clutter—“Mo ghrá, do we really need seventeen candles in one room?”— but he never moves a single one. Never tells me no. Never stops smiling when he catches me rearranging things for the fiftieth time.
I haven’t touched the bedrooms upstairs yet. They’re blank slates—quiet, waiting, full of hope and possibility. Four rooms meant for the future we once dreamed in whispers. Now they simply breathe softly above us, patient as the seasons.
His office, once stark and intimidating, now has a velvet chair by the window, a soft throw blanket, and a little brass lamp that casts a warm glow when he works late. He didn’t ask for any of it, but he uses all of it.
And the music room—the one he built off the dining room with no door, just an archway—that’s mine. Stacks of sheet music in woven baskets. Awards from old concerts lined gently across a shelf. Two pianos: the grand one he restored for me, and the upright from my childhood he hunted down and bought back from a collector. The room smells like old books, citrus polish, and fresh lilies. It feels like love in physical form.
