I turn just enough that his hand slides from my back to my hip. Intentional. Familiar. My knife rests loose in my fingers, catching the low light.
“Careful,” I murmur. “You’re flirting with your wife while planning a murder.”
His mouth curves. “Multitasking has always been a strength.”
I step closer, invading his space now, my smile slow and knowing. “Try not to look too pleased when they fall for it.”
He leans in, voice dropping. “No promises,mo chroí.”
I tap the flat of my blade lightly against his chest, right over his heart. “You like when I’m dangerous.”
“I married you because of it.”
Our eyes hold. Heat. Trust. A shared hunger that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with choice. Finn presses a brief kiss to my knuckles—courtly, reverent, lethal—then steps back, already turning toward the door.
“Tonight, then,” he says. “One last confession.”
I smile to myself, slipping the knife away.
“Aye,” I answer softly. “Let’s hear them sing.”
The lights dim behind us. The chapel waits.
The engine is the only thing breathing between us. Finn’s hands are on the wheel, knuckles pale where the road curves. Nodriver. No buffer. Just him, the night, and the choices we’ve already made.
The violin lies across my lap, naked wood and strings catching the dash light. I rest my palm over it—not to steady myself. To remind myself. He doesn’t look at me. Doesn’t need to.
The chapel appears ahead, all broken stone and memory, rising out of the dark like it’s been waiting this whole time. I inhale. He exhales.
And neither of us turns back. WSe pull in slow, deliberate—headlights washing over stone that still remembers blood. Finn kills the engine. For a beat, neither of us moves.
Then he’s out first, smooth, unhurried, already wearing the mask. The man the city knows. The groom. The peacekeeper. He rounds the car and opens my door like it’s any other night, like this chapel hasn’t swallowed our past whole.
I step out smiling. It’s almost funny how easy it is.
His hand slides to my lower back the second I’m upright, fingers warm and proprietary, thumb pressing just enough to remind anyone watching that I belong right here. I loop my arm through his, lean in close, laugh softly like I’ve been whispered something sweet instead of dangerous.
“Easy,” he murmurs under his breath, lips brushing my temple. “They’re watching.”
“I know,” I murmur back, tilting my face up so he can see the smile reach my eyes. “That’s the point.”
We walk together toward the doors, bodies pressed close, our steps perfectly in sync. His hand drifts—too intimate for public, too practiced to be accidental—fingers skimming my hip, my waist, the small of my back. I let my own hand slide up his chest, palm flattening over his heart like I’m checking it’s still there.
It is. Fast. Steady. Alive.
The chapel doors groan as we push them open. Candlelight flickers inside, throwing shadows that dance like ghosts along cracked stone. The air smells of dust and old incense and memory.
Finn’s fingers lace through mine. I squeeze. Inside, we play our parts beautifully—soft laughter, murmured words, stolen touches that look like affection but feel like strategy. His mouth dips to my ear, breath warm.
“Smile for me,mo chroí,” he whispers. “Let them think we’re stupid with love.”
I do. And together, hand in hand, we step fully into the chapel.
The chapel hasn’t changed. The roof still gapes open to the Belfast sky, ribs of stone exposed like a body that never healed right. Candle stubs line the altar, wax pooled thick and uneven, some melted down into the cracks where blood once dried.
Where my brother died. Where I learned how to survive.
Finn’s hand finds my lower back the moment the doors shut behind us. Warm. Steady. Possessive without force. I lean into it without thinking, my body remembering before my mind can interfere.
