Nikolas’s expression shifts once at that, then settles. “Understood.”
Conall appears at the side entrance with blood on his sleeve and two men behind him dragging Gavin between them. Gavin’s face is split over one brow, his lip is swollen, and one knee buckles every second step. He still has enough pride left to stand straight when he sees Saoirse.
“Little queen,” he mutters, voice wrecked. “Didn’t think you’d marry him in white.”
Saoirse steps out from my mother’s side before anyone can stop her. She is shaking, and she still walks right up to him until only a man’s reach sits between them. “You followed me when I was thirteen,” she says quietly. “You stood outside my dance lessons with Rory and told my father who I smiled at.”
Gavin’s mouth pulls into something that wants to be a grin and fails. “Kept you safe.”
“You held women down for him,” she replies, and her voice turns colder. “You delivered pills. You threatened doctors. You came to kill the father of my child at my wedding.”
The room goes silent around them.
Gavin looks at her belly, then at me, and spits blood onto the stone. “You think this ends him? Patrick always comes back.”
I step in then, close enough that he has to tip his head to hold my gaze. “No,” I tell him. “Men like Patrick come back when they still have routes, money, and believers. I took all three.”
He laughs once, ugly and wet. “You took what he let you see.”
I hit him hard enough to knock the laugh out of his face, then catch his collar before he drops all the way. “You are going to give me the hideout,” I say. “You’re going to give me vehicles, men, fallback routes, and every code he changed in the last week, and if you lie, I will know before the sentence ends.”
Gavin blinks blood from one eye and says nothing.
Conall shifts his grip. “There’s a room in the lower house with no windows.”
Declan walks over, gun loose at his side, and studies Gavin like he’s picking a cut of meat. “I know him,” he whispers. “He won’t break for pain first. He’ll break for timing. Make him think Patrick’s already moving without him.”
Nikolas joins us and hands me a phone in a clear evidence sleeve. “Pulled from one of the rear shooters. Recent calls areburner chains, but there’s one saved location pin sent three hours ago and deleted after read. We recovered the cache.”
I look at the screen, then at Gavin.
His eyes flick once. That is all I need.
“Take him,” I say. “Keep him breathing.”
Conall and the others drag him toward the side corridor, and Gavin twists once to look back at Saoirse. “He’ll use you too,” he rasps. “He’s just better dressed.”
Saoirse does not move. “Maybe,” she says, and her voice carries clean through the broken chapel. “But he never told me to hate the wrong man.”
Gavin’s face changes at that, and then the door shuts behind him.
I stand there a second longer, listening to the aftermath spread across the grounds. Orders. Boots. Radios. A stretcher wheel catching on stone. The chapel smells like cordite, flowers, and seawater drifting through shattered glass.
My mother touches my arm. “Finish this.”
“I will.”
Maeve looks around the ruined altar and lets out a sharp breath that could turn into tears later and will not now. “So,” she says, wiping soot from her cheek with the heel of her hand, “are you two still getting married today or do we reschedule around the gunmen?”
Declan snorts. Even Nikolas almost smiles.
I look at Saoirse, her dress torn, her eyes red, her mouth set, and I feel the old anger settle into the shape I need again. Patrick sent his best man. Patrick showed his hand. Patrick failed.
Now we take the rest.
“We finish the ceremony,” I say, and every head in my family turns toward me. “Then we get Gavin talking. By nightfall, I want Patrick’s door.”
Saoirse steps to my side and threads her fingers through mine, grip firm despite the tremor still running through her. “Then let’s not waste the priest,” she replies.
