"That he can reach us anywhere." Nico's hand finds the small of my back. "It's been handled. Lex took care of it."
I look at him — my husband, as of three minutes ago — and I see the war behind his eyes. The ceremony, the crowns, the kiss — all of it was real. And all of it happened inside a church surrounded by men who'd kill us if they could get past security.
This is my life now. Incense and gunpowder. Vows and violence. A man who kisses like a question and kills like a statement.
I should be afraid.
I take his hand. Squeeze it. "Then let's go celebrate."
Something moves across his face — surprise, then warmth, then the mask again. But the warmth was there. I saw it.
Chapter 7
Nico
The Reception
* * *
Elysium wears a wedding the way a soldier wears a suit — the shape is right, but the bones underneath tell a different story.
My club has been transformed. White linen over the tables where I've negotiated territory lines. Candles floating in glass bowls on the bar where Lex once broke a man's orbital socket with a whiskey tumbler. The lighting is softer than usual — someone on the event team adjusted the fixtures I had repositioned three years ago, and the effect is warmer, more forgiving. It doesn't favor me anymore. It favors everyone equally, and I find that irritating in a way I can't justify.
Two hundred people fill the room. Greeks, Irish, Romanos, and a constellation of business associates who accepted the invitation because declining would be a statement they can't afford to make. The music is tasteful. The champagne is French. The security is invisible to anyone who doesn't know where to look, and I know where to look — twelve men on the floor, four on the exits, two on the roof. Lex's architecture. Flawless.
And Siobhan is working the room like she was born in it.
I watch her from across the bar while pretending to listen to a Romano cousin discuss import logistics. She's talking to Gianna Romano — a woman who gossips like she breathes — and somehow, she's made Gianna laugh. Not the polite, obligatory laugh of a mafia wife performing social function. An actual laugh, head back, hand on Siobhan's arm. My wife has charmed one of the most calculating women in the Greek-Italian social web in under four minutes.
She's not performing. She's adapting. Performers crack under sustained pressure because the role eventually separates from the person. Adapters integrate — they absorb the environment and become native to it. Siobhan reads Gianna the way she reads every room: what does this person need to hear, what are they afraid of, where's the common ground? Then she meets them there. It's a skill I recognize because I use it. Seeing it in her is like watching someone speak my language with a different accent.
She laughs at something Gianna says and the sound crosses the room and hits me somewhere I didn't armor. Warm. Unguarded. Real in a way that nothing in this building has ever been.
I notice she's holding her champagne without drinking it. The house pour is a Veuve Clicquot, excellent and standard. She takes small sips that don't actually go down. I've watched her do it three times. She doesn't like it but she's too smart to set it down untouched in a room full of people reading every gesture for political meaning.
I catch the bartender's eye. Gesture him over.
"The bride's glass. Replace it with the Billecart-Salmon rosé. Discreetly."
"Sir?"
"She doesn't like what she's drinking. She won't say so. Fix it."
Two minutes later a waiter appears at Siobhan's elbow with a fresh glass. I watch her take a sip — automatic, social — and then pause. Look at the glass. Look around the room. Her eyes find mine across thirty feet of candlelight and crowded tables.
She knows. Of course she knows.
She doesn't smile. She does something worse — she holds my gaze for three full seconds, and the look she gives me isn't gratitude. It's recognition.I see you. I see what you did. I'm filing it alongside the dress and the books I haven't found yet.
I look away first. That's a problem.
"Nico." Cormac O'Brien materializes at my left, which is impressive because I had eyes on every exit and didn't see him move. He's holding whiskey, not champagne, because Cormac O'Brien will drink whiskey at his own funeral.
"Cormac."
He doesn't waste time. "Hurt her, alliance be damned, I'll kill you myself."
We're at the far end of the bar, away from the crowd, and he chose this position deliberately — no one within earshot, the music covering our voices. Smart. A public threat would be a political incident. A private one is just two men being honest.