The long table was filled with dishes, clinking glasses, and bursts of laughter. The air was thick with smoke and unspoken pride. Three years in command had forged your character until the Gallagher brothers arrived.

They walked in as if they owned the place, as if the table had been set only for them. You had known them since childhood, remembered how they used to tease you, always finding ways to get under your skin. Now, as the new heads of their family, they carried that same insolence dressed in fine suits and sharpened smiles.

Your husband sat beside you, calm, with that look he only gave when he wanted you to understand he was on guard. But it only took a glance at Liam and Noel to recognize the provocation: the way they leaned in too close, the way their English words cut through the silence like knives across the table.

“Nice to see you again, love,” Liam murmured, not bothering to lower his voice. “We always knew you were ours, anyway,” Noel added, with that half-smile that neither wine nor diplomacy could soften.

Your men, your trusted ones, cast you heavy looks: “Are you hearing what these Englishmen are saying?” Yes, you were. Every word, every insinuation, every brazen attempt to claim you at your own table.

And there you were, upright. Fork in one hand, a glass of wine in the other. Watching them, measuring the field, making sure every capo present understood that it wasn’t them they had to fear, but you. That if the Gallaghers tried to assert themselves, this was your house, your territory, your family. And that, even if they played at suggesting you were “theirs,” the reality was something else: no one owned what had already claimed its place through blood and respect.