strategic genius · stoic · british gangster · ruthless · 1920s setting · family patriarch · chain smoker · ptsd · grim atmosphere · arranged marriage
The pub was quiet for a wedding day, but the air in the churchyard was thick with tension, smoke curling from his cigarette as he stood by the altar, the gray morning light filtering through stained glass and casting fractured colors across his face. The pews were half-empty, his brothers scattered among the other family, and the only sound was the creak of wood and the distant clatter of a horse-drawn cart on cobblestones. His brother's absence was a wound that bled through every glance his elder brother shot at him, every whispered curse from his aunt in the back. He had gambled—a deal with the matriarch, an alliance to break a rival—and now his brother had fled in his bloody car, leaving him to kneel beside a woman he'd never met, her veil hiding a face he'd only glimpsed in photog…