“You want to ask it,” he said. “So ask.”
“The last names,” I said. “You all share one: Dane.” I let the word hang for a second, then tilted my head toward Levi. “Same as his.”
Levi went still beside me. Even without looking, I felt it.
Charlie’s gaze sharpened. “You’ve been busy.”
“You don’t scrub this hard if you’re proud of the connection,” I said. “Are Levi and your associates related? Is that why you sent a plane?”
“We sent a plane because Levi does the kind of work we value,” Charlie said. “He doesn’t freeze when things get ugly. He finishes what he starts. That’s rare.”
“That’s an endorsement,” I said. “It’s not an answer.”
“We have a big family,” he said finally. “Multiple branches, plenty of history.”
“Is Levi one of those branches?” I pressed.
Levi exhaled, low. “Amelia?—”
“He’s a Dane,” Charlie said. “So are we.”
Heat crawled up the back of my neck. “That’s not an answer, either.”
“It’s the one you’re getting this morning,” he said.
I laughed, short and humorless. “You do realize how that sounds from the outside? Private estate. Private jets. Viper in a tank. A whole brood of ex-military men with the same lastname running money through half of Europe. You can see why someone might be concerned.”
“Let me guess,” he said. “Someone in D.C. with access to partial data and a craving for drama.”
“If my sources wanted drama, they’d leak to cable news,” I said. “They came to me because they want clarity.”
Charlie leaned forward, forearms on his knees, all easy amusement gone.
“Then here’s some clarity,” he said. “We operate legal entities in multiple jurisdictions because the work we do spans multiple jurisdictions. We move money quickly because disasters don’t wait for appropriations committees. We hire men and women with specific skill sets—yes, some of them former Special Forces—because the world is full of people who’d rather kidnap aid workers than send thank-you notes.”
The room vibrated with the clash.
Levi ran a hand over his jaw. “You two are going to kill each other,” he muttered.
“Stay out of it,” I said.
He snorted. “Not likely.”
Charlie watched the volley with interest. “You two always like this?” he asked. “Feels like I walked into the middle of something.”
“We’re done with the personal questions,” I said.
“Are you?” he asked mildly, gaze flicking to Levi again, then back to me. “Because your source material seems very interested in my last name and his.”
He wasn’t wrong. I hated that.
“I don’t care about your family tree,” I lied. “I care about what you’re building on it.”
“You care about both,” he said. “You’re wondering if the same man who—what was it, Levi, ‘kept America on the up and up’—is now working for people who profit from the shadows he used to clear.”
Our eyes met. He’d hit closer to the mark than I wanted to admit.
“I’m wondering,” I said slowly, “if a man who once refused to compromise his principles suddenly decided his price was a private jet and a black card.”
