Page 102 of The Dangerous Dance

"You brought the bread," she says.

"I brought the bread."

She nods at her hands. "All right."

She doesn't cry. She doesn't perform composure either, which is what I was afraid she might do. She just sits in the lamp light for a moment longer and then she stands and she takes my hand and she pulls me with her downstairs to the kitchen, and we eat the bread together standing at the counter, and the simplicity of it is the most useful thing I've done all evening.

Ailish arrives at half past ten the following morning, having been moved through the protocol the way I'd be moved through it — Conor's man collected her from the compound car park at eight, two vehicle changes through downtown Brooklyn, a forty-minute coffee stop at a café we own through three layers of shell, a final drop at a corner six blocks east. She walks the last six blocks alone, with the casual gait of someone running errands.

She comes in through the back garden gate.

She looks at the house with the appreciation of someone encountering something she has only stepped inside once before. Then she looks at me with the expression she has when she's been thinking about something for long enough that the thinking has become a position.

"We need to talk about the endgame," she says.

"I know."

"Not the Viktor situation specifically. The shape of how all of this resolves." She sits at the kitchen table. "Because right now we have Nadia in your private house, Viktor escalating, the Italians about to see photographs that came through a Bratva channel for the express purpose of breaking the alliance, and a vote in two days. Those things are related but they're separate and they need separate answers." She meets my eyes. "What is she when the Viktor situation is resolved. What is her position."

"She's—"

"Not personally," Ailish says. "Professionally. Operationally. What does she do. Because right now she's the head of the Irish family's priority. Which is a position but it's not a structure."

"I'm working on the structure."

"Work faster. Because the vote is in two days and the first question someone is going to ask is what your intentions are regarding the Russian woman."

"She's under my protection. As an asset with specific intelligence value that has materially benefited this family and the Italian alliance. The personal dimension is separate."

"It's not separate to them."

"I know." I look at the window. "Tell me what you'd say."

She considers this. "I'd say she came to us. That she made choices that cost her. That the intelligence she's provided has been verified and valuable, that she identified the Connolly asset and provided the pharmaceutical evidence and has knowledge of Viktor's operation that nobody else in our network has." She pauses. "And I'd say that who the leader of this family chooses to have in his life is his business, and that confusing that with operational judgment is the kind of error that Connolly was making. And look how that ended."

I look at her. "That's exactly what I'd say."

"I know. That's why I said it." She looks at her hands. "And Liam. The Italians. When Marco sees the photographs⁠—"

"I'm calling him tomorrow. Before he calls me. I'd rather he learn the situation from me than from a courier with a Belgrade postmark."

She nods. "Get ahead of it."

"Yes."

She is quiet for a moment. Then she says, quieter: "She's going to be all right. She's harder than she looks, which is saying something because she looks very hard."

"I know she is."

"And she's good, Liam. Not just useful. Good." She says it with the specific weight of a woman who makes that distinction carefully. "I wanted you to know I think that."

I look at her.

"Thank you," I say.

She nods. "I can stay tonight if she needs someone in the small hours. I'll go back tomorrow on the same routing."

"Stay."