Page 103 of The Dangerous Dance

She goes upstairs to find Nadia.

I sit in the kitchen for a few minutes after she goes, and I think about a house I bought six years ago for the morning light and how it has, in the space of one day, become the most strategically significant location I own. Conor in the second-floor spare. Ailish in the third. Nadia in the bedroom that gets the east light I told her about. The garden with the fig tree that has never produced a fig. The two men I cannot see who Conor has positioned at the front, who do not know what they are watching, who will rotate in twelve hours.

This is the shape of it for now.

I drink the cold remains of my coffee and I think about what comes next.

The vote happens two days later at the compound, in the main hall, with everyone assembled who has a voice in the matter.

It's a bigger room than it used to be — the result of the men who came back in the three-day window, the ones who came back after Declan finished with the loyalists, and the ones from the south corridor who'd been waiting and made their decision when Declan stood in this same hall and told them, in the specific and unambiguous language of a man who has revised his own understanding, exactly what Connolly was and exactly what the Irish under my leadership is not.

I stand at the head of the hall.

Declan is to my right. Finn is at the wall. Conor is at the door.

"You know what this is," I say. "A confirmation of leadership. A formal vote on the direction of this family. Not because there's any ambiguity about the outcome, but because ambiguity is what's been feeding the fracture, and we're done feeding it."

The room is quiet.

"The last six months have been a manufactured crisis. Manufactured by a man who was paid by our enemies to create it. I won't pretend that means nothing — it cost us men and operations and time, and the specific damage that comes from fighting a war on two fronts when you don't know you're fighting two fronts." I look at the assembled faces. "That's done now. The question before you is whether you're in this family under my leadership with the direction that leadership is taking, or whether you're not."

I look at Declan.

He nods.

"Vote," Conor says, from the door.

It takes six minutes.

The count is what it is and what it needed to be — not unanimous, because men who've been through what the last six months have put through don't arrive at unanimity, and I don't need unanimity. I need the weight of the room and I have the weight of the room. The three men who vote against, I look at with the specific directness of someone who sees them and notes them and will deal with the meaning of it separately and without theater.

"Thank you," I say to the room.

Then I say: "There's one more thing."

The room settles.

"Nadia Volkov," I say. "You've heard her name. You've seen the photographs — or you've heard about them, which is the same thing for the purposes of this conversation. You know she came from Viktor's network and you know what she was sent to do." I look at the assembled faces. "You also know — those of you who've been paying attention — what she chose to do instead. The Connolly intelligence came from her. The pharmaceutical evidence came from her. The knowledge of Viktor's timeline that has let us stay ahead of his offensive rather than reacting to it — that came from her."

The room is quiet.

"She is under my personal protection. Which means she is under the protection of this family. That is not a negotiation. It is not a discussion." I meet every set of eyes in the room in sequence. "She is not the enemy in this building. Viktor is the enemy. The people who manufactured six months of internal fracture so that Viktor could move unchallenged — they are the enemy. Nadia Volkov made choices that cost her. The same direction, every time. That is the only intelligence assessment of her that matters to me."

The room absorbs this.

I look at the room one last time.

"We're done here," I say.

I call her from the compound car park.

She picks up on the second ring. "How did it go."

"It went," I say.

A pause. "That's not informative."

"You have the protection of the Irish family. Formally. On record." I look at the compound building. "And I'm coming back to the house."