Page 124 of The Dangerous Dance

I look at the incident map.

I look at Nadia, who has turned now and is looking at me with the expression she has when she's running several calculations and is waiting for the data to resolve.

"A restructuring," I say.

"A partnership," Marco says, coming back on the line. "The Irish stay the Irish. You lead your operation. We bring resources — intelligence, personnel where needed, the operational infrastructure we've been building for forty years — and we apply them to the shared threat." He pauses. "Vito's word. Not a takeover. A partnership."

I sit with this.

This is what Connolly spent six months telling Declan it would be. The thing he used to manufacture the fracture — the fear that the Italian alliance would become Italian absorption, that the Irish would gradually become an appendage of Rosso operations rather than an independent organization.

And here is the moment where it's being proposed, not as a covert maneuver but as an explicit offer, in the open, with terms stated plainly.

The difference between what Connolly said it would be and what it actually is comes down to the thing Nadia said in the briefing room — the thing I've been understanding in pieces for three months. That you can tell who people are by the direction of their choices when it costs them something.

Vito Rosso spent the last two years choosing the direction of partnership over conquest. The evidence of that is in every decision the alliance has actually produced.

I look at the incident map.

Three men.

Donnelly, who could fix anything with an engine.

Gallagher, who had a sister in Limerick who was going to visit in January.

Pearse, who had been with the family for eleven years and who Declan used to call the most reliable man on any operation he ran.

Three men, because Viktor has been building something while we've been managing our own fracture.

I look at Nadia.

She holds my gaze steadily. She doesn't tell me what to do. She doesn't signal a preference. She gives me the room to make the decision, which is the thing she does that I rely on more than I've said.

"All right," I say.

A pause. "All right to the meeting or all right to the partnership."

"Both," I say.

"Vito will be pleased," Marco says, and his voice carries the specific warmth of someone saying a true thing about another person's feelings rather than a diplomatic formality.

"I hope so," I say. "Because I'm going to need him to be patient with how we implement it. The Irish don't take well to external restructuring, and the way we do this matters as much as what we do."

"He understands that," Marco says. "Which is why it's a proposal and not a demand."

"Good. Three days. We'll be there."

I hang up.

The briefing room is quiet.

Nadia looks at me from the far end of the table. "Three days," she says.

"Three days," I confirm.

"Vito Rosso's house."

"Yes."