Page 149 of The Dangerous Dance

Inside we are warm.

CHAPTER 39

Liam

The war room is on the third floor of the Rosso building in lower Manhattan.

I've been in this room twice before — once for the initial alliance formalization and once for the Marco conversation that lasted forty-five minutes over the projected time and covered ground that needed covering. Both times I was the only Irish presence in a room that was otherwise entirely Italian, which was the correct configuration for those meetings and which is not the correct configuration for this one.

This one requires Nadia.

It's the meeting Vito asked for two months ago — the one I committed to in his name during the phone call after the simultaneous attacks. The situation kept overtaking the timeline. First her going back in. Then her being taken. Then the week of recovery and reorganization that followed Sunday. Now, finally, it happens.

The Italians have been working from the operational intel through partnership channels since the Brooklyn rescue, but this is the first time the full Rosso room sees the source. Marco confirmed the arrangement on Wednesday with the practical satisfaction of a man who has been waiting for it to be the right time and is glad it has become the right time.

The meeting is Thursday at nine.

She's been in the Italian safehouse since Tuesday.

It is, by any operational standard, the right location — the Russians have no meaningful intelligence on Rosso-adjacent properties, Viktor's network has been focused on the Irish-Italian alliance as a target rather than on the Italian infrastructure itself, and the safehouse has the kind of security that comes from forty years of refinement.

It also has a barre.

I found this out on Wednesday when I came to brief her on the meeting and she was doing something in the large back room that she didn't hear me arrive for, which gave me approximately ninety seconds of watching her work before she noticed, which I will not describe in any detail because some things don't require description and this is one of them.

The hip is better.

Petya would be pleased.

I told her this and she told me Petya was her problem and to mind my own business, which is the specific tone she uses when something has landed and she doesn't want to perform the landing.

She's been building the presentation since Sunday. By Wednesday it is thorough, specific, and laid out with the particular clarity of someone who understands that the people she's presenting to are not going to be inclined toward her from the start and that the work needs to do everything the relationship hasn't had time to do yet.

"Too much," I tell her, looking at it Wednesday night.

She looks at me. "It's comprehensive."

"It's comprehensive in a way that will make them feel managed. Which is the one thing you don't want the Italians to feel." I hold her gaze. "Give them the structure. Give them the three arms, the financing chain, the command hierarchy. Give them what they need to act." I pause. "Let them ask for the rest. Let the questions be theirs."

She looks at the presentation.

"You're right," she says, which she says with the specific efficiency of someone who has reached a conclusion and is moving to the next problem rather than dwelling on the arrival.

She cuts it by a third.

It is better.

The war room fills by nine-fifteen.

Twelve people around the table — Vito at the head, Marco to his right, Dante beside Marco with the easy watchfulness he carries everywhere. Four more Rosso capos I know by name from the files. Two from the financial operation. And at the far end of the table, Declan beside Conor, which is where I asked them to be — Irish presence, solid, the visual confirmation that this is a partnership and not a briefing.

Nadia is to my left.

The room's response to her entry was the response I anticipated — a specific quality of attention that is not hostile but is assessing, the collective recalibration of a room that has been told something and is now seeing the something in person. She received it the way she receives most things, which is without performing awareness of it and with complete awareness of it.

Vito looked at her for a long moment when she came in.

She looked back.