Page 95 of The Dangerous Dance

Declan comes at eleven.

He has the tablet in his hand, which means someone showed him despite Conor's containment, which means the containment has a leak I'll need to find, and his expression has the specific quality of someone who has been shown something they needed time to be angry about before they came to have the conversation.

He sets the tablet on my desk.

"Before you say it," I say.

"I haven't said anything."

"You're about to say several things."

He sits down. This is the version of Declan that has come out of the last two weeks — still capable of anger, still the specific force of personality he's always been, but directing it differently. The Connolly revelation has done something to him that I couldn't have manufactured and couldn't have asked for — it's made him precise about where he aims. "The crew is dividing," he says. "The ones who came back after the three days — some of them have seen these. They're asking questions."

"What kind of questions."

"The kind about whether the head of the Irish family has lost his judgment to a Russian operative." He holds my gaze. "Those are their words. Not mine."

"What are your words."

He looks at the tablet. "My words are that I've been on the receiving end of six months of manufactured doubt about your judgment, and I've just finished understanding what that cost us, and I'm not in the business of joining that particular chorus again." He looks up. "But I need you to tell me it's not what it looks like."

I hold his gaze. "I can't tell you that."

He is very still.

"It is what it looks like," I say. "With the additional information that she came to me. That she handed over the receiver at the warehouse and the Connolly intelligence and the poison Viktor sent to incapacitate me, all of which she could have not done." I hold his eyes. "She's not a managed asset, Declan. She's—" I find the word. "She's made choices that cost her. The same direction, every time."

He looks at the desk. "The Russians will think she's compromised."

"Yes."

"Which means they'll⁠—"

"Yes," I say. "I know what it means."

He looks at me. "Do you have someone on her."

"Ailish."

He nods. He picks up the tablet and turns it face down, which is its own kind of statement. "The loyalists who are asking questions," he says. "I'll handle them."

"Declan—"

"I'll handle them," he says again. "Not your way. My way. Which is the way that worked for fifteen years before Connolly got in my ear and started changing what I was hearing." He meets my eyes. "Let me."

I look at my brother. At the version of him that exists on the other side of a courtyard and a fight and a name finally given to the thing that had been manufacturing the gap between us. "All right," I say.

He stands. At the door he stops. "The Italians," he says.

"I know."

"You've got hours, not days, before Marco sees these."

"I know."

"What are you going to tell him."

I look at the window. "The truth," I say. "Enough of it."