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He stared down at the water. “I have had one cup.”

“You had one upstairs.”

“It was espresso.”

The room went silent as Riley stared at him. After a long moment, Maxim picked up the water. Alessia looked between them, clearly reassessing every assumption she had made about who actually held power in the room.

“Sit,” Riley repeated, adding black bread to the plate and then placing it by the empty chair beside me. “They’re less intimidating when they’re eating.”

“That is categorically untrue,” Kit said.

“Particularly in Nikolai’s case,” Ivan added.

Nikolai reached for a piece of bacon from Sloane’s plate. She poked his wrist with her fork.

“Mine,” she sneered.

Nikolai looked at the fork, then at his wife. “Violence over breakfast?”

“You married me with full knowledge of the risks.”

“That I did,” he chuckled.

Alessia’s mouth curved a little before she caught herself. She sat in the chair beside me, although she kept the black bag close to her boot. Her gaze continued moving around the table, studying each person now that names had been added to faces, before she finally picked up her fork.

The chair beside me had always been empty at Sunday supper. I had preferred it that way. Now Alessia occupied it with her black bag touching her foot and one hand close enough to grab it, so she could leave before anyone decided she had stayed too long. No one did, though. Instead, Riley passed her fruit. Sloane made a joke. Amy cocked her head, smiling. I watched Alessia take a bite and realized the place beside me had stopped feeling empty, which shouldn’t have mattered after less than a day, but for some reason, it did.

I tried not to read too much into it.

Kit waited until Alessia took a bite, then unlocked the tablet and slid it toward Alessia. “This is the complete file from last night.”

Still images from Nocturne filled the screen. The men on the VIP floor. Surveillance outside Alessia’s apartment. A frozen image of the bullet striking the wall beside her head.

Alessia swallowed heavily.

“Five men entered the club as part of the extraction team. Two were taken inside. A third was intercepted two blocks away. One died, and one escaped through the service alley. The two men we were told you noticed earlier in the week were connected to the operation, but one does not appear to work directly for the Armenians,” Kit explained.

Maxim waited until Alessia put her fork down. Then he cleared his throat and said, “Tell me about those two men.”

Alessia met his steel-blue gaze. “The taller one ordered mineral water and held the glass for nearly an hour without drinking. He wore an onyx ring on his right hand with an eight-pointed symbol cut into the face. He paid cash for the VIP booth, but folded the bills inward before handing them over, as if he didn’t want the server seeing the denominations.”

Kit began typing.

“Anything else?” Maxim asked.

“His jacket stayed buttoned even though the room was hot. Every time someone entered the service corridor, he touched the table with two fingers.”

“That had to have been a signal,” Ivan murmured.

Kit enlarged the onyx ring on the taller man’s hand. “That’s an Armenian eternity mark. Similar rings have been given to senior members of Levon Petrosyan’s transport crews.”

Then Kit swiped to the second man’s image.

“Tell me about the second man,” Maxim sounded like he was making a request, but it felt like an order.

“He barely watched the stage. He used the mirrors instead. He had a scarred right ear, split knuckles, and black wraps with two blue bands beneath his cuffs,” Alessia replied.

Nikolai stopped smiling.