Page 76 of Reckless Bratva Daddy

"Already relayed. She says her people are repositioning but will not move on presence alone. We need action, not proximity." Nik's voice was flat, controlled, the voice he used when the situation had stopped being theoretical. "Luca's team is watching them. Nobody moves until somebody gives them a reason."

"Understood."

I turned back into the room and found Kirill had drifted six feet closer without appearing to have moved at all, the rare skill of a man who had learned to close distance the way other men learned to shake hands.

"You seem distracted tonight," he said. "For a man hosting the best event of the season."

"I have a great deal on my mind. Same as you, I suspect."

Something flickered behind his eyes, gone before it finished arriving, and for one unguarded second neither of us performed anything at all. He knew I suspected something. I knew he knew it. Neither of us knew how much the other actually had, and in that narrow, honest gap between two men circling the same fact from opposite sides, we understood each other better than either of us understood anyone else standing in that room.

"You've always been careful, Dima," he said finally. "Careful men worry me more than reckless ones. Reckless men, you can predict."

"I have never needed to be predictable to win."

"No. You have not." He raised his glass a fraction, an old habit between us, a gesture that used to mean something uncomplicated. "To the event, then. Whatever else is happening tonight."

"To the event."

We drank, and it tasted like nothing, and somewhere behind his eyes I watched him decide not to say whatever he had actually walked over here to say, and somewhere behind mine I made the same decision, and for one more minute the two of us stood in plain view of four hundred guests, toasting each other like men who trusted each other completely, which was its own kind of lie told loudly enough that nobody in the room thought to question it.

"Excuse me," I said. "Duty calls."

"Of course. Wouldn't want to keep them waiting."

I moved through the next twenty minutes on instinct alone, the muscle memory of two decades of rooms like this one, my mouth forming the right sentences to the right people while the rest of me tracked Luca's updates arriving in short, clipped bursts that never once broke my expression.

"East terrace, four now. They've split, two moving toward the loading dock side."

"Kirill's badge scanned him back through the service corridor eleven minutes ago. He hasn't come back out."

"Cora's still at the coordinator's station. Beckett's with her. Both clear."

I answered a toast from a city councilman I had known for a decade, laughed at a joke I did not hear the first half of, and felt every one of Luca's sentences land somewhere behind my ribs while my face did none of the work of showing it. This was the part of the life nobody outside it ever understood, that a man could stand in the middle of the most dangerous hour of his year and still be expected to remember somebody's daughter's name.

"Confirm the two on the dock side," I said, low, into the noise of the quartet finishing a piece nobody was actually listening to.

"Confirmed. They're not moving toward the building yet. Positioning, not approaching." A pause, Luca's voice going flatter, more careful. "Dima. This looks rehearsed. Nobody stands this still for this long without a plan telling them exactly when to stop standing still."

I found Nik near the bar, a glass in his hand he was not drinking, his eyes doing the same math mine were doing.

"They're not here for a scene," he said quietly, not looking at me, both of us facing the room instead of each other, two men having the most important conversation of the night without moving our mouths more than necessary. "Four men do not stage a scene in front of four hundred witnesses and every camera this venue owns. They're here to create the conditions for something quieter, somewhere the cameras don't reach."

"The loading dock."

"The loading dock, or the service corridor, or anywhere Kirill can walk someone without being seen doing it." Nik finally looked at me, and whatever composure he had been holding onto for the last hour thinned by exactly one degree. "Dima. If this goes the way I think it's going, the first thing they'll try to take from us is the ability to see what's happening."

I thought of the breaker room I had walked past twice during setup week, a space marked on a floor plan I had personally memorized, tucked behind a service door nobody but maintenance staff had any reason to open.

"Get eyes on the electrical room."

"Already tried. Luca's man on that hallway went quiet ninety seconds ago." Nik's jaw worked once, the only outward sign of how much that sentence had cost him to say plainly. "Not answering his radio. Not moving on the last camera angle we had on him."

Across the room, Cora laughed at something again, bright and unguarded, entirely unaware that I had just stopped breathing normally, something that had not happened to me once since the doors opened. I wanted, with an intensity that frightened me more than anything Kirill had said, to cross the floor and put myself between her and every exit in the building at once. I did not move. Moving would tell four men watching from the edges of this room what mattered most to me, and I had promised her, in this exact building, that I would think clearly instead of bravely.

"Reyes," I said into the quiet space between two conversations, my voice low enough that only my own people would catch it. "Tell her we may be losing visibility. Tell her that's not a drill."

"Already telling her." Nik's voice had gone very still. "Dima."