Page 1 of The Dangerous Dance

CHAPTER 1

Liam

The boardroom on the forty-second floor of Rosso Real Estate smells like old money. Vito Rosso sits at the head of the table the way he sits everywhere — like the furniture was built for him. Marco is on his left, Dante on his right. Both carry the particular stillness of men who've decided, before walking in, that they don't trust me.

I don't blame them.

Six months ago, my father was alive and the Costellos ran the Irish in this city without needing anyone's permission. Six months ago, I'd never sat across from Vito Rosso. A lot has changed. My da is in the ground. I'm the one in his chair. And the Italians, who used to be a problem we managed, are now an alliance my brother thinks I shouldn't be building.

I take my seat across from Vito and set my hands flat on the table. No folder, no agenda packet, no theater. I never understood the theater of it. "Thank you for making the time."

"You requested the meeting," Vito says.

"I did." To my right, Conor settles in with the quiet competence that keeps him employed — he came up through my father's crew, ran security for fifteen years, runs it for me now. Beside him, the chair meant for Declan sits empty. I don't offer an explanation. Vito is too smart to pretend he hasn't noticed. He notices everything. It's what makes him dangerous. It's also, I'm slowly learning, what makes him useful.

"Your brother sends his apologies?" Marco asks. The tone is courteous. The meaning isn't.

"My brother sends nothing," I say, because lying would be worse. "He disagreed with the agenda. I'm here to represent Irish interests regardless."

Vito folds his hands. He studies me the way he studies every room — counting exits, weighing what I'm worth against what I might cost him. I've been on the receiving end of a lot of powerful men's scrutiny. His is among the more thorough.

"The agenda," he repeats. "Which is."

"The Russians." I let it sit. "Three incidents in sixty days. Two of them in territory that borders your shipping routes as much as mine. The Bratva isn't testing us separately, Don Rosso. They're testing the seam between us." I hold his gaze. "I'd like to make sure there is no seam."

It takes two hours. The conversation is careful and correct and colder than the room's climate control has any right to be. We reach agreements — some provisional, all contingent on the kind of sustained trust that can't be manufactured in a single meeting. I know that. He knows that. We shake hands anyway, because that's what you do, and I leave with Conor at my shoulder.

In the elevator, Conor says nothing. He's good at that.

My phone buzzes as we step into the lobby. Finn.

I answer before he can speak. "I know. I'm sorry for it."

"She's not angry," Finn says, which is his way of telling me Gianna absolutely is. "But we agreed we'd be done with this for a while, Liam."

"I know."

"We had plans. For the hotel⁠—"

"I know, Finn." I push through the revolving door onto Sixth Avenue. The November wind cuts through my coat. "I wouldn't have called if I had anyone else. Declan pulled out this morning. Last minute. I needed someone standing beside me who the Italians could recognize. Costello blood. Someone who vouches for what I'm trying to build without me having to say it."

Silence. Then, "Gianna wants to know when it ends."

The question lands the way it's meant to. I don't have an honest answer. "Tell her I'm working on that too," I say. "And tell her I'm grateful. Both of you."

He hangs up.

I stand on the pavement a moment longer than I need to. Then I tell Conor to take the car back and walk the nine blocks to the compound, where I know Declan will be.

He is, as I suspected, drunk.

Not falling-down drunk. Declan doesn't fall down. He sits in the armchair in the small sitting room off the main hall, a glass balanced on his knee, his jacket over the arm of the chair, his collar open. He looks at me the way you look at someone you've been expecting and weren't looking forward to.

"How'd it go?" he says.

"How do you think it went." I don't sit. "You were supposed to be there."

"I told you I disagreed with the meeting."