Page 76 of The Dangerous Dance

"Connolly," I say.

His expression doesn't change. But the stillness that comes over him is the stillness of someone who has been handed something they need a moment to hold before they can look at it.

"What about Connolly," he says.

"He's been on Viktor's payroll for eight months." I say it directly, without softening, because Declan has never responded well to softened things. "Through an Antwerp shell. Small payments, irregular timing, structured as consulting fees in a transport company he has a listed interest in." I hold my brother's eyes. "Eight months, Declan. Since before any of this started."

He is very still.

"The fracture between us," I say. "The way the alliance with the Italians has looked to you — as a takeover, as a slow erasure of what we are — that's Connolly's work. He's been shaping the narrative for you while feeding our operational intelligence to Viktor. He's been doing both things at the same time, very cleanly, for eight months."

Declan looks at the desk.

I wait.

The silence is long and has several things in it that I recognize — the specific quality of a person revising something large, the structural shift of a foundation being examined and found to have been built on ground that wasn't what it appeared.

"You have confirmation," he says. His voice is flat and even and carrying the specific weight of controlled fury that has a direction now, a named thing.

"Yes. The account structure, the payment history, the Antwerp connection. All of it documented."

"Connolly." He says the name like he's testing whether it still means what it meant yesterday. "How long have you known."

"Four days."

"Four days."

"I wanted confirmation before I brought it to you. Unconfirmed, it's just an accusation. Confirmed, it's — what I just told you."

He looks at me for a long moment. Something moves through his face that is not one thing but several things in rapid sequence — betrayal, anger, the specific grief of learning that someone you trusted chose you deliberately as the vehicle for their own ends.

"He put everything in my head," Declan says.

"Yes."

"Every conversation. Every—" He stops. His jaw tightens. "The things I said to you. The things I believed. He⁠—"

"I know."

"I nearly—" He stops again. He puts both hands flat on the desk, anchoring himself to something solid because the ground has just moved. "I nearly voted with his men. Against you. At the meeting in September."

"I know."

"If I had⁠—"

"But you didn't," I say.

He looks at the desk. He is quiet for a long time.

"What are you going to do about him," Declan says.

"What we've always done about people who betray this family. But not tonight. Tonight I came here for something else."

He looks up.

I hold his gaze. "I need this to end, Declan. The distance between us. The war inside the house." I lean forward. "I should have come to you directly months ago, and I didn't, and some of what happened between us is on me. Not the Connolly part. But the rest of it — I could have handled better."

He says nothing.