Nadia
I try to leave on a Tuesday.
Not dramatically. Not with a bag packed and a speech prepared.
I simply wake up before he does and I sit in the kitchen of the house in Carroll Gardens with the specific quality of someone who has been turning a problem in the dark and has arrived at a shape for it, and the shape is this: I have given him everything I have to give, and the giving has cost him three men and a broken arm and a shoulder laceration and a Sunday night in Brooklyn, and the correct thing — the fair thing — is to go.
Not from him. I am past the point where going from him is something I can construct a justification for, and I know it and I'm not pretending otherwise.
From the situation. From being the thing that Viktor moves against, the thing that draws the fire, the specific liability of being someone whose handler wants her dead and whose continued presence in this house makes this house a target.
I get my coat.
He is in the doorway before I reach the front door.
He does not look like someone who has just woken up. He looks like someone who has been awake for a while and has been waiting to see what I would do, which is the thing about him that I find most difficult and most — him.
"Where," he says.
"Away," I say. "Not from you. From this. From being the thing Viktor aims at when he wants to reach you."
He looks at me.
"You don't owe me anything," I say. "The operation is over. We have what we need to move against the Vore. You don't need me here anymore in any capacity that justifies the cost of—"
"Stop," he says.
"Liam—"
"Stop," he says again, with the specific quality of a man who has heard enough and is done letting it continue.
He crosses the hall and he stands in front of me and he takes the coat from my hands and he sets it on the chair and he holds my gaze with everything that doesn't have a clean word.
"You're not a liability I'm managing. You're not an asset I'm protecting.
You're—" He finds it. "Mine. In the specific way that means something in this world and in every other world and I don't care what Viktor aims at because Viktor is going to find that aiming at you means aiming at everything I have and everything I'm building and I will burn down whatever he's built before I let him have that. "
I look at him.
"You're mine," he says. Simply. Completely. "That's not a condition or a contract. It's just true."
I look at him for a long moment.
"That's a very large claim for a Tuesday morning," I say.
"I mean every word of it."
I believe him. This is the thing about him that I've been building toward for two months, the thing underneath the operational precision and the managed exterior — he says true things directly and he means them and he does not say things he doesn't mean.
I believe every word of it.
"All right," I say.
He looks at me. "All right you'll stay."
"All right I'll stay," I say. "But Liam. The house is not safe. Viktor knows this address now — he has to, after Sunday. Staying here means staying in a location he can move against again and I won't be the reason—"
"I know," he says. "I've been thinking about that."
"Have you arrived at something."
"Not yet. But someone might have."
Gianna arrives at ten.
She comes with the specific energy she brings everywhere, which is the energy of someone who has already been thinking about a problem and has arrived at a position and is ready to present it.
She sits at the kitchen table where we've had breakfast and she looks at me with the directness she's applied since the girl's day at the compound.
"I spoke to Vito," she says. "Last night."
Liam looks at her. "About."
"About Nadia. About the situation." She holds her brother-in-law's gaze.
"The Russians know virtually nothing about the Italian network.
The safehouses, the locations, the personnel — Viktor has been so focused on the Irish-Italian alliance as a target that he hasn't invested in mapping the Italian infrastructure itself.
" She pauses. "Which means if Nadia were in an Italian safehouse, she'd be in the safest possible location while the Vore operation resolves. "
"Gianna—" Liam starts.
"Vito agreed," she says. "Before you argue with me, he agreed. Not as a condition, not with strings. As the partnership doing what a partnership does." She meets his eyes. "His word."
Liam looks at his sister-in-law. Something moves through his face — the specific quality of a man receiving something that is both what he needs and more than he expected to receive, which is the quality that comes with understanding that what you've been building has become something you can rely on.
"It's temporary," Gianna says. "Until the Vore is dismantled and Viktor is no longer a functional threat.
" She looks at me. "But it's real. You'd have full access to their intelligence network, their operational infrastructure.
You could continue working on the Vore analysis from inside their network.
" She pauses. "Vito specifically said — and I'm quoting him because the wording matters — that the woman who identified the Connolly asset and walked back into a hostile operation to get the intelligence we needed deserves a safe place to work from while we use it. "
I look at Gianna.
She looks back with the expression of someone who has just delivered something they've been carrying carefully and is glad to set it down.
"Vito said that," I say.
"Word for word," she says.
I look at Liam.
He is watching me with the expression that lives in the space where the structural quality used to be and isn't anymore, the one that simply sees.
"It's the right call," he says. "Operationally."
"I know," I say.
"And I'll be there," he says. "The Vore operation, the strategy meetings — I'll be where you are more than I won't be."
"I know that too," I say.
He holds my gaze. "Say yes," he says.
I look at him for a moment. At the man who crossed a hall on a Tuesday morning and took my coat and said mine with the specific weight of something that is simply true.
"Yes," I say.
Gianna, across the table, does not perform satisfaction, which is the thing about her that I've come to rely on — she receives outcomes without theater. She simply picks up her coffee and drinks it.
The call to my mother happens that afternoon.
Not planned. I'm sitting in the east-facing room on the top floor, the one with the morning light that was the reason he bought the house, and the burner is in my hand and the Moscow number is in it and I've been looking at it for ten minutes with the specific paralysis of someone who knows they need to do something and has been waiting for the precise moment of readiness.
There is no precise moment. There is just the calling.
She answers on the third ring.
"Nadenka," she says. My name in her voice, which sounds like home in the specific way of things that were home before you knew what home was.
"Mamma," I say.
A pause. I can hear the quality of her listening — she was an actress, she listens the way actors listen, with her whole attention. "Where are you," she says.
"New York," I say. "I'm all right."
"You don't call when you're all right," she says. "You call when something has changed."
This is my mother. This is the thing about her that I've been carrying since before I knew I was carrying it — the specific intelligence underneath the performance, the real version that existed before she learned to be the role.
"Things have changed," I say.
"Tell me," she says.
I don't tell her everything. I tell her enough. The version that contains the shape of it without the operational specifics, which she understands because she has always understood, more than she's let on, the shape of the life I was living.
When I finish she is quiet for a moment.
"This man," she says. "Costello."
"Yes."
"He came for you."
"Yes."
"And you came back," she says. Not a question.
"Yes," I say.
Another pause. "Your father," she says carefully, "would have had opinions."
"He would," I say.
"I am not your father," she says. "And my opinions are different." A pause. "I think you sound like yourself. For the first time in a long time." She pauses. "The way you used to sound before all of it."
I sit with that. With the specific weight of it, which is not small.
"Call me again," she says. "Soon. Not when something changes. Just — call."
"I will," I say.
"Nadenka." Her voice does the thing it does when she's going to say something she means rather than something she's performing. "I'm glad you didn't become what they wanted you to be."
I close my eyes for a moment.
"Me too," I say.
We hang up.
I sit in the east-facing room with the afternoon light and the city outside and the specific quality of having said something true to someone who needed to hear it and needed to say it back.
Liam appears in the doorway. He doesn't ask. He looks at me and reads what he sees the way he reads most things — quickly, accurately, without requiring me to translate.
He comes in and sits beside me on the floor, which is where I'm sitting, back against the wall.
We look at the light coming through the windows.
"My mother," I say.
"Good call?"
"Good call," I say.
He nods.
We sit.
"The Italian safehouse," I say. "When."
"Tomorrow," he says. "Gianna's arranging it today." He pauses. "And the Vore strategy meeting is Thursday. Marco wants you in the room."
"I know," I say. "I've been building the presentation since Sunday."
He looks at me. "You've been building the presentation since Sunday."
"In my head," I say. "I'll put it on paper tomorrow."
He is quiet for a moment. "You were in Viktor's compound two days ago."
"I know where I was," I say.
"And you're already building the presentation."
"The granularity fades," I say. "You told me to get it documented. I'm documenting."
He looks at me with the expression that is the fully realized version of everything I've been reading in fragments since November.
"What," I say.
"Nothing," he says.
"You're making a face."
"You told me I don't make faces," he says.
"You don't," I say. "Usually. Right now you're making one."
He looks at the window. "I'm thinking that you came in with a cover story and a mission two months ago," he says.
"And that the cover story was for a city that didn't care you'd arrived and the mission was to destabilize something.
" He pauses. "And now you're sitting in my house making plans to present Vore intelligence to the Italian alliance and calling your mother. "
I look at him.
"That's all," he says. "I'm just thinking about the distance."
I look at the window. At the afternoon light. At the city that didn't care I arrived and which I am beginning, in specific and particular ways, to be a part of.
"It's not that far," I say. "From there to here."
"No," he says. "I don't think it is."
We sit in the east-facing room.
The light does what afternoon light does.
Outside the fig tree is in the garden, bare and slightly reproachful.
Inside we are warm.