Something in Doyle’s face sharpened by a degree.
I went on.
“Which means the cleanest solution isn’t to push harder through the same route. It’s to allocate enough volume elsewhere that the pressure stops being worth the effort.”
Doyle sat back. “And you came here because?”
“Because you have infrastructure my father respects, discretion he trusts enough to do business with, and a vested interest in keeping New York’s mess from bleeding any further than it already has.”
Olivero said nothing beside me, which was wise.
Doyle looked at me for a long moment.
“You speak like a man expecting to be taken seriously.”
“I would recommend it.”
That got the smallest huff of laughter out of him.
“There’s Alessandro in that one,” he murmured.
“Fortunately, I also inherited enough restraint not to enjoy hearing that too much.”
His pale eyes glinted the smallest fraction, enough to suggest approval without generosity.
“All right,” he said. “Assume for a moment I’m listening. What exactly are you proposing?”
So I told him. Not everything of course, but enough.
I laid out the volume we’d need to move, the window during which rerouting would be viable, the categories of goods best suited to secondary handling, the sort of deniability both our sides would require if anyone started sniffing too close, and the incentive structure that would make it worth his time without insulting my own family by being too eager for help.
He interrupted twice, both times with the kind of question designed to catch weakness in the spine of an argument. Costs. Exposure. Timing. The reliability of the men who would oversee the transfer.
I answered all of them.
By the end of it, he was no longer testing whether I belonged in the room. He was testing how far ahead I was thinking.
That, at least, was a language I spoke fluently.
“And if the pressure in Jersey escalates?”
“Then we’ll know the reroute was never the real target,” I said. “At which point the problem stops being logistics and becomes message control. But if it doesn’t, then we’ve learned someone wanted us frustrated, not wounded.”
Doyle’s fingers tapped once against the desk.
“You really are Alessandro’s son.”
I considered it for a moment before answering. “I am.”
He rose then and crossed to the bar against the far wall, pouring himself a drink without offering one to either of us. Another test. Or a statement. Possibly both.
“Your father can be proud,” he said at last, turning back toward me with the glass in hand. “You negotiate well. No wasted words, no unnecessary arrogance, just enough threat to keep things interesting.”
“He is.”
Doyle looked at me over the rim of the glass, as though that answer had told him more than the words themselves.
After a moment, he nodded once. “All right. I’ll open the port for a trial run. Limited volume first. If your numbers hold and the pressure drops, we expand. If they do not, I charge your father extra for making me entertain his heir.”
