Page 30 of Reckless Bratva Daddy

"I absolutely do. I don't get to win against professionals very often. Let me have this."

Luca laughed outright, a short, delighted bark he didn't bother hiding, and even Dmitri's mouth did something at the corner that wasn't quite a smile but was clearly related to one.

"Careful," Luca said to Nik. "She just out-negotiated you in under a minute. I've known you three years and I've seen that happen exactly twice, and I'm fairly sure both times you bought the other person dinner afterward out of respect."

"I did not."

"You absolutely did. I was there for one of them."

Nik did not confirm or deny this, which I was beginning to understand was its own kind of confirmation, and moved on to the next item with the brisk efficiency of a man who preferred being outmaneuvered in private.

"Seating," Dmitri said next, sliding a diagram across the table that was clearly meant to represent something more delicate than a simple chart, empty circles, unlabeled tables, no names anywhere on it, just the shape of a problem waiting to be solved. "Two parties who don't currently sit within twenty feet of each other if they can help it. I need them close enough to look civil and far enough apart that nobody has to test whether that's actually true."

I turned the diagram around and studied it the way I studied every seating chart, as a puzzle with a right answer hiding somewhere inside a wrong one. "How much do they actually dislike each other? Old grudge, or new one?"

"Does it matter?"

"Enormously. Old grudges have a shelf life. People get tired of maintaining them properly. New ones are still fresh enough that everyone's actively keeping score." I tapped two of the circles. "If it's old, I put them at adjacent tables with a shared centerpiece vendor, something small and neutral they can both complain about together. Shared annoyance is the fastest peace treaty I know. If it's new, I put a dance floor between them and give both sides a reason to be watching the stage instead of each other."

Nik and Dmitri traded a glance I couldn't fully read, though I got the distinct sense I'd just answered a far more complicated question than the one I thought I'd been asked.

"New," Dmitri said. "Very new."

"Then dance floor it is. I'll also want the band running longer sets during the stretch when both tables are seated at the same time. Less silence for anyone to sit in with people they're currently furious at."

"You've done this before," Luca said, sounding genuinely impressed for the first time since I'd walked in.

"I've seated exes at the same reception, business partners mid-lawsuit, and one bride's entire side of the family against a groom's mother who called her a gold digger at the rehearsal dinner. This isn't the first war I've planned seating for. It's just the first one where I understood, going in, that it actually was one."

The security rotation came up twenty minutes later, buried in a longer conversation about entrances and exits that I mostly followed the way I followed any conversation about a venue I hadn't personally walked yet, half attention, half mental floor plan. I had pulled up my own version on my phone without really meaning to, the draft I'd built for the vendor logistics weeks ago, before any of this had folded together into whatever it currently was.

"North stairwell's covered eight to midnight," Nik said. "East corridor gets a rotation every forty minutes starting at nine."

I looked up from my phone. "That doesn't match the floor plan."

Everyone looked at me at once, considerably more attention than I'd expected to generate over a stairwell.

"The east corridor doesn't connect to anything past nine," I said, turning my phone around so they could see the screen. "The caterers close that hallway down for the night service reset. It's blocked with rolling carts from nine until close. If someone's supposed to be rotating through there, they're either walking through catering equipment every forty minutes, or the rotation's covering a hallway that isn't actually open, which means whatever's actually happening in that stretch of the building isn't being watched by anyone."

Nobody said anything for a second. Dmitri had gone very still, the specific stillness I recognized now as him listening harder than he wanted anyone to notice.

"Say that again," Nik said.

"The east corridor's closed for service after nine. Your rotation's covering the wrong hallway." I turned the phone back around, feeling suddenly like I'd wandered into a much more serious conversation than the one I'd thought I was having. "I only caught it because I've walked that building forty times this year. It's not a criticism. It's just not on the plan you're working from."

"It's on the plan we were given," Nik said, and something moved behind his eyes that had nothing to do with florists or delivery windows.

"Then whoever gave it to you needs a better plan," I said. "Or a reason for giving you the wrong one."

The room went still in a way that felt different from the quiet before it, heavier, more deliberate, and I watched Nik and Dmitri exchange a look that traveled a whole conversation in about a second and a half, the kind of look two people share when they've just both arrived at the same uncomfortable place from different directions.

"Get me the actual building schematics," Dmitri said to Nik, not raising his voice, which by now I understood was worse than if he had. "Today. Not from the file we've been using."

"On it."

Luca, for once, was not smiling. "That's twice in one meeting she's caught something we missed."

"I noticed," Nik said.