Page 75 of Reckless Bratva Daddy

I stood near the coordinator's station running one last check of my board before the night officially took over and stopped belonging to me at all. Every name, every table, every rotation sat precisely where I had put it. Table nine hadn't shifted an inch from its spot near the east terrace doors, the donor rotation held steady around it, and nothing on the board had moved without my knowing first. That was the whole point of building it that way. That was the only part of tonight I had any real control over, and I intended to keep it that way for as long as the room let me.

Habit made me pull up the loading dock feed on the tablet anyway, the same habit I had built into every hour of the last week without ever fully naming it as a habit, the small private ritual of checking one more time before I let myself believe the room was actually safe.

Through the loading dock camera feed, I watched a badge I didn't recognize scan through security. I'd flagged that exact company eight days ago. Nobody had pulled it from the list.

41

DMITRI

The Ambrose had become, sometime between three o'clock and now, the single most beautiful room I had ever paid for, and I could not afford to look at it the way it deserved to be looked at. Gold light washed up the walls in exactly the shade Cora had fought the venue for, white flowers crowded the head table without crowding the sightlines, and four hundred people in black tie moved through the space like the whole evening had been built around the specific pleasure of being seen in it. I stood near the entrance shaking hands I did not care about, smiling at faces I had spent the last week quietly running through every threat matrix I owned, and let none of it show on my face, because that was the entire job tonight. I gave the room warmth on schedule, for however long tonight demanded it of me.

Cora found me near the champagne fountain before Kirill did, tablet tucked under one arm, the particular brightness in her face that meant tonight was unfolding precisely as she had spent three months insisting it would.

"Table nine's fine," she said, pitched low enough to read as small talk to anyone watching. "Kirill hasn't moved from his assigned seat all evening. Nothing on my board says otherwise yet."

"Keep watching it."

"I always do." She touched my sleeve, brief and deliberate, a gesture built to look like nothing to anyone who did not know to look for it. "You look like a man hosting a party. Good. Keep looking like that one."

"I intend to."

She was gone again before I could say anything else, back into the crowd, already laughing at something Naomi said three steps away, and I let myself watch her go for as long as I could afford to, which was not nearly long enough.

"Dima." Kirill appeared at my elbow with two glasses of champagne, offering one the way he had a hundred times before, easy and unhurried, a man entirely at home in a room I had built. "You look like a man performing relaxation instead of feeling it."

"I always look like this."

"That's what worries me." He smiled, and it was a good smile, practiced enough that I would have believed it myself in another life. "Beautiful event. Your event planner has a gift."

"She does. That's why she's still here."

"I mean that as a compliment to you as well. Choosing well takes real skill." He sipped his champagne, unhurried, scanning the room just as I was, though I doubted we were counting the same things. "How is your father's old friend, the one who gave the toast at your twenty-first? I saw a face by the bar that looked like his."

"Petrenko. He retired to Florida four years ago. That's someone else's uncle."

"Ah. My mistake." He said it lightly, and it was nothing, a stranger mistaken for another stranger in a crowded room, except that Kirill did not make that kind of mistake, ever, and we both knew it, and neither of us said so.

"You've seemed occupied all week," he said, watching me over the rim of his glass. "Nik tells me almost nothing anymore. I remember when I used to be told things."

"Nik tells people what they need to know, when they need to know it. That has not changed."

"Hasn't it?" He said it without heat, almost gently, the way a man tests a floorboard before deciding whether to trust his full weight on it. "I only mean that you seem further away than usual, Dima. Even for you."

"It's a large event. I'm watching all of it."

"There always is, with you." He held my gaze one beat past comfortable, then let it go, easy again, the smile sliding back into place like a mask returning to its hook. "Enjoy your evening."

I excused myself before the silence could ask either of us to fill it with something honest, and moved through the rest of the room the way I had worked rooms like it for twenty years, one handshake and one shallow conversation at a time, my earpiece a small, constant pressure against the noise of the party.

Luca's voice came through low, almost under the string quartet. "Two unfamiliar faces, east terrace, badges that scanned clean but don't match anyone on tonight's list. I know one of them. He used to run collections for Basile."

"Copy," I said to no one visible, smiling at a councilman's wife as I said it, my voice pitched for exactly one listener.

"Second one just confirmed. Same crew. They're not doing anything yet. Just standing where they can see three exits at once."

I found Cora across the room without meaning to look for her, the way I always found her now, some instinct that had stopped asking permission months ago. She stood near the coordinator's station in a dress the color of the wine nobody at this event could afford, laughing at something Beckett had said, one hand resting on a tablet she was not currently looking at. She had not seen me yet. I let myself have three full seconds of watching her be happy before I went back to counting exits.

"Nik," I said quietly, turning toward the bar so my mouth would not be visible to the room. "Confirm with Reyes's people. Two of Basile's men on the east terrace, unconfirmed intent."