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"Why not?” Leo fixed her eyes on Vivienne.

Vivienne's eyes moved once over Leo's face. The grey-blue of them was the grey-blue of an accountant; there was nothing soft in it. Leo liked it more than she had any business liking it.

"Because, Mademoiselle Cole," Vivienne said, "I have spent twenty-five years preserving a particular kind of silence about a particular person, and I was not going to break that silence until I was ready.”

“Your timetable is costing me."

“I’m terribly sorry for the inconvenience.” Vivienne’s voice dripped with sarcasm.

"It is costing the mission." Leo was firm.

"I am the mission." Vivienne’s grey blue eyes burned into Leo.

Leo closed her mouth a beat.

That was true, and she did not like that it was true, and she liked, very much against her professional interests, that Vivienne had said it.

"I have names inside your organization," Leo said. "I can move on them tomorrow. I have evidence linking Renaud to Gaudin and Gaudin to YLV. I have cameras on your gate and on the north wall and on the service corridor. I have operatives at the lodge. What I do not have is a shape to what Lara Kossek is willing to do next. You are the one person who knows her. I am not asking you to unburden your soul. I am asking you to give me a threat model."

"A threat model."

"Yes."

"What she wants? How far she will go?”

Vivienne did not answer.

Leo took a step into the room.

"She sent a message," Leo said. “What did it say?”

"It said, It has been a very long time."

“That was it?” Leo confirmed.

Vivienne nodded. “You knew it was Lara too?”

Leo nodded.

"I have been watching your hand around a phone for a week. I have been reading you for two weeks. I know what you look like when you are being attacked commercially, and I know what you look like when you are being attacked personally, and I learned in Maison Noire on Tuesday that the second one is what is happening. She wrote to you. You read it. You did not tell me. You have not slept."

"I have slept."

"You have slept a very small amount." Leo looked at her knowingly.

"Your job is not to monitor my sleep,” Vivienne looked intrigued and mildly frustrated.

"My job is to keep you alive."

"You are very literal this evening."

"Madame."

Vivienne stood.

She had been on the sofa in bare feet, and when she stood she did not put the heels back on. That was not lost on Leo. She rarely was without her heels, but there was a smallness to her without them that Leo enjoyed, but she didn’t lose her power. Her shoulders were back. Her feet were planted. The length between her and Leo across the carpet was four meters, then three, then two, because Vivienne, bare feet, had walked two meters closer without announcement.

"Mademoiselle Cole."