I map the probable guard positions. The kill zones. The hallways where an ambush could cut off retreat. The geometry of violence laid out on paper. I learned to read these patterns at twenty-two, standing over blueprints while my father's bloodwas still drying on a warehouse floor not so different from this one.
Cormac approaches the table. He stands beside me for a moment without speaking. Two men looking at a map, calculating the distance between strategy and loss.
"If Finn's dead when we get there?—"
"He's not."
"If he is."
I look at him. Cormac O'Brien is six-two, broad-shouldered, built like a man whose hands were designed for damage. He has the eyes of someone who has buried friends and broken enemies and never fully distinguished between grief and fury. Right now, those eyes are asking me a question that has nothing to do with tactics.
"Then Viktor Reznikov dies slowly. And I'll hold him down while you do it."
Cormac studies me. Whatever he's measuring, he reaches his answer. He extends his hand.
In thirty-two days of marriage to his sister, every handshake between us has been mine to offer. At the wedding. At the reception. At family dinners where he accepted my grip with the tolerance of a man allowing a stranger into a house he's guarded for twenty years. This is the first time Cormac O'Brien has reached for me. The difference between tolerance and trust lives in who extends first.
I take his hand. He grips hard. I match it.
"Bring my sister home safe."
"I will."
He holds for one beat longer than necessary. Then he nods and walks back to his team. I watch him go and think about what it costs to send someone you love into a building where people will try to kill them. I think about how I'm about to do the exactsame thing with Siobhan and how the hypocrisy sits in my chest like a stone I can't swallow.
I find her in the side room off the basement. She's sitting on an ammunition crate with the Beretta in her lap, checking the magazine for the third time. Fourteen rounds. She racks the slide with the efficiency I drilled into her at the range. Her hands are steady. Her breathing is even.
She's wearing jeans and a dark sweater from this morning, now covered by the tactical vest Lex fitted twenty minutes ago. I watched her put it on. Watched her adjust the straps across her chest and settle the weight across her shoulders. She paused when the Kevlar pressed flat against her stomach. One second. Her hand adjusted the strap lower and then she moved on and the pause was so small I filed it as discomfort with unfamiliar equipment.
She looks like a soldier. She shouldn't have to.
"Hey."
She looks up. The composure holds for one beat, two. Then the mask slips and the woman underneath is the one who stole my coffee this morning and laughed at a joke I didn't realize I was making. The woman who pressed her forehead into my chest while the water heated and murmured "five more minutes" like the world beyond our kitchen didn't exist.
"Whatever happens tonight?—"
"Don't." Sharp. Immediate. "No goodbyes, Nico."
"Siobhan—"
"We go in. We get Finn. We come home. That's the plan. That's the only plan."
"When did you get so brave?"
Her eyes hold mine. Steady. Clear. Absolutely certain.
"I was always brave. You just didn't know me yet."
She's right. I didn't know her when I watched her across the Ricci function eight months ago. I didn't know her when she satin my chair and negotiated terms I still haven't fully recovered from. I've been learning her for thirty-two days and I haven't finished. I may never finish. The thought doesn't frighten me the way it should. It feels like a promise.
I cross to her. Take the Beretta from her lap. Set it on the crate. Pull her to her feet. She comes willingly, hands settling on my chest. I cup her face. The gesture from our wedding, the first time I touched her. Palm against jaw. Thumb tracing cheekbone.
I kiss her. Hard. Desperate. The kind of kiss men give before wars because their bodies understand what their minds won't say: this might be the last time. She kisses back with the same urgency, fingers tightening on my shirt, her mouth fierce against mine.
Forehead to forehead. Her breath warm on my lips. My hands in her hair.
"Stay close to me."