The waiter arrived, setting two cups of black coffee on the table.
Neither of them acknowledged the intrusion.
The waiter vanished back into the bustling dining room.
Victoria picked up her coffee cup. Her hands were perfectly steady. She took a slow sip, her slate-grey eyes pinning him over the rim of the porcelain.
"This buys you months of bureaucratic delays, Mr. Russo," Victoria said, her voice dropping into a razor-sharp whisper. "It is a brilliant evasion. But it is still an evasion. You are delaying the inevitable."
"Am I?" Ryan smiled, holding her gaze.
She was formidable. Most he encountered in New York had folded under the sheer, suffocating weight of his capital and his dominance.
Victoria Croft was different. She was a mercenary who lived in the trenches of federal regulation. She didn't care about his net worth. She cared about the game.
