Ava's POV
Nobody spoke for a long moment.
Mercer let the silence sit. She was good at it the particular patience of someone who had made offers in rooms like this before and understood that pushing too fast collapsed the thing you were trying to build. She just waited, hands folded, eyes moving between Leo and Ava with the measured attention of someone reading a situation carefully.
Leo was looking at the table.
Not blankly. She knew the difference now between Leo looking at nothing and Leo looking at the table because the table was a neutral surface that wasn't going to complicate what he was trying to think through. He was running it. All of it. Every angle, every variable, every gap between what Mercer was offering and what offering it cost her, and what accepting it cost him, and whether the math resolved into something he could stand behind.
She watched his hands on the table. Still. Too still.
"What happens to my people?" he said.
