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"Miss Thorne."
"Mr Queen."
"Nolan Ross. Pleasure to meet you."
"John Diggle. Likewise."
"Cutting quite a swathe, aren't you?" Oliver said, sipping a drink.
"Excuse me?" Emily smiled. It was a good smile, Oliver thought, but then, most smiles looked good on beautiful women. Genuine. He liked to think Thea was a little less good at smiling like that.
"I'm sorry," he said. "Has that expression gone out of style, too? It's just - slang these days. Hard to keep up - or to catch up, I should say."
"Oh, of course. You were that guy who'd gone missing for five years."
He wondered if the slip in politeness was on purpose. It seemed likely. "Yup. I'm that guy."
"You look a bit worried, Mr Ross."
"Please. Nolan."
"Dig."
"Seriously, Dig? I dig it."
"Mr Diggle will be acceptable as well."
"Do you know the difference between justice and revenge, Miss Thorne?"
Another smile. He wondered if she practiced regularly. "Isn't the ideal that they're one and the same?"
"I think we both know that they're not," Oliver said.
"Then - " Emily put down her empty glass "I would say that revenge is justice for people who haven't got anything left to lose."
"Is that you?" Oliver asked. "Because you don't look like you haven't got anything left to lose."
"Me?" Emily said. She didn't look particularly wide-eyed, although there was a definite hint of innocence.
"Let's cut to the chase," Oliver said. "You're not on my list, but if you hurt anyone I care about, you will be. So. With that out of the way - incidentally, am I on yours?"
For a moment, he thought he'd pushed too fast, too far. She was smart, though - smart enough to recognize a bit of what he was, beneath the mask.
"Did you know my father?"
A test, of sorts. Feeling out just how much he really knew. "David Clarke? No."
"Good."
"Truce, then?" He didn't ask her if she'd known his. It wasn't particularly important.
She smiled again, and this one time, he thought she might mean it. "Truce."
"Crazy, beautiful people." Nolan shook his head.
Diggle chuckled and grabbed himself a drink. "I'll grant you one out of those two."
"Oh, come on." Nolan scoffed. "Like you never thought of hitting that."
"Regularly," Diggle said. "Although not, probably, in the way you mean."
"Ah. But then, given that you're still sticking around ... "
Diggle shrugged. "I'm a loyal guy."
Nolan raised his glass. "To loyalty, then."