Vicious was not in Baedal while Odessa's former partner was, and his knowledge of that man and whatever other employees he had is limited - though it seems harmless on the surface, he is skeptical and duly paranoid, because he isn't stupid. He looks at her frankly, his gaze taking on a slightly more human, personal weight, like it does sometimes in small breaths in between his cold professionalism.

"I don't mean to isolate you," he says, of his insistence on overseeing her contacts. "But the work I've asked you to do is dangerous, and I do not recklessly endanger people important to my interests."

He is protective. Of her. (It is a mild implication, but one he knows Odessa will see; he knows because she wants to see it - something he also knows.)