Page 1 of Sins of Arrogance

Chap­ter 1: Let’s build a Ghost

8 Months Ear­lier

MICK

Bro­gan, boss of the Shaugh­nessy Mob and my fa­ther-in-law, fol­lows me into the strat­egy room.

This is not a con­ver­sa­tion I want to have at the man­sion, re­gard­less of the new se­cu­rity mea­sures I em­ployed af­ter a re­cent breach.

My top three lieu­tenants fol­low close be­hind. Brice shuts the door when we’re all in­side and leans against it.

“Okay, I’m here. What’s this about, Mick?” Bro­gan plants him­self in the chair at the head of the long con­fer­ence ta­ble, arms crossed.

I put my fin­ger up in a sign for him to wait while Conor scans the room for lis­ten­ing and video record­ing de­vices and Rory sets up the por­ta­ble sig­nal jam­mer.

Overkill? Maybe.

But that’s the way I lean when it comes to se­cu­rity. Es­pe­cially af­ter dis­cov­er­ing not one, but two dif­fer­ent in­fil­tra­tions by other or­ga­ni­za­tions into our mob in less than two years.

Conor gives me a thumbs up and takes out his ear­buds. “Clean.”

“We’re se­cure.” Rory steps away from the de­vice placed in the south­west cor­ner of the room.

Build­ing joists, pipes and vents af­fect the jam­mer’s per­for­mance and he tested for the ideal spot be­fore we had our first meet­ing in here.

This is the first time I’m loop­ing my fa­ther-in-law into my plans.

“What do you know about whis­per guns?” I ask Bro­gan.

“What the hell is a whis­per gun?”

And that’s my an­swer. He knows noth­ing. Which means we start from the be­gin­ning.

“Imag­ine a firearm that doesn’t leave a trace.” I cross to the ta­ble where I lay out the mockup schemat­ics in front of him. “No sound sig­na­ture. No pow­der residue. No ri­fling marks on the bul­let.” The elec­tro­mag­netic charge causes the spin for ac­cu­racy. “No cas­ing left be­hind.”

Bro­gan frowns. “Sounds like sci-fi bull­shit.”

“It’s not.” I tap the print­out of the in­ter­nal bar­rel de­sign. “This is real. Mag­netic rail propul­sion us­ing neodymium mag­nets in­stead of ex­plo­sive force. The pro­jec­tile moves fast enough to kill, but silent. Close-range only.”

For now. But the plan is for that to change once we get the ini­tial tech per­fected.

Brice steps away from the door. “Think of it like a cross be­tween a rail­gun and a ghost. No bark. No foot­print. Just a body hit­ting the floor.”

The six-foot tall Black man came with me from Ire­land and is my top lieu­tenant. So did Conor. Five-feet-eight inches of deadly ac­cu­racy with a ri­fle, he’s our sharp­shooter.

Rory was born here. Worked on the docks, con­nected to the Shaugh­nessy Mob, but not a sol­dier. He wanted some­thing dif­fer­ent though. We met over a pint and a dead body.

He kills up close and with a knack for keep­ing the scene clean.

All three run crews un­der me. Our ranks are the dead­li­est in the Shaugh­nessy Mob. Which is not a co­in­ci­dence. Like draws like. My men all have a code of honor they know I’ll kill them for break­ing, but none of us feels guilt about do­ing the things we need to in or­der to pro­tect the mob and our in­ter­ests.

Bro­gan leans for­ward, in­ter­est sharp­en­ing. “And this is your idea?”

“Not orig­i­nally,” I ad­mit eas­ily.

I don’t have to be the first to the ta­ble, I only care about be­ing the best when I get there.

My fa­ther-in-law makes a “con­tinue” mo­tion with his hand.