Page 100 of Sins of Arrogance

A crafty look comes of Gjon’s face. He’s try­ing to de­cide if it’s bet­ter to tell me or keep it a se­cret.

I help him out by cut­ting an­other line down his un­ban­daged arm.

“He’s my un­cle!” Gjon writhes mak­ing the chains he’s dan­gling from sway. “I’m his nephew. He’ll pay you a lot to get me back.”

If that is true, I don’t doubt Besnik would pay a high ran­som for this man.

“Too bad for you, I don’t need money. I want in­for­ma­tion and if you can’t give it to me, I’ll cut your still beat­ing heart from your chest and send it to your un­cle.”

Gjon retches and I jump back, avoid­ing the vomit that ex­plodes from his mouth a sec­ond later.

Weak. So damn weak.

“He’s got the right tac­ti­cal gear,” Brice says in Gaeilge. “But it’s flashy, not use­ful.”

I flick my gaze over to my friend. He’s hold­ing up a knife with a neon green blade with haz­ard lo­gos on it.

The so-called zom­bie slayer knife is over­built with crap ma­te­ri­als and breaks un­der stress. The ser­rated edge looks cool but it’s as ef­fec­tive as a babe’s teething ring at hurt­ing the en­emy.

No ques­tion, de­spite this man lead­ing, the real weapon with him is Wraith.

“You ex­pect­ing the un­dead, or are you just ter­mi­nally stupid?” My voice res­onates with the dis­gust I feel at this in­com­pe­tence.

I’d be do­ing his un­cle a fa­vor to kill him.

“It’s a good knife,” he blus­ters.

I don’t bother to re­ply to that stu­pid­ity, but ask, “Who sent you?”

“I told you. My un­cle, Besnik.”

“Besnik’s crew takes out­side jobs. Tell me who paid for this one.”

“I don’t know. You think my un­cle tells his men who we’re work­ing for? He’s too smart for that.”

“But you’re not just one of his men.” I don’t call Gjon a sol­dier, be­cause he’s not. “Are you? You’re fam­ily.”

“Do you tell your fam­ily that kind of stuff?” Gjon sneers.

I cut him right across the throat. Just for fun. The wound is too shal­low to hit any­thing im­por­tant but he still squeals like a pig and yanks against his bro­ken arm.

Well, feckin’ hell. “He passed out.”

Brice hands me the smelling salts with­out hav­ing to be asked. I wave them un­der Gjon’s nose. His head jerks and his eyes open, only to fill in­stantly with tears. “Please, I don’t know who hired the mis­sion.”

Mis­sion. Like he’s got a pass­ing un­der­stand­ing of what that word means.

“You know some­thing.” Puffed up with his own im­por­tance, he’s the kind of guy that ear­wigs at doors.

“All I know is that my un­cle was speak­ing in Rus­sian to some­one be­fore we got our or­ders.”

More mil­i­tary speak that this mag­got has no right to be us­ing.

Rus­sian?

“Did you hear a name when you were spy­ing on your un­cle?” I ask.

“Ivan.”