Page 109 of Sins of Arrogance

But know­ing how in­tru­sively my old mob has been spy­ing on me is not unim­por­tant. Know­ing what Dier­dre has learned about Kara is cru­cial.

“I heard about her hissy fits. The way she de­manded you fire one of the women that worked in your of­fice.”

“How?” I de­mand.

“Peo­ple talk,” Dier­dre dis­misses.

I flick my hand wav­ing away the ap­proach­ing waiter. “What peo­ple?”

“I sup­pose her in­se­cu­rity is un­der­stand­able. Kara’s not ex­actly in your league now. And back then? Re­cently preg­nant and un­able to even try to ser­vice the needs of her very vir­ile hus­band…” Her voice trails off in in­nu­endo. “Well, you know bet­ter than I do how that must have played out.”

“Who did you hear this from?” I de­mand again.

Dier­dre shifts, press­ing her wa­ter­glass to her cheek like it might cool her. “It’s not a state se­cret, Micky.”

“If my peo­ple have been talk­ing out of turn, I want to know it,” I grind out.

I didn’t ap­pre­ci­ate how an­noy­ing I would find this form of in­ter­ro­ga­tion with her. Things don’t usu­ally get to me.

More like never.

But as I’ve found with so many things re­gard­ing my wife, I re­act in in­ex­pli­ca­ble ways to the knowl­edge some­one has been talk­ing about her in dis­parag­ing terms.

“Don’t worry. Your sol­diers are ev­ery bit as cir­cum­spect as you ex­pect them to be,” she as­sures me with a mea­sure of ir­ri­ta­tion.

Who has she been try­ing to pump for in­for­ma­tion?

I pour her more wine, push­ing the glass to­ward her in a silent or­der to drink.

She obeys and takes a long sip be­fore fan­ning her hand in front of her face. “It’s hot in here. Is their air­con bro­ken?”

“It’s fine. If it wasn’t one of our sol­diers that gos­siped about my wife, then who?” I want a name and what I want, I get.

Dier­dre rolls her eyes. “Calm down, Micky. Bro­gan men­tioned it when he was vis­it­ing last fall.”

“I find that hard to be­lieve.” Would my fa­ther-in-law re­ally be that in­dis­creet?

“Brian was com­plain­ing about Brigid again,” Dier­dre says, men­tion­ing my sis­ter. “She re­fused yet an­other mar­riage al­liance, this one in Lon­don.”

The fact my sis­ter, at the age of twenty-seven, re­mains un­mar­ried and un­promised is a source of con­ster­na­tion for my fa­ther. He’d have bet­ter luck wait­ing for his old­est grand­daugh­ter to come of age than try to push my sis­ter into a mob al­liance.

She wants noth­ing to do with that part of our lives.

“I didn’t re­al­ize he was try­ing to ar­range an al­liance with a mob there.” I fo­cus on the truly per­ti­nent piece of in­for­ma­tion in Dier­dre’s com­ment.

“Oh, it wasn’t a mob. It was Greek mafia and your sis­ter was hav­ing none of it. He couldn’t threaten her with cut­ting off funds be­cause she is self-sup­port­ing.” Dier­dre sounds bit­ter about that, but noth­ing is stop­ping her from us­ing the de­gree she got from TCD.

And Oisín Kelly has never been stingy with Dier­dre’s al­lowance, even al­low­ing her to have her own apart­ment.

“You never men­tioned this to me.”

“There’s a lot I don’t tell you,” she says know­ingly. “I can’t be sure of your loy­al­ties with you liv­ing here in Amer­ica.”

I was right think­ing I need to cul­ti­vate other in­for­ma­tion sources within my old mob. Maybe my sis­ter would be a good one. There’s room there, to play on her dis­con­tent with our fa­ther.

“Any­way, Brian blamed Brigid’s re­fusal on some teenage in­fat­u­a­tion. She has a boyfriend.”

And he’s still alive? That doesn’t sound like my fa­ther wanted the Greek con­nec­tion all that badly.