Page 113 of Sins of Arrogance

“What else?” she asks with a husky chuckle. “I want you, Micky.”

“I’m al­ready mar­ried.”

“There’s such a thing as di­vorce.”

More preva­lent in the Amer­i­can mob than it is in Ire­land. Not that it’s com­mon here though. There are plenty of Amer­i­can mob bosses that con­sider death the only pos­si­ble end to a mar­riage.

“I’m not go­ing to di­vorce my wife.”

“You say that now, but think about it, Mick. You’ve al­ready got Fitz. He’s the guar­an­tor of the con­tract now, not Kara. You don’t need her.”

“What do you know about the con­tract?” I de­mand.

“Please, Mick. It’s like you don’t know me. I read it of course.”

Shite.

Kara will be livid if she finds out Dier­dre knows the par­tic­u­lars of our mar­riage al­liance con­tract. She car­ries in­ex­pli­ca­ble shame around the IVF treat­ments and has never even told her sis­ter or cousin that’s how she con­ceived Fitz.

Be­tween us, she acts like it never hap­pened and I don’t re­mind her. The IVF was hard on my young wife.

I won­der some­times if that’s the rea­son she never brings up get­ting preg­nant again. She as­so­ciates her preg­nancy with ev­ery­thing she had to go through to get that way and we lost in the process.

It could as eas­ily be that she doesn’t want to risk hav­ing post­par­tum de­pres­sion again.

Re­gard­less of her rea­son­ing, Bro­gan is not happy his daugh­ter re­fuses to give him more grand­chil­dren right now.

How­ever, I made it clear to him that if he pushes her on it, I will get a va­sec­tomy.

When he threat­ened me with one of those un­com­mon di­vorces on be­half of his daugh­ter, I told him Kara would stop be­ing my wife over my dead body.

Bro­gan Shaugh­nessy is a ruth­less man, but he’s not like me. He still has sen­si­tiv­i­ties borne of emo­tion and those make him re­luc­tant to kill his son-in-law.

If he ever starts to show signs that’s chang­ing, it won’t be me who ends up dead.

Kara is hav­ing our next child when she’s ready. If she’s ever ready.

“Tell me about Ilya Darakov.”

Dier­dre’s eyes soften. “I knew you cared. He’s fifty-two, Mick. Old enough to be my fa­ther.”

But not twice her age of thirty. “When did he ap­proach your fa­ther about the mar­riage al­liance.”

“Last year some time.”

“When?” I press again.

“I don’t know, six…maybe seven months ago.” She pushes her plate away like the prawns dis­gust her now.

If she’s start­ing to feel nau­se­ated, my win­dow for ef­fec­tive in­ter­ro­ga­tion is clos­ing.

Ten months ago, we took the whis­per gun tech­nol­ogy from the weapons en­gi­neer and killed him af­ter find­ing out what a sick bas­tard he was.

It could have taken a cou­ple of months for Darakov to find out we were the ones who torched the lab and took the pro­to­type.

He’s def­i­nitely in­ter­ested in the whis­per gun tech­nol­ogy, but how much does Dier­dre know? How much do my da and hers know?

My gut is telling me, noth­ing at all.