Page 121 of Sins of Arrogance

Sparse, but clean, these hold­ing cells aren’t for in­tim­i­da­tion. But for a man who spent ten years in the Army, two of them work­ing for the shad­owy agen­cies con­nected to it?

It’s a de­cent space.

Not that he’ll stay here if things go the way I plan.

A barely-there smile flicks across Wraith’s fea­tures. “Darakov only paid The Al­ba­nian Boys two-hun­dred grand for the job, and half was due upon suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion.”

“You know what they say. You get what you pay for. If he’d hired you di­rectly, things might have gone dif­fer­ently the day be­fore yes­ter­day.”

Wraith’s jaw clenches, but he doesn’t an­swer. Shift­ing into the clas­sic mil­i­tary at ease po­si­tion, feet shoul­der-width apart, thumbs in­ter­laced be­hind his back, he doesn’t sit down ei­ther.

I can work with that.

“Your grand­mother is Irish.” Though we found no mob af­fil­i­a­tions in her fam­ily. I was right about some­thing else too. “Ranger Rick fits bet­ter than I thought, doesn’t it?”

Our black­gloves did a deep dive on Wraith yes­ter­day and noth­ing I learned has changed my mind about re­cruit­ing this man into the mob.

He’ll be a good sol­dier.

“I pre­fer Wraith.”

I nod. “Al­right, Wraith. I can do that.”

My new re­cruit re­laxes in­finites­i­mally. He re­ally doesn’t want to be called Ranger Rick.

In­ter­est­ing.

“Besnik is pretty bro­ken up over Luan’s death,” I say.

“No doubt. Luan was a bet­ter sol­dier than Gjon ever will be.”

“I got that im­pres­sion.” Not that I re­gret let­ting Wraith kill the Al­ba­nian.

Wraith sighs. “He was also an ass­hole. My mother is not a slut.”

“The Al­ba­nian Boys have some back­ward views on women.”

“And the il­le­git­i­mate chil­dren they give birth to.” It doesn’t sound like those views bother Wraith, but he’s bleedin’ good at hid­ing his thoughts so I can’t be sure.

“Is that why you never joined the gang?”

“I was never in­vited.”

“Did you want to be?”

“No.” The dis­gust im­bued in that sin­gle word isn’t hard to read at all.

“And the Cosa Nos­tra? Your fa­ther didn’t want you to get made?”

Wraith scowls. “My sperm donor can choke to death on his hand­made Ital­ian loafers.”

“He aban­doned your mother when she found out she was preg­nant?” I ask, won­der­ing if he’ll tell me the truth.

“They were never to­gether. She worked as a maid in his house. The one time they had sex was not con­sen­sual.”

And be­cause he was con­nected, no rape charges would have been filed.

I pull a knife sheath stamped with the Shaugh­nessy coat-of-arms from my in­ner breast pocket and of­fer it to Wraith, hilt first. The skean in­side is cer­e­mo­nial, but that doesn’t make it any less lethal.