Page 122 of Sins of Arrogance

His gaze flicks from the knife to the open door, draw­ing the cor­rect con­clu­sion. I’m show­ing him trust.

What he doesn’t know is that no mat­ter how good he is, he’s not as deadly as I am. He doesn’t have his kit, but I’m wear­ing mine, in­clud­ing a knife in a spring-loaded sheath at my wrist. I will have it out and pierc­ing his heart be­fore he can fin­ish tak­ing a threat­en­ing step to­ward me.

But the il­lu­sion of trust is nec­es­sary at this stage and if my re­cruit­ment strat­egy works, that trust will be as real as it needs to be for him to be in­ducted into our mob by the end of the year.

His face a blank slate, he stares down at the skean.

I jut my chin to­ward him. “Take it.”

He does, slid­ing the knife from the sheath. The Irish dag­ger is the same as the first one given by the first Shaugh­nessy Mob boss over a hun­dred years ago to his sol­diers.

The blade is six inches long and so sharp when Wraith tests it with his thumb, a drop of blood wells. He makes a sound of sur­prise.

“There are no weapons just for show in the mob.” We don’t do pretty swords hang­ing on the walls that can’t do their job of run­ning an op­po­nent through.

Or be­head­ing him when nec­es­sary.

My fa­ther’s sword has taken more than one fin­ger from his sol­diers in pun­ish­ment.

Bro­gan prefers other meth­ods.

Namely, send­ing them to dance with the devil. Me.

He runs his fin­ger­tip over the claddagh on one side of the hilt. “My mother has a ring with this on it, given to her by her mother.”

“Ev­ery el­e­ment sym­bol­izes some­thing to our clan.”

“What?” he asks, his tone low.

“The heart is usu­ally as­so­ci­ated with love, but for us it stands for the lifeblood you are will­ing to sac­ri­fice for the mob.”

His eyes meet mine, his un­read­able. “And the hands?”

“The hand of your broth­ers that will al­ways be reach­ing to­ward you as yours will reach to help them. A mob is fam­ily, not just a group you join.”

“Be­ing in the Irish mob is a way of life,” he says like he’s re­peat­ing some­thing he heard.

“Who told you that?”

“One of my Ranger broth­ers.”

That tracks. From fight­ing for Irish lib­er­a­tion to pro­tect­ing the coun­try of their birth, there has al­ways been mem­bers of the mob in the mil­i­tary. “He was right.”

“I thought the Army was a way of life too.”

“The crown sym­bol­izes loy­alty. No man gets in­ducted that isn’t trust­wor­thy.”

“Not even some­one born to the mob?” he asks, his tone dis­be­liev­ing.

“Not even then. Fam­ily shouldn’t be the weak link in a syn­di­cate. They should be the strong­est mem­bers.” The dead­li­est. Like me.

Like Fitz will be one day.

He flips the skean over and makes an­other in­vol­un­tary sound of sur­prise.

That side of the hilt is en­graved with the Shaugh­nessy coat-of-arms. Be­low that is his name and be­low that is the year of his in­duc­tion.

This year.