Page 140 of Sins of Arrogance

“Do we have some­one tail­ing her?”

“Kieran and Sean.”

“Part of Wraith’s train­ing?” I ask.

“Not that he needs much of it. Once he learns how to work within our power struc­ture rather than the mil­i­tary, or as an in­de­pen­dent con­trac­tor he’ll be ready to take the oath.”

“You’re that sure of him?”

“When have you ever been wrong about a re­cruit?” He sounds re­signed to los­ing a very good bot­tle of whiskey.

“You’d think you’d know bet­ter than to bet against me.”

“Got to keep you on your toes, boss. You need to be chal­lenged now and again.”

He’s not wrong. Part of be­ing a good leader is hav­ing smart peo­ple at your back. Brice, Rory and Conor are in­tel­li­gent and all three of them have the balls to ques­tion me when I need it.

I’m bet­ting Wraith will fall in that cat­e­gory too. He’s not afraid of pun­ish­ment or pain. That sol­dier will give his loy­alty be­cause he chooses to, not be­cause he’s been in­tim­i­dated into mak­ing a vow.

The strong­est syn­di­cates are made up of men like him.

I mon­i­tor the Dier­dre sit­u­a­tion from my of­fice as I go over the con­tract Bro­gan ne­go­ti­ated in Lon­don and put the terms into the client dossier for the other com­pany.

My phone buzzes.

I tap the side of my ear­bud to an­swer. “It’s a de­cent deal.”

“Of course it is. I ne­go­ti­ated it.” Bro­gan’s ar­ro­gance doesn’t faze me.

“You didn’t need me there af­ter all.” Am I rub­bing it in to press the point home?

Yes.

He grunts. “Travel is part of your job as my un­der­boss.”

“Some can’t be avoided, but from now on, I want to min­i­mize my trips away from my fam­ily.”

“You could have seen your fam­ily if you’d gone to Lon­don.”

My wife and son are the only fam­ily that mat­ters to me. “Did you meet with the Nor­thies then?”

“Yes. Brian and Oisín seem gen­uinely wor­ried about Dier­dre’s safety. They of­fered a fa­vor in re­turn for keep­ing her safe.”

“She’s in con­tact with Darakov.”

“That’s not a sur­prise if they’re try­ing to ne­go­ti­ate a mar­riage al­liance. Her mam is al­ready mak­ing wed­ding plans.”

“She’ll have to can­cel them. An al­liance be­tween the Nor­thies and Darakov isn’t good for us.” Which means it will not hap­pen, one way, or an­other.

“He could be a dis­tributer for us.”

“Nah.”

“You’re not the boss yet, Mick. Don’t pre­sume to tell me what to do.”

“He can’t be trusted.” Which should be feckin’ ob­vi­ous af­ter Darakov sent mercs to steal the orig­i­nal pro­to­type.

“Who in this world can be?”