Page 148 of Sins of Arrogance

Cold fury brings ev­ery­thing into sharp fo­cus. If Dier­dre knows about The Mar­lowe Cen­ter, then those words have a much more sin­is­ter mean­ing.

She was try­ing to plant the idea of killing her­self in Kara’s head.

“I will talk to her.” And I will talk to Bro­gan.

This sit­u­a­tion can­not be al­lowed to con­tinue.

“Be­cause that did so much good be­fore.” Kara is look­ing at me like I’m a use­less new re­cruit who can’t even load my weapon yet.

“I’ll sort it,” I grit out.

She just shakes her head. “In case you’re in­ter­ested, when her threats against me didn’t scare me into com­pli­ance, she threat­ened to kill our son.”

Kara watches me, wait­ing to see how I’m go­ing to re­spond to those fan­tas­ti­cal words.

“You don’t have to em­bel­lish your en­counter to get me on your side, Kara. I said I would sort it, and I will.” Dier­dre is a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them.

She has too much self-in­ter­est to risk harm­ing Kara or Fitz.

But push­ing my wife into harm­ing her­self? That’s right out of the first year mean girl play­book.

“Why did I think that’s ex­actly what you were go­ing to say?” Kara asks with dis­gust.

“I don’t know what is go­ing on here.” I move to­ward my wife. “But there’s no way that she’s go­ing to risk my wrath, or your da’s, by harm­ing you or our son.”

No mat­ter what she said.

And I doubt af­ter her take­down, Dier­dre is go­ing to be threat­en­ing Kara in any ca­pac­ity again any­time soon.

Tak­ing ad­van­tage of the fact that I won’t touch her when she so clearly doesn’t want me to, Kara side­steps and moves around me.

When she has her hand on the knob to our front door, says, “I am not con­vinced. And that does not make me feel safe.”

“If you’re wor­ried about be­ing safe, you’re more se­cure here in the apart­ment with me and Fitz.” It’s a solid, log­i­cal ar­gu­ment.

And with a few rare ex­cep­tions, Kara is a log­i­cal woman.

“You’re as­sum­ing I be­lieve that you will pro­tect me from your ex-lover.”

All the fury I bled off in the work­out with Wraith comes rush­ing back. “I gave you my word I would pro­tect you al­ways.”

“You didn’t pro­tect me from this. You didn’t pro­tect me from Dier­dre hurt­ing me.”

“That’s not the kind of pro­tec­tion I promised.”

“Well, it should have been.”

Chap­ter 37: The Strat­egy of Sur­vival

KARA

I’ve been hold­ing the vial so long, it’s warm in my hand.

The box moma gave me be­fore my wed­ding sits open on my old bed. It’s the first time in my seven-year mar­riage that I’ve opened it.

It stayed closed even when my mind was so chaotic and my emo­tions were so de­bil­i­tat­ing af­ter Fitz’s birth.

I never wanted to de­crease Mick’s ar­dor. Nei­ther have I ever had need to threaten Mick with the dag­ger.