Page 149 of Sins of Arrogance

The Eth­yl­ene Gly­col never even reg­is­tered to my brain that dark day I took all the sleep­ing pills to shut down the ca­coph­ony of ter­ri­ble thoughts in my mind.

Now, I’m hold­ing onto it and not sure who I mean to use it on.

Dier­dre…or Mick.

With him out of the pic­ture, she won’t have a rea­son to harm my son. And with­out her death, the North­side Dublin Syn­di­cate will have no rea­son to with­draw their al­liance.

Or worse, de­clare war on the Shaugh­nessy Mob.

The thought is so much like the way my fa­ther would think, it makes me sick. It’s the ex­act way of think­ing that led him to promis­ing my hand in mar­riage to a com­plete stranger at the age of six­teen.

It’s this kind of mob-is-all based logic that made Bro­gan think it was okay to black­mail my cousin Róise into a mar­riage al­liance with the Ital­ian mafia she de­spised.

These thoughts are not mine.

I may have sac­ri­ficed my fu­ture for the good of the Shaugh­nessy Mob, but I will never sac­ri­fice the life of some­one I care about for it.

Dier­dre, on the other hand, is a dif­fer­ent mat­ter.

If I kill her, that will pro­tect Fitz in the short term. How­ever, it puts his fa­ther in dan­ger from re­tal­i­a­tion at the hands of his own fam­ily. My fa­ther too.

I may not like Bro­gan Shaugh­nessy, but I do love him.

There is only one way to pro­tect ev­ery­one and make sure Dier­dre dies. Di­vorce Mick.

Once I ask for a di­vorce, my fa­ther and Mick will know that jeal­ousy isn’t mo­ti­vat­ing what I tell them about Dier­dre. They will both be­lieve me that she threat­ened Fitz.

And that will be her death sen­tence.

While I have a bot­tle of Eth­yl­ene Gly­col, they have the skills and means to guar­an­tee her death is per­ceived as an ac­ci­dent.

All I have to do is con­vince both men I re­ally want a di­vorce.

And I do.

No mat­ter what my mob boss fa­ther and un­der­boss hus­band be­lieve, I de­serve a hus­band who loves me. Who puts me first when my life and that of his son is on the line.

Who im­me­di­ately be­lieves me fully and com­pletely when I tell him that’s what’s go­ing on.

~

Bro­gan is at his desk and Mick is in one of the chairs fac­ing it when I en­ter my fa­ther’s of­fice.

That’s for­tu­itous.

And a sign, if I need one, that I’m do­ing the right thing.

My fa­ther greets me as soon as I walk through the door. “Hello, Kara. Mick was just telling me about your lit­tle run in with Dier­dre.”

Lit­tle run in? “Is that how you de­scribe a guest in your home threat­en­ing the life of your daugh­ter and grand­son?”

His ex­pres­sion turns pained. “I know she has been mak­ing some­thing of a nui­sance of her­self.”

“Do you?” I ask.

“Hope told me.” His eyes soften briefly when he says the other woman’s name. “She doesn’t like Dier­dre ei­ther.”

“Hope has dis­cern­ing taste.”