Page 15 of Sins of Arrogance

I won’t kill fam­ily for am­bi­tion, but I will kill any­one for the sake of my wife and son’s safety.

Bro­gan’s mouth shifts into a sar­donic smirk. “I no­tice you didn’t in­clude me in that list.”

I shrug. I won’t grieve if he dies. I’m not wired for that kind of emo­tion, but I’m loyal. And that’s all Bro­gan has to worry about.

“Did you know the Odessa Mafia tried to kid­nap Dier­dre when you agreed to let her come here?” I don’t do a damn thing to hide my dis­ap­proval.

“I know that’s what her fa­ther told me.”

That makes me pause. “Ye don’t be­lieve him?”

“Did you be­lieve her?” Bro­gan asks me, in­stead of an­swer­ing.

“She doesn’t have any tells when she lies.”

“Which is not the same as say­ing you be­lieve her.”

“No. It’s not.”

“The tim­ing is sus­pect. We’re de­vel­op­ing new tech­nol­ogy for silent guns and sud­denly one of our Dublin friends needs to stay in my house?”

“Ye think we have an­other mole?” I ask.

Bro­gan scowls and shakes his head. “No fuck­ing way. I looked ev­ery one of our men in the eye when they re­newed their pledge of loy­alty.”

I had too. If one of them is spy­ing for my fam­ily’s mob, they’re a bet­ter liar than Dier­dre. Be­cause the very ab­sence of any tells makes me dis­trust ev­ery­thing she says.

Which is only one of the rea­sons I think she has ul­te­rior mo­tives for be­ing here.

Bro­gan’s scowl dark­ens. “We didn’t use a shell com­pany when we sourced the Neo mag­nets through your con­tact in Myan­mar.”

Ko Naing has a strict face-to-face, one-on-one pol­icy. In­sist­ing on deal­ing with me per­son­ally, he won’t even take a call from Bro­gan. I re­spect that level of cau­tion.

Be­sides we need ac­cess to Neodymium with­out go­ing through gov­ern­ment chan­nels. Most sources in China and the United States – the big­gest pro­duc­ers – are con­nected to gov­ern­ment en­ti­ties.

Un­for­tu­nately, my fa­ther also does busi­ness with Ko Naing.

The Burmese man is dis­creet, but my da could have a spy in his op­er­a­tion. I do.

Trust­ing a busi­ness part­ner to be com­pletely trans­par­ent is a fool’s game and I’m no­body’s fool.

Ex­pect­ing other peo­ple to take the same pre­cau­tions, I’m hy­per vig­i­lant about watch­ing for in­di­ca­tors of spies in our ranks. Which is why Troy and his fel­low spy for the AOG pissed me off so much.

Un­for­tu­nately, both men were in­ducted into the mob be­fore I came to Amer­ica. Both had the per­sonal ap­proval of Bro­gan’s fa­ther and both were too damn good at cov­er­ing their tracks.

Just like the mole work­ing for the Columbian car­tel we iden­ti­fied last year.

Both sit­u­a­tions still fill me with rage.

I’ve per­son­ally vet­ted ev­ery sin­gle one of our sol­diers now, but I should have done it when Bro­gan made me sec­ond-in-com­mand.

Which is why all sol­dier’s phones are now equipped with lis­ten­ing de­vices and spy­ware.

Even if they use a burner to make a call, or text, if it’s done within the vicin­ity of their pri­mary phone, the con­tent of the call or text is fed into the AI pro­gram de­vel­oped by our new Cosa Nos­tra al­lies. The AI mon­i­tors com­mu­ni­ca­tions for sus­pi­cious speech pat­terns and be­hav­ior.

Like us­ing a burner cell to make texts and calls.

No one but Bro­gan and I know it’s on the sol­dier’s phones.