Page 155 of Sins of Arrogance

With my wife’s words, an­other bul­let point to add to my plan to keep her emerges.

She’s been frus­trated with me for with­hold­ing in­for­ma­tion from her for weeks. She wanted to know what busi­ness kept Dier­dre at the man­sion and I re­fused to tell her.

Be­cause it’s safer for Kara not to know.

At least that’s what I’ve al­ways be­lieved.

How­ever, I thought she didn’t need my pro­tec­tion against Dier­dre’s words, and I was wrong about that.

It’s look­ing like I was wrong about this too.

I meet my wife’s eyes. “I’m sorry.”

She jerks a nod, but there’s no soft­en­ing in her de­meanor.

She’s still stuck on get­ting the di­vorce then.

“You want me to kill Dier­dre?” I ask.

“I don’t care who does it, but yes, I want her and the threat she poses to Fitz gone. Per­ma­nently.”

“You don’t men­tion your­self,” Bro­gan says. “But it’s ob­vi­ous she threat­ened you first.”

“You al­ready knew that, but it wasn’t enough was it?”

Bro­gan doesn’t an­swer.

I don’t think he can. There’s pain on his face I can’t iden­tify with. It’s emo­tional, but there’s no doubt­ing it’s real.

“I don’t mat­ter. You made that clear. I’ve never mat­tered. Not to you. Not to Mick. All I’ve ever been to ei­ther of you is a means to an end. A uterus to carry the heir and a spare.” The bit­ter­ness in Kara’s voice is laced with her own emo­tional pain.

And that pain both­ers me.

It has to be fixed.

“You do mat­ter, Kara. I’m sorry I didn’t be­lieve your ver­sion of what hap­pened un­til I saw it for my­self.”

Kara’s ex­pres­sion says she’s not hand­ing out any of­fers of easy for­give­ness. “As long as you take care of the prob­lem now with­out plung­ing us into war with the North­side Dublin Syn­di­cate, I’ll be sat­is­fied.”

“But not happy,” Bro­gan says, sound­ing none too much in that state him­self.

“There’s noth­ing for me to be happy about in this sit­u­a­tion. If Dier­dre had acted on her de­sires be­fore giv­ing me a warn­ing, ei­ther I would be dead and my son would be with­out a mother, or both of us would be.”

And Kara holds both her da and I ac­count­able for that.

Bro­gan shakes his head. “She wanted you to ask for the di­vorce and thought she could threaten you into do­ing it.”

“It worked.” And for that alone, Dier­dre would have to die.

That she threat­ened my wife and son with in­tent only means her death isn’t go­ing to be quick.

Kara shrugs. “I guess we all learned a les­son from this.”

“Yes, we did,” Bro­gan says with sin­cer­ity.

“Fitz is go­ing to be home from school soon.” Clearly done with the meet­ing, she turns to walk out of the of­fice.

“Kara,” her fa­ther says with some ur­gency be­fore she reaches the door.