Page 16 of Sins of Arrogance

We weren’t sur­prised when our black­gloves dis­cov­ered a back door in the pro­gram that would have al­lowed the Ital­ians to spy on us too. I would have tried the same thing.

When the hacker closed the back­door at my re­quest, he put an alarm on its lock. When the Ital­ian’s tried to use it to ac­cess our coms in­for­ma­tion, it trig­gered a warn­ing to us and a virus to the server host­ing their AI that did just enough dam­age to warn the Cosa Nos­tra not to fuck with us.

It was my idea for ev­ery mon­i­tor in their net­work to flash: Nice try, gléas.

I per­son­ally texted the mes­sage to Miceli. He texted back a frown­ing devil, horse and hole emo­jis. His own ver­sion of fuck off, ass­hole. We’re all good.

“Most likely sce­nario is that Dier­dre is here on a fish­ing ex­pe­di­tion.” The Nor­thies aren’t go­ing to know we’re work­ing on whis­per guns from the mag­nets alone.

Much less how close we are to a work­ing pro­to­type.

But we’re not the only ones work­ing on the tech­nol­ogy. Civil­ians, gov­ern­ments and other syn­di­cates all want a piece of that pie.

It wouldn’t be a far reach for my fa­ther to guess where our busi­ness is headed. It’s con­ceiv­able he sent Dier­dre here to gain in­for­ma­tion.

It makes sense, even if I don’t like it.

“You’ll need to keep an eye on Dier­dre. She’ll re­veal her­self to you in ways she won’t to the rest of us. It’s clear as day that woman wants you back in her bed.”

Bro­gan is right. On all counts.

But that doesn’t make it a good idea. “Kara won’t like it.”

Bro­gan gri­maces. “She’s bet­ter now. You don’t have to worry about my sen­si­ble daugh­ter throw­ing a jeal­ous fit.”

No, she’ll just pull fur­ther away.

Or not.

What if jeal­ousy trig­gers Kara’s de­sire to stake her claim on me? Maybe she’ll start vis­it­ing my of­fice again if she thinks she needs to check up on me.

A tiny voice in the back of my head ques­tions the wis­dom and ethics of us­ing Dier­dre to spark my wife’s bat­tened down emo­tions. I think it’s what ex­ists of my con­science.

I ig­nore it like I’ve been do­ing for most of my life.

Chap­ter 5: Fam­ily Din­ner & Other Blood­sports

KARA

Early enough for Fitz not to be cranky with tired­ness, Sun­day din­ner is usu­ally one of my fa­vorite times of the week. It’s the one time our pow­er­ful mob fam­ily feels al­most nor­mal.

Not only do both Mick and my fa­ther stop work­ing early to be at the ta­ble by two o’clock sharp, but there is no busi­ness talk at the ta­ble on Sun­days. Per mamo’s de­cree.

My grand­mother is a stick­ler for time­li­ness and tra­di­tion.

It’s an Irish tra­di­tion mamo brought from the Old Coun­try. One even my grand­fa­ther didn’t mess with.

Like he messed with ev­ery­thing else.

My hand presses against my lower belly in a self-sooth­ing re­ac­tion to the mem­o­ries that try to sur­face. Con­cen­trat­ing on my sur­round­ings, I push them back.

No clinic. No cal­lous dis­posal of em­bryos with fe­male DNA. No fer­til­ity con­trolled sex life.

I was four months preg­nant with my son be­fore I had pen­e­tra­tive sex for the first time with my hus­band.

No. Darn it. I am not go­ing there.

In a des­per­ate at­tempt to stem the tide of mem­o­ries that don’t want to be sup­pressed for some rea­son to­day, my eyes latch onto the view across the lawn.