Page 163 of Sins of Arrogance

“She doesn’t. Brice is do­ing a chem­i­cally en­hanced in­ter­ro­ga­tion on her with our new­est re­cruit. Af­ter that, she’ll be sent back to Dublin with no mem­ory of the in­ter­ro­ga­tion.”

“Sounds like a pass to me.” And that’s not what my fa­ther promised.

“Once she is back in Dublin, she will dis­ap­pear. Her fam­ily will be­lieve she has been kid­napped by Ilya Darakov. Both will die in a plane crash while he is try­ing to get her to Odessa.”

It’s a good plan for killing her with­out start­ing a war with The North­side Dublin Syn­di­cate. “Who’s Ilya Darakov?”

“The Rus­sian bratva leader try­ing to steal new weapon tech­nol­ogy from me.”

Me. Not us. Not the mob. Me.

What­ever is go­ing on, Mick is tak­ing it per­son­ally.

“Why aren’t you do­ing the in­ter­ro­ga­tion?” And why is Mick telling me all this?

It’s mob busi­ness even if I have a vested in­ter­est in per­ma­nently re­mov­ing the threat of Dier­dre to my son.

“Be­cause I fucked it up the first time and didn’t ask the right ques­tions. I won’t let that hap­pen again.” He said some­thing like that in my fa­ther’s of­fice.

“Funny, I thought you’d say be­cause you’re busy kid­nap­ping your wife!”

“That too. Our mar­riage takes prece­dence.”

“I don’t be­lieve that for a minute.”

“You will.”

I ig­nore his claim and say, “Bro­gan is your boss. You can’t kill him with­out se­ri­ous reper­cus­sions.”

“None more se­ri­ous than al­low­ing you to leave me.”

Chap­ter 40: Re­flec­tions Dur­ing a Kid­nap­ping

MICK

Kara glares at me in si­lence as I wait for her to un­der­stand the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of her scream­ing for help.

“If you’re so wor­ried about me yelling,” she says, her voice meaner than I’ve ever heard it. “Why don’t you just gag me?”

“You know why.”

Seven Years Ago

I walk into the clinic treat­ment room ex­pect­ing my wife to be dressed and ready to re­turn to the Shaugh­nessy es­tate.

But she’s stand­ing in her night­gown, her ex­pres­sion dazed as silent tears track down her cheeks.

I don’t know why, but I do not like see­ing her cry. “Kara?”

Her head turns to­ward me, but she doesn’t speak.

“The nurse said the im­plan­ta­tion pro­ce­dure went as ex­pected.” I take a slow step to­ward her, my atavis­tic in­stincts telling me that any quick move­ment will cause her dis­tress.

Caus­ing her up­set is un­ac­cept­able.

Again, I don’t know why. I do not re­act to any of the other women in my life like this. My mother’s tears do not af­fect me. My sis­ters get­ting up­set only im­pacts me if the rea­son for it is some­thing I deem wor­thy of han­dling.

My fa­ther and older broth­ers would pre­fer I let them han­dle in­sults to the fam­ily. They al­ways have.