Page 190 of Sins of Arrogance

We. Like I would ever al­low that woman to stand be­side me. She’s not even wor­thy of lick­ing the dirt off the bot­tom of Kara’s shoe.

Wraith draws the con­ver­sa­tion out, get­ting as much de­tail as pos­si­ble about Dier­dre’s de­mented plans.

“Ilya and I have a deal,” she says at one point.

“A good deal?” Wraith asks, man­ag­ing to sound ad­mir­ing while his body is rigid with dis­gust.

Dier­dre’s eyes lose what lit­tle fo­cus they had. Her voice is flat, like she’s read­ing from a script. “He said if I helped him get some gun pro­to­type, he’d back out of the mar­riage al­liance.”

She’s al­ready re­vealed she can’t back out be­cause her da threat­ened to cut her off fi­nan­cially if she didn’t marry Darakov.

Brice makes a sound and I shift my fo­cus to my lieu­tenant lean­ing against the wall. He’s not lean­ing now though, he’s stand­ing away from it, his hands fisted at his sides.

Wraith glances at his crew leader and shakes his head in­finites­i­mally. “How were you sup­posed to do that?”

“I told him about the Bunker.”

“How do you know about the Bunker?” Wraith asks.

Moth­er­fucker.

My jaw clenches so tight I think some­thing cracks.

She licks her lips. “I over­heard Un­cle Brian and my da talk­ing.”

Dier­dre is even bet­ter at ear­wig­ging than I gave her credit for. No way did my da and Oisín dis­cuss mob busi­ness like that in her hear­ing on pur­pose.

“Ev­ery­one thinks the Bunker is a myth, but Un­cle Brian told my da that it’s real. An un­der­ground safe house in Queens the Shaugh­nessy Mob has been us­ing since they em­i­grated to New York. Un­cle Brian has met with Bro­gan there.”

It’s time my fa­ther-in-law re­tired to the le­git side of the busi­ness. He’s got­ten too ar­ro­gant for proper cau­tion to run a crim­i­nal syn­di­cate.

First, he tells my da about Kara’s jeal­ousy back in the day and now I learn he’s shown the Bunker to da. At least it was be­fore we started work­ing on the Whis­per Gun project.

Da hasn’t been to New York since the month be­fore ren­o­va­tions on the Bunker be­gan.

“What did you and Darakov talk about in the Wal­dorf suite?” Wraith’s voice drops even lower. Lethal and in­ti­mate.

“Since his men failed to get the gun pro­to­type, he wanted more in­for­ma­tion.”

“What kind of in­for­ma­tion?”

She sighs like it’s ob­vi­ous. “A dif­fer­ent way into the Bunker. He wants me to search Micky and Bro­gan’s of­fices for in­for­ma­tion on the gun.”

No won­der she came to my of­fice so of­ten. Only prob­lem for her is, there’s no in­for­ma­tion about the Vanta in there.

Only on my phone and lap­top and the NSA isn’t go­ing to break that en­cryp­tion, much less Dier­dre feckin’ Kelly.

“Did you find any­thing?” Wraith asks.

Dier­dre pouts. “No.”

“Was Ilya happy about that?” Wraith’s voice is pitched low with com­mis­er­a­tion.

“No. He threat­ened to back out of the deal if I didn’t tell him some­thing.”

Wraith’s eyes nar­row. “What did you tell him?”

“I lied.” Dier­dre taps her nose again. “I told him I thought the in­for­ma­tion was in the boathouse be­cause no one is al­lowed to go in there.”