Page 191 of Sins of Arrogance

“What else?” Wraith prompts, clearly as aware as I am that Ilya Darakov wasn’t go­ing to be sat­is­fied with sup­po­si­tion.

Sigh­ing again, Dier­dre’s head lists to the side. “I had to tell him the num­ber of sol­diers guard­ing the man­sion and their se­cu­rity ro­ta­tions.”

No way does she know that stuff. Even her body­guards don’t know it. We don’t stick to a set sched­ule for ro­ta­tions. Rou­tines make you vul­ner­a­ble.

“Did your body­guards give you that in­for­ma­tion?” Wraith asks.

Dier­dre winks at him. “Nope. If they knew I was spy­ing for Ilya, they’d tell my da I turned rat.” She shud­ders. “So, I lied again.”

“Did it work?” Wraith asks, an un­der­ly­ing buzz of ex­cite­ment in his tone.

Dier­dre’s lies can work in our fa­vor. If Darakov is plan­ning an at­tack on the man­sion, we can take him out then and Dier­dre can be a ca­su­alty in the cross­fire.

It’s more el­e­gant than my plan, but not as fun. I planned to drug them both with a par­a­lytic and then put them on his pri­vate jet af­ter sab­o­tag­ing it. They would have had two other guests on the plane with them.

Siberian pit vipers.

Darakov is known for us­ing their venom on his en­e­mies. He is re­puted to have sev­eral liv­ing in ter­rar­i­ums in his home and ru­mors say he trav­els with one on his plane in case he needs it.

But this new de­vel­op­ment would al­low me to tor­ture and then kill Darakov with­out ret­ri­bu­tion. Prob­lem is, any signs of phys­i­cal tor­ture on Dier­dre could lead to war.

Psy­cho­log­i­cal tor­ture it is then.

Dier­dre’s lips twitch up­ward, smug. “Ilya said he’d get my fa­ther to back off. No mar­riage. No threat of be­ing cut off.”

“Is that all you talked about?” Wraith asks, show­ing an in­grained thor­ough­ness that will ben­e­fit our mob in the years to come.

Dier­dre shakes her head. “I told him Kara was in the way. That I needed her gone.”

Even though I know Dier­dre threat­ened Kara’s life, hear­ing that she asked for help from that scum, Darakov to make it hap­pen snaps some­thing in­side me.

My chest hurts. It feels like I’m go­ing to have a heart at­tack. I can­not lose Kara.

Not ever.

Feckin’ hell. I love her.

It’s not how I love Fitz, but there is no other word for this feel­ing. It’s too big for ad­dic­tion, too en­com­pass­ing for lust, too much to be any­thing other than the mir­a­cle of a so­ciopath lov­ing his woman.

“What did he say to that?”

She rolls her eyes. “Well, af­ter the blowjob, he said he’d take care of it.”

“You or­dered a hit on Mick’s wife?” Brice asks, speak­ing for the first time.

“No,” she says, sound­ing in­dig­nant. “I didn’t or­der any­thing. I just said it would be bet­ter for ev­ery­one if she dis­ap­peared. He said he’d take care of it.”

This feckin’ cow is bunny-boiler crazy.

She thinks she can take my heart from me? Never go­ing to hap­pen. I’d rip Dier­dre’s from her chest first.

Brice is the one who asks, “Why do you want Kara dead?”

A rap­tur­ous smile cov­ers Dier­dre’s face. “Be­cause Micky is mine. He al­ways has been. And once Kara is dead, he and I will rule New York and Dublin to­gether.”

I close the lap­top with a bang.

If I watch one sec­ond more, I’ll find a way to tele­port my­self through the screen and make her scream.