Page 203 of Sins of Arrogance

I watch my fa­ther and hus­band, to see what they think.

Mick’s face is blank, but my fa­ther looks im­pressed.

“You’ve got her phone cloned, right?” If they don’t, I can eas­ily do it by re­plac­ing her charg­ing cord in her bed­room with one that sends data di­rectly to a cloning pro­gram.

Mick guides me into a chair and then sits down in one he tugs to a po­si­tion right be­side me, our thighs touch­ing. “Aye.”

“Send him a text telling him that she’s go­ing to get him the pro­to­type, but will only hand it over to him.”

Mick’s eyes nar­row in thought. “They’ve been too cau­tious to text about their deal.”

“So, couch it in terms that he’ll un­der­stand but make it ob­vi­ous what she means. Stress her need for se­crecy, that she’s wor­ried you’re onto her and she’s go­ing to keep their con­tact to a min­i­mum.”

“If we make it look like a ro­man­tic assig­na­tion in the boathouse, we’ll be able to show the texts to her fa­ther as proof of the sce­nario we are cre­at­ing,” my fa­ther says with ad­mi­ra­tion.

We dis­cuss the best way to word the texts and then my fa­ther sug­gests that I han­dle the ex­change be­cause I’m a woman.

I sti­fle my sigh. Baby steps.

My fa­ther isn’t go­ing to change overnight and I’m doubt­ful he’ll ever be any­where near be­ing la­beled a fem­i­nist.

But he’s try­ing.

The text ex­change goes well. I make it clear, as Dier­dre, that I won’t hand my­self over to any­one else. Only him.

I make it sound like she’s agreed to the mar­riage and wants to spend time with him away from her fam­ily, or my fa­ther’s watch­ful eye to be cer­tain of their phys­i­cal com­pat­i­bil­ity.

We agree to meet at 2 a.m. in three days at the boathouse for our ren­dezvous.

To be safe, all texts and calls will be fun­neled through the clone pro­gram in case Darakov con­tacts her be­fore then.

He shows he knows it’s a ruse for get­ting the pro­to­type with his fi­nal text.

Ilya: I look for­ward to ful­fill­ing all the terms of our deal. I keep my prom­ises. I’m glad you keep yours.

Which I’m grate­ful for, be­cause af­ter she gave him a blowjob to con­vince him to have me killed, the idea of her be­ing will­ing to have sex with him isn’t that big of a stretch.

The next three days are fun.

For me.

Not so much for Dier­dre.

Mick goes from never show­ing me af­fec­tion in pub­lic to touch­ing me when­ever we’re to­gether. Which is pretty much 24/7. I start do­ing my school­work in his of­fice and we’re mak­ing out on his desk one time when Dier­dre walks in with­out knock­ing.

He’s kiss­ing me up against the wall the sec­ond time she does it.

He puts his arm over my shoul­der dur­ing din­ner, in­ter­mit­tently press­ing his lips to my tem­ple. He holds my hand as long as we have our se­cu­rity de­tail around us.

He ex­plained why he didn’t be­fore, and I tell my so­ciopath that he’s sweet.

That leads to an im­promptu episode in the sun­room with men out­side the doors to the ter­race and hall to pre­vent any­one in­ter­rupt­ing us.

He is not at all sweet and I end up with a sore bot­tom, but only in the best pos­si­ble or­gasm in­duc­ing way.

I help Mick’s black­gloves comb through cam­era footage from in and around the man­sion, iden­ti­fy­ing ev­ery­one Dier­dre and her two guards have spo­ken to so they can be de­briefed, ac­cord­ing to my fa­ther.

Or in­ter­ro­gated, ac­cord­ing to my hus­band.