Page 208 of Sins of Arrogance

His body blan­ket­ing mine, he whis­pers the only words that mat­ter. “I love you. I’ll love you through my last breath and into eter­nity.”

Chap­ter 51: For Kara. Al­ways.

MICK

Dier­dre is pac­ing the cell when I re­lease the bio­met­ric lock and walk in­side.

“Micky, what am I do­ing here? I don’t know what that de­vi­ous woman you mar­ried told you, but I love you. You must know that.” She throws her­self at me, cling­ing in a way no woman but Kara has a right to.

I shove Dier­dre from me hard enough that she lands on the cot across the small room. Eyes wild, she jumps up again.

But I put my hand up. “Stay there.”

For once, real tears fill her eyes and spill over. Un­lucky for her, the only woman’s tears who mat­ter to me are Kara’s.

“You tried to take my heart from me,” I in­form her dis­pas­sion­ately. “You will die. And you will be in ex­cru­ci­at­ing agony when you do it.”

Dier­dre starts scream­ing and I leave the cell.

She’s still alive be­cause she has one more job to per­form, but when that’s done, she will die in ter­ror and pain.

A just end­ing for some­one who wanted to kill my wife and threat­ened my son.

Later that night, I stand in the shad­ows of the boathouse watch­ing the wa­ter on the bay. The ac­cess door for the slip con­nected to the main room of the boathouse is open and Dier­dre is sit­ting in a chair bathed in the light of a sin­gle lamp like she’s wait­ing for some­one. What she is, is drugged.

Just Spe­cial K this time. I only needed her mal­leable and sug­gestible.

De­spite my warn­ing about her death, when I tell her I need her to do some­thing, the drug makes her will­ing. Her delu­sions make her ea­ger.

But by the time Darakov re­al­izes the trap, it will be too late for him to es­cape.

The sound of an out­board mo­tor reaches me be­fore my eyes tune to the dark shadow cross­ing the wa­ter.

We’ve turned off the alarms on the bay side of the boathouse and the guard un­der­wa­ter is one of my men. No word of tonight’s events will reach Nor­thie ears from any mouth but my own.

And that nar­ra­tive will only have a loose re­sem­blance to what ac­tu­ally hap­pens.

Darakov waves at Dier­dre and like the well-prepped, drugged-up bunny-boiler she is, she waves back.

He moors the boat at the edge of the pier and steps out.

“You got the pro­to­type?” he asks when he’s only a few feet from her.

She nods. “In the duf­fel.”

He moves for­ward quickly to grab it and that’s all I need.

I give the sig­nal and the two guards he brought with him are taken out with head shots, the only sounds the thud of a body hit­ting the deck­ing and the splash of the other go­ing into the wa­ter.

Darakov turns to see what’s hap­pen­ing and I strike. Tak­ing him down is al­most an­ti­cli­mac­tic. Clearly too used to hav­ing his men do all the fight­ing for him, his re­sis­tance is pa­thetic.

I have him cuffed at the wrist and an­kles with a gag shoved in his mouth and duct tape over it in less than a minute.

It’s ridicu­lous.

“With a leader as weak as you, no won­der your bratva is about to get wiped off the face of the earth.” By me.

I shove the aerosol mask prepped with the benzo com­pound over his nose and wait for him to in­hale be­fore press­ing the re­lease on the can­is­ter.