Page 209 of Sins of Arrogance

He stops squirm­ing af­ter his third in­hale. The cuffs on him are de­signed not to leave marks even if he strug­gles against his bonds. But I’m not tak­ing chances.

If some­thing is worth do­ing, it’s worth do­ing right. And the stage I’m set­ting for this nar­ra­tive pre­cludes bondage or in­ter­ro­ga­tion marks on his body.

I in­struct Conor to dis­pose of the two dead bod­ies of Darakov’s men and trans­fer him and Dier­dre to hold­ing cells in the man­sion.

Get­ting the in­for­ma­tion I want from him, and a lot more that might prove use­ful in the fu­ture, will take too long for us to ac­com­plish step two of our plan be­fore the bay gets busy with po­ten­tial wit­nesses this morn­ing.

It’s af­ter din­ner the next day and I’m fin­ish­ing up Darakov’s in­ter­ro­ga­tion when my phone buzzes in my pocket.

I pull it out and re­al­ize it’s a video call. Con­nect­ing, I step into the hall. The sub­base­ment is one of the few parts of the man­sion that don’t have video sur­veil­lance.

That Bro­gan is aware of.

I have cam­eras down here, but the only peo­ple with ac­cess to their feeds are my lieu­tenants and me.

“Mo chroí, you look beau­ti­ful.” Her nat­u­ral curls frame her face.

She stopped straight­en­ing her hair and pulling it back into pony­tails all the time. More ev­i­dence my queen is set­tling into her­self and her right­ful place.

Her smile is warm and in­ti­mate. “Thank you. I know you’re busy, but Fitz wanted to talk to you.”

She wouldn’t have called me like this be­fore, even if our son asked her to. It fills me with sat­is­fac­tion that she does now.

“I’m al­ways happy to talk to our son.”

“Told you he wouldn’t mind, mom.” Fitz’s voice comes through clearly though I can’t see him yet.

Kara rolls her eyes and then the video feed shows the wall, the ceil­ing and fi­nally my son’s eyes and nose. He’s hold­ing it too close to his face again.

“Hi, da.”

“Hello, a mhac. Are you and your mom hav­ing fun?”

“Mom is let­ting me watch three episodes of Spidey and His Amaz­ing Friends be­fore bed.” My son’s voice is soaked with glee.

“Your mom is a pretty won­der­ful woman, isn’t she?”

“Aye, Da,” my son says, mim­ick­ing my Irish burr. “She’s sav­age craic.”

“Who taught you that one?” He didn’t learn Irish slang at school.

“Un­cle Rory. He says the best stuff.”

“Well, that’s bang on. Your mom is sav­age craic.” And in ways my son will never know about.

“Will you be home soon, da?”

I cal­cu­late how long the rest of the in­ter­ro­ga­tion should take and nod. “I’ll be there in twenty min­utes.”

I make it to the apart­ment in time to watch the third episode of my son’s fa­vorite show be­fore Kara and I tuck him into bed.

Kara wants to know how the in­ter­ro­ga­tion went and I tell her. “He wanted the whis­per gun pro­to­type, but he hasn’t told the pakhan about it. His bratva is the only one in­volved in the at­tempt to steal it from us.”

“Ex­cept that Al­ba­nian gang leader you told me about.”

“His gang was hired for a job. He doesn’t have any in­for­ma­tion.” Which won’t stop me de­stroy­ing his gang.

Help­ing me with that will be Wraith’s fi­nal test for in­duc­tion into our mob.