Page 21 of Sins of Arrogance

“And mommy too?” Fitz stresses.

Where is this com­ing from? Why does my son be­lieve I value his mother’s safety less than his? “Aye.”

“Even when she goes some­where with­out me?” Fitz asks doubt­fully.

“Next to you, boyo, your mam is the most im­por­tant per­son to me in the world.” As the words leave my mouth, I re­al­ize where some of my son’s fears stem from.

I’ve said some­thing sim­i­lar to him many times be­liev­ing it would give him com­fort. Now, I re­al­ize it has caused him to cre­ate a nar­ra­tive in his mind where I don’t value Kara’s safety as much as his.

The way that Kara looks down at our son and doesn’t meet my eyes tells me she buys into the same nar­ra­tive.

Feckin’ hell.

I’m not a man made to com­fort oth­ers. Present sit­u­a­tion a glar­ing ex­am­ple of that truth. But I can­not leave ei­ther of them be­liev­ing that I won’t burn down the world to pro­tect Kara.

“I will never let any­one take your mommy away from us,” I prom­ise Fitz be­fore lift­ing my wife’s chin so our eyes meet. “Ye are mine Kara, now and for­ever. I will al­ways pro­tect you.”

Her eyes soften like they do some­times. “I know.”

But she doesn’t know. Does she? Nei­ther does Fitz. Words are not enough and they’re not my strong suit any­way.

I pull out my phone and send two texts. One to the head of se­cu­rity and one to the group mes­sage stream for the en­tire team ded­i­cated to watch­ing over my wife and son.

I get seven im­me­di­ate re­sponses. All of them af­fir­ma­tive. Not that I ex­pect any­thing less. These men know their lives are for­feit if any­thing hap­pens to their charges. They knew it long be­fore I had to teach that les­son to the rest of our sol­diers.

“From now on, when I’m not here, there will be se­cu­rity both in­side and out­side the apart­ment. Two of your guards will be vis­i­ble at all times.”

Kara’s mouth drops open, but what­ever she wants to say gets swal­lowed as our son nods en­thu­si­as­ti­cally. “Even when mommy is alone.”

“Even then,” I prom­ise him.

My wife is not nearly as happy about the change as our son. I’m not sure why. There’s no ma­te­rial change in her rou­tine. The guards were al­ways there, she just didn’t see them.

“Did you think yiz didn’t have guards with yiz at all times?” I ask her.

“Why would we have guards in­side the house?” she asks back.

But clearly she didn’t.

She still thinks I don’t know about the lit­tle out­ing she ar­ranged with Róise for her cousin’s twenty-first. Kara has no clue that the minute she left the es­tate, I got an alert from her tracker.

She only got that far with­out me know­ing be­cause my wife is scary good at dis­abling alarms and hack­ing se­cu­rity footage. I had eyes on her the minute they reached the dock of the man­sion fur­ther down the coast­line.

Af­ter fol­low­ing them into the city, I watched over them the en­tire time they were there and made sure my wife made it safely back to the es­tate.

Then I told our black­gloves to take the man­sion se­cu­rity fire­walls to the level of a nu­clear weapons fa­cil­ity. Should have done it sooner, but Kara’s the only one who ever man­aged to hack through the ones we had.

And she had in­side ac­cess. Re­gard­less, even she won’t find a way in now. Un­less she gets phys­i­cal ac­cess to the server room, and we beefed up se­cu­rity to that too.

“Be­cause what hap­pened to Róise will never hap­pen to yiz.” My wife is never leav­ing the es­tate with­out me know­ing again.

Fitz draws in a sharp breath. “You prom­ise, da?”

“Aye.”

“Dou­ble pinky swear.” Fitz shoves his arms out, crosses them and ex­tends both of his pinkies.

What the feck is this? I look to Kara for an ex­pla­na­tion. And of course she has one. There’s noth­ing about our son she doesn’t know.