Page 212 of Sins of Arrogance

Once we get our vic­tims onto Darakov’s in­flat­able raft, Brice and I row it out to the mid­dle of the bay, no out­board mo­tor to at­tract at­ten­tion. Then, while Brice dons his scuba gear, I take care of busi­ness.

Dier­dre is aware, but com­pletely un­able to move her limbs. She looks at me with ter­ror in her eyes and I smile.

It’s not a nice smile.

Most of mine aren’t.

The only peo­ple who get good smiles from me, smiles that re­flect real feel­ing, are Kara and Fitz. And hope­fully one day, there will be an­other child for this so­ciopath to love.

“You’re go­ing to drown. And the en­tire time you’re drown­ing, you will know that you brought this on your­self. Be­cause you threat­ened the only woman who mat­ters.” I shove Dier­dre over the side.

There’s no flail­ing, just a splash as she sinks in the cold, salty wa­ter.

Turn­ing to the now con­vuls­ing Darakov, I say, “I will kill ev­ery vor in your bratva.”

Un­for­tu­nately, with the two al­ready dead, there are only five more to dis­pose of.

“I will de­stroy the bi­o­log­i­cal weapons you wanted to sell to my old mob. My black­gloves will dis­sect your com­put­ers. We’ll raid your in­ven­tory stashes and take what we want.”

Even in his state my words reach him, and he swears at me in Rus­sian.

It’s his turn to be the re­cip­i­ent of my less than friendly smile. “We’ll de­stroy ev­ery­thing I don’t want and erase you from ex­is­tence.”

Af­ter that pro­nounce­ment, I push him into the wa­ter. He tries to swim, but his con­vuls­ing body won’t let him and I watch while he floun­ders and even­tu­ally drowns.

I put on my scuba gear while Brice drops into the wa­ter and dis­con­nects our DPVs from the boat. The in­flat­able raft might be painted dark for stealth, but it’s in­fe­rior de­sign is easy to cap­size.

Brice and I use our DPVs to re­turn to the boathouse un­seen.

I shower be­fore climb­ing back into bed with Kara. Sens­ing my pres­ence, she turns nat­u­rally to me in her sleep.

Like she al­ways does.

Be­cause I’m her so­ciopath.

And Kara? She is my ev­ery­thing.

Epi­logue: No Loose Ends

KARA

We travel to Dublin for Dier­dre’s fu­neral with Fitz and my fa­ther.

Brian and Oisín were fu­ri­ous when they dis­cov­ered that Deirdre and Ilya Darakov had been in con­tact while she was in New York. His cap­sized in­flat­able raft was dis­cov­ered by a fish­ing trawler. Then their bod­ies washed up on the beach a day later.

Both deaths were ruled ac­ci­den­tal drown­ings and warn­ings were is­sued again about the use of a plea­sure craft with­out lights in the bay at night.

Re­cov­ery of Dier­dre’s phone records con­firmed Mick’s ac­count of events.

Things got rocky be­tween my fa­ther and the Nor­thie lead­ers, Oisin de­mand­ing to see the se­cu­rity footage from that night.

My fa­ther played the role of fu­ri­ous and of­fended very well be­fore fi­nally hand­ing it over. Of course, it had been ma­nip­u­lated to back up our story about her death as well.

The lack of alarms on the wa­ter was ex­plained by the abil­ity to dis­arm them from the yacht in­side the boathouse. No one was sup­posed to know about that, but Dier­dre was good at suss­ing out se­crets and her fam­ily knew that.

Nevan ve­he­mently de­nied the nar­ra­tive, but couldn’t di­vulge his knowl­edge of Dier­dre’s fix­a­tion with Mick and de­sire to get rid of me with­out reper­cus­sions from Brian Fitzger­ald.

She hadn’t told him about her deal with Darakov, so even­tu­ally, even he had to ac­cept our ver­sion of events. On the sur­face any­way.