Page 4 of Sins of Arrogance

“Con­ser­va­tive es­ti­mate? Fifty grand. That’s black mar­ket. If we go be­spoke, of­fer to elite buy­ers, pri­vate mil­i­taries, states look­ing for de­ni­able as­sets, we can eas­ily push into the six-fig­ure range. Each.” I let that sink in. “We sell a thou­sand units in a mix of base price and be­spoke, and our ini­tial in­vest­ment is re­turned.”

“With a work­ing pro­to­type, we can sell a thou­sand guns like that be­fore we’re even in pro­duc­tion,” Brice muses.

Rory nods. “Our prob­lem will be lim­it­ing our out­put and buy­ers.”

“And that’s the pri­mary rea­son we need to do this,” I say.

Bro­gan leans back in his chair. “Ex­plain.”

“It’s about dom­i­nance,” I say, voice low. “No stri­a­tions. No muz­zle flash. No GSR. A gun that doesn’t make a sound and leaves no trace. That makes us un­touch­able. Ev­ery­one else fights for scraps. We set the rules.”

Bro­gan ex­hales through his nose. “How much, to­tal?”

“$75 mil­lion with ac­cess to an ad­di­tional ten per­cent for nec­es­sary bud­get ad­just­ments.”

My boss doesn’t flinch. It’s not even the big­gest in­vest­ment we’ll make this year, but it is the most im­por­tant.

Bro­gan drums his fin­gers on the table­top while he thinks. “De­vel­op­ing these whis­per guns is go­ing to put a huge assed tar­get on our backs.”

He’s right. This is the kind of tech­nol­ogy ev­ery­one is go­ing to want a piece of. “If word gets out. It won’t.”

“You think it’s a risk worth tak­ing?”

“I think some­one is go­ing to take that risk. Pro­tect­ing the mob…” And more im­por­tantly, my wife and son. “Means we’re the ones that have to do it first.”

Chap­ter 2: Tat­tooed Hus­bands, Tank­i­nis, & Trou­ble

The Present

KARA

“Come on, Fitzy. You can do it!” I give my son an en­cour­ag­ing smile and beckon him to me.

He looks from me to his fa­ther, stand­ing a few feet to my left in the deeper wa­ter off the shore. Fitz peers sus­pi­ciously into the wa­ter shim­mer­ing in the mid-Au­gust sun.

Only deep enough to reach my ribcage, he can see all the way to the bot­tom, but his sturdy lit­tle body re­mains firmly on the dock.

“Here, Fitz. I’ll catch you.” Mick’s soft Irish lilt still makes my heart flut­ter af­ter seven years of mar­riage.

But that’s noth­ing com­pared to the way my nether re­gions re­act to his mus­cu­lar, tat­tooed body cov­ered in noth­ing but board shorts, the bar­bell through his right nip­ple on dis­play. Even the frigid wa­ters of the bay can’t cool my la­dy­bits.

You’d think that af­ter this long, I’d be im­mune. I’m not.

I’ve learned to ac­cept that re­gard­less of what my heart may feel, and my mind might think, my body will al­ways re­spond this way to Mick.

It’s the one area of our mar­riage we are on an en­tirely level play­ing field.

My hus­band craves my body as much as I pine af­ter his nonex­is­tent love.

No mat­ter what time he comes to bed at night, he al­ways ini­ti­ates sex. Do I make sure I get to sleep early enough to take ad­van­tage of that when the time comes with­out be­ing tired and slug­gish?

Yes, yes I do.

On the rare oc­ca­sions he’s around dur­ing the day and our son is oth­er­wise oc­cu­pied, Mick turns on the se­duc­tion then too. There’s no ques­tion he wants me.

How­ever, the heated pas­sion and sen­sual touches stay tucked safely be­hind our bed­room door.

What can I ex­pect when I got mar­ried as part of a deal be­tween two pow­er­ful mob fam­i­lies?