Page 62 of Sins of Arrogance

“Mommy and da kiss­ing in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g,” Fitz sings loudly.

Kara’s body stiff­ens and she pulls back.

With an­other dose of re­gret, I let her. “Let me guess, an­other thing he learned from Enoch?”

“More likely he learned it in Kinder­garten,” Kara says. “Didn’t you sing it to taunt your friends when you were lit­tle?”

“Nah.” I didn’t have friends in pri­mary school.

Other than my dog and he wasn’t go­ing to sing songs with me, was he?

I re­luc­tantly leave my wife and son to call Hex. The bril­liant sci­en­tist thinks she’s made a break­through cool­ing the bar­rel, but she needs more ma­te­ri­als to run the tests she wants to.

Not an emer­gency. But not unim­por­tant ei­ther.

I hope she’s right about cool­ing the bar­rel. Doesn’t mat­ter how quiet the gun is if it melts in your hand and burns a good chunk of skin along with it.

Bro­gan tracks me down right af­ter I end my call with Hex. En­ter­ing my of­fice, he shuts the door be­hind him and glow­ers. “What the fuck was that at din­ner?”

I go still and stare him down un­til he tugs at the col­lar of his cus­tom-tai­lored shirt. “Good ques­tion. What the feckin’ hell did you think you were do­ing rep­ri­mand­ing my wife and son?”

“She’s my daugh­ter. He’s my grand­son,” Bro­gan blus­ters.

“You ever talk to Kara like that again and I’ll cut out your tongue and have the chef turn it into soup,” I prom­ise my fa­ther-in-law.

Bro­gan laughs un­easily. “You’ve got a warped sense of hu­mor, boyo.”

“Do you see me laugh­ing?”

Bro­gan clears his throat. “Okay, you’re right. I shouldn’t have been so hard on ei­ther of them. I’m just not used to my daugh­ter be­ing so ob­sti­nate. Not since she was a lit­tle girl any­way.”

He’s made com­ments be­fore, about how Kara used to be stub­born and brash. She’s still stub­born, even if he re­fuses to see her quiet re­bel­lions.

Like telling me point blank if I sent Fitz to school in Bos­ton, she was go­ing with him. She meant it.

I didn’t want ei­ther of them to leave, but for a while there, we were on the verge of war with the Gen­ovese Fam­ily.

If it came to war, I would have sent them to Dublin though, so I gave up on Bos­ton as a stop­gap se­cu­rity mea­sure.

“When did she change?” I ask.

Bro­gan rubs his hand over his face. “When my sis­ter-in-law was mur­dered. Char­ity was like a mother to my girls. They both took her death hard.”

My wife didn’t just see her aunt shot, but her lit­tle sis­ter as well, but Bro­gan ig­nores that fact.

“No child should have to wit­ness the mur­der of some­one they love.” Or any mur­der.

When I kill, I never do it in front of the in­no­cent.

“It’s a dan­ger­ous life.” Bro­gan shrugs, then frowns. “I only wish Fiona would snap out of it. She’s let it af­fect her for more than a decade.”

Fiona sur­vived be­ing shot, but she’d been in a coma for nine days. Her anx­i­ety is un­der­stand­able, even if it’s not some­thing I can ex­pe­ri­ence.

And if Kara used to be im­petu­ous, she’s been af­fected as well, be­cause she’s any­thing but. Her more amenable na­ture isn’t some­thing her fa­ther is go­ing to mind though, is it?

“Fi is who she is. She’s happy.” Even I know that peo­ple don’t just snap out of child­hood trauma.

His youngest needs ther­apy, but that’s not go­ing to hap­pen un­less she does what Kara has and sees some­one on­line in se­cret. Maybe I should sug­gest it to my wife.