Page 10 of Sins of Arrogance

“Fi and Zoey were al­ready swim­ming and promised to bring Fitz back when they’re done,” Kara says, like she knows ex­actly what I’m think­ing.

She reads me bet­ter than any­one else, but she still doesn’t know me. And if I can help it, she never will.

I straighten my cuffs. “I’m sur­prised you didn’t stay with them.”

Kara prefers the bay, but she loves to swim. Bro­gan has dis­cour­aged the fam­ily from us­ing the bay for swim­ming since Róise’s kid­nap­ping though. How­ever, I don’t want my son ham­pered by un­re­solved fears.

So, Kara and I are work­ing on get­ting him used to be­ing in the bay again. “He’s afraid of the dock.”

Kara stops in the door­way to the en suite and turns to look at me over her shoul­der. “I don’t think it’s that cut and dried. He was fine stand­ing on it by him­self.”

“But he didn’t want you near it alone.”

She nods, chew­ing on her bot­tom lip and then meets my eyes, her hazel gaze dark with worry. “I want to get him ther­apy.”

“Aye. Bet­ter that than to let his fears fes­ter.”

Face slack with shock, Kara turns around com­pletely so she’s fac­ing me. “You’d be okay with it?”

What does she think? I would deny my son the med­i­cal care he needs? Is that why she hides her on­go­ing vis­its with the ther­a­pist she started see­ing in the “lux­ury treat­ment cen­ter” when Fitz was still an in­fant?

She thinks I won’t ap­prove?

Her fa­ther wouldn’t, which is why I don’t men­tion that my wife has weekly video calls with a men­tal health pro­fes­sional. But hell, any­thing that will pre­vent her from go­ing back to the dark de­pres­sion she fell into af­ter Fitz’s birth is a good thing.

She tried to end her own life and damn near suc­ceeded. Thirty min­utes later and I wouldn’t have got­ten to her in time. Her heart would have stopped for the pills she took.

Never again.

If talk­ing to her ther­a­pist once a week helps, then I’ll make sure my wife al­ways has that op­tion. No mat­ter what Bro­gan has to say about it.

Even if I per­son­ally don’t un­der­stand the need to talk about her in­ner­most thoughts and feel­ings with some­one. De­spite my dis­guise of nor­malcy, I don’t have feel­ings like other peo­ple. And if I shared my deep­est thoughts, I’d be locked up in a not so lux­ury men­tal health fa­cil­ity.

“It will have to be some­one con­nected to the syn­di­cate though,” I warn Kara. “Some­one who knows bet­ter than to share our busi­ness with out­siders.”

She shakes her head at me. “Doc­tor-pa­tient con­fi­den­tial­ity would pre­vent that from hap­pen­ing re­gard­less.”

“I trust fam­ily bonds over HIPAA com­pli­ance.” With the right in­cen­tive, even a doc­tor can turn in­for­mant.

It’s hap­pened be­fore and will hap­pen again.

Kara sighs, but nods. “I’ll see if my ther­a­pist knows a child psy­chol­o­gist she can rec­om­mend.”

That’s one of the many things about my wife that I ad­mire. She doesn’t lie un­less she has no other choice. So, she doesn’t re­fer to the woman as her for­mer ther­a­pist, or im­ply they aren’t still in touch.

Nor does she of­fer the fact she con­tin­ues to see the doc­tor weekly. Kara hides a clat­ter of shit from me and her fa­ther, but she doesn’t out­right lie about it.

“You’d bet­ter get back down to your friend. She’s prob­a­bly wear­ing a pat­tern in the car­pet wait­ing to have her se­cret dis­cus­sion with you.” Kara uses air quotes when she says se­cret dis­cus­sion.

It’s the sec­ond time she’s men­tioned the fact that Dier­dre won’t tell me why she’s here in front of my wife. And that’s cause for con­cern.

When she first started show­ing signs of jeal­ousy dur­ing her preg­nancy, it didn’t bother me. I’m pos­ses­sive and would kill a man who made a move on my wife. Her ex­press­ing the de­sire for other women not to flirt with me was rea­son­able.

Un­for­tu­nately, Kara of­ten thought women were flirt­ing when they weren’t. If one of the house­hold staff smiled at me, it could lead to an emo­tional rant from Kara.

I min­i­mized my time with women who worked with us in ei­ther our mob busi­nesses or le­git ones. But then Fitz was born and I thought Kara’s emo­tions had evened out.

When I started work­ing on a deal that re­quired a lot of le­gal sup­port, I spent many hours se­questered in my of­fice with our lawyer. She hap­pened to be an at­trac­tive woman in her early thir­ties, but all I saw was her brain and abil­ity to give le­gal ad­vice.