Page 150 of Sins of Arrogance

My fa­ther’s mouth twists with dis­ap­proval. “You don’t have to make up sto­ries about Dier­dre to get rid of her. She’ll be go­ing back to Ire­land soon enough.”

Mick makes a sound. Of an­noy­ance? I’m not sure. But it def­i­nitely isn’t agree­ment with Bro­gan’s con­de­scend­ing words.

“I’m not here to talk to you about the Wicked Witch of the West.” Not yet any­way. “I want per­mis­sion to di­vorce Mick.”

Eyes widen­ing with dis­cern­able shock, my fa­ther opens and closes his mouth with­out any­thing com­ing out of it.

“No,” Mick says with glacial fi­nal­ity.

I don’t look at him. I can’t. Not if I want to get through this meet­ing with­out cry­ing, or do­ing some­thing equally hu­mil­i­at­ing, like ask him why he doesn’t love me.

But I do ad­dress him. “I wasn’t ask­ing you. We were mar­ried in the State of New York. That means, I can file for a di­vorce and it will even­tu­ally be granted, re­gard­less of what you want.”

“This is a dis­cus­sion you need to be hav­ing with your hus­band, Kara.” My fa­ther has found voice again.

I shake my head. “I dis­agree. As I said, Mick ul­ti­mately has no say over whether or not I can di­vorce him. How­ever, you as the mob boss, do.”

We all know that he has granted per­mis­sion for a hand­ful of di­vorces in his ten­ure as mob boss. Un­der the right cir­cum­stances, even my hide­bound fa­ther ac­knowl­edges an in­di­vid­ual’s right to choose who they are mar­ried to.

“Like hell,” Mick says.

But my fa­ther nods, his ex­pres­sion now trou­bled. “That is true. But you must know I’m not about to al­low you to di­vorce Mick and de­stroy our al­liance with the North­side Dublin Syn­di­cate.”

“Fitz is now the guar­an­tor of that al­liance, not me. I don’t have to be mar­ried to Mick for him to be your un­der­boss, or for him to take over from you when you re­tire.”

“As much as I hate to even think about it, there’s no guar­an­tee my grand­son will live to take over from his fa­ther,” Bro­gan says heav­ily.

In other words, he wants more grand­sons.

It’s my turn to nod. “There are still male em­bryos in frozen stor­age at the clinic.”

No fe­male ones, but that’s not a mem­ory I want to re­live.

“You are not go­ing through IVF to get preg­nant again.” Mick’s voice is deadly cer­tain.

I shrug, still not look­ing at him. “I don’t have to. An ap­pro­pri­ate sur­ro­gate can be found to carry the baby.”

Dier­dre was right about that at least.

The as­ton­ish­ment on my fa­ther’s face is al­most com­i­cal. He was sur­prised by my re­quest for a di­vorce, but my will­ing­ness to al­low an­other woman to carry my child stuns him.

I’m not thrilled with the idea, but the re­al­ity is my fa­ther will not ap­prove me be­gin­ning di­vorce pro­ceed­ings if I’m preg­nant. And he’s not go­ing to al­low Fitz to be his only grand­son.

The very fact he is the cur­rent mob boss in­stead of his dead older brother is ev­i­dence enough of the dan­gers to this life.

“Per­haps you should re­turn to The Mar­lowe Cen­ter.” My fa­ther doesn’t sound con­de­scend­ing now.

He sounds wor­ried.

“Some things can­not be ther­a­pied away. Be­lieve it, or not, I am not jeal­ous of Dier­dre. I don’t be­lieve Mick wants to sex her up.” Mostly. “I know she’s still here be­cause of mob busi­ness.”

“Then what is the prob­lem?” my fa­ther asks.

“The prob­lem is that I de­serve to be happy. I know my hap­pi­ness means noth­ing to you, but it means some­thing to me.”

Bro­gan winces, like my words hurt him in some way. But I don’t let my­self go down that men­tal path­way. The only rea­son they bother him is that I’m not act­ing like the per­fect mob princess pup­pet he wants me to be.

“You do not be­lieve I will pro­tect you from Dier­dre. That is why you are pre­tend­ing to want a di­vorce.” Mick’s voice is de­void of emo­tion.