Page 157 of Sins of Arrogance

That’s not what Mick usu­ally does. He likes my legs free, so he can po­si­tion me the way he wants me.

“Mick?” My voice only tremors slightly with the re­al­iza­tion that this sit­u­a­tion may not be down to my hus­band’s do­ing.

My brain races with ways to get out of this.

A fa­mil­iar hand presses against the side of my neck. “Don’t freak out, mo chuisle, it’s me.”

One of his arms slides be­hind my back and then his other one un­der­neath my knees, and he lifts me from the bed.

I reach up with my bound hands and rip the sleep mask from my face. My eyes are ad­justed to the dark, but I still don’t see much.

The out­line of Mick’s shoul­ders and head is vis­i­ble be­cause he’s so close. Ev­ery­thing else is in­de­ci­pher­able be­cause the room is darker than nor­mal.

There’s some­thing over the win­dow cov­er­ing where cracks of light would usu­ally slip through. The only light, as lit­tle as it is, comes from the soft glow of the night­light through the cracked door to the en suite.

“What did you put over the win­dow?” That’s not what I re­ally need to know right now but it’s a start.

He takes a step away from the bed with all the con­fi­dence of a man wear­ing night vi­sion gog­gles in a com­pletely dark en­vi­ron­ment. Only there are no tell­tale lumps on his face.

The surety of move­ment is 100% my hus­band.

He shifts me against his chest and warmth tin­gles through me from where my arm brushes against his cot­ton cov­ered pecs. “I closed the safety shut­ters.”

Ev­ery room has them for se­cu­rity, but the walls won’t with­stand re­peated fir­ing, hence the mul­ti­ple safe rooms in the man­sion.

Be­cause the mob isn’t just a busi­ness like my fa­ther wants to pre­tend. It’s an army and my fam­ily has many en­e­mies with armies of their own.

“I slept through that?” The shut­ters aren’t loud, but they aren’t silent ei­ther.

“You slept through me putting re­straints on you,” he says in a flat tone. “I thought you would wake up.”

“You sound dis­ap­pointed.” Which is a lie be­cause there’s no emo­tion in his voice at all.

“Why would I be?” His head comes down to­ward me and I’m sure he’s go­ing to kiss me, but he just in­hales. “It made the first part of my plan eas­ier to ex­e­cute.”

“Some­times you sound more like a ro­bot than a man.” That’s not some­thing I would have said to Mick be­fore.

I al­ways pre­tended I didn’t no­tice when he with­drew into an emo­tion­less shell. That was my job, right? To be a good lit­tle mob princess and pre­tend ev­ery­thing was fine.

Even when it wasn’t.

But I’m done pre­tend­ing. My brain to mouth fil­ter with him is as bro­ken as our mar­riage.

“Why close the safety shut­ters? Are we un­der at­tack? Where’s Fitz?” I de­mand fran­ti­cally.

I don’t know why Mick would feel the need to bind my wrists and an­kles to take me to the safe room though.

“No.”

Be­fore the re­lief even has a chance to reg­is­ter, he adds, “I closed the shut­ters so you couldn’t go to the win­dow and draw at­ten­tion by bang­ing on it.”

Fear slith­ers down my spine. Why would I need to try to get help?

Mick said in Bro­gan’s of­fice there would be no di­vorce. Does he plan to kill me?

I curl my fin­gers into fists and bring my bound hands up in an arc, hit­ting the side of his face as hard as I can, throw­ing my­self back­ward as he grunts from the im­pact.

Land­ing hard, pain ra­di­ates through my body on the side of im­pact.