Page 161 of Sins of Arrogance

There’s some­thing dif­fer­ent about him. That thing that lurks un­der­neath his easy Irish charm is on the sur­face. I al­ways as­sumed that it was the mob­ster, the man will­ing to com­mit crim­i­nal acts for the good of the syn­di­cate.

But it’s some­thing more.

I’m not con­vinced the men would come to my aid if they saw Mick car­ry­ing me out of the house, no mat­ter how loudly I screamed. But am I will­ing to take that chance?

“You’re in­sane,” I ac­cuse.

“It’s called an­ti­so­cial per­son­al­ity dis­or­der, and it is not ac­com­pa­nied by delu­sions or para­noia.”

Which ap­par­ently is sup­posed to mean he’s not in­sane.

“You’re a so­ciopath?” How can that be pos­si­ble?

He loves Fitz. I know he does.

“Aye.”

“You’re de­luded if you think I’m go­ing any­where with you,” I in­form him.

“I thought you would pre­fer I not kill your fa­ther ei­ther.” He says it so pro­saically.

Like he didn’t just threaten to mur­der his boss and friend.

“Why in the world would you even threaten that?”

“He gave you per­mis­sion to file for di­vorce. Once I am boss, that per­mis­sion will be re­scinded.”

“No. No. No.” This is not hap­pen­ing.

Mick, the af­fa­ble, but scary un­der­boss, is not threat­en­ing to kill my fa­ther to keep me mar­ried to him.

“You can’t kill my fa­ther. He’s your boss. You took an oath.”

“He be­trayed that oath when he agreed to the di­vorce,” Mick says im­pla­ca­bly. “Just as your seanathair did when he or­dered the dis­posal of our girl em­bryos.”

That is not a mem­ory I want to re­visit, but he can’t be say­ing what I think he’s say­ing. “You killed my grand­fa­ther?”

His health be­gan to de­te­ri­o­rate months be­fore Un­cle Derry’s death and more rapidly af­ter. Ev­ery­one put it down to seanathair’s grief.

“Aye.”

My brain can­not take this in. “Why?”

“He stole from me. That is an un­ac­cept­able be­trayal of the oath be­tween boss and sol­dier and negated the oath I made to him.”

Be­cause the girl em­bryos be­longed to me and Mick, not my grand­fa­ther. Only seanathair hadn’t seen it that way.

“I don’t un­der­stand.” My brain is spin­ning like hard disk drive gone amok. “How did you kill him?”

“Thal­lium poi­son­ing. I wanted to use ar­senic, to pro­long his suf­fer­ing be­cause he made you cry. But your grand­fa­ther was old school Catholic which meant no cre­ma­tion. And ar­senic can be de­tected in the body too long af­ter death.”

My hus­band’s eyes re­flect a com­plete lack of emo­tion, in­clud­ing re­morse. This is the real Mick. Not the charm­ing fa­cade he puts on to fool peo­ple.

I al­ways knew it was there, but he held this part of him­self back from me.

“If I had known the full cost of his ac­tions to­ward you, I would have made him suf­fer much worse be­fore death.”

“You think I took the pills be­cause of seanathair?” I ask, aghast.