Page 171 of Sins of Arrogance

“I know you value me, but you don’t pri­or­i­tize me, so that puts low cur­rency on that value.” I think, even with his ASPD, he cares about me.

As much as he cares about any­one be­sides Fitz. But that still doesn’t make me im­por­tant to him.

“Not tak­ing you on dates made you be­lieve this?” he asks, no in­flec­tion in his tone.

I have to get used to that. Mick not mask­ing his true na­ture.

“Aban­don­ing me for work on our wed­ding night, tak­ing phone calls in the mid­dle of sex—”

“I ex­plained about our wed­ding night.”

“But if you’d got­ten the call from my grand­fa­ther be­fore you left the bed­room, you would have gone.”

Mick nods. “And that both­ers you?”

“The fact you would do it at all? No,” I spell out very clearly. “The fact you would do it on our wed­ding night, or miss our an­niver­sary for mob busi­ness? Yes.”

“Be­cause our an­niver­sary is the only time I take you out to din­ner, just the two of us.”

“That, and it’s our an­niver­sary Mick. If you don’t want to cel­e­brate our mar­riage, how am I sup­posed to be­lieve it, or I am im­por­tant to you?”

“You need to make me a list of the dates that are im­por­tant to you.”

“They’re not some big se­cret. Our an­niver­sary. My birth­day—”

“You want me to spend time alone with you on your birth­day?” he in­ter­rupts me to ask again.

It’s on the tip of my tongue to say, duh, but I don’t. Maybe what is ob­vi­ous to me, and other peo­ple isn’t to my so­ciopath. And maybe that list he wants is his way of pri­or­i­tiz­ing my feel­ings.

I sim­ply nod and say, “Yes.” Then a thought comes to me. “It would be just as spe­cial if that time in­cluded Fitz.”

“But no one else.”

“No one else.”

“Not even Fiona or Maeve?” he checks.

“Not even them. Our time to­gether as a nu­clear fam­ily is at a pre­mium. You mak­ing it hap­pen for my birth­day would feel spe­cial.”

“Noted.”

I can’t be­lieve he’s got me talk­ing like we have a fu­ture al­ready, but this whole Mick show­ing me who he re­ally is and lis­ten­ing to my ev­ery word? It’s heady stuff.

He pulls some­thing out of his trousers pocket. A flat jew­eler’s box. “I know jew­elry is just part of the ar­mor you wear, but this made me think of you.”

“You have to step back so I can open it.”

He does with clear re­luc­tance.

I flip the top up on the box and gasp. It’s a gar­net cut in the shape of a heart and wrapped in yel­low gold wire, cre­at­ing a tree of life in the cen­ter. It’s set in an oval set­ting dec­o­rated with tiny fo­liage ac­cented with small round bril­liant cut emer­alds and di­a­monds.

Like my birth­day gift, this neck­lace feels spe­cial. As if it was made just for me.

There are ear­rings made with the same yel­low gold and gem­stones but sim­ple and el­e­gant to com­pli­ment the pen­dant.

“It’s beau­ti­ful.” I touch it rev­er­ently. “I can’t be­lieve you just saw some­thing like this and it made you think of me.”

“I saw a heart shaped stone wrapped in the tree of life and told the jew­eler I wanted some­thing like it, but be­fit­ting my queen.”