Page 183 of Sins of Arrogance

“When I was in group ther­apy one of the other res­i­dents at The Mar­lowe Cen­ter asked me what I did while I hung out in your of­fice all day. Like why was I there?”

“None of his feckin’ busi­ness.”

I smile wryly. “That’s not how group ther­apy works. Any­way, I re­al­ized I didn’t do any­thing use­ful. Any­thing that had to be done in there with you.”

“I didn’t care.”

“I did.” I shrug and then change the sub­ject. “I’ve never un­der­stood how you con­vinced my dad to let you move to Maine with Fitz to be near me.”

“I didn’t. He told me no. That you didn’t need us there.”

“But you came any­way. With your crew.”

“Aye.”

“That could be seen as be­trayal.”

“And he could be seen as dead.” Know­ing now what I do about how Mick’s brain works in re­gard to tak­ing care of me and any­one stand­ing in the way of that, I don’t for a sec­ond think he’s jok­ing.

Wor­ried Mick is go­ing to start dwelling on his de­sire to kill Bro­gan for agree­ing to the sep­a­ra­tion, I re­turn to our ear­lier dis­cus­sion against my bet­ter judge­ment. “You said at first it was about Fitz.”

“Aye. It took me a few months to re­al­ize you were ac­tively avoid­ing com­ing to my of­fice.”

“And that didn’t bother you?”

“Oh, aye, it both­ered me al­right. But I know what I am and I fig­ured you were look­ing for some free­dom from me.”

“Is this an ASPD thing, a guy thing, or just a you thing?” I ask, not so face­tiously. “Be­cause that doesn’t make any sense to me. Why would I want free­dom from you?”

“You didn’t have a choice about mar­ry­ing me or do­ing it right out of high school.”

“Nei­ther of us had a choice. If you didn’t marry me, seanathair would have mar­ried me off to some­one else.”

“Aye, I re­al­ized that right off.”

“And you weren’t about to give up the chance to ad­vance in the Shaugh­nessy Mob like you couldn’t in the Nor­thies.”

“I wasn’t about to let an­other man get his mitts on you.”

“You said I be­came your ad­dic­tion on our wed­ding night.”

“That’s when I rec­og­nized the threat you were to my self-con­trol. From the mo­ment we met, I knew I wasn’t go­ing to let any other man bask in your in­no­cence.”

“You have a po­etic streak, did you know that?”

“I might be a so­ciopath.” He winks. “But I’m an Irish one.”

I laugh softly, con­tent to stand there and look up at my hand­some hus­band for the next mil­lenia.

Which is a ridicu­lous truth, but it is my truth.

“Any­way, I wanted you to have what free­dom I could give you.”

“That’s why you never told me you knew about me pur­su­ing a uni­ver­sity de­gree.” He wanted me to feel the free­dom of do­ing some­thing en­tirely on my own for my­self. “You’re a pretty spe­cial so­ciopath. I’ll give you that, but I would still rather have known you missed me.”

“That’s when I started watch­ing you on the se­cu­rity feeds.”

“And in­stalled cam­eras in our apart­ment.”