Page 215 of Sins of Arrogance

“You don’t think he trusts us?” Sheila asks, her voice laced with sad­ness.

I don’t ask what there is to trust about a fam­ily who ba­si­cally ban­ished him out of fear be­cause I want Mick to have a bet­ter re­la­tion­ship with his par­ents and sib­lings.

“Do you trust him?” I counter. “I do. In all things and ev­ery way.”

“Mick re­ally does love you, doesn’t he?” Chivon asks. “That level of trust doesn’t come from any­thing but know­ing you are loved on a cel­lu­lar level.”

Chivon’s hus­band has been dead longer than I’ve been mar­ried, but I won­der if she trusted him like I trust Mick. If he loved her.

Ar­ranged mar­riages are com­mon in our world. Love? Not so much.

“I know my fam­ily loves me that way,” Chivon says, as if I asked the ques­tion.

“But Mick doesn’t,” I say.

“I didn’t think he needed our love,” Sheila says.

“I think ev­ery child needs love.” And maybe my so­ciopath would have de­vel­oped ten­der feel­ings for one or more of them, if they’d given it.

But Mick scared them, it sounds like from a very young age.

“He was so emo­tion­less when he was lit­tle. He only cried if he was hun­gry or wet. Never be­cause he wanted at­ten­tion. He ig­nored us most of the time.”

“He didn’t ig­nore me the day he broke that bully’s arm,” Brigid dis­agrees.

They tell me a story about Mick ex­act­ing ret­ri­bu­tion for an older boy knock­ing Brigid off the mon­key bars.

“That’s Mick. He pro­tects the peo­ple he con­sid­ers fam­ily.” If I say it of­ten enough, maybe they’ll be­lieve me.

“Then I wish he’d known what my hus­band was do­ing to me,” Chivon says grimly.

Her mother gasps, but Brigid nods ve­he­mently. “Mick would have got­ten rid of Jack af­ter the first time he hit you.”

“Did you tell any­one what was hap­pen­ing?” I ask Chivon gen­tly.

She shakes her head. “I thought it was my duty to take it, to en­dure.”

“It wasn’t,” Brigid says with ve­he­mence.

Sheila reaches out for her daugh­ter. “Is that why you never came home dur­ing your mar­riage?”

“Jack wouldn’t let me travel with­out him. He barely let me leave the house.”

The look on Brigid’s face says she knows all this and I think maybe that has more to do with her re­fusal to marry into an­other syn­di­cate than any­thing else.

“If you’d told us…” When Sheila’s voice trails off, we all know it’s be­cause she knows what she was go­ing to say would have been a lie.

I tell them about moma’s box then.

“I had no idea Maeve was so blood thirsty,” Sheila says.

“She’d kill to pro­tect us girls.” And I’m just re­al­iz­ing how lucky I am to have been born into a fam­ily with her as my grand­mother.

“I want a box like that,” Brigid de­clares.

“You’re never get­ting mar­ried, why would you need one?” her mother asks with some as­per­ity.

Chivon’s face sets with de­ter­mi­na­tion. “I wish I’d had one and I guar­an­tee my daugh­ter will if she ever gets mar­ried.”