Page 31 of Sins of Arrogance

The only peo­ple in this house who en­joy Dier­dre’s com­pany are my hus­band and fa­ther. Which seems to suit the Irish beauty just fine.

I have no doubt she’s used to get­ting her way. Too bad for her, this isn’t Dublin and she’s not the reign­ing mob princess. Worse for her, I’m no longer a mob princess. I’m a mob queen.

Be­cause my hus­band and son are the next in line to run this mob, that makes me the se­nior rank­ing woman in the Shaugh­nessy Mob, some­thing mamo reg­u­larly re­minds me of.

Dier­dre sinks art­fully into an arm­chair with­out be­ing in­vited.

“I hope I didn’t make things…awk­ward last night.” Her tone laced with in­no­cence so false, it might as well be sugar free sweet­ener.

Un­sure which par­tic­u­lar mem­ory she dredged up with my hus­band that she’s re­fer­ring to, I say, “Not at all.”

She crosses one leg over the other, pos­ing even now, with no one but me in the room to ap­pre­ci­ate her prac­ticed move­ments. “It’s just we have so much his­tory.”

“That’s usu­ally the case with older friends.” Forced by my own ad­her­ence to good man­ners, I put the e-reader down on the oc­ca­sional ta­ble be­side me.

Her eyes nar­row. “I’m sure you meant old friends.”

The way she says old friends sound like past lovers, or is that just me?

“Did I? Would you like a glass?” I in­di­cate the pitcher of iced tea on the serv­ing tray. “Green tea is filled with an­tiox­i­dants that can help keep older skin look­ing youth­ful.”

“What are you im­ply­ing? I don’t need any­thing to help me look younger.”

“Of course. With your fix­a­tion on me be­ing younger than you, I thought you might ap­pre­ci­ate the—”

“It’s not your age rel­a­tive to me that I find so…” Dier­dre cuts me off be­fore I can fin­ish, but then floun­ders in her um­brage, un­will­ing to say the word on the tip of her tongue.

“Ob­jec­tion­able,” I of­fer. She’s cer­tainly im­plied as much.

“Con­cern­ing,” she coun­ters.

She’s been very care­ful thus far not to say any­thing that can be pointed to as a di­rect in­sult.

“I’m not sure why me be­ing nearly a decade younger than you would be so con­cern­ing?” I pause and then give her a com­mis­er­at­ing look. “You shouldn’t let the fact that you’re over thirty and un­mar­ried get to you. I know mob cul­ture can be back­wards, but we don’t live in the last cen­tury. A woman doesn’t need a hus­band and fam­ily to have a sat­is­fy­ing life.”

Which is some­thing I be­lieve strongly, but not a sen­ti­ment I think Dier­dre will ap­pre­ci­ate.

Her mur­der­ous ex­pres­sion tells me I’m right. “My con­cern is how much younger than Micky you are, not me.”

“But you’re the same age, aren’t you?” I ask, do­ing my own im­i­ta­tion of false in­no­cence.

“Yes,” she grinds out. “But that’s not the point.”

“What ex­actly is the point?” I pour my­self a glass of tea and take a sip, giv­ing her plenty of time to an­swer.

“It must be…” She waves her hand like she’s look­ing for words, when I have no doubt she’d come in here with ev­ery word al­ready planned.

Hope­fully my ques­tion got us back on script. As fun as it has been to give her a lit­tle of her own back, I would still rather be read­ing.

“Ex­haust­ing,” she goes on, her eyes filled with pity. “Al­ways watch­ing. Al­ways won­der­ing.”

Re­fus­ing to let her get to me again, I arch one brow. “Won­der­ing about what ex­actly?”

My post-par­tum de­pres­sion fu­eled jeal­ousy not­with­stand­ing, the only thing I’ve ever had cause to won­der about is whether or not my hus­band will ever love me.

“A vir­ile, pow­er­ful man like Micky…you’ve got to be cu­ri­ous what he does so many hours of the day away from you.”

So, she no­ticed how lit­tle time Mick spends with me. It’s hard to miss. But it’s also not un­com­mon with mob men at his level. The mob comes first, fam­ily sec­ond, no mat­ter what kind of lies my fa­ther likes to tell him­self.