Page 32 of Sins of Arrogance

“Not par­tic­u­larly.” Which is true.

I’m nei­ther in­ter­ested in the de­tails of Mick’s le­git­i­mate busi­ness deal­ings nor the gritty ones re­lated to his role as the Shaugh­nessy mob un­der­boss.

Even back when we were first mar­ried, and I used to hang out in Mick’s of­fice – I still strug­gle with mem­o­ries of how be­sot­ted I was – the de­tails of his work didn’t in­ter­est me.

I just wanted to be in the same room as him, which is my own pa­thetic truth to live with.

Dier­dre’s scoff­ing laugh is the first real thing in her de­meanor since she came into the room. “Is that the line you’ve been taught to toe? It must be dif­fer­ent in Ire­land. I wouldn’t stand for my hus­band hav­ing friends on the side.”

“Mick can have what­ever friends he likes,” I an­swer with de­lib­er­ate ob­tuse­ness. “Though out­side of his crew, I don’t think he has many.”

He and Róise’s fi­ancé, Miceli De Luca, un­der­boss to the Gen­ovese Fam­ily? But even with the fam­ily ties soon to be ce­mented, that re­la­tion­ship is still pri­mar­ily busi­ness.

“Maybe you’re not as smart as I thought. I wasn’t talk­ing about boyos to drink at the pub with.”

“I didn’t think you were, but why should I dig­nify your nasty in­nu­endo with an an­swer? If you think my hus­band lacks the in­tegrity to keep his mar­riage vows, that’s a you prob­lem.”

“You think he’s faith­ful?” she scoffs.

“You don’t?” I counter.

Dier­dre shifts in her chair. Some­thing about this con­ver­sa­tion isn’t go­ing the way she ex­pects.

It’s prob­a­bly the part where I’m not in­tim­i­dated by her. In­sin­u­a­tions of Mick’s sup­posed rov­ing eye don’t hold any weight af­ter the way he wrecked me last night…and the night be­fore that…and the night be­fore that.

“I just think it’s sad, that’s all. For both of you. A man like Micky? He should be with a ma­ture woman who doesn’t get all teary eyed when he gets cold or quiet.”

“Mick doesn’t do cold and quiet with me, and even if he did, it wouldn’t send me cry­ing into my pil­low.”

“You’re very loyal, but you don’t have to pre­tend with me. I know him.” She pauses. “In­ti­mately.”

“Cor­rec­tion you knew him.” I leave off the in­ti­mately.

“You know we stayed in touch af­ter he left Ire­land. And not just through texts. He’s been back to Dublin many times since he came to work in New York.”

She wants me to be­lieve Mick has been hav­ing sex with her when he vis­its Dublin?

Not likely.

Al­low­ing my­self to be­lieve oth­er­wise would be way too detri­men­tal to my men­tal health. But I’m not bury­ing my head in the sand.

Mick’s a starv­ing man with an in­sa­tiable sex­ual ap­petite the first few days af­ter he gets back from any trip, in­clud­ing the ones to Dublin.

No way is he get­ting his rocks off while he’s away.

Ig­nor­ing her bla­tant in­nu­endo, I choose to fo­cus on some­thing else Deirdre said. “He didn’t just come to work for the Shaugh­nessy mob. He mar­ried into it. New York is Mick’s home now.”

She doesn’t like hear­ing that, but the anger glint­ing in her gaze quickly turns to cal­cu­la­tion.

“It wor­ries me,” she says, clearly in­tent on ig­nor­ing the words she doesn’t want to hear, just like I did. “He’s a pow­er­ful man who de­serves some­one who doesn’t flinch when he gets a lit­tle bru­tal in the bed­room.”

One thing I never do, is flinch away from Mick and his sex­ual ap­petites. How­ever, I’m not about to dis­cuss my sex life with this woman, or any other one, for that mat­ter.

Nei­ther my sis­ter, nor my cousin, knows about the early months of my mar­riage when I wasn’t al­lowed to have my hus­band in­side me un­til the male em­bryo had im­planted in my womb through IVF.

I lost my vir­gin­ity to Mick’s thick, long fin­gers. It was both amaz­ing and over­whelm­ing at the time.

But that doesn’t mean I ever want to dis­cuss the lack of pen­e­tra­tive sex in my mar­riage un­til I was preg­nant with the great-grand­son Fer­gal Shaugh­nessy was so adamant on get­ting.