Page 36 of Sins of Arrogance

I raise a brow. “Do you?”

A flash of hurt. “You used to trust me.”

I don’t an­swer.

Be­cause I trust her to be ex­actly what she’s al­ways been: am­bi­tious, slip­pery, and use­ful.

And if she thinks I’m de­fend­ing her out of sen­ti­men­tal­ity?

That’s fine.

If she thinks Kara’s jeal­ousy gives her lever­age?

Let her think it.

Be­cause even­tu­ally, Dier­dre will re­veal what the hell brought her to New York. When she does, I’ll know if my fam­ily are still al­lies.

Or if they’ve be­come my en­emy.

Chap­ter 11: Din­ner, Dier­dre, & the Death of Il­lu­sions

KARA

Dier­dre’s machi­na­tions come to roost just be­fore din­ner.

Mick ar­rives while I’m still work­ing with Fitz on the word list he needs to rec­og­nize by sight go­ing into first grade. He learned to read last year, but there are still words on the sight list he’s un­fa­mil­iar with.

That was an in­ter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion with his Kinder­garten teacher.

She was an­noyed I’d taught Fitzy to read, say­ing it made things more dif­fi­cult for her. As she had to keep him oc­cu­pied while teach­ing the skill to the rest of the class.

I sug­gested the teacher al­low my son to read books at his read­ing level on his own while she worked with the rest of the class.

Mick shocked me by say­ing maybe we should send Fitz to a mil­i­tary acad­emy with ad­vanced aca­demics near Bos­ton. I coun­tered that if Fitz went to Bos­ton to go to school, he wouldn’t be liv­ing in the dorm, be­cause I was go­ing with him.

For a cou­ple of weeks, I thought that was what was go­ing to hap­pen. Then my fa­ther ne­go­ti­ated a mar­riage al­liance be­tween my cousin, Róise, and Don De Luca’s brother, Miceli.

Sud­denly, there was no more talk of send­ing me and Fitz out of state and Mick gifted a li­brary of age-ap­pro­pri­ate books to our son’s Kinder­garten class­room.

I found out later that Mick wanted to get us out of New York in case war broke out be­tween our mob and the Cosa Nos­tra.

Not that he told me that at the time.

No, he just let me think my com­pany was dis­pos­able.

I never told Fi or Róise that’s what went down. There’s a lot I don’t share about my mar­riage with my in­no­cent sis­ter and cousin.

Mick ruf­fles Fitz’s hair. “Get washed up for din­ner, mo leanbh. I want to talk with your mam for a minute.”

“But look, da!” Fitz points to the stack of flash­cards on his side of the ta­ble. “I won all of them.”

Fitz loves to learn, but add an el­e­ment of com­pe­ti­tion by mak­ing it a game where he “wins” the cards he gets cor­rect? And my sweet son gets laser fo­cused.

Mick’s smile for our son reaches his eyes, the pride there easy to read. “That’s grand, mo leanbh. You’ll be the smartest boy in first grade.”

From some­one else, that might be hy­per­bole. But not Mick. He doesn’t give empty praise to our son. Or any­one else. He gen­uinely be­lieves Fitzy will be the smartest kid in his class.

Chances are, Mick’s right.