Page 43 of Sins of Arrogance

That as his chil­dren, we de­serve his pro­tec­tion be­fore any­one else. Even the mob.

Róise’s kid­nap­ping crys­tal­ized that truth for me, when I didn’t hes­i­tate to put Fitz ahead of ei­ther her, or Fi. His safety was the only thing I cared about in that mo­ment.

If it had been my fa­ther in the wa­ter that day, he would have pro­tected his most im­por­tant cur­rent as­set of the mo­ment: Róise.

“Mick, I need you in Lon­don next week to over­see a ne­go­ti­a­tion with one of our Eu­ro­pean clients.” My dad’s frown says he’s not happy about the tim­ing of this trip.

Which im­plies it is both ur­gent and nec­es­sary.

The buzz around the din­ing ta­ble con­tin­ues as if my dad didn’t just drop a con­ver­sa­tional bomb be­tween the grilled sword­fish and rose­mary pota­toes.

Fitz chat­ters away, telling mamo how he and Enoch played su­per spies to­day, but all I hear is the echo of my dad’s voice.

Lon­don.

For how long? Does it mat­ter?

What will be ma­te­ri­ally dif­fer­ent with Mick gone? Well, nightly sex for one thing, but is that such a bad thing?

You starve a fever right? And love is noth­ing but a fever of the heart.

That’s what I’m telling my­self when I re­al­ize both my dad and Mick are look­ing at me with ex­pec­ta­tion.

“I’m sorry, I missed that,” I say au­to­mat­i­cally, know­ing I missed some­thing.

“I was say­ing you should go with Mick. Some time away from the fam­ily is al­ways good for a mar­riage.” My dad’s smile is all white teeth and false gen­eros­ity.

As if he’s gift­ing me Paris Fash­ion Week, not an­other week of lone­li­ness in a five-star prison.

Been there, done that. Burned the t-shirt. The week I spent in Paris on what was sup­posed to be my be­lated hon­ey­moon, turned out to be a cover for a meet­ing be­tween Mick and our other Eu­ro­pean clients, the ones not on the books of our le­git­i­mate busi­nesses.

“Mick is free to go, of course.” Like that would ever be in any doubt, or that I would have any say in the mat­ter. “But I won’t be tag­ging along to act as win­dow dress­ing for an­other busi­ness trip dis­guised as a ro­man­tic get­away.”

My be­lated hon­ey­moon in a nut­shell.

And ev­ery trip we’ve taken since then.

But now things are dif­fer­ent. I have a life, maybe one that my dad and hus­band know noth­ing about, but I have one all the same. School. Self-de­fense lessons with my cousin and sis­ter.

I’m get­ting re­ally good. Who knew?

And of course, there’s Fitz. I don’t want to leave him be­hind this time. Not with Dier­dre here.

There’s some­thing off about her. Be­sides the fact that she so ob­vi­ously has the hots for my hus­band and would be happy to see me get hit by a bus.

My fa­ther’s brows bee­tle, his dis­plea­sure cast in the slant of his lips. “It wasn’t a re­quest, Kara.”

I set down my fork. “Nei­ther was my an­swer.”

Mick tenses, and Fitz goes still, glanc­ing be­tween the adults like he’s sens­ing a storm front rolling in.

“You don’t want to go to Lon­don with your hus­band?” Bro­gan asks, the even tone of his voice be­ly­ing the storm seething in his blue gaze.

“Not re­ally, no.” I swirl my wa­ter glass. “I’ve stayed in the suite. Or­dered room ser­vice. Waited around while Mick took meet­ings.”

“You think I ask him to travel for fun?” my fa­ther snaps, his voice low­er­ing just enough to make my skin prickle.

“No. I think you ask him to travel for you,” I re­ply evenly. “And I think you send me along so I can smile and look pretty when the sit­u­a­tion calls for it.”