Page 44 of Sins of Arrogance

My fa­ther’s jaw flexes, his hold on his fork now white-knuck­led. But he doesn’t re­ply.

So, I go for broke. “And I know that you don’t care whether it’s a good ex­pe­ri­ence for me, or how much your busi­ness dis­rupts my life. But that mat­ters to me.”

Mamo makes a small sound, barely au­di­ble over the clink of sil­ver­ware.

“This is not the place to dis­cuss per­sonal fam­ily mat­ters,” my fa­ther says freez­ingly.

“Con­sid­er­ing the fact that this is the only time I see you un­less I make an ap­point­ment, I would say that fam­ily din­ner is the per­fect time to have a per­sonal con­ver­sa­tion.”

Bro­gan Shaugh­nessy looks like I smacked him in the face with the sword­fish be­fore our chef got a chance to cook it. “We have guests.”

I open my mouth to re­ply, but Mick lays his hand on my thigh and squeezes. “We can talk about the trip later.”

“There’s noth­ing to talk about,” I re­ply, with zero re­morse. “I am not go­ing to Lon­don.”

Fitz watches me with awe, not worry in his bright green gaze. I wink at him and he smiles.

A stran­gled sound comes from my fa­ther’s end of the ta­ble. I ig­nore it.

The door­mat ver­sion of Kara Fitzger­ald has left the build­ing.

“Why can’t you go to Lun­non, athair mór?” Fitz asks. “I don’t want my da to go.”

I have to swal­low back to­tally in­ap­pro­pri­ate laugh­ter. If any­one doubts that my son has both his fa­ther and me in him, that should seal it.

Only Mick is au­da­cious enough to chal­lenge my fa­ther. And it’s the Shaugh­nessy blood that makes me stub­born enough to do it.

I might not have shown that side of me for a while, but she’s al­ways been there. Bid­ing her time.

“That’s a won­der­ful idea, Fitz.” I smile sweetly at my fa­ther. “You have fewer fam­ily com­mit­ments than Mick. Your daugh­ters are all grown.”

Bro­gan’s mouth drops open and he stares at me like my head just spun around three times while I laughed ma­ni­a­cally.

“You al­low your grand­son to ques­tion your de­ci­sions, cean­naire?” Dier­dre asks, scan­dal­ized, us­ing the Irish term for chief.

Boss, but a shade more em­phatic.

“No, I do not. Fitzger­ald Shaugh­nessy, you do not ques­tion me.” For the first time in mem­ory, my fa­ther lev­els a harsh glare at my son and speaks in a tone bet­ter suited to dress­ing down one of his sol­diers. “Ever. It is dis­re­spect­ful.”

Fury ex­plodes like a grenade in my chest and I jump to my feet, shov­ing my chair back and knock­ing Mick’s hand away. “If you do not like the man­ners I have in­stilled in my son, you take it up with me.”

My fa­ther doesn’t stand, but the look of chill­ing dis­ap­proval he sends to­ward me is meant to cow me. “Then you tell your son to apol­o­gize. To both Dier­dre for his com­ment ear­lier and to me. I will not tol­er­ate that kind of rude­ness at my ta­ble.”

He doesn’t say it, but he def­i­nitely ex­pects me to say I’m sorry too.

Go­ing hot all over, my en­tire body flushes with anger. Fitzy’s fu­ture un­rolls in my mind’s eye like a ter­ri­fy­ing movie.

Us teach­ing him to be like me, tol­er­ant of any­thing his grand­fa­ther, the boss, wants him to do. Us teach­ing him to be like Mick, will­ing to do what­ever heinous act is nec­es­sary to fur­ther the mob’s in­ter­ests.

And never, ever hav­ing a say about his own life.

“I will not.”

My fa­ther re­gards me coldly. “You will, or you will both leave the ta­ble.”

Dis­be­lief that my fa­ther would say such a thing to me wars with pain at the knowl­edge that if I don’t change some­thing, it will al­ways be this way for Fitzy too.

Swal­low­ing back tears, I say, “It doesn’t have to be this way.”