Page 45 of Sins of Arrogance

“There’s a hi­er­ar­chy in the mob and it must be re­spected.”

Feel­ings I’ve kept locked away for so long leak out of the cage I’ve kept them in, adding to the caul­dron bub­bling in my gut.

“Kara, a ghrá. It’s al­right,” mamo says sooth­ingly. “Fitz has ex­cel­lent man­ners and it will not hurt him to re­mem­ber them with his athair mór.”

I blink away tears and shake my head. “No. Bro­gan isn’t act­ing like Fitz’s athair mór, he’s be­hav­ing with all the cru­elty of a cean­naire. But my son is not one of his sol­diers and I won’t have him raised to be­lieve his feel­ings don’t mat­ter. That he’s not al­lowed to have an opin­ion in a fam­ily dis­cus­sion.”

“This is not a fam­ily dis­cus­sion, Kara,” Bro­gan points out, al­most pa­tiently. “We are dis­cussing busi­ness.”

“Then you should have saved it for your of­fice,” I fire back, not even a lit­tle ap­peased.

Ev­ery bit of soft­en­ing in Bro­gan’s de­meanor dis­ap­pears. “You dare to tell me how to be­have in my own home?”

“I thought it was my home too, but it never has been, has it?”

“Is she al­ways this dra­matic?” Dier­dre asks in a whis­per meant to carry.

The woman whose pic­ture is next to Drama Queen in the Ur­ban Dic­tio­nary thinks I’m dra­matic?

Bro­gan’s face tight­ens, but he doesn’t re­ply. He’s star­ing me down. A tac­tic he’s used to great ef­fect in the past.

But I am be­yond be­ing sub­dued by his dis­ap­proval. When you’re never enough, even­tu­ally you stop try­ing to be any­thing.

“Fitz…” My hus­band’s voice sends a dag­ger straight through my heart.

Be­trayal nearly takes me out at the knees. So, it takes a sec­ond to parse what Mick is ac­tu­ally say­ing.

“…have noth­ing to say you are sorry for. You used a re­spect­ful tone when you asked your athair mór a ques­tion. If I go to Lon­don, you and your mam will be com­ing to. I made ya a prom­ise and I don’t break my word.”

Now our son is look­ing at Mick like he’s one of Fitz’s fa­vorite Mar­vel he­roes. And mamo mouth is round with shock.

I’m clench­ing my teeth so hard my jaw hurts, but I will not cry in front of Dier­dre Kelly. I didn’t ex­pect Mick to take my side.

He didn’t take your side, a voice in­side my head taunts, he took up for your son.

He’s still talk­ing like he plans to take me (and Fitz now) to Lon­don. I’m not sure how I feel about that. Is it bet­ter, or worse than the trips that came be­fore?

“You’ll not be tak­ing my heir out of this coun­try,” Bro­gan says with ar­ro­gant im­pla­ca­bil­ity.

The qual­ity of Mick’s still­ness be­side me changes and the tem­per­a­ture around the ta­ble drops into the Arc­tic zone, suck­ing all the sum­mer heat out of the air. “If I go my son goes with me.”

The shock on Bro­gan’s face when I stood up to him was al­most com­i­cal, the look on his face now? Is not funny at all. He looks sur­prised, but there’s a ten­dril of fear in his gaze too.

Some­thing I never thought I’d wit­ness in my fa­ther’s face. Ever.

What­ever he sees in my hus­band’s ex­pres­sion has him spooked.

“Yes, well…we’ll dis­cuss this later.”

Mick slides his hand into mine and tugs. Not sure how to process the last five min­utes, I sit. I stood up to my dad. Mick stood up for Fitz.

And my dad backed down.

Mick’s arm slides along the back of my chair, his fin­ger­tips set­tling on my bare shoul­der. The barely there touch sends elec­tric zaps straight to my la­dy­bits.

He just doesn’t touch me out of the bed­room. So this? Tonight? My body doesn’t know how to process it any bet­ter than my brain with my roil­ing emo­tions.

A show of sol­i­dar­ity with me? Or pos­ses­sion?