Page 46 of Sins of Arrogance

Bro­gan chal­lenged Mick’s right to make de­ci­sions for our fam­ily. He chal­lenged mine too, but I wouldn’t and didn’t ex­pect any­thing less.

Telling Mick he couldn’t take Fitz out of the coun­try was over­reach­ing and my fa­ther knows it.

Dier­dre sighs and shakes her head. “Micky, I know you’re a dot­ing fa­ther, but there’s some­thing to be said for dis­ci­pline.”

The look she gives me tells ev­ery­one at the ta­ble who she blames for my son’s sup­posed lack of dis­ci­pline.

Ig­nor­ing her, Mick reaches for his wine and asks our son if Gobby, Fitz’s spas­tic cat, has brought him any more gifts.

When Gobby gets out of our pri­vate apart­ment, the cat steals things and brings them as trib­ute to my son. Once it was mamo’s fa­vorite cro­chet hook. An­other time, the lit­tle mon­ster found one of Bro­gan’s cuff­links.

Fitz launches into a story about Gobby steal­ing Enoch’s LEGO and bring­ing it to him.

And me?

I pick up my fork and re­sume eat­ing like noth­ing hap­pened.

Like I’m not men­tally adding don’t stab the guest to my per­sonal growth mantras.

Chap­ter 13: The Devil’s Bride

KARA

Dier­dre mo­nop­o­lizes the con­ver­sa­tion over din­ner and I make no at­tempt to change that. Nor­mally, I would make sure ev­ery­one at the ta­ble felt in­cluded. Not this evening though.

I’m too lost in mem­o­ries.

The mo­ments that led us to here.

The day I turned six­teen and my birth­day gift from my grand­fa­ther was a con­tract mar­riage. My fa­ther didn’t put it that way, of course.

Even Bro­gan Shaugh­nessy has enough sense not to im­ply an ar­ranged mar­riage is any kind of gift for his teenage daugh­ter. No, he made it clear that it was my duty to both my fam­ily and the mob.

My obli­ga­tion to give the rest of my life to serve as a guar­an­tor of a con­tract be­tween two pow­er­ful mob fam­i­lies.

I didn’t learn about what ex­actly that would en­tail un­til two years later.

Home from school for the Thanks­giv­ing hol­i­day week­end, I’d been in­un­dated with plans for the wed­ding. Did I like this color? Would I pre­fer this cake?

As if any of my pref­er­ences mat­tered. I tested it once, just to see. Know­ing my grand­fa­ther was not fond of choco­late cake, I said I wanted devil’s food cake with choco­late mousse fill­ing for my very Amer­i­can wed­ding cake.

The caterer was in­structed to bake a vanilla cake with a rasp­berry coulis and cus­tard fill­ing.

I didn’t care about cake fla­vors af­ter moma took me aside and ex­plained what was re­quired af­ter I said I do.

Nei­ther my fa­ther, nor my grand­fa­ther wanted to dis­cuss an eigh­teen-year-old’s fu­ture sex life with her hus­band.

Hon­estly? Even if I’d been thirty, I doubt they would have been up for the task.

Seven Years Ago

“It will be al­right, a ghrá.” Moma pats my hand sooth­ingly. “Once you be­come preg­nant, you and your hus­band will be able to en­joy nor­mal mar­i­tal re­la­tions.”

“What are nor­mal mar­i­tal re­la­tions?” I ask, shock mov­ing the words from my head to my mouth.

Moma stares at me. “Ach. Don’t the girls at your fancy school talk?”

I nod. They do talk, but what they say doesn’t give me com­fort. “They say it hurts. That boys don’t al­ways lis­ten when you say no, es­pe­cially if they’re your boyfriend.”