Page 47 of Sins of Arrogance

Won’t a hus­band be worse?

“If you ever say no to Michael Fitzger­ald and he ig­nores you, you tell me.” The mil­i­tant glint in moma’s eyes tell me she’s not kid­ding. “I’ll sort it, even if it means mak­ing you a widow.”

I be­lieve her. “But won’t that make seanathair an­gry?”

I’ve never called my grand­fa­ther by any­thing less for­mal. He’s def­i­nitely not a grandda. It’s ei­ther seanathair or sir.

“You lis­ten to me now, girl. The women in our world may marry for the sake of the mob, but we’re Irish. We don’t stand for our men abus­ing our good na­ture.”

Don’t we though? Isn’t ar­rang­ing a mar­riage for me less than a month af­ter I grad­u­ate high school an abuse of my good na­ture?

Not for the first time, I wish my fa­ther was more like Un­cle Derry. My un­cle made an iron clad prom­ise to my cousin, Róise, that she’d never have an ar­ranged mar­riage.

Maybe if my mom were still alive, but prob­a­bly not. She moved here from Chicago to marry my fa­ther and strengthen ties with the Doyle-Byrne Mob. Their cur­rent boss is my sec­ond cousin, or some­thing, but I’ve never met him.

His fa­ther took ex­cep­tion to my mother dy­ing in child­birth af­ter be­ing told not to get preg­nant again. But seanathair in­sisted my gen­er­a­tion had to have a male heir.

My mom and aunt had only given birth to me and Róise at this point. The plan failed on ev­ery level when my sis­ter was born. Not only did my mom die, she’d done it giv­ing birth do an­other daugh­ter.

As far as I know, re­la­tions with Chicago have been tense ever since.

“…and we know how to han­dle it if it hap­pens.” Moma is still talk­ing.

She digs into the em­broi­dery bas­ket she keeps be­side her fa­vorite chair and pulls out a box with the tree of life carved on the lid. “Your seanathair be­lieves this is where I keep med­i­ca­tions and necesses­si­ties for that time of month.”

“Isn’t it?”

Moma taps the side of her nose. “It’s much more prac­ti­cal. She opens the box and pushes aside a box of tam­pons and a pack­age of pads.

Ly­ing on the brown vel­vet lin­ing is a dag­ger. Be­side it is a small pre­scrip­tion style bot­tle with no la­bel and a glass vial with a stop­per lid.

“If your man lays a hand on you, you tell him you’ll cut his balls off in his sleep if he does it again. You show him how sharp you keep that dag­ger and he’ll be­lieve you.”

I can’t imag­ine threat­en­ing Michael Fitzger­ald with a dag­ger. I’m not like my moma. I don’t make waves.

She pats my hand again, like she knows what I’m think­ing. “Like I told you, a ghrá, if your hus­band gives you that kind of trou­ble, you tell me and I’ll sort it.”

She points at one of the pill bot­tles, “That’s blood pres­sure med­i­ca­tion with the un­for­tu­nate side ef­fect of caus­ing a man’s bod to stay limp.”

I swal­low. “But why…”

“If your man is randy too of­ten and you’re not feel­ing it, you can give him one of these in his morn­ing cof­fee for a few days. He’ll not be beg­gin’ fa­vors when he can’t get it up, you mark my words.”

Un­will­ing to even think about my grand­mother us­ing the med­i­ca­tion on my seanathair, I point at the vial. “What’s that?”

“Eth­yl­ene Gly­col.”

“What’s it for?”

“The fi­nal so­lu­tion.”

“What…I don’t…”

“My máthair gave this box to me when I wed your seanathair. Women in our fam­ily have not al­ways been lucky when it came to the men we were in­duced to marry.”

I stare, my mouth open­ing and clos­ing, but no words com­ing out.

“A few drops of the Eth­yl­ene Gly­col in some­thing sweet and it’ll not be de­tected. When your hus­band has a stroke, there’ll be no rea­son to sus­pect your hand in it.”