Page 6 of Sins of Arrogance

He’s proud of his new skills, but even that pride won’t make him let go of his fa­ther.

Mick lifts our son un­til their faces are par­al­lel. “Look at me, Fitz.”

Iden­ti­cal green eyes stare back at each other.

“I will never let any harm come to yiz. Not you, nor your mam. You will al­ways be safe when you are with me.” It’s more re­as­sur­ance than I ex­pect from my hus­band.

I’m not sure why. He’s a good dad and has al­ways shown an af­fec­tion and pa­tience for Fitz that he doesn’t show any­one else.

Our son’s shoul­ders lower and his body re­laxes in his dad’s hold. “What about when you’re not here?”

“Then you have to trust me that I’ve taken the pre­cau­tions nec­es­sary to keep yiz safe.”

One thing about the way Mick speaks to Fitz: our son has a truly im­pres­sive vo­cab­u­lary for a newly turned six-year-old.

Fitz nods and then looks at me. “You’re not scared, are you, mommy?”

“No, mo stóirín. I’m not.”

Fitz won’t like be­ing called my lit­tle trea­sure for many more years, but he hasn’t de­cided he’s too big for the en­dear­ment yet. And I’m us­ing it un­til I can’t any­more.

His lit­tle brow fur­rows as Fitz con­sid­ers my an­swer.

What Mick hasn’t men­tioned to our lit­tle boy, is that it’s not just a mat­ter of in­creased se­cu­rity. The man who be­trayed us by look­ing away from the sonar mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem at the op­por­tune time (on pur­pose) is no longer on our pay­roll.

He’s no longer breath­ing ei­ther, but that’s be­side the point.

Or maybe that’s the only point? Hope­fully the method of his demise will dis­cour­age other sol­diers from sell­ing out the Shaugh­nessy fam­ily.

I don’t know the de­tails, but I do know that even though it’s been a cou­ple of weeks since it hap­pened, sev­eral sol­diers who wit­nessed the ex­e­cu­tion are jumpy when my hus­band is around.

Some even avoid him al­to­gether if they can.

Mick be­gins mov­ing away from the dock, par­al­lel to the shore. “Your mam can stay near the dock and you can swim to her.”

Fitz’s body bows like he’s try­ing to throw him­self from Mick’s hold. “No! Mommy, come with us! The dock’s not safe!”

That’s it. My son is go­ing to start see­ing a chil­dren’s ther­a­pist. No mat­ter what my hus­band or fa­ther says.

Mick pulls Fitz close and speaks qui­etly in his ear. Af­ter a few sec­onds, our son’s rigid body re­laxes and he nods.

My hus­band raises his head, so our gazes meet. For once, I can eas­ily read the con­cern in his usu­ally in­scrutable emer­ald gaze. “Fitz will swim to­ward you from the dock and I will keep pace with him.”

I nod and dive into the wa­ter to swim past them. When I’m about thirty feet away, I stop and turn to face the two males I love most in the world.

Even if one of them doesn’t love me back.

Fitz is smil­ing, ob­vi­ously re­laxed now. Clearly, he iden­ti­fies the dan­ger with the dock and not just the wa­ter in the bay. Which is good to know, but no less con­cern­ing.

He leaps from his fa­ther’s hold and starts swim­ming a but­ter­fly stroke to­ward me.

Mick calls en­cour­age­ment, mov­ing more swiftly through the wa­ter than I ever can un­less I’m swim­ming, stay­ing in easy to reach dis­tance with our son.

Fitz stops in front of me and treads wa­ter, too short for his feet to reach the bot­tom. “Did you see mommy? I’m fast. Just like a dol­phin.”

The way the swim­ming tech­nique re­sem­bles that ma­rine mam­mal is the big­gest rea­son Fitz wanted to learn it. “You looked just like a dol­phin, mo stóirín.”

“Ye did well.” Mick’s voice is laced with ap­proval for our son’s swim­ming feat. “That’s not an easy stroke to learn.”