Page 68 of Sins of Arrogance

Kara leans down and kisses his fore­head, mur­mur­ing a Gaeilge bless­ing for peace­ful sleep be­fore she straight­ens.

“Good night, mommy. G’night da,” Fitz whis­pers with his eyes closed.

Kara doesn’t head to­ward our bed­room like I ex­pect, but re­turns to the main liv­ing area and puts the ket­tle on.

“That bet­ter be herbal tea you’re drink­ing,” I warn her. She needs her rest.

And I need her in our bed.

KARA

Mick’s words are like tin­der to the hot ball of anger in­side me. And it goes whoosh, burn­ing the last of my ret­i­cence about speak­ing my mind.

“What tea I drink is none of your busi­ness. I’m an adult and if I want to drink a pot of cof­fee, I will.” Not that I want to.

Be­cause our son wakes with the birds no mat­ter what time I go to sleep.

But I could if I did.

I spin around to face my hus­band. “Shouldn’t you be get­ting back to Dier­dre? I’m sur­prised you were able to pull your­self away from your ex-girl­friend to tell your son good­night.”

His eyes flicker with sur­prise.

“I came down to get you, to re­mind you of your prom­ise.” Our son has been so frag­ile since Róise’s kid­nap­ping.

I wasn’t go­ing to al­low Mick to let him down about tuck­ing him in. So, I left Fitz play­ing a boardgame with one of our se­cu­rity de­tail, who has watched him for short times in the past, and went look­ing for my ab­sent hus­band.

I’d ex­pected to find him in his of­fice, un­aware of the time, not hav­ing a cozy chat with Dier­dre in the sun­room, while she sat curled up like a kit­ten in my chair.

How much else of my place does she want to take?

All of it, a small voice in my head whis­pers.

Mick frowns. “I heard a noise, but then the night se­cu­rity showed his face.”

It was Frank who clued me into where Mick was and with who. “Yeah, he was with me when I over­heard you mak­ing a lunch assig­na­tion with her.”

I’d gone hot with shame and high­tailed it back to our apart­ment, not car­ing if Mick showed up to tuck our son in, or not. Part of me hoped he wouldn’t.

Which isn’t fair to Fitz, but just look­ing at Mick stand­ing there so un­con­cerned over it all makes my stom­ach cramp in pain.

“It’s lunch.” He tun­nels his fin­gers through his hair and sighs. “Not an assig­na­tion.”

“Funny how you never have time to have lunch with me, but you’ll drop ev­ery­thing to take her out for a meal.” When was the last time Mick took me any­where, just the two of us.

Bile rises in my throat, a mem­ory of Dier­dre say­ing those ex­act words less than thirty min­utes be­fore echo­ing in my head.

Just the two of us. Her and Mick.

Not me and Mick. And that’s the story of my mar­riage, isn’t it? We’re not a cou­ple. We’re a con­tract.

Mar­ry­ing me was his path to even­tual con­trol of the Shaugh­nessy Mob. Well, mar­ry­ing me and get­ting me preg­nant with our son.

Fitz’s birth guar­an­tees that Mick will be­come Boss of the Shaugh­nessy Mob when my fa­ther re­tires at the age of sixty-seven. Or ear­lier if Bro­gan dies. Which, in his line of work, is as likely a sce­nario as re­tire­ment.

Some­times, I can’t help won­der­ing if I’m now sur­plus to re­quire­ments.

That’s a phrase my Eng­lish room­mate from board­ing school used to say. It’s kind of per­fect for how I feel though. Both in re­gard to my fa­ther and my hus­band.