Page 9 of Sins of Arrogance

FML

I grit my teeth in frus­tra­tion. I can’t even say the F-word in­side my own head. Just the acro­nym. Be­cause I’m the good girl. The obe­di­ent one.

I will­ingly sac­ri­ficed my life and dreams in mar­riage for the good of the mob at the age of 18.

But I res­ur­rected those dreams, didn’t I?

I might be a good girl who can’t curse in­side her own head, but I’m also the woman who is at­tend­ing on­line uni­ver­sity in se­cret and is only nine months from get­ting my de­gree in com­puter sci­ence.

Not that I’ll ever be al­lowed to do any­thing with it, not in the Shaugh­nessy Mob any­way. My fa­ther’s firmly stuck in the Dark Ages in his views on the role of women in the fam­ily busi­ness.

But maybe out­side it. My spe­cialty is pro­gram­ming and well…hack­ing, but I don’t want to make a ca­reer out of that out­side the mob. Too risky con­sid­er­ing who I am.

But lots of pro­gram­mers work re­motely and with Fitz start­ing first grade in the fall, what’s to stop me from fill­ing my days with some­thing more chal­leng­ing than shop­ping and cof­fee dates with other mob wives?

Maybe I’ll have a se­cret ca­reer to go with the rest of my se­cret life.

The parts of life I choose, not the pieces thrust on me be­cause I was born a mob princess.

Chap­ter 3: My Wife, My Rules, My Prob­lem

MICK

“I’ll be right back,” I tell Dier­dre af­ter lead­ing her into the man­sion’s main liv­ing room.

She lets her gaze roam up and down my body. “Don’t get dressed on my ac­count.”

Her words and at­ten­tion leave me cold.

The view of my wife walk­ing across the lawn to­ward the house with Fitz’s hand in hers, in con­trast, has blood surg­ing to my dick.

Ig­nor­ing her in­nu­endo, I leave Dier­dre and jog to­ward our quar­ters be­fore my Pavlo­vian re­ac­tion to my wife be­comes ob­vi­ous and the daft woman thinks it has some­thing to do with her.

I’m slid­ing into my suit jacket, af­ter a quick shower, when Kara steps into our bed­room.

Her eyes widen upon see­ing me. “I thought you were meet­ing in pri­vate with Dier­dre.”

My wife doesn’t roll her eyes when she says in pri­vate but her tone leaves no doubt how unim­pressed she is with Dier­dre’s re­fusal to talk in front of her.

“I needed a shower, and I don’t take meet­ings half dressed.”

“I’m sure Dier­dre wouldn’t have minded.” Turn­ing to­ward the en suite, Kara shrugs out of her swim wrap.

Her swim­suit bot­toms cling to her gen­er­ous ass and my dick pre­dictably takes im­me­di­ate no­tice.

“Where’s Fitz?” I ask, not hav­ing heard his bois­ter­ous tones be­fore she came into the bed­room.

The walls on our room are sound damp­en­ing, but when the door is open, noise trav­els eas­ily from the front room de­spite the dis­tance.

We have the en­tire sec­ond floor in the west wing of the man­sion for our pri­vate use. Set up like a lux­ury apart­ment, be­sides four bed­rooms, three bath­rooms and a kitchen, it has its own com­mu­nal liv­ing area and safe­r­oom too.

“He wanted to swim in the pool with Enoch.”

Two weeks ago, Bro­gan ac­com­pa­nied Miceli De Luca to de­stroy the com­pound of an en­emy. When my fa­ther-in-law came back, he had Hope Dobbs and her two chil­dren with him.

Es­ther is six­teen and Enoch is eight. De­spite their two-year age dif­fer­ence, the two boys be­came im­me­di­ate friends.

My wife is slower to trust their mother. So, it sur­prises me she left our son in Hope’s care.