Page 91 of Sins of Arrogance

Fiona blushes, tugs at her cop­per red pony­tail and tries to hide the smile Zoey’s ac­knowl­edge­ment of their re­la­tion­ship brings to her face.

None of us are smil­ing and my sis­ter, cousin and I are all sweaty and breath­ing hard by the time we fin­ish prac­tic­ing the rou­tine on the dummy. I’m hop­ing Fabi­ana isn’t go­ing to try to make us prac­tice the se­quence on each other.

I won’t hurt Fiona or Róise. I can’t. And I’m pretty sure, they’d feel the same. We al­ready get in trou­ble for not tak­ing our spar­ring “se­ri­ously enough”.

As if my thoughts con­jured it, Fabi­ana an­nounces that we’re spar­ring next.

Fiona ends up with Fabi­ana be­cause ap­par­ently Zoey holds back too much with her too. Fabi­ana’s dis­gust is real and she threat­ens to bring in new spar­ring part­ners for us at our next les­son.

Ap­par­ently learn­ing self-de­fense is not un­com­mon among the women of the Gen­ovese Fam­ily. Which means we can spar with other women like us. Not mafiosas. Which is some­thing any­way.

The Cosa Nos­tra is so dif­fer­ent from the Irish Mob. At least the Gen­ovese Fam­ily is. I don’t know how the other Five Fam­i­lies in New York treat their women in re­gard to learn­ing fight­ing skills and how to use a gun.

I’ve heard that my cousin’s mob in Chicago al­lows women to act as sol­diers too. I wish some of that at­ti­tude would rub off on my dad.

I won­der if Mick will take things in a dif­fer­ent di­rec­tion af­ter he takes over as boss? I used to think my hus­band and fa­ther were cut from iden­ti­cal cloths, but now I’m not so sure.

Zoey gets called away to re­port to Al­lessio, leav­ing me and Róise to spar with each other. My cousin and I cir­cle one other, slow and care­ful. Do her mus­cles burn as badly as mine?

“You okay?” Róise asks, low enough that Fabi­ana and Fiona won’t hear.

“I’m fine.”

She gives me a look. The kind that says liar. She fakes a grab and I de­flect with­out think­ing, but my tim­ing’s off.

“So…” She tries the grab again, breath com­ing a lit­tle faster. “Mick took the news well? About Fitz?”

This time she makes no ef­fort to keep her voice down.

I nod, and keep my hands up. “Bet­ter than I ex­pected. He even said he’d han­dle it if Bro­gan tries to block the ther­apy.”

“Of course he did.” Róise de­flects a kick to her thigh. “He’d burn the city for that lit­tle guy.”

“Good. Fitz needs help pro­cess­ing this stuff.” Fiona chimes in sound­ing way too in con­trol of her breath­ing for all this ex­er­cise. “He needs to learn to feel things safely. I don’t want him to end up like me.”

Ev­ery­thing stops for a beat. Even Fabi­ana pauses.

I glance to­ward Fiona. She’s star­ing straight ahead, locked in place; her hands are shak­ing.

Swiftly cross­ing the mats to­ward my sis­ter, Róise right be­hind me, my heart hurts. Vi­o­lence and trauma shaped my sis­ter’s life, just like it did for me and Róise.

Is it be­cause we were raised in the mob? Maybe. But the only rea­son my son hasn’t had to learn to duck, run and hide is be­cause he at­tends a school with se­cu­rity dic­tated by the mob.

Other chil­dren his age go to school ev­ery day aware that the next mass shoot­ing could be at their school. And they’re taught how to re­spond if it does.

None of that has a sin­gle thing to do with be­ing raised as part of a syn­di­cate. And so Bro­gan re­minded us af­ter Aunt Char­ity’s death in his at­tempt to help Fiona “get over” her anx­i­ety.

Three mil­lion chil­dren wit­ness a shoot­ing ev­ery year, whether at school or in their home. Gun vi­o­lence is the num­ber one cause of death for chil­dren and teens in the United States and only a tiny per­cent­age of those are linked in any way to or­ga­nized crime.

Know­ing this helped me not to hate be­ing born into the mob. It didn’t help my sis­ter’s anx­i­ety lev­els. In fact, the re­al­ity that gun vi­o­lence is so preva­lent made my sis­ter even more stressed about leav­ing the man­sion.

Sur­pris­ingly, or maybe not so much, these self-de­fense lessons are help­ing Fiona’s con­fi­dence more than any of our fa­ther’s lec­tures.

I pull my sis­ter right into a hug. “Fitz is go­ing to be okay, Fi.”

Sud­denly Zoey is there, pulling Fiona from my arms into hers. She ca­resses my sis­ter’s cheek. “Your nephew is strong like his aunt. Like his mamma.”

“Like Kara maybe, but I’m not strong,” my sis­ter whis­pers.