Page 92 of Sins of Arrogance

“You’re one of the strong­est peo­ple I know,” I dis­agree. “You face your fears and anx­i­ety ev­ery day and you don’t let it stop you from ev­ery­thing.”

Fiona gives a wa­tery laugh. “Only some things.”

“Which shows just how strong you re­ally are,” Róise says force­fully. “Lis­ten, Fi, it’s easy to go to a shel­ter and adopt a cat when you aren’t ter­ri­fied the whole time. But you did it with that ter­ror and you never let Rambo know how afraid you were.”

“That cat trusts no­body but you and some­times my son.” I smile en­cour­ag­ingly at my sis­ter.

She re­turns my smile with a small tilt of her lips.

“An­i­mals have good in­stincts,” Fabi­ana says. “If the cat trusts you, he knows you’ll pro­tect him.”

Some­thing flick­ers in Fiona’s eyes. And she stands a lit­tle straighter.

My baby sis­ter needs to hear from peo­ple who aren’t fam­ily how won­der­ful she is. Fabi­ana is good peo­ple, which makes it even more im­pact­ful for Fiona to re­ceive af­fir­ma­tion from the mafiosa.

Fabi­ana claps her hands. “Okay, enough with the chit-chat. Back to work, peo­ple. We only have ten more min­utes. Let’s make them count.”

I face off with Róise again, lung­ing al­most im­me­di­ately and catch­ing her off guard.

We tan­gle, her hips twist one way, mine the other and we end up grap­pling. With an un­ex­pected ma­neu­ver, she breaks the hold.

But I dive right back in and when Fabi­ana calls time, we’re both pant­ing.

The locker room off the new res­i­dents only gym in the Os­curo Build­ing is like that of any other high-end gym, only this one has armed se­cu­rity on the door while we’re in­side.

Both the en­try to the gym and the locker room have bio­met­ric scan­ner based se­cu­rity as well.

Miceli is tak­ing no chances with Róise’s safety.

Af­ter my shower, I get dressed it the com­mu­nal area with the rest of the women. I don’t know about Zoey and Fabi­ana, but I’m used to it from my years at board­ing school.

There’s never been a lot of false mod­esty be­tween me and my sis­ter and our cousin ei­ther.

“It felt like you had some ag­gres­sion to work out to­day, cuz.” Róise dries her shoul­ders and arms with a fluffy white towel. “Is ev­ery­thing okay with Mick?”

In no mood to blow-dry and straighten my hair, I pull my curls into a wet bun on top of my head. “We have a new house­guest.”

“Who?” Róise asks.

“Dier­dre Kelly is over from Ire­land.”

“As in the Kelly fam­ily that runs the North­side Dublin Syn­di­cate with the Fitzger­alds?” Róise asks, sound­ing shocked.

Her words are so like my thoughts when I first heard Dier­dre’s name, I smile.

“Yes.” I ad­just my full breasts in­side my bra af­ter clasp­ing the front clo­sure.

“What’s she like?” Róise’s voice is slightly muf­fled by the shirt she’s pulling on over her head. “How old is she?”

“Mick’s age, I guess.” I pull on my white tex­tured linen palazzo pants. “They used to be a thing.”

“Ac­cord­ing to her, they’re still good friends,” Fiona pipes up.

No one can do mock­ery like a teenager and at 18, my sis­ter is in her sar­casm prime.

Róise tucks part of her hem into the front of her shorts so her top blouses over the waist­band. “So, she’s in New York try­ing to re­new old friend­ships?”

“She claims it’s for her safety. That an­other syn­di­cate tried to kid­nap her.”