Page 99 of Sins of Innocence

That hand has been there since we walked onto the tarmac. A steady, grounding pressure that feels a little possessive and a lot protective. I don't mind either.

Any more than I'm bothered by the sparks of desire creating tiny explosions along my neural pathways and the bubbles of anticipation fizzing through my blood.

Mom settles into the seat beside Neeve, already pulling her knitting from her tote, her own curiosity about Kieran's financial situation apparently satisfied. Ellie opens her laptop and starts tapping away at the keys.

"Seatbelts while we taxi and take off," I remind my girls.

"We know, mom," Sadie says, but without the eye roll she would usually give me.

She chooses a seat by the window across the table from Neeve, tucking one leg under herself as she settles. I check to see how Joy is taking her sister sitting in the other window seat, but she's back in the galley, talking up a storm with the flight attendant.

No argument over who gets to sit where on the horizon, my attention shifts back to my oldest daughter. She seems calm. Too calm?

After getting my approval, like it wasn't a done deal already, Kieran arranged a meeting for Sadie with a highly regarded, but mob-approved child psychologist this morning.

I was worried Sadie would have a lot of feelings to process after that. If she does, she's doing it silently.

Mostly. She's on her phone texting again and I don't need any guesses to figure out who with. She and Fitz have been texting a lot since yesterday. Already good friends, I think this experience has moved them into bestie territory.

Like me and Ellie.

At least I hope that's what this is. I don't want my daughter falling for the son of the underboss.

Which feels kind of hypocritical considering who I'm about to marry, but I'm signing my life away because I want to protect my children's future. I don't want Sadie throwing herself back in the Lion's Den without a good miracle on standby to help her.

But isn't Kieran your miracle?

Oh, that taunting inner voice.

She might even be right. And maybe he's my girls' miracle too. Whatever else is going on, there's no question my daughter feels safe right now in a way I couldn't make happen.

I press my lips together hard against the emotion that rises every time I think about what happened. Maybe I'm the one that needs to process my emotions.

But she's only twelve years old.

Sadie should never have gone through what she did with those boys at St. Patrick's. But even if we weren't mob adjacent with me working for Kenneth Shaughnessy, it could have happened. I try to prepare my girls to keep themselves safe, but darn it to heck and back, wouldn't it be easier and better for boys to be taught not to be little creeps?

The fact her sense of safety is relying on a practical stranger right now, and a room full of mob consequences to restore it makes me want to scream. Or torch Kenneth Shaughnessy's new luxury sports car.

Two men step into the plane cabin through the still open doorway.

"The big one is Dagda," Kieran says near my ear. "The one who looks like he's been in the sun since birth is Torch."

Dagda is nearly as enormous as Kieran. With a dark complexion and close-cropped hair, and carries himself with the particular stillness of a man who has been in live combat. My brother carried himself that way.

So does Kieran.

Torch is lean and sun-browned, with the kind of restless energy that makes you think he is always calculating how far away the nearest exit is. He was different yesterday. More intent.

Maybe because his focus was all on keeping Kenneth Shaughnessy away from me and my family.

Both of them in a small flying tube at thirty thousand feet is either very reassuring or very alarming. I am going with reassuring.

"We met Torch yesterday," I say.

Kieran nods. "They'll be with you all whenever I can't be."

"They're our bodyguards?" I keep my voice equally low.