Page 83 of Honorable Sins

Right now, there are questions that have to be answered to keep us all safe and that means Mick has to stay at the Bunker.

He's not sending Fitz home without him. I'm positive of that.

Which doesn't mean I'm going to wait to see my son.

I text Mick and tell him my plans. His lack of response is not a surprise.

The walk through the tunnels that connect the basement of one of our apartment buildings that access the Bunker and the subway is about twenty minutes. And there's no doubt in my mind Mick would have opted to use it for the sake of Fitz's safety.

He's not going to expose our son to a possible assassination attempt. We don't even know if the man they took into custody is Karl Nyström, much less if he's working alone.

I order a red-alert level security cavalcade to be readied for immediate departure before seeking out the rest of my family in the main area of the saferoom apartment.

This underground set of rooms fortified to withstand a bomb blast is the only saferoom big enough for all of us and it has more amenities than the smaller saferooms attached to each of our living quarters.

Right now, everyone but Fiona and Zoey are here.

They opted to wait out the red alert in their private saferoom. Fiona is hiding from mamo's fixation on wedding plans.

My dad looks up from a game of Candyland he's playing with Cormac, Sorcha and Mavie. "Everything all right?"

Seeing him like this is still surreal to me. I don’t remember him ever playing any kind of game with me and Fiona when we were children.

"It is now." I don't mention that Fitz was almost kidnapped and the man who tried to take him from us is on his way to Interrogation Room 1. That's not something the littles need to hear. "I'm going to the Bunker."

"Is that safe?" Hope asks, her blue eyes soft with concern.

She grew up in a religious cult. Her first husband was old enough to be her grandfather and she hated him. Now, she's married to my dad and against what a lot of people would think makes sense, she adores him.

He's gentler with her than he is with anyone else. Including his daughters, Fiona and me.

"I'm taking the necessary security precautions. Will you watch the children until we return?" I ask both her and my father.

Even after six years of my dad trying to be a dad and not just the boss of my mob, I don't quite trust him with my children without Hope there to protect tender feelings.

Mamo did her best to protect us girls in the ways she thought she could. But she never stood up to my dad or grandfather about saying and doing things that left scars on both mine and Fiona's hearts.

Hope, for all her softness, is hard as granite when it comes to my dad saying the wrong thing to his stepchildren, or us. Even though Fiona and I have been adults since Hope met us.

My father has apologized to me more times in six years than he did in the twenty-plus years before that. Which is to say at all.

Hope smiles. "Of course."

"Tell Fitz I'm proud of him," Mamo says serenely as her knitting needles clack rhythmically.

"How did you…" Shaking my head, I let my voice trail off.

Mamo may not know the details, but she knows Fitz is the only child not here and I'm leaving the saferoom against protocol. Ergo, Fitz was in some kind of trouble.

She just assumes he handled himself in a way she can be proud of.

And of course, she's right.

"I will," I tell her and bend down to hug and kiss first Cormac, then Maevie and then brush the top of Sorcha's head before I leave.

There are eight SUVs waiting in the drive when I get outside. All of them have at least four men inside.

No one will question this level of security because everyone already knows about the attempted hit on Wraith and Áine and that my family is on red alert status.