Page 17 of Sins of Arrogance (Syndicate Sins #1)

KARA

Dierdre monopolizes the conversation over dinner and I make no attempt to change that. Normally, I would make sure everyone at the table felt included. Not this evening though.

I'm too lost in memories.

The moments that led us to here.

The day I turned sixteen and my birthday gift from my grandfather was a contract marriage. My father didn't put it that way, of course.

Even Brogan Shaughnessy has enough sense not to imply an arranged marriage is any kind of gift for his teenage daughter. No, he made it clear that it was my duty to both my family and the mob.

My obligation to give the rest of my life to serve as a guarantor of a contract between two powerful mob families.

I didn't learn about what exactly that would entail until two years later.

Home from school for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, I'd been inundated with plans for the wedding. Did I like this color? Would I prefer this cake?

As if any of my preferences mattered. I tested it once, just to see. Knowing my grandfather was not fond of chocolate cake, I said I wanted devil's food cake with chocolate mousse filling for my very American wedding cake.

The caterer was instructed to bake a vanilla cake with a raspberry coulis and custard filling.

I didn't care about cake flavors after moma took me aside and explained what was required after I said I do .

Neither my father, nor my grandfather wanted to discuss an eighteen-year-old's future sex life with her husband.

Honestly? Even if I'd been thirty, I doubt they would have been up for the task.

Seven Years Ago

"It will be alright, a ghrá ." Moma pats my hand soothingly. "Once you become pregnant, you and your husband will be able to enjoy normal marital relations."

"What are normal marital relations?" I ask, shock moving the words from my head to my mouth.

Moma stares at me. "Ach. Don't the girls at your fancy school talk?"

I nod. They do talk, but what they say doesn't give me comfort. "They say it hurts. That boys don't always listen when you say no, especially if they're your boyfriend."

Won't a husband be worse?

"If you ever say no to Michael Fitzgerald and he ignores you, you tell me." The militant glint in moma's eyes tell me she's not kidding. "I'll sort it, even if it means making you a widow."

I believe her. "But won't that make seanathair angry?"

I've never called my grandfather by anything less formal. He's definitely not a grandda. It's either seanathair or sir.

"You listen to me now, girl. The women in our world may marry for the sake of the mob, but we're Irish. We don't stand for our men abusing our good nature."

Don't we though? Isn't arranging a marriage for me less than a month after I graduate high school an abuse of my good nature?

Not for the first time, I wish my father was more like Uncle Derry. My uncle made an iron clad promise to my cousin, Róise, that she'd never have an arranged marriage.

Maybe if my mom were still alive, but probably not. She moved here from Chicago to marry my father and strengthen ties with the Doyle-Byrne Mob. Their current boss is my second cousin, or something, but I've never met him.

His father took exception to my mother dying in childbirth after being told not to get pregnant again. But seanathair insisted my generation had to have a male heir.

My mom and aunt had only given birth to me and Róise at this point. The plan failed on every level when my sister was born. Not only did my mom die, she'd done it giving birth do another daughter.

As far as I know, relations with Chicago have been tense ever since.

"...and we know how to handle it if it happens." Moma is still talking.

She digs into the embroidery basket she keeps beside her favorite chair and pulls out a box with the tree of life carved on the lid. "Your seanathair believes this is where I keep medications and necessessities for that time of month."

"Isn't it?"

Moma taps the side of her nose. "It's much more practical. She opens the box and pushes aside a box of tampons and a package of pads.

Lying on the brown velvet lining is a dagger. Beside it is a small prescription style bottle with no label and a glass vial with a stopper lid.

"If your man lays a hand on you, you tell him you'll cut his balls off in his sleep if he does it again. You show him how sharp you keep that dagger and he'll believe you."

I can't imagine threatening Michael Fitzgerald with a dagger. I'm not like my moma. I don't make waves.

She pats my hand again, like she knows what I'm thinking. "Like I told you, a ghrá , if your husband gives you that kind of trouble, you tell me and I'll sort it."

She points at one of the pill bottles, "That's blood pressure medication with the unfortunate side effect of causing a man's bod to stay limp."

I swallow. "But why..."

"If your man is randy too often and you're not feeling it, you can give him one of these in his morning coffee for a few days. He'll not be beggin' favors when he can't get it up, you mark my words."

Unwilling to even think about my grandmother using the medication on my seanathair , I point at the vial. "What's that?"

"Ethylene Glycol."

"What's it for?"

"The final solution."

"What...I don't..."

"My máthair gave this box to me when I wed your seanathair . Women in our family have not always been lucky when it came to the men we were induced to marry."

I stare, my mouth opening and closing, but no words coming out.

"A few drops of the Ethylene Glycol in something sweet and it'll not be detected. When your husband has a stroke, there'll be no reason to suspect your hand in it."

"But what about a post mortem?" I like true crime podcasts, but I've never heard of Ethylene Glycol poisoning.

"We're the mob, dear. We don't do post mortems."

I'm sure moma means our little chat to be comforting, but all it does is increase my anxiety before the wedding. What she's really saying is that if my future husband mistreats me, I can't rely on the men in my family to protect me.

Never as detached as her son to my wellbeing, I don't doubt that moma will kill to protect me. But the fact that she thinks it might be necessary?

That scares the crap out of me.

With no real idea what to expect and her dire warnings ringing in my head, I spend the last semester of high school hiding my fear from my friends and family when I see them.

I've gotten so good at it, my smile doesn't slip once on my wedding day.

And Michael's is completely absent.

He doesn't smile during the ceremony. He doesn't smile when we're pronounced husband and wife. His face is void of emotion when we cut the cake and that doesn't change when we share our first dance under the ballroom chandeliers.

It's disconcerting. And confusing.

I don't know my groom well, but from what I've seen, Michael's blessed with more than his fair share of Irish charm. And his smile gives me butterflies when it's turned on someone else and makes my heart race the few times it's turned on me.

Until now, I have no inkling why the men whisper about him and call him an diabhal . Devil.

But this Michael is intimidating. Downright scary.

Where is his easy smile? Today of all days, I need to see it. But it doesn't break through once.

I can't stop thinking about it the entire helicopter ride to Martha's Vineyard.

Why is he so somber? Did he not want the marriage?

I mean, I know it's an alliance, not two people in love, but I never thought he didn't want to marry me.

Is there someone he had to leave behind in Ireland and today was the reminder that he would never see her again? Never have the future they wanted?

My stomach twists in knots, a feeling I've never experienced before, making it hard to breathe.

Jealousy.

We're both silent on the short drive from the helipad to the Martha's Vineyard house.

Bittersweet warmth surges through me when the large white, two story beach cottage comes into view. The Shaughnessy family has been using this place for vacations for three generations.

Or what we call vacations: mob business with our allies masquerading as family bonding time.

Like our home on Long Island, there's a smaller building meant to barracks whatever soldiers are on security, but there are no quarters for live-in staff.

A groundskeeper, cook and housekeeper come daily, when we're here. I don't know what their schedule is when we aren't. I suppose that's something I'm going to have to know.

Moma will teach me.

Despite the business that went on behind closed doors, some of my best memories are playing in the lush grass with my cousin and sister while Aunt Charity and moma sipped iced tea on the terrace.

Sometimes Uncle Derry would join in, chasing us down the path to the beach, making us scream with laughter. After Aunt Charity's death, he stopped doing it.

Everything changed after Aunt Charity got shot four years ago. Including me.

Conor, one of the men Michael brought with him from Dublin, opens my door and I step out of the SUV.

Michael is already headed toward the front door, his stride brisk. Gathering the folds of my wedding dress up so I won't trip, I rush to catch up.

Gravel crunches under my heels, some of it skittering around my feet and I have to hop-skip not to fall. Family tradition says I must stay in my wedding gown until Michael takes it off of me.

But right now, I really wish I was wearing tennies and jeans.

I'd settle for ballet flats, but moma would not hear of me ruining the line of my dress.

Another piece of gravel rolls under my shoe and I stifle my surprised cry, but a squeak escapes, sending heat rushing into my cheeks.

Maybe Michael didn't notice.

He stops and turns back toward me. So much for not noticing.

"You alright?" he asks.

Am I? No, not really. I'm about to have sex for the first time, or something close to it, with a practical stranger.

But that's not what he's talking about, is it?

So, I answer the way I've been taught to. "I'm fine."

I reach him and keep going, grateful for the smooth steps leading to the porch when I reach them.

Michael grabs my elbow and keeps me steady as I go up, but when we reach the top, he pulls his hand away.

I give him a tentative smile. "Thank you."

He jerks his head in acknowledgment.

"We'll be in the guest house if you need us, boss," Rory says from behind me.

When we come with the family, a full compliment of my grandfather's soldiers joins us and there are perimeter guards at night.

But it's just me and Michael, not the mob boss. We don't need that level of security.

And I'm glad.

Honeymooning with a stranger is going to be hard enough without a bunch of men watching our every move.

We stop at the front door and Michael reaches out to unlock it.

"Do you have a girlfriend?" Ugh. I can't believe I just asked that.

Seanathair would say it's none of my business. Even moma would be mortified I asked the question with as much subtlety as a brick to the face.

Michael pushes the door open and then meets my gaze, his green eyes giving nothing away. "Nah."

Relief floods through me, but the shoulders that relax at his answer tense up when he steps around me, making no move to carry me across the threshold.

What's one more dream that will never be fulfilled? I'm the granddaughter of one of the most powerful mob bosses in America. This is my life.

Married for an alliance to a man who could care less about romantic wedding traditions.

Of course, I don't bring it up.

I'm not that girl anymore, am I? Brash. Willing to break the rules and try anything.

Bad things happen when you break the rules. People die. That's what seanathair says. No one in the family was breaking the rules when Aunt Charity and Fiona got shot that night.

But the men who shot them were.

Now, my aunt is dead and my sister has panic attacks when Brogan drags her out of the house. Not that he calls them that.

He and seanathair say she's throwing a tantrum. But Fi doesn't scream and stomp her feet. She cries silent tears and has trouble breathing.

Not a tantrum.

Taking a deep breath I step forward and stop as soon as my gown clears the doorway, unable to take another step.

Memories of laughter and the family we used to be hit me like a storm blowing in off the ocean. That cozy chair by the fireplace is where Aunt Charity sat and read.

A massive bouquet of roses dominates the small square table by the window where we used to work on jigsaw puzzles when it was raining.

The scent memory of heather and honeysuckle, from when Aunt Charity had vases filled with them all over the downstairs, almost overpowers the fragrance from the roses.

For a moment, I'm more in the past than the present, but the scent of roses is too cloying and sweet to give way to memories.

It's not just the bouquet by the window either. There's another one on the hearth and an arrangement on the counter in the open plan kitchen.

There are even white rose petals scattered on the floor in a path leading to the stairs.

And the bedrooms on the second floor.

Champagne I'm too young to drink chills in a freestanding silver glacette . I wonder whose idea that was?

Michael doesn't push me; he simply pulls the door shut behind us and then steps around me.

Throat dry, my heart pounding practically out of my chest, I suck in a deep breath and let it out. It doesn't help.

"Michael…I'm…I mean…"