Page 37 of Sins of Arrogance (Syndicate Sins #1)

MICK

The apartment is quiet when I come in, but there's a light from the doorway in our bedroom.

Kara's still up.

I hoped, but it's after ten and she's usually asleep by now.

Checking in on Fitz, I find him out cold, sprawled sideways across his bed with his covers kicked off. I shift him so his head is back on the pillow before pulling up the covers.

Gobby jumps onto the bed and settles herself beside him like the cat has been waiting for someone to sort out her human.

After pressing a kiss to his temple, I head to mine and Kara's bedroom.

The soft click of a keyboard reaches me before I get there. Casting a pale gold halo over her light brown hair, the only light in the room is the lamp on the desk she's working on.

Her shoulders tense, but she doesn’t look up when I walk in.

In sleep leggings and an oversized shirt that covers enough to satisfy most nuns, her fingers move fast over the keys. The outfit seems familiar and then I remember.

The third and last time she ever safe worded with me. She'd worn the same kind of clothes to sleep in.

Armor.

Shite.

"Hello, a stór ." Loosening my tie, I toe off my shoes. "What are you working on?"

"Hey," she says without turning. "How was your dinner?"

Not cold, but not warm either. A shade of polite she uses with people outside her inner circle.

And I don’t like it turned on me.

I shrug out of my suit jacket and pull off my tie, tossing it on the bed with an idea for using it later. "Productive."

Kara makes a noncommittal sound in response.

I walk over to her and leaning down with one hand on the back of her chair, I lower my voice in invitation. "You didn't tell me what you're working on."

"Does it matter?"

Her unwillingness to answer pulls me up short. It's not like her.

Is she working on something for school? Maybe Kara doesn't want to tell me since I supposedly don't know about her secretly attending a university with an online program.

"Is this something you have to finish right now?" I ask.

Her hands still on the keyboard. "It's something I'm going to finish right now."

Which is not the same thing. She's choosing to prioritize whatever she's working on over our time together.

That's not something Kara does.

We both treat these nighttime hours of privacy together as important.

Unless it's a bleedin' emergency, I come home to Kara before midnight every night. And she is always here, ready to welcome me when I wake her.

I frown, trying to figure out what's going through my sweet wife's brain. "Is this a late-night study session? Have you got a big test coming up or something?"

She was still before. Now, she's frozen into immobility. "You know."

"About you going to college? Yes."

"How long?" she asks in a whisper.

"Since the beginning. There's nothing about you that I don't know."

She makes a sound of disbelief.

I shake my head. She doubts me? "I followed you."

"When?"

"The night you and Róise snuck out to celebrate her birthday."

Kara slides out of the chair and puts distance between us, but at least she's facing me now. "No. You couldn’t have."

"I did. You're good, love. Our blackgloves couldn't have handled the cascading disabling of alarm triggers any better." I'm still proud of her ingenuity and intelligence.

"Then how did you follow us?"

"I watch you," I admit.

Her hazel gaze dark with an emotion I can't decipher, she asks, "What do you mean you watch me?"

"On the security feeds. With your phone tracker. I always know where you are."

KARA

I always know where you are .

Mick's words resound in my brain like a clanging bell. Only instead of feeling like the alarm they should be, they warm something inside me that's been cold since he left earlier.

The pain is still there, but this attention ? Obsession ? It implies that I'm not nearly the nonentity in my husband's life I've always thought I was.

But if he watches me so much, he should know I'm not taking any classes for the summer term. "You don't watch me all the time, or you'd know I don't have any classes right now."

I'm working on final plans for the big Labor Day celebration, not because they couldn't wait until tomorrow, but because I couldn't sleep.

"I forgot."

He forgot? "That doesn't sound like you."

"No one is infallible, a stór ."

But Mick usually is. Did his dinner with Dierdre rattle him in some way?

That's not a question I want an answer to, so I ask a different one. "Why didn't you tell me you knew I was taking college courses?"

"Why didn't you tell me you were taking them?" he counters.

My hands fist at my sides, my fingernails digging into my palms. "I was afraid if I did, you would make me stop."

"I am not your father."

So, he thinks, like me, that Brogan would have insisted I stop? "I guess not."

"I'm glad you're still in therapy," he says, with the air of a man getting everything out there at once. "In fact, I think you should convince Fiona to see an online therapist too."

"You think…" I can't get enough air into my lungs right now.

My entire secret life is not actually a secret at all. And I have no idea how I feel about that. Contrary to my fears, Mick is not trying to make me give up a single thing I've kept from him.

Not even the therapist.

Mick shrugs. "It might help her."

"So my dad can marry her off to someone for another alliance?" I ask painfully.

"That can't happen. Brogan gave his word to your cousin. Fiona's freedom at the cost of hers."

"My father is good at getting around the intent of a promise by finessing the fine details."

He'd taken advantage of the fact that it was seanathair who made the promise to Róise's dad, both now dead, not to force my cousin into an arranged marriage. The promise had been predicated on the agreement of my uncle to take his rightful place as boss when seanathair died.

Only Uncle Derry died before my grandfather and never took over as boss, nullifying the promise. At least as far as Brogan was concerned.

"Do not misunderstand me, Kara. I will not allow him to arrange a marriage for Fiona."

"Why?"

"Because I keep my promises and I won't work for a man who doesn't keep his."

And the only way Mick stops working for my dad is for Brogan to retire. Or die.

Or for Mick to.

A shiver skates up my spine and I force the disturbing thoughts from my head.

"You agreed with him that he wasn't responsible for honoring seanathair's promise to Uncle Derry?"

"Yes. Derry should have planned for that eventuality and ensured a different wording on the vow."

"You think he should have planned for what would happen if he died before seanathair ?" I ask, more appalled than I probably should be considering the life we live.

Mick unbuckles his belt and slides it out of the loops on his pants, catching his backup holster as it releases from the belt. "I have."

"What do you mean?" I lick my lips, watching in fascination as my husband begins disarming himself, one weapon at a time.

I've seen him do this hundreds and hundreds of times and it still makes me wet.

"Your father has signed a blood contract stating that if I die, neither he, nor any other Boss of the Shaughnessy Mob will attempt to force you to marry again."

"You never told me."

"I don't plan to die." He shoves his trousers down his legs, revealing muscular thighs that an action hero would envy.

"But you made arrangements in case you do." How do I reconcile this with the way Mick dismisses my feelings so easily about other things?

Like Dierdre.

Unbuttoning his shirt, my husband asks, "Are we done talking now?"

"Why?" I give him a suspicious look. "What else are you planning to do?"

He picks up his tie from the bed and lets it dangle from his fingers. "Do you really need me to tell you?"

"No." And I don't mean he doesn't need to tell me.

I mean no to the tie. No to sex. No to all of whatever he's got planned.

"No?"

"That’s not how this works, Mick," I tell him flatly.

"What’s not?" he asks, like he really doesn't know.

How could he watch me like he says he does and be this obtuse about how I feel?

But then he doesn't watch me for the sake of emotion. Clarity bursts in my brain. I'm not an obsession. I'm a responsibility and Mick watches over me.

"You don’t get to leave with the cum still wet between my legs to go wine and dine your ex."

A strange sound comes out of his throat. Surprise maybe? "It wasn't a date."

"It was more of a date than you've taken me on since our sixth anniversary." And that was over a year ago.

Besides, duty dates on our anniversary don't count, even when they do manage to happen.

"It was business. I told you that."

Business that had to happen at a restaurant? I don't think so.

I've spent most of the night picturing my husband and Dierdre laughing over an intimate table for two. And business did not feature in a single one of the images tormenting me.

Ignoring his claim, I say, "You for sure do not get to come home acting like nothing happened. Like I’m supposed to be here, ready, warm and waiting for you, just because you decided to come back."

"There was never any question about me coming back . I never sleep away from you if I can help it."

He likes to be here in the morning to have breakfast with our son. That does not make me feel special.

"Kara, mo chuisle —"

"No." I put my hand up. "Just no. Not tonight, Mick. You already got your rocks off for the day. If you wanted to make love again, you would have stayed."

"That was not an option." Frustration laces my husband's voice.

It's weird. He doesn't usually show impatience.

But I'm not giving in.

"Do I have to say it?" I ask.

We both know what I'm talking about.

Red.

He jerks his head side to side. "I'll take a shower and leave you to whatever has you so enthralled."

I grab the urge to take back my words and stuff them down as deep as I can, past my hurting heart and deeper than my unrequited love for my contract marriage husband.