Page 4 of Sins of Arrogance (Syndicate Sins #1)

MICK

"I'll be right back," I tell Dierdre after leading her into the mansion's main living room.

She lets her gaze roam up and down my body. "Don't get dressed on my account."

Her words and attention leave me cold.

The view of my wife walking across the lawn toward the house with Fitz's hand in hers, in contrast, has blood surging to my dick.

Ignoring her innuendo, I leave Dierdre and jog toward our quarters before my Pavlovian reaction to my wife becomes obvious and the daft woman thinks it has something to do with her.

I'm sliding into my suit jacket, after a quick shower, when Kara steps into our bedroom.

Her eyes widen upon seeing me. "I thought you were meeting in private with Dierdre."

My wife doesn't roll her eyes when she says in private but her tone leaves no doubt how unimpressed she is with Dierdre's refusal to talk in front of her.

"I needed a shower, and I don't take meetings half dressed."

"I'm sure Dierdre wouldn't have minded." Turning toward the en suite, Kara shrugs out of her swim wrap.

Her swimsuit bottoms cling to her generous ass and my dick predictably takes immediate notice.

"Where's Fitz?" I ask, not having heard his boisterous tones before she came into the bedroom.

The walls on our room are sound dampening, but when the door is open, noise travels easily from the front room despite the distance.

We have the entire second floor in the west wing of the mansion for our private use. Set up like a luxury apartment, besides four bedrooms, three bathrooms and a kitchen, it has its own communal living area and saferoom too.

"He wanted to swim in the pool with Enoch."

Two weeks ago, Brogan accompanied Miceli De Luca to destroy the compound of an enemy. When my father-in-law came back, he had Hope Dobbs and her two children with him.

Esther is sixteen and Enoch is eight. Despite their two-year age difference, the two boys became immediate friends.

My wife is slower to trust their mother. So, it surprises me she left our son in Hope's care.

"Fi and Zoey were already swimming and promised to bring Fitz back when they're done," Kara says, like she knows exactly what I'm thinking.

She reads me better than anyone else, but she still doesn't know me. And if I can help it, she never will.

I straighten my cuffs. "I'm surprised you didn't stay with them."

Kara prefers the bay, but she loves to swim. Brogan has discouraged the family from using the bay for swimming since Róise's kidnapping though. However, I don't want my son hampered by unresolved fears.

So, Kara and I are working on getting him used to being in the bay again. "He's afraid of the dock."

Kara stops in the doorway to the en suite and turns to look at me over her shoulder. "I don't think it's that cut and dried. He was fine standing on it by himself."

"But he didn't want you near it alone."

She nods, chewing on her bottom lip and then meets my eyes, her hazel gaze dark with worry. "I want to get him therapy."

"Aye. Better that than to let his fears fester."

Face slack with shock, Kara turns around completely so she's facing me. "You'd be okay with it?"

What does she think? I would deny my son the medical care he needs? Is that why she hides her ongoing visits with the therapist she started seeing in the "luxury treatment center" when Fitz was still an infant?

She thinks I won't approve?

Her father wouldn't, which is why I don't mention that my wife has weekly video calls with a mental health professional. But hell, anything that will prevent her from going back to the dark depression she fell into after Fitz's birth is a good thing.

She tried to end her own life and damn near succeeded. Thirty minutes later and I wouldn't have gotten to her in time. Her heart would have stopped for the pills she took.

Never again.

If talking to her therapist once a week helps, then I'll make sure my wife always has that option. No matter what Brogan has to say about it.

Even if I personally don't understand the need to talk about her innermost thoughts and feelings with someone. Despite my disguise of normalcy, I don't have feelings like other people. And if I shared my deepest thoughts, I'd be locked up in a not so luxury mental health facility.

"It will have to be someone connected to the syndicate though," I warn Kara. "Someone who knows better than to share our business with outsiders."

She shakes her head at me. "Doctor-patient confidentiality would prevent that from happening regardless."

"I trust family bonds over HIPAA compliance." With the right incentive, even a doctor can turn informant.

It's happened before and will happen again.

Kara sighs, but nods. "I'll see if my therapist knows a child psychologist she can recommend."

That's one of the many things about my wife that I admire. She doesn't lie unless she has no other choice. So, she doesn't refer to the woman as her former therapist, or imply they aren't still in touch.

Nor does she offer the fact she continues to see the doctor weekly. Kara hides a clatter of shit from me and her father, but she doesn't outright lie about it.

"You'd better get back down to your friend. She's probably wearing a pattern in the carpet waiting to have her secret discussion with you." Kara uses air quotes when she says secret discussion .

It's the second time she's mentioned the fact that Dierdre won't tell me why she's here in front of my wife. And that's cause for concern.

When she first started showing signs of jealousy during her pregnancy, it didn't bother me. I'm possessive and would kill a man who made a move on my wife. Her expressing the desire for other women not to flirt with me was reasonable.

Unfortunately, Kara often thought women were flirting when they weren't. If one of the household staff smiled at me, it could lead to an emotional rant from Kara.

I minimized my time with women who worked with us in either our mob businesses or legit ones. But then Fitz was born and I thought Kara's emotions had evened out.

When I started working on a deal that required a lot of legal support, I spent many hours sequestered in my office with our lawyer. She happened to be an attractive woman in her early thirties, but all I saw was her brain and ability to give legal advice.

Kara threw a fit and demanded her father fire the lawyer. Brogan refused.

I found my wife unconscious on the floor of our bathroom three days later. She'd taken nearly a full bottle of sleeping pills.

Now, I pay attention when Kara shows anything more than mild annoyance. Not because she's exhibited jealousy since then, but because since that time, her feelings have been almost as locked down as mine.

"You know there's business I don't share with you." I watch closely to gauge her reaction to my words.

Her kissable lips twist in a frown, but there's no fervor of banked fury in her hazel eyes. "Are you saying her reason for being here has to do with business?"

"I don't know."

"And if it's not, will you tell me then?"

"Is it important to you that I do?" I ask, my senses on high alert.

Kara sighs again and her shoulders sag. "No, I suppose not. What's one more secret between us? It's not like we love each other."

I'm not capable of loving her. Obsession may be part and parcel to my nature, but not love.

However, Kara used to believe she loved me. She never said it, but it was there. Both her father and grandmother commented on it during Kara's jealousy episodes.

However, somewhere along the line, she stopped.

I don't know why exactly, but it doesn't surprise me. A heart as pure as hers can't stay fixated on a monster. Even one she doesn't know exists.

At some point her atavistic instincts must have sounded the alarm to her heart.

~ ~ ~

"I'm sorry I didn't come for the wedding." Dierdre looks up at me through her lashes. "It would have been too hard to watch you marry another woman."

I incline my head, not convinced. Sure, there'd been plenty of craic about me and Dierdre getting married one day.

We dated. We had sex. But I wasn't her first and she wasn't mine.

There was no romance. No great love.

The only person I have ever loved is my son. I'm not sure Dierdre has ever loved anyone.

When my da got the chance to tighten the ties between the Northies and the powerful Shaughnessy Mob in New York, he took it.

Marriage to Kara offered me something marriage to Dierdre never could: the chance to become second in command.

And I didn't even know it would go down that way when I agreed to the marriage.

The promotion from assassin for my former mob to captain, running my own crew under Derry Shaughnessy – Fergal's oldest son and underboss, was enough incentive to leave Ireland.

The death of both Fergal and Derry in the same year offered me something more. The chance to be underboss and eventually, the Boss of the Shaughnessy Mob.

As his "disturbed" youngest son, my father would not have made me a captain. And there was no chance I would ever be second-in-command in the Northies, much less the boss without my older brothers dying.

I don't have a lot of scruples, but killing family is one of them.

Don't think my da knows that though. He was as happy about getting me out of Dublin as he was about the marriage alliance with the Shaughnessy Mob.

I make him nervous.

Da is one of the few people who knows the real me. He recognized my lack of the moral restraints other people are born with before I started school. He's the one who taught me to project a relatable persona to cover the sociopath within.

Other kids learned manners. I learned to mask the monster who felt no remorse about breaking the arm of a boy who knocked my sister off the monkey bars and made her cry.

Brigid was five. I was eight. The boy who knocked her off so he could play on them was ten.

While he writhed on the ground crying and screaming for the teacher, I told him I would kill him if he ever touched her again.

Da took me out of school and got me private tutors after that.