Page 60 of Sins of Arrogance (Syndicate Sins #1)

KARA

My father is already in the meeting room when Mick and I step in, two of his lieutenants behind us.

Despite the space age level security in the Bunker, four more of Mick's men are guarding the hallway outside the room.

He's leaning over a long metal conference style table with a floorplan of the mansion spread out in front of him. A red pen sits beside a half-drunk mug of black coffee.

Looking up at the sound of our entrance, Brogan swears.

"What is she doing here?" he demands of my husband.

I don't give Mick a chance to answer. "That's a good question considering I've never been here before."

Which is not to say the women in my family don't know about the Bunker. We all do and when Róise was kidnapped she was headed to it for safety.

Not that she knew how to get inside.

Which is not okay.

"Of course not," my father dismisses. "We conduct mob business here."

"You conduct it at the mansion too, but I'm allowed to live there."

"That's different."

"Is it?" I shake my head. "I don't think it is. The mansion is fortified for our safety. But this place is even more secure. Why do mob soldiers have access to it for sanctuary, but not the women in your family?"

I know the answer to my own question: because we aren't as important as his soldiers.

But the expression on my father's face is arrested. "It's always been this way."

"I wonder. I have no doubt that seanathair had that policy, but maybe the bosses before him valued the Shaughnessy women more than he did."

Instead of getting angry and blustering like I expect, Brogan sighs and nods. "Maybe they did. I know I do."

"And yet you never told me or Fi about it. Never gave us the codes to get in if we needed to."

"We keep you safe without it." There's the bluster I expected.

But I'm not impressed. "Protecting us means making it possible for us to protect ourselves."

"Is this about those self-defense courses Miceli insists you all take?" My father sounds agrieved.

He doesn't like the training, but the only person he could have forbidden from taking it is Fiona and he was too enamored with the idea she would willing leave the mansion to do so.

"It's about treating us like equals and not little dolls you want to keep on a shelf until you have use for one of our uteruses."

"That's crude."

I shrug.

"You're right."

Shock expels from my lungs in a gasp. "I'm right?"

"Yes. I've made mistakes raising you girls. I see that now. You should have access to the Bunker and the armory for that matter." He puts up a hand. "But first you take gun safety and shooting lessons."

Stunned, I just nod like a bobble-head.

"That said, you do not belong in this meeting, Kara."

I stop nodding abruptly and my spine stiffens, but this time Mick speaks before I can. "She stays."

"This is mob business," Brogan says, like maybe Mick didn't get the memo.

Mick settles his hand on my lower back in a statement of solidarity. "Kara is now privy to all my business."

"That is not wise. We’ve always kept the women in the dark for a reason." His voice is rough with conviction. "We keep them safe by keeping them separate."

Mick shrugs. "And if that is how they choose to live, we respect that. Kara is my equal and she chooses to know."

That word I like so much that my former roommate used to say perfectly describes the look on my father's face.

Gobsmacked.

"We've always done it this way," he says and runs his hand over his face. "For their protection."

"I don't care how it's always been done. That’s not how it’s going to work with me and Kara.

I can protect my wife better by telling her the truth when she wants it.

There will be no secrets between us." The deep satisfaction in Mick's tone when he says those words have nothing to do with mob business.

He is happier than I've ever seen him now that he doesn't have to hold part of himself back from me. Our lovemaking is off the charts.

And coming back to the mansion hasn't changed that. It was good before, but it's different now. We're both our true selves, hiding nothing.

After Fitz left with his bodyguards to go to school, Mick stayed. He swooped me up and carried me to bed, to the floor, to the wall – any surface strong enough to take us. I came hard and fast and often.

And when I told him I loved him again, it felt like the most natural truth in the world.

Because it is.

It was his words after that blew a hole in my heart and filled it back up again.

"Thank you for loving me for the sociopath that I am and not the man I pretend to be for everyone else." Then he told me he loved me.

And we made love again. No handcuffs. No edging. Just two bodies moving together in love filled pleasure as he said thank you to me over and over again, between kissing every inch of my face, neck and shoulders.

Mick needed the walls to come down between us even more than I did and I'll never forget that. I will never allow him, or me, to erect them again.

Right now, my father stares at my husband like he’s lost his mind. "That's not how it works in our world."

"It is in the one I'm creating with Kara."

I'm so pleased by his response, I turn my head and reach up so I can kiss the underside of his jaw. "Yes, it is."

"This is what you really want?" my father asks me.

"Yes. From now on, I get a voice in my own life and the life of this family."

"You're a strong and intelligent woman, one I'm proud to call daughter. I'm sure you'll only make us stronger." He grimaces. "But you can't blame me for worrying about you."

"If you worried about my emotional wellbeing as much as you do my physical, we'd have a very different relationship."

"If I change, if I show that you and your sister matter to me more than the mob, more than anything…" He pauses, almost diffident. "Do you think that relationship can change?"

"If your actions match your words and intentions, it's possible. I don't trust you, but if you really want to change that, you will."

His eyes glisten, but he blinks away the moisture and nods. "I will."

For some reason, I'm too choked to speak, so I merely nod.

"Darakov thinks the plans for the prototype are in the boathouse," Mick says with an abrupt subject change.

Done with emotional watersheds for the moment, I'm grateful. "So, we set a trap."

"I don't want my family put at risk," my father says. "We need to draw him into targeting the Bunker again."

"That will only net us more hired mercs, or his own men."

"We want Darakov to come, right? So, you can kill him and explain Dierdre's death away as a lover's spat gone wrong," I say.

Mick's brows furrow. "That wasn't the plan. She dies in the crossfire when he tries to kidnap her again."

I shake my head. "That makes it look like we didn't protect her like my father promised to do. But if Dierdre sets up the assignation and somehow ends up dead when she changes her mind and refuses to leave with him…"

I watch my father and husband, to see what they think.

Mick's face is blank, but my father looks impressed.

"You’ve got her phone cloned, right?" If they don't, I can easily do it by replacing her charging cord in her bedroom with one that sends data directly to a cloning program.

Mick guides me into a chair and then sits down in one he tugs to a position right beside me, our thighs touching. "Aye."

"Send him a text telling him that she's going to get him the prototype, but will only hand it over to him."

Mick's eyes narrow in thought. "They've been too cautious to text about their deal."

"So, couch it in terms that he'll understand but make it obvious what she means. Stress her need for secrecy, that she's worried you're onto her and she's going to keep their contact to a minimum."

"If we make it look like a romantic assignation in the boathouse, we'll be able to show the texts to her father as proof of the scenario we are creating," my father says with admiration.

We discuss the best way to word the texts and then my father suggests that I handle the exchange because I'm a woman.

I stifle my sigh. Baby steps.

My father isn't going to change overnight and I'm doubtful he'll ever be anywhere near being labeled a feminist.

But he's trying.

The text exchange goes well. I make it clear, as Dierdre, that I won't hand myself over to anyone else. Only him.

I make it sound like she's agreed to the marriage and wants to spend time with him away from her family, or my father's watchful eye to be certain of their physical compatibility.

We agree to meet at 2 a.m. in three days at the boathouse for our rendezvous.

To be safe, all texts and calls will be funneled through the clone program in case Darakov contacts her before then.

He shows he knows it's a ruse for getting the prototype with his final text.

Ilya : I look forward to fulfilling all the terms of *our* deal. I keep my promises. I'm glad you keep yours .

Which I'm grateful for, because after she gave him a blowjob to convince him to have me killed, the idea of her being willing to have sex with him isn't that big of a stretch.

The next three days are fun.

For me.

Not so much for Dierdre.

Mick goes from never showing me affection in public to touching me whenever we're together. Which is pretty much 24/7. I start doing my schoolwork in his office and we're making out on his desk one time when Dierdre walks in without knocking.

He's kissing me up against the wall the second time she does it.

He puts his arm over my shoulder during dinner, intermittently pressing his lips to my temple. He holds my hand as long as we have our security detail around us.

He explained why he didn't before, and I tell my sociopath that he's sweet.

That leads to an impromptu episode in the sunroom with men outside the doors to the terrace and hall to prevent anyone interrupting us.

He is not at all sweet and I end up with a sore bottom, but only in the best possible orgasm inducing way.

I help Mick's blackgloves comb through camera footage from in and around the mansion, identifying everyone Dierdre and her two guards have spoken to so they can be debriefed, according to my father.

Or interrogated, according to my husband.

Mick's interrogating a man who showed up in several conversations with Dierdre and even entered her room on one occasion. I wouldn't want to be him.

Even if he didn't divulge anything to her, he's been unknowingly consorting with the enemy and Mick has no mercy when it comes to our safety. If the man turns out to be a rat, I don't envy me, because security is going to get boa constrictor tight around here.

I'm taking a break to read, ensconced in my favorite chair in the sunroom, when Dierdre comes storming in.

She slams the door and glares at me. "I don't know who you think you're fooling, but all this lovey-dovey bullshite with Micky is just that."

"I don't know what you're talking about." I lay my eReader on the table and shift my weight in the chair.

I know there are security men around me, but I'm not taking any chances. My life is finally what I want it to be and this woman is not taking that away from me.

One of my security detail is on the far side of the room, to give me privacy. Mick insists if I'm not in our apartment that I have a bodyguard with me at all times.

And the men have all been instructed to prevent Dierdre access to our apartment, no matter how big a temper tantrum she throws.

My bodyguard is silently making his way toward us, but I'm not worried.

Dierdre isn't armed with anything but her poisonous words and they can't hurt me now.

She's not besting me a physical altercation and we both know it. Still, my muscles are bunched and I'm prepared to jump up if I need to.

"Did you forget what I told you would happen if you didn't divorce my Micky?" she demands, her eyes lit with a fanatical gleam.

I stand up and step right into her personal space. "Did you forget what I said I would do if you threatened my son?"

She takes an involuntary step back, but scoffs. "Like you're going to kill me."

"I don't need to kill you, Dierdre. You're already dead."

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asks belligerently.

The door opens and Mick enters, sliding his phone into his pocket. "Just what it sounds like, Dierdre."

"Stalking me again?" I tease my sociopath.

"Always."

"Your wife just threatened to kill me," Dierdre screeches at top volume.

"Not exactly, boss," my bodyguard pipes up.

Dierdre's head jerks around and she stares at the man she didn't realize was in the room with us.

"I know," Mick says calmly. "She told Dierdre she's already dead."

"I'm not dead," Dierdre yells.

I tilt my head. "Aren't you?"

"You thought you could come between me and the woman I love. The only woman I could ever love. The only woman who could ever match me strength for strength. Passion for passion."

"You really are sweet, Michael." I smile dreamily at my husband.

Dierdre lunges for me, but Mick is lightning fast and has her hands cuffed behind her back in zip ties in less than a second.

He shoves her toward the bodyguard. "Put her in a holding room."

Like I told my father, mob business happens here when it has to. Not everyone who shows up at a mob boss's door is his friend.

We've got a subbasement I've never been in, but I'm assuming that's where the holding cells are.

The soldier grabs Dierdre by the upper arm, but she screams and kicks him. Then he tosses her over his shoulder fireman style and carries her from the room, her caterwauling all the way.

"Isn't that a little conspicuous?" I ask.

"He's one of my men."

As opposed to one of my father's men who Mick does not trust as much. His lieutenants and their crews know stuff even Brogan doesn't. But I know it all.

Now.

Mick grabs me, picks me up the same way and starts jogging.

Only I'm laughing and his hand is squeezing my thigh suggestively as he jogs up the grand staircase.

"Where are you taking me?" I smooth my hands over his toned backside.

What's a girl to do? It's right there .

"We need to have another discussion about how very not sweet I am."