Is it a choice though?
Chapter five
áINE
That is not what I'm expecting him to say.
But I get the threat implied in the second option.
Without Kieran's so-called protection, there will be more days like today for Sadie and eventually for Neeve and Joy too.
"Are you saying that if I'm not married to Kieran, Kenneth can rape me without punishment?
That his son can do the same to my daughter? "
Kieran, Mick and Kara all say no at the same time, Kieran with angry vehemence, Kara with impassioned certainty and Mick with flat finality.
Mick puts his hand up, silencing the other two. "Kenny Jr. will be punished for what happened today."
Apparently, Fitz already broke his arm, isn't that punishment enough?
Kara's hazel eyes glitter with ire. "He needs to be taken out from under the influence of his father."
"It could only be an improvement, but I'm not sure it will make any difference to his character at this point," I mutter.
Maybe it would have a few years ago, before he became the bully his father made him.
A memory of something I overheard between Kenneth and Kenny Jr. when the boy was still in elementary school flashes in my brain.
I'm carrying fresh towels toward the upstairs linen closet when I hear Kenneth's office door open. I step into an open doorway. I'm not comfortable alone with Kenneth. I've seen him grope the other maid and the cook. So far, he's only leered at me, but I'm not taking any chances.
"Kenny," my boss's voice raps out sharply.
I see the boy now, standing at the top of the main stairway, a backpack hanging from one thin shoulder. He's smiling. "Yes, Dad?"
"Come in"
Kenny Jr. steps into his father's office, but leaves the door open. "I got picked," he says excitedly.
"For what?"
"The soccer team." The pride in his voice is impossible to miss.
My heart squeezes. Kenny Jr. worked hard for it. He'd been practicing in the backyard every day all summer.
There's a brief silence.
Then Kenneth asks, "Starting lineup?"
"No, sir," Kenny Jr. mumbles.
Another silence. Longer this time.
"Then you didn't get picked."
That jerk!
"I made the team," Kenny Jr. insists stubbornly.
"You made the bench," his dad dismisses.
"Coach said if I keep working—"
"Did coach put you in the starting lineup?"
"No, sir."
"Then work harder."
"I practiced every day," Kenny says quietly.
"Apparently not enough." I can't see him from where I am, but I can picture Kenneth in my mind's eye. Expression hard, standing over his son like he's passing sentence.
I've seen it often enough.
"The world doesn't reward effort," Kenneth adds harshly. "The world rewards results."
"Yes, sir."
"If another boy took the position you wanted, it's because he earned it."
"Yes, sir."
"Do better next time."
"Yes, sir." The sound of Kenny Jr.'s feet shuffling across the carpet is so different than the exuberant step he had entering his father's office, my heart hurts for him.
"But we can try." Kara's words spoken vehemently to her husband bring me back into the present.
Mick stares back dispassionately. "The punishment for rape in this mob is death."
"Fitz stopped them!" I'm not defending the little creeps, but Kenny Jr. is only twelve.
They can't kill a child. Can they?
"Even sociopaths can be taught a sense of honor." Kara shares a private look with her husband.
"We'll need a more detailed account of what happened today," Mick tells his wife. "I'll talk to Fitz."
Am a I bad person because I'm glad the underboss wants to get the details from his son and not my daughter? I don't want her interrogated.
Especially by this man.
But what happens after Mick talks to his son?
Kara doesn't seem upset, so I'm going to assume it won't be the imminent death of four children. But this mob world is every bit as harsh as Mick Fitzgerald claims.
And I don't want any part of it. "Why can't we just leave New York? I promise I won't say anything."
"If you leave, there is nothing to stop Kenneth from following you," Kara says with clear concern and another dose of unwelcome pity.
"If you stay and don't marry Wraith, Kenneth will continue to try to coerce you into sex. Can you be sure you won't give in to it?" Mick asks.
Gritting my teeth, I refuse to answer because the truth is, I would do anything to protect my children. And it infuriates me that if I stay in New York and don't marry Kieran, the underboss is acknowledging my current situation isn't going to improve.
In fact, it's pretty much guaranteed to disintegrate.
"He and his son both know the consequences of rape, but Kenny Jr. still attacked Sadie today with his friends," Kara adds. "Because Kenneth Shaughnessy believes he and his family are untouchable."
"Or not." That's all Kieran says but it triggers a thoughtful silence between him, Kara and Mick.
"Why or not?" This isn't a matter of curiosity but of trying to understand the game that's being played with me and my girls' lives.
Kieran doesn't answer me, but Kara does. "It's possible that Kenneth egged his son on in order to trigger mob justice."
"He wants Kenny Jr. killed?" I don't believe that. He's a terrible man, but he has an egoist's pride in his namesake.
"No, but he wants Mick to invoke the punishment so he can go to my father with a complaint and stir up more trouble among the other lieutenants and their captains."
"Because even mobsters balk at killing a child?" I ask, trying to understand.
The underboss shrugs. "Aye."
"But you wouldn't?"
The underboss doesn't answer, but the unemotional expression on his features does it for him.
"Mick would look for other alternatives first," Kara says with absolute conviction.
"Aye, because I have a conscience." The look he gives his wife is so elemental it hits my own atavistic instincts.
On his own, Mick Shaughnessy would mete out mob justice without remorse or compunction, but because of his wife, he is capable of mercy.
She is his conscience.
I cannot imagine being that important to another human being. Troy and I loved each other and it hurt when he died, but I never felt like I wanted to dive into his grave with him.
These two? Are that primally necessary to each other.
"But Shaughnessy doesn't know that," Kieran says, like he's making an effort to explain it to me.
Kara nods. "What he does know is that my father would never sanction the death of a child as punishment."
"You're saying what happened to my daughter was part of some plan Kenneth Shaughnessy has concocted to undermine your husband's position in the mob? Those boys could have raped her!"
"Doubtful. Seeing what happened today in light of what we believe Kenneth's plans to be, Kenny Jr. meant for Fitz to find them. What they didn't count on was the strength of my son's reaction or their inability to defend themselves against it," Kara says with some satisfaction.
"What they did was traumatizing enough. She'll need counseling." If those words had come from Kara, they wouldn't surprise me. But they come from the underboss and I'm too shocked to reply.
"She'll get it," Kieran says.
As if he has input over my children's lives.
I manage to yank my hand from Kieran's and cross my arms over my chest. "That's for me to say."
"You don't want her to go to counseling?" Kieran's heavily muscled arm lands across my shoulders. "I'll pay for it."
Because the only reason I could have for protesting him making pronouncements about my daughter's healthcare is that I might not have the insurance to cover counseling services? This man is as emotionally dense as a fossilized rock.
"Of course I want her to go and I'll make sure she does, but that's not for you to say. I'm her mother."
Kieran doesn't bother to reply.
Surprise. Surprise.
"Which is the point, I think," Kara says. "Kenneth is setting everything up to make it look like you have a reason to resent Mick enough to turn him in to the feds."
"Why would I resent Mick for what happened today?" I ask in bewilderment. "I'm more likely to despise Kenneth and his miscreant son."
Which I already do and today only solidified that feeling.
"Considering what he has already told you, we have to assume he has a plan to make it seem like Mick's at fault for Kenny Jr. and his friends' reprehensible attitude. Or that you blame him for it at least."
All he has to do is say as much to his cronies. No one is going to believe me if I deny it. Why would they? They see me as the widow of a traitor and that makes me the lowest of the low in their eyes. I've already experienced that in the way they treat me and talk to me.
Kenneth isn't the only one who has called me a traitor's whore.
When I don't say anything, Kara sighs with what sounds like real regret. "Like it, or not, and trust me, none of us likes what happened today to Sadie, Kenneth has made you and your girls an integral part of his plan."
What plan? Oh, that's right, the one where Kenneth gives an anonymous tip to the feds and blames me for it when Mick gets arrested. In his position, I'm sure he has access to proof of the underboss's criminality.
And because I work in his home, he'll convince people I gained access to it somehow.
Like, by seducing him. No wonder he's trying so hard to push me into being his mistress. He hasn't raped me because he knows the penalty and as an adult, he can't hope for clemency.
My imagination could be running away with me, but instincts honed by living in a hostile environment for over five years tell me I'm not.
Leaving New York isn't going to save me. I'm already in too deep when I didn't realize I'd even taken a step into the muddy waters of the mob.
"What you are saying is that I don't have a choice. If I want to protect my daughters and myself, I have to marry into your mob." Marry the man currently pressed up against me like an overprotective gargoyle.
I don't realize I said the last bit aloud until Kara says, "You could do a lot worse than a gargoyle as your protector." She gives her husband a loving look.