What am I doing? #2
"You don't know that." Kieran brushes the moisture from my cheek. "He's a cunning asshole. He never would have gotten this far in his campaign against Mick if he wasn't."
Tilting forward so my forehead rests against Kieran's chest, I whisper the words that are tearing at my heart. "I'm a bad mom."
"No. Goddammit. No, you are not a bad mom," Kieran says fiercely, his thumbs pressing up on either side of my jaw to lift my face so our eyes meet again. His are filled with fierce certainty. "You are willing to marry a stranger to protect our daughters."
Our daughters. This man!
"Maybe that's just another terrible decision in a long string of them." Unable to hold them back anymore, tears spill down my cheeks. "What if marrying you only puts them more at risk? You're a mobster. Your world is unforgiving and brutal. Children can be killed for breaking your laws!"
"The boys are not going to die for attacking Sadie." He returns to rubbing my back soothingly.
"But they could have." What am I thinking? "How is knowingly marrying into this world any better than what Troy did?"
Kieran's big body vibrates with outrage. "Bullshit! Troy was a traitor. He didn't put you at risk by working for the mob. He put you and our girls at risk by betraying it."
Again with the our. When this man decides to do something, he's all in.
"But—"
Kieran shakes his head decisively, cutting me off. "No. Mick was never going to kill the boys for attacking Sadie."
"He would have. If he wasn't married to Kara."
"Mick's a sociopath, but he has his own code of honor. Even without Kara in his life, he wouldn't have killed them."
"You have a lot of faith in man who doesn't have his own conscience." The underboss said it himself. Kara is his conscience.
"There's a reason for that," Kieran says quietly. "Mick let me live when he should have killed me."
Harsh surprise courses through me. This man could have died before I ever got a chance to meet him.
And why is that thought so devastating?
"I don’t believe you ever broke one of the mob's laws that's punishable by death." I won't believe it.
Kieran is too good a man.
He grimaces. "I wasn't part of the mob then. I was working freelance and I broke into one of the mob's facilities with three men from my client's syndicate."
"Why would you do that?" Kieran's a smart guy. Breaking into a mob warehouse, or whatever, is not a smart move. Even I know that.
"They were supposed to steal a piece of technology. I was supposed to keep the syndicate leader's heir alive." There's disgust in his tone when he mentions the man he was supposed to watch out for.
"You got caught?" I don't know why that shocks me, but it does.
"I made a mistake trusting the intel provided by a syndicate I had no confidence in. The security at the facility was next level, way beyond what their information said it would be."
I sniff back more tears and swipe at my face with the back of my hand. "Why did Mick let you live?"
"He saw something in me," Kieran says with gratitude laced pride.
"What?" I see a lot of things in Kieran, but what would a man like the underboss see that would make him spare Kieran's life?
"Strength. Integrity. Intelligence." He lists the qualities off like they're no big deal.
Like a man who is strong, honorable and intelligent isn't as rare as a good day at work in the Shaughnessy household.
"I see those things in you too." And that's one of the biggest reasons I agreed to this marriage, but what can I really know about him after less than twenty-four hours? "I thought I saw them in Troy as well though."
And, man, was I wrong about that. My dead husband was none of those things. He'd been good at putting on a pretense though.
Not for the first time since his death, but for the first time I let the thought come to the forefront of my mind, I wonder if we'd still be married if he were alive.
"We all make errors in judgment in our teens," Kieran says, dismissing my colossal mistake in judgement.
"I bet you didn't." Not the mobster version of Captain America.
"I should have forced my mom to run with me as soon as I realized what her piece of shit husband was doing to her." The grief and regret haunting Kieran's gaze leaves no doubt he believes what he's saying.
But it's my turn to object. "No. Kieran, you were her son, not her savior. You were too young to make your mom do anything."
"You don't know that."
"I do." Cupping his cheeks with my hands, I ask, "How old were you?"
"Eleven."
Eleven? "That's like expecting Neeve to save me from Kenneth Shaughnessy." Can't he see how ridiculous that thought is?
How impossible?
"I wasn't eleven when she died," he dismisses. "I was sixteen. A man."
I swallow down more tears, these ones for the boy Kieran was and not my own grief over failing my family. "Sixteen-year-old boys are not men. You were a child."
His shrug says too much. It's the past. It can't be changed, but he doesn't agree.
No wonder he went right to Neeve thinking she had to protect me. That's the kind of kid Kieran was too. And he's right about her. My middle daughter takes on the troubles of the world if I let her.
But I failed to protect her from that too. If I hadn't, she would have told me what had been happening at school. The fact she told Kieran shows my daughter instinctively trusts him like I do though, but what if I'm making another mistake?
"You can trust me," he says like he's reading my mind. "I will keep you and our family safe. No matter what it takes."
"But just being in your world increases the risk to all of us." Him included.
How do I reconcile that truth with the need to protect my children?
"It protects you too."
"Only if I marry you," I remind him with asperity, feeling more cranky about my own doubts than that outrageous fact. "I wouldn't need that protection if Kenneth Shaughnessy hadn't dragged me into his stupid plans."
"Mob justice might be brutal, but it protects us and our families," he replies, reiterating his stance and ignoring my allusion to our upcoming forced marriage, not to mention my gripe about Kenneth.
"It didn't protect Sadie." And neither did I.
How do I live with that knowledge?
"Didn't it?" Kieran challenges. "Do you think Fitz would have been so well trained he could take down four boys a year older than him if he wasn't the underboss's son?"
"No. Probably not."
"He's the future of our mob, just like our girls will be. Strong. Honorable. Intelligent."
The three core attributes Mick saw in Kieran. I bet the underboss saw more in this amazing man, but those are the three traits that are most important to my big guy.
My big guy? Yes, mine.
For good, or ill, the die has been cast and all I can do is wait and see if it comes up a winning number.
I've made a lot of mistakes in the last six years, but I have to hope that marrying Kieran won't be another one.