Chapter twenty-eight Parental Controls
Chapter twenty-eight
Parental Controls
áINE
The rest of our stay in Anaheim was more like a real family vacation/honeymoon than mob forced marriage safety induced exodus from New York. Sure, Kieran spent time working, but he got up early enough to handle a lot of it by the time we were ready to eat breakfast as a family.
He took to theme park duty for three girls who had never been to Disneyland and wanted to experience all the things as if he'd trained for it. Hoisting Joy onto his shoulders without being asked, fielding Sadie’s endless trivia about the park’s "hidden secrets" and—without complaint—standing in line for an hour to buy Neeve the churro she’d fixated on.
He was on his phone a lot, texting or talking, but still somehow managed to take Neeve on the rollercoaster she desperately wanted to go on, ride the teacups with Joy and take pictures of Sadie with all the Disney cast members we came across for her socials.
He insisted on us all going on the boat ride through It's a Small World so he could sit beside me. And he held my hand while his phone buzzed in his pocket with incoming texts.
He didn't check them until after the ride was over.
Is it any wonder that by the time we got back to New York, I was having a hard time remembering he's not my Prince Charming and we're not a real couple.
Okay, maybe my charming villain, but whatever I want to call him, he feels like he's mine. In more than a we-got-married-because-we-had-to way.
Somehow, his big body fits in my queen-sized bed though he shouldn't. The fact he takes up most of the mattress laying diagonally so his feet don't dangle and I sleep half on top of him is beside the point.
He fits. We fit.
And sex with him is out of this world. Not that we've had a lot of that in the almost two weeks since we got back from Anaheim.
Way less than either of us has wanted to.
Things have been super busy. The girls are all back in school. Sadie and Neeve are both seeing the same mob approved therapist. Kieran made it to the emergency meeting of the school board for Sadie's school, but most evenings he's away from the apartment.
Working.
He calls the girls to wish them goodnight every night. And me as well.
Its…sweet.
And unexpected.
Dagda accompanies me dropping the girls off in the morning and picking them up. Then, either he, or another soldier under Kieran's command, remains in the hall outside the apartment until my new husband makes it home.
Two nights, he hasn't made it back to the apartment at all.
It's understandable, right?
First, it's not like we have a real marriage. Or one based on love anyway. He doesn't miss me so much, he has to come home no matter what.
Not like I'm starting to miss him.
Second, he's stepping into his role as lieutenant in the mob and while he doesn't talk about that—because Kieran—Ellie does. Probably more than he'd be happy knowing she did.
Besides being in charge of the investigation into how far Kenneth spread his mutinous rot, Kieran also now oversees the legitimate businesses run by the men under him that used to be under Kenneth Shaughnessy.
Ellie says both the legitimate and mob based businesses are being run like they're in the dark ages and she's knee deep in helping with the modernization. She demanded Kieran bring me in to help get accounts and inventory systems digitized.
I've got no experience with inventory systems, but Ellie's not about to let that stop me from using that big brain you were born with.
So, I work for Kieran from after I drop the girls off at school until just before I have to pick them up. And get paid about four times as much as I was making for Kenneth Shaughnessy. I'm on the official payroll and everything.
That feels so good, knowing I'm not trapped in a dead end job that pays peanuts, but am able to use the education I worked so hard to get. I love the challenge of modernizing the accounts, but enjoy seeing Kieran every day even more.
Not that we work together, but he almost always picks me up for lunch and we text throughout the day.
If only he spent every night with me, our marriage would feel as real as anything I had with Troy. Or more than.
I love picking my daughters up from school and hearing about their days when everything is fresh and they're excited to talk about it.
Mom is in alt having the extra time to devote to her new hobby. Ancestry research.
Lord save us if she finds another tenuous link to a High King's lineage. And by tenuous, I mean pretty much in the realm of fantasy. The High Kings ruled parts of Ireland before the Anglo-Norman invasion in the 12th Century.
But mom got her DNA tested months ago and found out that like literally millions of other people of Irish descent, she carries genetic markers for the lineage of Brian Boru.
Now that she has more free time because I can pick the girls up from school, she's spending it online and planning a trip to Ireland to visit some of the oldest cemeteries to get a feel for my ancestors.
When she leaves, there will be one less person to hear any noises Kieran and I make at night.
Knowing my daughters are sleeping on the other side of the wall is a pretty spectacular deterrent to sexy times with my new husband. And both of us working the hours we do during the day precludes us taking advantage of an empty apartment.
Just like a real marriage.
And right now, when he just handed all three of my daughters brand new iPhones without a single word to me beforehand, the marital disharmony feels all too real too.
Sadie already has a phone, for heaven's sake. And he didn't bother to ask if I wanted Neeve and Joy to have them.
Which I categorically did not before the whole thing went down at Sadie's school and I learned about Kenneth Shaughnessy's coup plan.
With me as his unwitting scapegoat for getting Mick Fitzgerald out of the way.
Now, the idea of all my girls having phones isn't such a bad one. But Kieran should have asked me before giving them to the girls.
"This is something we should have talked about beforehand," I tell him in as even of a voice I can manage, making my throat ache from the strain of not yelling.
Which really? I don't yell. Or I didn't.
Until Kieran.
What is it about this man that unlocks the gates on my usually dormant temper? It's like I feel safe getting angry with him.
Which makes no sense. He's a dangerous mobster. How am I less worried about holding him accountable than standing up to a man like Kenneth Shaughnessy? Who is not even in Kieran's league when it comes to being genuinely, personally powerful.
"Told you, boss man," Ellie singsongs.
I glare at my bestie. "You knew about the phones?"
She raises both her hands palms out and shakes her head. "Nope. But I knew Kieran's tendency to think he knows what's best for everyone around him and certainty he has the right to act on it was going to run right up against the wall of your independence."
"This is not me being independent." Though that's not a bad thing. Is it? "This is me being a concerned parent and not liking my primary role in my daughter's life being usurped without a single conversation."
"But dads can buy phones for their kids, can't they?" Neeve asks, looking worried.
"Not in our family. That's a two-parent decision." When every decision for the last six years had been mine alone.
Wow. Okay, this might be about more than buying cell phones for the girls without my permission.
It's about trusting him to make choices like this. I still want a say, but we have to make these decisions together. Not me alone. Not him in unilateral mode.
Both of us.
That is going to take some getting used to.
Troy wouldn't have asked if he wanted to buy the girls phones, my pesky inner voice, tapped directly into my conscience, says.
But I don't want my marriage with Kieran to be like the one I had with Troy. I don't care if he has millions in the bank, when it comes to decisions within our family, Kieran and I are equals.
"Oh." Joy's face falls. "I can't call Minnie Mouse?"
After meeting Minnie Mouse at the park, Joy is convinced they're besties.
"No. Silly. We don't have her number." Sadie softens her words with a side hug for her little sister.
We just finished eating dinner, when Kieran arrived hours earlier than the last few nights, and dropped identical slim boxes in front of each girl.
Looking way too unconcerned for a man so close to being murdered by his wife, he reaches for Joy's phone and shows her how to unlock it before handing it back. "There's an app already loaded on your phone where you can text with Mickey and his friends."
"For real?" Joy squeals.
Kieran nods and taps on the screen to show her.
"It's a learning app with preloaded text prompts and replies," he tells me.
"All the phones have parental controls turned on.
The GPS only turns off if the battery is dead.
I set the contacts up so they can only call or text people you approve. Or me."
He gives me a look that says: See, I’m looking out for them.
Which is so not the point. "I never doubted you'd take the safety measures necessary."
Kieran, without a hint of irony, tells the girls, "Don’t use them at school. They’re for emergencies."
Like that's going to stop them.
Neeve perks up. "What kind of emergency?"
"If any kids call you names, you text me right away." He looks at Sadie. "If you start your woman’s thing and don’t have the stuff you need. Uh—" He hesitates.
Looks at me for guidance.
But I just raise my eyebrows.
"Call or text either your mom, me or McLaren...uh, Ellie. We'll make sure you get what you need."
Sadie stares at the phone. "Is this because of what happened before?"
She means the boys. The school. All the ways her father’s death followed us like a stain no matter how fast I tried to scrub it out.
I open my mouth to answer but mom beats me to it.
"Your stepfather just wants to be sure you’re safe. That’s his job now."
Kieran nods, jaw working like he’s chewing on every word he doesn't say.