10. Strategizing in the Shower
Chapter ten
Strategizing in the Shower
MICK
Kara's beautiful body on display under the falling water in our morning shower is the perfect way to start the day.
But instead of letting me act on that perfection, she's bent on talking. "I think you should ask your brother to foster Kenny Jr."
"I was thinking boarding school." The one my nephews attend would be a good option though.
It's the same one my brothers attended from age eleven. The one I would have if I had not been tutored at home.
"Which could be part of the fostering placement, but those boys need to be taught our code from adults who believe in it."
And their parents deserve to share in their punishment. As they would if the civil authorities were allowed to charge them.
Fostering isn't usually considered a punishment though. It's an age-old tradition in the mob to send our sons to live with ally mobs to train and learn. If the fostering parents are given legal authority over the boys, that would change the dynamic of the situation though.
"You think my brother is a good candidate to do that?" I squirt Kara's favorite bodywash into my palm and build up a lather.
Her lips twist in a grimace. "Maybe not when it comes to fidelity, but I still want him to foster one of the boys."
"Why?"
"If he's fostering one of ours, he'll be more amenable to allowing Eoghan to come live with us." Kara washes my chest with the handmade soap she buys because it smells like me.
I slide my soapy hands over her soft shoulders and down her shoulder blades, pulling her closer. "We want that why?" I ask.
"Fitz is worried about Eoghan."
"He is?" Eoghan only registers as a peripheral person to me but if my son is concerned, that matters.
"Adam made him drop his art elective." Kara looks at me with eyes that see both the sociopath and the heart that beats for her and our chizzlers.
"I think Eoghan needs his drawing to keep him human.
A leader in our world completely without humanity is dangerous to his own syndicate, but even more so to his allies. "
Kara knows exactly what to say to make me take notice. One day, Eoghan will be Fitz's ally.
"I'll call Adam." I pull Kara close. "After."
She doesn't ask after what.
"I'm surprised you came up with the fostering option," Adam says after I succinctly explain my plan.
"I didn't." I wouldn't have killed the boys, but I'm not sure my instinct for punishment wouldn't have extended to the corporal rather than what amounts to incarceration.
"Ah. It was Kara." Adam sighs. "You got lucky with your wife, Mick. She's one in a million."
"She is." Kara is perfect.
"We're not all so lucky." My brother doesn't sound bitter, just resigned.
"Is that why my son saw you snogging a woman not your wife?" I ask without sympathy.
"He saw me with Mitzi? When?"
"When do you think?" My brother's not stupid.
We were only in Dublin for Boxing Day through New Years. And we only went out as a group once.
"Don't sound so damn judgmental. Margot isn't like Kara. She's been cheating on me since before Gavin was born."
Gavin is 14. "That's a feckin' long time to put up with that shite."
"Aye. It is."
"Divorce her."
"Da refused permission."
Being heir to the throne is different than sitting on it, but my brother needs to grow a pair. "Do it anyway."
"I filed for divorce in January." My brother's words surprise me.
Not only because he refused our father's order, but because my new informant didn't tell me. "Does da know?"
"Nah. Margot doesn't either."
"How does that work?"
"She signs shite all the time without looking."
Kara would never be that trusting. "She'll be bullying when she finds out."
"Divorce is better than death." My brother's tone is as flat and emotionless as mine.
"Aye." Though how he's stopped himself killing the man who defiled his wife is a mystery to me.
Maybe he didn't. I don't ask.
"The last time the boys were home, Eoghan told me he wished I was more like you. Can you believe that?"
"Aye." Fitz told me what Eoghan said in December.
My son doesn't lie to me.
Not sure why my oldest brother is bringing it up now.
Adam laughs harshly. "Well, I found it feckin' hard to credit. You're a fucking sociopath."
"My kids know I love them."
"How? How do you love your kids and Kara like she claims when you never loved any of us? Not even mam?"
"I don't know." And I don't care.
"Eoghan calls me sir now. Da too. Da ordered my son to call him daideó and Eoghan stopped addressing him at all."
I bet that has da raging. "It's because of the art."
Has my brother really not figured that out? He's no muppet.
"He can't be seen as weak, Mick. He'll be boss one day."
"There are other ways to show his strength that don't include him giving up part of who he is."
"We all give up parts of ourselves to serve the brotherhood."
"I didn't."
"You had to leave Ireland."
"I got Kara." Nothing else matters.
"Oh, aye. That you love her still does my head in."
"She wants Eoghan to foster with us while Kenny Jr. is fostering with you."
My brother is silent for several long seconds, then he sighs. "It's probably for the best what with the divorce and all."
"You don't think he'll miss his mam?" I ask.
I don't know. Margot is a cold fish, but chizzlers love parents that don't deserve it.
"She's barely around when he and Gavin are home. At least with him living in New York, he can tell himself he doesn't see her because of the distance."
That's not something that would have occurred to me, but then Kara would kill me before she'd let me put distance between her and our chizzlers.
"I’ll allow Eoghan to train with you for the next year, but da and mam will have to foster your mob’s kid. Gavin and Eoghan deserve for me to focus on them with their mam moving out."
"When’s that going to happen?"
"According to the paperwork we filed, she moved into her own place twelve years ago. That’s when she took out a lease on an apartment in Dublin."
"When did you find out about it?"
"The same time I learned that she was cheating. Two years ago."
To be deceived like that for so long has to stick in my brother’s craw. "Feckin’ sleazer."
"You’ll hear no argument from me, but try not to say shite like that in front of Eoghan. She’s still his mam."
And my brother loves his boys. Which might explain why he opted for divorce over death for his faithless wife. It sure as bleedin’ hell would have been easier on him to kill her and make it look like an accident.
"Course not." Kara would be upset.
I don’t upset my wife.
We discuss details that don’t matter to me but I know Kara will ask about.
"You’re going to encourage my son to keep drawing, aren’t you?" Adam asks.
I can’t tell if the idea annoys him, or not.
"Aye."
"When Eoghan told me he wished I was more like you, he said you weren’t afraid of looking weak because you know you aren’t."
I don’t say anything. I wouldn’t like hearing that from my son. Or one of the girls.
Because the implication is that Adam is weak.
"He knows about Margot’s affairs."
"How?"
"Caught her out. He asked me if all mob marriage were like that. I told him no. That cheating is breaking a vow and we don’t break our vows."
But once she’d broken hers, my brother no longer considered himself bound by his own. We have that in common.
"He didn’t understand me staying married to his mam after that."
"You didn’t tell him da refused your petition for divorce."
"Nah. Me listening to him was on me, but I think there’s more than one reason my son thinks my sociopath of a brother is a stronger man than his own da."
"Fix it."
"I’m working on it."
"Kara says a leader in our world has to hold on to part of his humanity or he’s a danger to the mob and its allies. Making mistakes is human."
"Not according to da. To him, making mistakes is weak."
"He thinks Eoghan’s art makes him weak too. He’s wrong."
"Aye." My brother sighs. "I guess I was wrong about that too. Eoghan has what it takes to be the boss one day."
"He does." Eoghan has a ruthless streak his father can’t see for the drawing.
"Thanks, Mick."
"That’s what family’s for."
"You’ve always been my brother, but I don’t think I really saw you as family until the last few years."
"I’m loyal to you." As long as I never have to choose between them and my own nuclear family.
"I didn’t believe that either. I’m sorry, Mick."
I don’t need his apology. I doesn’t matter that he never saw me as family before. But sorry isn’t a word any of us says.
It will make Kara happy to know Adam said it though.
"Don’t fash yourself. What you believed about me didn’t change who I was."
"Nah. It didn’t, did it?"
How could it? The only people whose opinions matter to me think I’m the antihero who gets the girl.
And as long as I have her, it’s all good.
My phone call with Brogan takes an unexpected turn.
"Hell, I shouldn't have told Kenneth about me retiring yet. But fuck, how was I supposed to know he'd be stupid enough to spout off about his grievances to his kid? We don't talk mob business with our children."
Fitz knows more about the business than some of the soldiers, but he's going to be boss one day. And he's my son.
"You told Kenneth you were stepping down? When?" I ask.
More to the feckin' point, why? They're family. Second cousins, or something. But the men aren't close.
"He was saying shit about how you didn't deserve to be underboss and I told him to keep his tongue in his head if he knew what was good for him because you'd be boss soon enough."
"And?" I prompt. Because soon enough could mean any point in the future.
Brogan curses. "He said he still had hope I'd show some sense and change my mind about turning the reins over to you. I told him I don't go back on my word."
And he'd be dead if he tried.
"This isn't the first time he's brought it up," I say, sure I'm right.
"When he's had one too many whiskeys he gets maudlin about how Shaughnessy blood should run the Shaughnessy mob, but he's been spouting bullshit like that since we signed the addendum to the blood contract."
Brogan inherited his cousin as a captain from his father and made him a lieutenant a few years later. "Did you think promoting him would shut him up?"
"Yes."
"It didn't."
"No, but he's a good lieutenant."
"That had two traitors on his crew," I judge.
"He accepted his punishment."
And resented having to do so. "Your lieutenant has been bitching about you making me underboss since before my son's birth and you never once said a bleedin' thing about it?"
"He was just letting off steam."
"Well, he's been letting that steam off around other men and his own kid."
"I thought I had it handled. He's loyal, just a blowhard."
"A blowhard who raised a would be rapist."
Brogan takes exception to my blunt speech and starts shouting. I don't shout, but I make it clear what I expect to happen and Brogan agrees to the demotion and Wraith's promotion to Kenneth's place.
He doesn't have a choice. Like he said, I'll be boss soon enough. No sense forcing me to accelerate matters by refusing to do what's necessary.
Family, or no family.