16. Spill the Tea
Chapter sixteen
Spill the Tea
KARA
I set Allison's glass onto the table on the terrace overlooking the bay. Three glasses. One pitcher of iced tea. Lemon shortbread our cook insisted no one could resist.
And a thin, invisible coating of the Triad interrogation compound lining the inside of Allison's crystal tumbler.
Since drug assisted interrogation is more his skillset than mine, Mick reviewed the dosage before I prepared the glass.
Six years ago, we were a husband and wife learning how to love each other.
Today we're one unit, parents of four amazing kids and we're building both a criminal and legitimate empire together.
The door to the terrace opens and áine steps outside, her 50s inspired summer dress doing great things for her curvy figure. Some would call her voluptuous. I bet Wraith calls her addictive, just like Mick does me.
I've seen the way Wraith devours áine's curves with his eyes. áine might have started as a project for his tarnished knight complex, but if I don't miss my guess, she's going to become the one person he can't live without.
If she isn't that already.
"Hey, Mrs. Veseli," I stress her new name. "Are you doing okay?"
She grimaces. "Yes. Kieran is keeping us safe like he promised."
"Of course he is. No one is getting anywhere near you or your daughters," I promise her.
"I know. We have so many bodyguards, I feel like we're a K-Pop band." She laughs a little.
I'm glad the stress isn't getting to her too badly. It can't be easy knowing a human trafficking ring is targeting her daughter. Even if her new husband has already eliminated almost all the members of said ring.
"Are you enjoying newly married life? I want details." The single phone conversation we've had since her surprise wedding was too brief.
She blushes, pink suffusing her cheeks as her mouth opens and closes with nothing coming out.
"That good, huh?" I tease.
"It's uh…it's better than I thought it would be, considering why we got married."
"From the way you're blushing, I'd say so. I didn't know Wraith had it in him. He's always so taciturn and stoic."
"He talks more when we, uh…" She presses both hands to her hot cheeks. "Never mind. I can't believe I was going to say that to you."
"I can and I'm here for it." I waggle my eyebrows, seeking to lighten the mood even further.
Dwelling on the dangers of our world won't change it, only mute the good things with added stress and anxiety.
I'm not comfortable with a lot of women outside my immediate family, but áine has the makings of a friend. I can just feel it. The way she stands up for her girls and her willingness to marry a total stranger to keep them safe shows that she has the right priorities.
I want to help her learn not to just exist, but to thrive in the mob world I was born into.
"He's just…" Her voice trails off and she looks out at the bay, like maybe she'll find answers there. "Kieran's a lot, you know?"
"In a good way, right?" Do I need to talk to Mick on áine's behalf?
Looking back at me, áine smiles, her oddly colored eyes lighting up. "The best way. He's really different from Troy."
"That's good to hear." Troy was a rat. Wraith is one of the few men Mick trusts.
Not as much as he trusts Brice, Rory and Conor, but they've been with him a lot longer. He trusts Wraith more than he does any of my father's lieutenants though.
"Not like that," áine says, showing she knows exactly what I was thinking about her dead husband. Not that it would be hard to figure out. "Of course, he's loyal and honest like Troy wasn't." She grimaces. "I can't believe how much I didn't know about the father of my children."
"I bet Wraith doesn't like to hear you refer to Troy that way." Mick would hate it.
He's lucky I don't have any men in my past to bedevil him with because I would. I like to keep my powerful underboss, soon to be mob boss, husband on his toes.
"You have no idea," áine says with feeling.
"That sounds like a story you need to tell." I frown at the sight through the French doors of Allison being led into the sunroom by security staff. "But it will have to wait."
áine turns her head and when she sees what I do, her lips flatten. "She's here."
"Looks like it. Quick, before she comes outside, her glass is the one in the front. I'll serve her first, so there's no chance of them getting mixed up."
"I still can't believe she wanted me here," áine says.
"Because she doesn't see you for the strong and courageous woman that you are. She spent six years telling you what to do and thinks she's about to do it again."
áine lets out a short breath that isn't quite a laugh. "She's going to be disappointed."
"I expect she will."
For six years áine swallowed every opinion that might put her daughters in danger.
Today, she doesn't have to.
During the phone call setting this meeting up, neither of us was able to understand Allison's logic. She genuinely believes the two of us can and should talk sense into Mick and Wraith.
As if either man has somehow misplaced his.
The idea still makes me want to laugh.
My husband isn't exiling Kenny Jr. because he's angry. He's doing it because he believes the boy still has a chance to become a decent man. If Kenny Jr. stays with Kenneth and Allison, that chance disappears.
"I can't believe you're going to drug her," áine says in a hurried whisper as the French doors open.
"Whatever it takes," I say before pasting a social smile on my face to greet Allison Shaughnessy.
Frank opens the terrace doors again.
"Mrs. Shaughnessy."
Allison glides outside in cream linen and diamonds. Everything about her is expensive, from the oversized sunglasses resting on top of her perfectly arranged hair to the handbag dangling from her wrist.
She looks exactly like the woman who hosts charity luncheons while someone else cleans up afterward. Which to be fair, I do too, but I care about the charities on whose boards I sit. I'll eat my shoe if Allison even remembers what her supposed causes are.
"Thank you both for agreeing to meet me." Her smile trembles delicately around the edges. "You can't imagine what these past weeks have been like."
I don't bother pointing out that since both áine and I are mothers far more involved in the lives of our children than Allison is with Kenny Jr., we probably can.
"Please, sit down." I wave my hand toward the table.
She looks at the seat at the head of the table but then moves with barely perceptible reluctance to sit in one of the chairs on the side farthest from where áine is standing. Allison is used to being the queen bee in her little circle of socialite friends.
Too bad for her, she's in the home of the true queen in our world. Me.
áine sits down across from her former employer but does not greet the older woman.
Allison was twenty-two when she married the then forty-year-old Kenneth the year before Mick and I tied the knot. Her face is unmarred by wrinkles, but no one would mistake her for a fresh-faced twenty-something. He cold social facade is too polished.
It is difficult, if not impossible to see this woman as a concerned parent.
I sit down and Allison immediately turns her body to face me, effectively cutting áine out of the conversation. "You've got to help me, Kara. I don't know who else to turn to."
Without answering her, I pour the tea, making sure Allison receives the correct glass.
She thanks me distractedly before taking a long drink. "I'll be honest," she says. "I don't understand why Mick is doing this. He knows my Kenny isn't a bad boy. He's family."
"Being family does not give your son a pass," I tell her.
It doesn't give her husband one either and they'll both find that out soon enough.
"But he's only thirteen. He made a mistake."
"Is that what you call it?" áine asks acerbically.
Allison flicks a disgruntled glance at her but her attention is back on me less than a second later. "Please don't let Mick keep my son away from me." Moisture gathers in her eyes without disturbing her mascara. "Kenny Jr. knows what he did is wrong."
"What makes you think so?" He certainly didn't express that opinion during the sentencing.
"He told me."
That I do not believe. "When?"
"The day..." She hesitates, looks at áine and then back at me. "The day everything happened."
"Before or after Fitz broke his arm?" I ask.
A flicker of irritation crosses her face. "After."
"Did he apologize to Sadie?" I know he didn't.
But he will. And he'll mean it. His fostering parents raised four boys in the mob. All four are strong men and loyal to the syndicate.
"I don't know. He didn't get a chance before he was ripped from our home and sent off to another country." And even his not-so-doting mother believes he's done it since being sent away. "I don't understand why you're making him sound heartless. He's a child."
"I haven't described his heart at all," I say mildly.
She opens her mouth, then closes it again and takes another sip of tea. "Kenny belongs here with me and his father, not living with some low-level mob soldier's family in Spain. He doesn't even speak Spanish."
"He will. It's good for a child to learn a second language." From what I can tell neither Kenneth Sr. nor Kenny Jr. speak Irish like we were taught to do.
"That's hardly the point."
"No." I fold my hands on the table. "The point is that your son participated in the assault of a twelve-year-old girl."
"It wasn't assault." Allison finally faces áine and appeals to her, "He never touched her. Kenneth told me Wraith and Mick blew it all out of proportion."
"You are mistaken," áine says grimly.
"He cornered her with three other boys," I add.
Allison nods. "I know and he's sorry for it, but children tease each other."
"Sexually harassing another child isn't teasing." áine’s voice reverberates with fury. "Attempted rape isn't teasing."
"That's not true. You have to stop your daughter from lying like this."
How in the dark has Kenneth kept his wife? I'm starting to think she has mushroom status and the crap she's buried in is about to smother her.