16. Spill the Tea #3
"You take advantage of the people who work for you. You ignore your husband's behavior toward female staff because acknowledging it would inconvenience you. You either indulge Kenny or forget he's in the room."
"That's a lie."
"No." áine shakes her head. "It's six years of observation.
Your son may be cruel and selfish, but you and your husband made him that way.
I still remember the little boy I first met.
He wanted your approval so bad. He tried so hard.
He needed the love you claim to feel for him, but instead he got neglect from you and cruelty from Kenneth. "
áine stands up from the table. "You said no one ever got ahead in this world by being nice, but you're wrong. Decent people get ahead all the time. Mick and Kara are leagues ahead of you and Kenneth, but they're decent people. They love their kids. They're loyal to their family and friends."
"You think Mick Fitzgerald is decent?" Allison laughs.
It's real amusement because she's at that stage with the drug, where her genuine emotions are showing through whatever her intentions.
"I do." áine looks at me. "Do you mind if I go for a walk along the shore?"
She's asking if I need her here to finish the interrogation. I don't. Allison is at a very malleable place and áine clearly needs a moment to get her own emotions under control again.
I understand that need only too well.
"Not at all. Security is tight both in the water and on the perimeter. You have nothing to fear walking down there alone, but Wraith might have something to say if you go out of sight of the house regardless."
áine just shakes her head. "My life sure has changed since I married Kieran."
"It's not all bad," I say hopefully.
She smiles at me, her eyes warm. "Not even close."
The rest of my discussion with Allison is both productive and frustrating. I learn she knows nothing, absolutely nothing about her husband's business, much less his plans to overthrow Mick and my father.
She doesn't even know the name of his friends, unless they're on one of her guest lists.
We know more about how Kenneth spends his time than she does.
I keep her talking and drinking tea until she's sobered up to the point she's safe to drive.
She, Wraith and áine all leave at the same time. Comparing the three SUVs that make up Wraith and áine's secure cavalcade to Allison driving her own lone Mercedes, I can't help but pity the socialite a little. Kenneth doesn't care about her safety at all.
Mick won't even take me to a restaurant without setting up security on site beforehand.
"How did it go?" Mick's arms come around me from behind, pulling me against his hard body.
I rest my hands on his forearms, letting the delight unmuted by more than a decade of marriage my heart feels at our connection wash over me before answering.
"Depends on how you look at it. Good, if we're glad Allison isn't complicit and I kind of am for Kenny Jr.'s sake.
Bad if we hoped to get anything out of her.
Kenneth doesn't tell his wife anything. She thought he owned the businesses he was running for Shaughnessy Corp. "
Mick turns me around and our eyes lock, our bodies pressed tightly together. "There's no love lost between those two."
"No, there isn't."
"Not like us."
I smile at my beloved sociopath. "No, not like us."
"We tell each other everything," he says with deep satisfaction that used to surprise me.
It took a while to accept how truly obsessed my husband is with me. Every tiny thing he knows about me, my experiences and emotions fill a heart designed not to feel with joy.
"Yes, we do. And now it's your turn. What did Wraith have to say?"
Mick's eyes burn with victory. "áine found the connection between Kenneth and the Hollow Point Kings and their human trafficking enterprise."
"She didn't tell me!" But then she didn't have a chance, did she?
Allison was here.
"Your da scheduled the tribunal for three days from now."
Relief flooding me, my body sags a little. Kenneth needs to be eliminated as a threat to my husband and to other girls like Sadie.
"You'll do the interrogation, right?" I ask.
"Me and Wraith. He'll pick Kenneth up tonight after he drops áine off at their place." Mick's phone buzzes and he pulls it from his pocket without letting go of me.
All the warmth that being with me brings to him disappears and my husband becomes the cold sociopath mobster again. "Wraith's SUV was T-boned on the LIE."
"A hit?" Just when we have Kenneth dead-to-rights?
That's not a coincidence.
"Yes. I'll take care of it. I want you and the chislers in the saferoom until I get back."
I don't argue that the mansion is one of the safest places on the planet nowadays. I just nod. "But Fitz is still training with Brice at the Bunker."
"I'll call Brice on my way to the accident site. He'll keep Fitz on lockdown until I give the all-clear."
"Be safe," I order him.
For a second the emotion Mick only shows me and our children glows in his eyes. "Always. I have too much to lose if I'm not."
"You got that right."
With a brief but intense kiss, he's gone and I'm being ushered into the family saferoom with the littles, my sister, Zoey and Mamo.