Page 12 of Sins of Innocence

"You're not going to tell me? Or it's not my turn?" I demand.

"Why do you think Mick would kill you?"

My hands curl into fists. There were more words in his question than any of his answers to mine.

"Don't play dumb. I know I'm alive on sufferance. That if I step out of line, not just me, but my daughters will pay the price."

"Have you?"

"Stepped out of line? No. I have not. I've done exactly what Mick Fitzgerald ordered me to. I'm still living in New York – even though I'd rather raise my daughters almost anywhere else – so the mob can keep an eye on me and make sure I don't betray any secrets. Not that I know any. I work in a miserable job, for a lech who makes a pass at least once a week, to prove I'm loyal to that same mob."

Helpless anger fills me as I list off all the accommodation I've been forced to make to keep my daughters safe because their father wanted the good things in life and was stupid enough to believe taking money to betray the mob was the way to get them.

Troy dazzled my naïve eighteen-year-old self with his sophistication. He wore designer suits and watches. Well, I thought they were designer suits at the time. They were knockoffs, but they impressed the heck out of my teenage self.

He always carried the latest smart phone on the market. He took me to dinner at Michelin star restaurants and bought me jewelry from Cartier.

Yeah, those were fakes too, but I didn't find that out until I tried to sell the jewelry to help make ends meet after he died.

Against my mom's advice, I married him two weeks after we found out I was pregnant with Sadie. He'd forgotten the condom once too often and I thought he was such a prince for taking responsibility.

Mom didn't want me to get married so young, not even because I was pregnant. She offered to help me with Sadie and promised to watch her while I went to college.

But Troy was adamant and so darn charming.

So, I married him. He bought us a house (so heavily mortgaged I couldn't hope to keep up the payments after his death). I didn't have a Mercedes like Allison, but I did have a shiny minivan.

He didn't want me to go to college, but mom watched our daughter for me while I took classes part time without him knowing. It took me four years and two difficult pregnancies to get my Associate's Degree in Accounting.

There was no question of me working though. Especially when I discovered I was pregnant again right before our second daughter, Neeve, started kindergarten.

Troy was ecstatic that the birth control failed.

Me? Not so much. I love all my daughters, but pregnancy was hard and Troy worked long hours. When he was home, he wanted to play with his girls and there were times I felt like a single parent.

The prospect of adding another child to our family dynamic was not pure joy for me.

Only when my husband didn't live to see Joy born, that's exactly what I named her because she brought it back into all our lives.

Despite my fairytale turning into a horror story and learning my prince had been a frog who left me and my girls in the boiling pot of water, Joy's birth reminded all of us that life brings both happiness and grief.

As I come out of my trip down memory lane, I realize the man beside me is practically vibrating with fury.

That granite jaw and stiff shoulders could be from something other than anger, but he's got what Joy would call his mad face on.

"You are not going back there." The words come out like bullets.

And are just as devastating.

"I don't have a choice. Ask your boss."

Kieran's grip on the steering wheel goes white knuckled. "No."

I wish. "After I deal with whatever is going on with Sadie and Kara Shaughnessy, which I realize now that I'm calmer probably has something to do with what happened at St. Patrick's, though I'm not sure why they didn't call me if my daughter was involved, I have to go back to that house and beg Allison not to fire me before somehow getting the rest of the preparations done for her dinner party."

"You aren't begging her for anything. And you're not going back to that house."

"And because you say it, it has to be true?" I demand, fed up with the fear I've been living in for over five years.