Chapter 32 Finn
FINN
Ipark the van and kill the engine. There aren’t many people around this late. The street lights glow a soft orange and occasionally flicker. The apartment building looms to my left, windows bright. The doorman looks half asleep.
“How much did you bribe him?” I ask, not taking my eyes from the building.
Liam answers, sounding almost lazy about it. “Fifty grand.”
I laugh and stare. “Seriously? Fifty for a doorman?”
“What? The guy’s really well paid. You want him to keep his mouth shut, it costs.”
He’s got a point, but still. This operation is already way more expensive than I thought it would be.
Not that the money is an issue. I’ve never been a big spender. I live comfortably and I have my vices, but I’m not crazy about it. My war chest is likely much, much bigger than anyone in my family realizes.
I make a quick call and raise the phone to my ear. No walkies this time, only phones. That’s more of a risk but it’ll have to do. Can’t have our line of communication failing again like it did with Redmond.
“Yes, darling? Are you in position?” Caroline answers almost immediately. She sounds excited.
“Just parked. How are things over there?”
“Fine. Terrible. You know. But Dermot’s here and he doesn’t seem like he’s leaving anytime soon.” She’s talking at a whisper. I assume she’s hiding in a bathroom or something.
“Good. Keep an eye on him and call the second something changes. We’re heading in shortly.”
“Be careful. Gotta go. Talk soon.”
She hangs up. I pause and look at my phone.
I hate that she’s at her father’s place right now.
I know how much it hurts her to step foot in that house, but it was the best way she came up with to make sure Dermot wouldn’t be home.
She arranged a little family gathering, and while she’ll probably have to swallow some verbal abuse, at least we know they won’t touch her. Not while she’s my wife.
“You ready?” I shove my phone back into my pocket and check my gun.
“Definitely, but I’m not the one with the bum shoulder.”
I absently rub at the wound. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about me.”
“You good to carry those boxes?”
“Probably not, but I’ll make it work.” I get out and Liam follows, moving around the van on his side. We meet at the back and throw the rear doors wide.
The boxes don’t look like much. They’re heavy duty cardboard with some Chinese symbols on the side. But look past the boring exterior, and just beyond, any intrepid searcher will find a bunch of subcompact semi-automatic weapons plus enough ammunition to storm Fort Knox.
I’m about to reach inside when a voice stops me.
“You boys need a hand?”
I almost laugh as I turn around to find Cormac standing casually behind us.
My brother’s wearing street clothes. Black jeans, dark shirt, light jacket. His hair’s messy and slightly curly and his eyes take us in with almost no expression at all. Cormac’s always been hard to read. He’s one cold bastard.
“Jesus shit, where’d you come from?” Liam says, clearly startled. He steps to the side, hand paused mid-reach for a weapon.
Cormac glances at that hand and seems to visibly dismiss the threat. His eyes move back to mine. “You weren’t worried about someone following.”
“Why would I be? I didn’t think the family Ghostman would come after me.”
He tilts his head. “If I were here in a professional capacity, you’d be dead already.”
“Then are you just here to help out?”
“Declan wants a word.”
“I’m busy. Tell him to wait.”
Cormac shakes his head. “Right now.”
“Declan can ask himself.” I turn my back on my brother. “We’ve got a job to do.”
Liam seems uncertain, but he starts reaching for a box, and only stops again when Cormac speaks.
“Caroline’s on her way too.”
I grimace. That bastard. He knows what he’s doing.
I turn again, this time quickly, and step forward close to my brother.
Cormac’s a killer, through and through, and in a fight, I’m not sure I’d win.
Even with Liam’s help, it would be close.
Cormac’s entire job for the family is to take down our enemies.
It’s what he does. It’s what he loves, almost as much as his wife. I think of murder as his first love.
“You really should leave her out of this.”
Cormac barely reacts. “Can we please not make a scene in front of your brother-in-law’s apartment building? If you ever want to follow through with this plan of yours in the future, it’d be better if nobody finds out you were here.”
I glare at him. Cormac stares back impassively. In the end, I snort with frustration and force myself to smile broadly. I shove the mask back into place.
“Alright, big brother, since you’re so persuasive, let’s go talk to the Whelan boss. Liam, you take the van back home.”
“Whatever you say.” He backs away and walks around to the driver’s seat.
I gesture at Cormac. “I assume you have a car?”
He walks off without a word.
Declan’s not happy.
The vibes are bad the second I walk into his office. Caroline’s already there and looks very uncomfortable. I’m not sure what they said to extract her from her father’s place, but I hope it was subtle. She lightly touches my hand, almost unconsciously, the second I stand beside her chair.
My oldest brother is behind his desk drinking gin and glaring. That’s half his job these days: getting drunk and being mad. He runs the family and heads the businesses with ruthless efficiency, and if I’m honest, he does a very good job. He doesn’t have Dad’s charm, but he’s still a good leader.
Right now, I don’t care about that. I’m mostly just pissed.
“Why are we here?” I raise my drink to my lips. Cormac’s sitting in the corner. Seamus is lurking beside him. “You brought the whole gang together.”
Declan keeps on glaring. That’s his default look. “I know what you’ve been doing.”
My eyebrows raise. “You’ve seen my Sudoku book? I’ve been absolutely slaying lately. It’ll be solved in a week, tops.”
“This isn’t a joke.”
“No kidding, bro. Math isn’t funny.”
His fist slams onto the table. His teeth are gritted together. “Two of them are dead, Finn. And now you’re going for a third. It’s bad enough you’re doing this, but you dragged her into it too.”
Everyone’s very still. My heart is racing. Caroline’s stiff as hell under my touch. I keep my hand on her shoulder, trying to reassure her, but this is a surprise.
I keep my smirk firmly in place. It’s my only protection right now. “I don’t know what the fuck—”
“God damn it, Finn, stop playing around. I know it’s you. I know she’s involved too. And if I know, you can be sure the Flanagans are going to figure it out too. What are you thinking? What the hell is going on?”
He’s livid. I can’t blame him. Eamon Flanagan and those cock-sucking sons of his are useful to my oldest brother. They keep the unions happy, the bribes flowing, the books sweetly cooked. They’re profitable, and in our world, that matters more than almost anything.
Except to me.
“You know why.” I stare at him, holding his gaze. My smile’s gone now. Fuck the armor. Let them see the truth they’ve been trying so hard to ignore.
Declan softens, but only slightly. “Shit happened between you and them when you were younger. I get it, you hate them, but this is bad. You know how important they are. We don’t kill our own.”
I step forward, heart racing. I roughly rip my shirt up and show him the scars on my side.
I point to one, an ugly jagged mark. I feel Seamus and Cormac staring.
“Shane did this. Stabbed me with a pencil. I still have some graphite in there somewhere. You ever wonder where I got all these fucking scars? You know their names. Shane, Redmond, Dermot, Malachy, and Eamon. That’s why I look like this. ”
Declan's jaw is tight. “They were assholes. They beat you up—”
“They viciously abused me.” I snarl the words at him, fed up with hiding it.
“You ever wonder why I never went swimming without a shirt on when we were kids? I was hiding all this.” I take my top off and throw it aside.
I doubt my brothers have ever seen me without something covering my skin before.
All these ugly scars. I let them get a good look.
Declan takes me in. His jaw works slightly. “That was all them?” he asks after a long few seconds of scrutiny. “Why didn’t you tell us before?”
“Mom knows. Dad did too. But the Flanagans are important, right? They decided it was nothing, I was exaggerating, and they swept it under the rug. By the time I got old enough to know what happened to me was beyond fucked, I’d already gotten used to hiding it.
Shame kept my mouth shut for years, but anger kept me living. ”
Seamus speaks up. “Dad wouldn’t do that.”
“Bullshit.” I turn to stare at him. His face is red with anger. “Come on. You think Declan would’ve done anything different? Eamon Flanagan’s important now, but he was even bigger back then.”
“I wouldn’t have.” Declan’s voice is quiet but there’s a hard undercurrent.
“They beat me. They stabbed me, tortured me, sliced me, cut me, and laughed in my fucking face. Mom and Dad kept sending me out to that hell every summer, and they knew what was happening, they just didn’t want to admit it. And every nightmare I went through, Caroline dealt with her whole life.”
She’s crying now. Quietly, but her shoulders are shaking. She nods, her face in her hands. “It’s true,” she manages to say, and I squeeze her shoulder to let her know that’s more than enough.
Declan sits back in stunned silence. I should’ve done this a long time ago. This secret’s been killing me for years. I’ve been hiding it with smirks and laughter since I was a kid. That’s all I ever knew how to do.
But now I have Caroline. She suffered even worse than I did, and if I can’t face what happened to me for myself, at least I can do it for her.
“I believe you,” Declan says, face back to its grim cast. “But you still can’t go around murdering Flanagans.”
“They deserve fucking worse,” Seamus says sharply, his voice trembling with barely restrained anger. “Are you kidding me right now, Dec? We should burn them to the fucking ground.”
“He’s right.” Cormac sounds detached, which is a bad sign. For the Flanagans anyway. “They need to die.”
Hope blooms in my chest. I’ve always loved my brothers, but there’s a distance between us.
This secret I’ve carried all my life eats at me and makes me feel like an outsider, like they can’t possibly see the real me.
Now there’s a bright light, strong enough to disinfect my rotten past, and it feels good.
My insides are all twisted up, but hearing Cormac and Seamus support me is one of the best moments of my life.
It lights a fire inside my heart and makes me feel like I’m really a part of this family after all.
Declan leans forward. “No.”
“Fuck that,” Seamus snaps, surging forward. Cormac has to hold him back. “You fucking see him, right? You see the scars? If I knew—bro, if I had known—” His voice cracks. Strong, proud, vicious Seamus. It kills me, hearing the raw emotion in his tone.
I go to him. I take his hand in a strong grip and pull him into a tight hug. He squeezes back hard and takes a deep breath. “If I had known—” he says again but still can’t get it all out.
“I know, bro, I know.” I step back, taking a shaky breath. Caroline’s still crying, but she’s calming now. Cormac’s face is ice like always, but there’s an edge to him, and he’s staring right at Declan.
“No,” Declan says again.
“Why not?” Cormac asks simply.
“Look at this from the perspective of the other families.” He grimaces when Seamus lets out an ugly, rage-filled laugh, but presses on.
“This is my fucking job, you assholes. You three get to stand there and be all pissed, but I have to think about this. And the ugly truth is we can’t just burn the Flanagans to the ground for personal shit they did years ago.
We just can’t. The other families will be absolutely livid and they’ll start thinking we might do it to them.
The second they start to wonder if life is better somewhere else is the second we start losing power.
It can’t happen. The answer is no, we can’t just wipe them out. ”
The silence is heavy. Seamus is tense like he wants to spring at Declan, but I tilt my head, listening carefully to what my brother said—but also to what he didn’t say.
“We can’t destroy them as a family,” I say slowly and walk up to Declan’s desk. “But what if they destroyed each other?”
He looks back at me steadily. “That wouldn’t be my fault.”
“If Malachy found guns in his brother’s apartment, for example.”
“Internal family squabbles aren’t my problem.”
“And you wouldn’t have anything to say about it?”
“I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”
I nod at him slowly. “Alright, Dec. You want clean hands? You got them.”
“Not my hands. You better fucking understand that, Finn. I love you, you know that. I’d kill for anyone in this room, even Caroline. But my responsibility is to the clan as a whole. What you four do—” He waves a hand and sits back. “Not my problem.”
Seamus grunts and shakes his head. “I’m glad I don’t have your fucking job.”
“You’d be terrible at it,” Cormac says and nods once at me. “Comfort your wife. When you’re ready, find me. I’m not busy right now.”
“Same here, brother.” Seamus throws back a drink. “I’m in a killing mood.”
I pull my shirt back on then help Caroline to her feet. She leans against me as we leave the office together. I have a feeling Seamus and Cormac are going to lay into Declan for a little while, but that’s not my problem. In the hall, I hold my wife tightly and wipe her cheeks until they’re dry.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I’m really sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry ever again. This is good, baby, it’s a good thing. We don’t have to hide who we are anymore. What happened to us really happened, and we don’t need to pretend like it didn’t.”
“Your brothers… they’re really going to help?”
“Absolutely.”
“And that’s good, right?”
“Cormac’s the scariest bastard I’ve ever met. Seamus is like a tank when he gets going.”
She touches my face. “I guess that means my brothers are fucked?”
“Fucked is an understatement.”