9. Finn
Finn
Ashes and Lies
Holy feck.
So, this is how it feels to be bound and gagged on the chair in the middle of the warehouse under the low watt shaded light bulb.
When I try looking around, all I see is darkness, but maybe that’s ‘cause my eyes have swollen shut.
I look at the floor. They’ve thrown sawdust down there to absorb my blood. That’s what I would’ve done too.
My legs are spread wide so I don’t get blood on my jeans.
It makes cleaning up easier. I wonder who’ll be burning their clothes after this? Who’ll be hanging their leather jacket from the hook on the wall?
I hear a voice I recognize. Feck, it’s difficult to talk over bleeding lips.
“Johnny, lad, congratulations on your promotion.” I slur over the word “congratulations,” but manage to make my way to the end of the sentence without doing it again. My Irish pride is real. Can’t have myself falling at the first hurdle in this race.
Johnny’s voice. “The Boss brought in an independent contractor for this, Finn. You’re still my captain.”
“Cheers for that, mate.” Hurts when I bring my lips together to say “mate.” “Could you tell him to lay off my jaw and nose? Want to stay pretty for the ladies.”
Johnny snorts with laughter off in the distance. “Right you are, Finn.”
I drift off for a bit. The Byrne plant, Liam told me to meet Saoirse at the bakery. I heard the apartment door open, but could sense it wasn’t Saoirse.
When my black-haired lass comes into a room, the molecules shift in the air. This was different. Our sacred spot, our neutral ground, was infiltrated.
I kept my wits about me, flicking a belt around my fist and withdrawing the flick-knife from under my pillow. It was too late to reach for my gun in the closet.
I pushed against the wall by the door and waited.
Four masked men, and they still weren’t enough to take me down. The first two got stuck with the knife. Easy to stab the first one in the throat, pull the knife out, aim for the next one’s eye.
Two to one, I threw down my knife when it got too bloody slippery to hold and relied on my straight right to lay into them. Chin down, I closed in, landing left hooks the same way a soldier fires a scattergun. The third man went down and didn’t get up.
I was ready to square up to the last man standing, but he maced me.
Without my breathing and my sight, he must’ve aimed his cosh at the back of my skull and gone to town on it.
Leaning forward, I spit blood.
And… there’s the pain. Fecking skull-splitting agony it is. But it only makes my grin wider.
I hear the wicket door open and the heavy tread of old men approaching.
Connor—my father—grunts. “Put it on the table and then leave us.”
Ah. A face to face with my dear old Da. How deeply touching.
“Look into my face if you dare, lad.”
“It’s the back of my head that’s hurting, Da, not my face. Actually, your boys darkened my daylights too, now that I think about it. Did you bring any ice?”
He tuts, like I’m a naughty schoolboy. “They found a gun with your prints on it next to Seamus Byrne’s corpse, Finn.”
“Who’s Seamus Byrne?” I don’t bother asking how they got a match on the fingerprints so fast. Like the docklands, the New York police force is cluttered with Irish.
The old man steps up and lands a swift smack on my cheek.
I’m laughing. “Heh. Not the face. I keep telling you.”
He hisses, breathless at my perceived betrayal. “An O’Shea man with a Byrne lass is how wars are started, lad.”
My grin is fixed in place, but my brain ticks over into the red when I hear Uncle Eamon’s words coming out of Connor’s mouth.
The whiskey-soaked fool betrayed me. Ah. I thought of that man as a father to me, a priest willing to hear my confession without insisting I pray afterward. Now, it’s fecking personal, because he made it so.
“All the evidence says you did it, lad. I don’t want a war on my hands, so I have no choice in the matter.”
The old man doesn’t like it when I wind myself up and let myself go. Only he gets to decide who lives and dies.
But I must know. “What happened to Liam? I didn’t kill him.” But I know he’s dead after delivering his final message, probably left to rot in the ground at the Byrne estate.
Connor becomes remote, his voice distant. “Not my pony. Not my fecking horse race, boy.” He lifts his voice. “Bring the bolt cutter over here, Johnny.”
I brace myself for the “I take no pleasure from having to do this” speech, but it never comes. That’s funny. When I call for the bolt cutters, it’s always so I can cut off a finger. Or a toe, if I’m feeling generous.
“Hold out your hand.” Okay. I take that back. He’s going for a finger after all.
“Cut off the whole fecking hand if you want to, Da. I’ll not confess to a murder I didn’t commit.” I hold out my hand and open my eyes to watch the cutters glide closer to my hand out of the darkness.
There’s a loud crunch as the old man cuts the family ring off my left hand. “I wouldn’t try sliding a ring off those battle-scarred knuckles of yours, boy. Now, go. You’re exiled. Excommunicated from the O’Sheas.”
A nick tells me the wristbands have been cut. I know enough about sitting tied to a chair for hours not to get up immediately.
“So, that’s it then? You’re going to believe what you see and not what your heart tells you?” I’m flexing my hands to get the blood flowing, looking into the darkness with one eye… The less swollen one.
The old man won’t look at me. “That’s your gun on the fecking table over there, Finn. And it’s your bullet in Seamus.” He reasons with me. “The evidence says you did it. That’s enough for me. For anyone.”
So be it.
He calls out to me as I leave. “Don’t be going back to Damian’s either. The cops are there.” He mutters under his breath. “Fecking maniac the boy is.” And then louder. “It’s well rid of you I am.”
Hands in my pockets, I cross the bridge, cap pulled down to hide my eyes. The Verrazzano at night reflects the Bay Ridge lights. They fade too quickly and disappear behind me.
The pub, the docks, the streets—where I grew up and where I learned to fight—every landmark represents a goodbye that I can’t say.
Saoirse will think I left her, that I sold her out. She’ll believe all the fecking lies they choose to tell her. Because I gave her every reason to.
In my Irish pride I pursued her. But that wasn’t enough. I had to control her and claim her to relieve the stubborn adoration I felt when she said her prayers in the chapel that night.
Brick by brick, I built the case against myself. She’ll never believe I need her now.
She’s mine. She said so.
Her words cross the bridge with me as I leave everything else behind.
I might not deserve my beautiful black-haired storí. But I’ll come back for her anyway.
One day.