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Part Five
EPILOGUES
Forty-Eight
Finn
“Con? Let me up.”
A yawn sounded on the intercom. “It’s four.”
“Yes. I know.”
“Four, Finn. You know I don’t get up until six.”
I shot Padraig a look and watched him squint at his watch. “I know you don’t, but this is different. And it’s four in the afternoon, Con, not pre-dawn. Let me up.”
He yawned but I heard the buzz as the elevator drifted down to greet us in the lobby of his building.
When the doors opened, Padraig and I clambered in, and he remarked in confusion, “It’s late.”
“Not for Conor. Anyway, this is the only way I’d get you up there. He’ll be too tired to check the video feed.”
“It’s a lot more high tech than it was when I was younger,” Paddy admitted uneasily.
“Yeah, you hung around in the back of restaurants—”
“Huh, do I look like a fucking Italian? They did that shit. We went to bars, Finn.Bars.”
My lips twitched at his sudden descent into full on New Yorker. “You can take the man out of Hell’s Kitchen, but—”
“Yeah, yeah. Can’t take Hell’s Kitchen outta the man.” He hunched his shoulders in his coat. “You know him well, don’t you?”
“Con?” I frowned. “Of course.”
“It’s good to see. Frank, Aidan, and I, we were tight, but I can tell you and your brothers are closer.”
I pondered that a second and mused, “I think in your position, I’d have no fear about going to Junior.”
He grimaced. “Times were different back then. Had shit with the Haitians and the Aryans going down. This was before the wars, but shit was rough. The eighties were harder going. Lots of territory disputes. Your da made Stalin look friendly where his paranoia was concerned.”
“That sounds about right,” I said gruffly.
“Wish I’d been as tight with him as you guys are. Makes my soul pleased, ya know? Looking at the lot of yous, I know somehow, those fucked up folks of yours managed to make some decent sons.”
My brows lifted at that character assassination. “You sound… critical.”
“I am. Wasn’t at the time. But with distance and the passage of years, and then the fact I got Liam now, I saw what he did and realized it was fucked up.” He reached up and scratched his chin. “Our da was of the same school as yours. ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child.’”
“You weren’t like that with Liam?”
“Nah. I had two choices. Knew I could be like Aidan or I could be likeme.”
“And you decided to be like you?”
“I did, but I still fucked it up anyway.” He heaved a sigh. “I fuck up a lot of shit. That’s another reason why I didn’t tell Aidan. There’s only so much shit you can dig your way out of.”
The doors opened to an empty hall. With his words drifting around my head, I beckoned him out and hollered, “The fuck are you, Kid?”
