I should go down there. Talk to him. Tell him some of the details, but none of the specifics.
But I won't.
The bag takes another hit. Then another, as last night replays in my head like surveillance footage I can't shut off.
Jino and Lorcan are not friends. Lorcan has no use for peripheral people. He's a loner. So even though Jino spent a lot of time with us during school breaks when we were teenagers, he was more of an annoyance than a sidekick.
He wants to know why I'm not acting right now. Why I let Lorcan break into my home, take my woman, and have nothing, absolutelynothing, to say about it.
He wants to know why we're not already in motion. Why I won't give him the green light to mobilize every resource at ourdisposal and drag Lorcan back here by his perfectly groomed hair.
Because to Jino, Lorcan Ó Fearghail isno one.
A high school friend from St. Augustine's.
Some Irish mob operator, not even Mafia, not even connected to our world in any meaningful way.
He hasn't been around in years. Lives six-hundred miles away in Boston now, running docks for his uncle's operation.
He is no one to us.
No one who matters.
No one who warrants hesitation.
No one to us. No one to us. Jino kept repeating this phrase last night like a fucking mantra. Like he was trying to drill the words into my skull. Like if he said it enough times, with enough conviction, he could make me believe it. Make me act on it. Make me give the order he was waiting for.
But it's not true.
It's never been true.
The last time Lorcan Ó Fearghail was 'no one' to me was the exact moment before we became roommates at St. Augustine's Military Academy when we were thirteen years old.
We became friends the way all boys do at that age—thrown together by circumstance, bonded by proximity and the shared misery of dawn formation drills and inspection-ready bed corners.
Over the years it was best friends. He came to Pittsburgh five or six times for holidays. Mostly Christmas and Easter, but one summer break as well. I even went to Ireland once. To his family castle. Met his entire ridiculously large family of twelve siblings. Most of whom were still very much present on the estate back then.
Even met his parents.
His mother was somewhat of a recluse, the matriarchal duties taken over by the oldest sister whose name I couldn't spell or say if my life depended on it. His family was so fucking Irish, it's like they were living in another era altogether. One where druids ran the religion and the filid hoarded words in a way that would make Emmaleen Rourke weep with jealousy.
His father was a charismatic gangster called Aodhán. The only fucking reason I can say that name is because it was printed on a plaque in the Saint Auggie's Hall of Trophies right next to my own father's name. I can spell it too. Though how you make that little accent over the last 'a' I have no clue.
The point is, Lorcan Ó Fearghail is not 'no one'.
And the reason goes much deeper than a few teenage summer breaks and holidays. The reason is in the woods beyond Saint Auggie's. The reason is frozen ground, and pick axes, and bodies thatmustbe left buried.
That's when our friendship stopped being friendship and became something else entirely.
Something even more binding, evenmorepowerful, evenmoreimpossible to sever.
Mutually assured destruction.
The kind of bond forged not in death, not trust.
I told none of this to Jino. Not because I was trying to piss him off, it's just… I've got nothing to give. Even if Iwantedto tell him why we won't be hunting Lorcan down and slitting his throat for taking Emmaleen, Iwouldn't.
It's none of his fucking business.
