“When I was younger,” he says, staring out at the casino across the river, “my father had a very particular vision for me.”
“Politician.” I remember him mentioning this.
“Yes. I was bright and picked up skills very easily. I knew how to charm people.”
“Not much has changed there,” I deadpan.
He smiles almost gratefully at me. It makes me uncomfortable.
“I didn’t want to go into politics. I didn’t know what I did want, but my senior year, I got into every school I applied to. All the prestigious ones my father drooled over. But he didn’t care. I wasn’t going to major in what he thought I should, so all of that meant nothing to him. But there was another way he could use me.”
His voice is heavy with pain, even after all these years. I think back to the letters in the secret compartment and understand better why they’re there. Why they’re his greatest treasure.
“I was a good-looking kid. Women liked me, and I seemed older than I was. Once I turned seventeen, my father basically pimped me out to any woman he needed a favor from. If they didn’t come through, he’d reveal my age and blackmail them.”
“Jesus, that’s awful, Finn.” I lightly touch his arm.
He shrugs. “I could’ve said no, I suppose, but I liked the attention. I enjoyed the sex—I was a horny teenage boy, anyway. And my father was proud of me for once.”
His casual words don’t disguise the sadness etched on his face.
“You were underage. That’s not okay. What he did to you was not okay.”
“There was this one girl he wanted me to date. We were both seniors in high school. She was a nice enough girl. Not particularly pretty or interesting, but that never seemed to matter to my father. Her parents were rich, even richer than us. Old school Boston Brahmin, like my father pretends to be.”
A cold wind picks up, shaking the bare branches of the trees lining the river. He continues to stare across its frozen expanse.
“He wanted me to get her pregnant,” he says with a bitter laugh. “Can you imagine? He wanted me to trap this poor girl.”
“And you too,” I remind him.
“I decided then I was done being his puppet. I’d fuck every woman I wanted, whenever I wanted, but he’d get nothing from it. I wanted to ruin his chances with this family. They were very well connected to investors my father was chasing. I found the sharpest knife I could and gave myself this.” He points to the scar through his eyebrow. “Dragged it right through my skin. It took seven stitches to close it up. I told the girl my father did it to me but made her promise not to say anything to her folks because he’d hurt me worse if she did.”
“Finn, he was hurting you. Maybe not in a way people could see, but it was just as bad.”
He ignores my comment.
“I knew she’d say something. I shouldn’t have used her like that, but it was the start of a glorious career for me. Her father confronted mine, who denied it, but the other man didn’t believe him.”
“Why your face, Finn?” I think I know the answer, but I wonder if it’d help him to say it.
“Two reasons. One, because he was using my appearance as leverage. Two, because every time he looks at me, I want him to be reminded that I took something from him. I ruined any possibility of his profiting from this family, and he’s hated me ever since. I went to Dartmouth and majored in History. And that was it.”
“Did your mother know?” I ask softly.
“She did.”
“Jesus. What about your siblings?”
“No. They think I was in a fencing accident. Patrick was off at school and everyone else was too young to understand what was going on.”
“That includes you. No wonder you’re so angry.”
And no wonder he has so many issues with women. How could he not?
“I got so caught up in not being what he wanted that I turned into someone I’m not exactly proud of. I have nothing to show for myself other than spite. What kind of a life is that? What kind of person does what I did to someone like you? At least at seventeen I had the integrity not to drag some poor girl into my family’s cesspit.”
I don’t know exactly what to say here. I’m feeling so many things. I’m sad for Finn, but still angry at him and his despicable father. I’m sad for myself, too, and unsure of how Finn will be able to keep his father from hurting me or my brother.
Even if he is willing to give up whatever his long-term plan is.
And do I want him to give that up if it means losing an opportunity to take James Carney down? We watch the Orange Line train rumble across the Mystic in the distance.
“Pain does terrible things to people if they don’t find ways to resolve it,” I say, finally. “And sometimes circumstances force us to make choices that turn us into someone we don’t recognize. And eventually we believe it’s our truth, and that there’s nothing we could or should do to change it.”
I’m talking about him, but about me too.
Then I move tentatively closer to him. After that story, I don’t want to just grab onto him.
He wraps his big arm around my shoulders, a wry smile on his face. “You’re the first person I’ve told this to,” he says. “So I guess we’re each other’s firsts in some kind of way.”
As I laugh, my breath hangs in front of me, frozen.
“Thank you for meeting me,” he says.
I rest my head against his chest. “I’ll carry the aftermath of my assault with me for a long time, Finn. I need you to understand how deeply you hurt me. I’ve got my own scars now.”
“Don’t compare your scars to mine. Yours are a testament to your bravery. Mine is a legacy of spite.”
“I’m doing what I’m doing to help your employees, Finn. That’s my big goal. But don’t think that I’m not partially driven by spite. I want your father to pay for what he did to me. To Jamilah. And for threatening my brother.”
“I never wanted to be like him,” Finn muses, “but it’s exactly what happened. It shouldn’t have taken me this long to feel ashamed.”
“What’s next, then?” I ask, looking up at him.
The tenderness in his eyes frightens me. I don’t know what to do with that information. I don’t know if I can forgive him. I don’t want to hurt him further, but I need more time to process all this.
He gives my shoulders a squeeze and tells me about his plan to divest his father from his properties.
“Finn, unionizing won’t bankrupt the casino. If your father manages to not fuck up other operations, it won’t impact his ability to pay off those loans.”
He nods. “I know. I was foolish to buy into his narrative. It’s funny—I hate him as much as he hates me. Maybe more. But there’s still a part of me that believes all the things he says.”
“I believe what my father says about me too, sometimes.”
He scowls. “I hate how he treats you.”
I feel his anger toward my father more than I hear it.
“If you ever want me to intervene I will,” he says.
Oh god, no.
“He’ll be the means to his own end,” I say softly. “He doesn’t need anyone else to intervene.”