Page 53 of Lorcan

“What are you talking about?”

“Your father had siblings who never rose to take the throne of the empire, right? He did it himself, claiming to be the true heir of the O’Farrell dynasty…but he wasn’t the eldest.”

I thought back to our uncles and tried to understand but shook my head. “Yeah, he was.”

“No,” she said. “Finneas was the eldest son, sure, but he had an older sister. Now, I get it, no one really thinks of women as leaders in family empires, whatever, but the truth of it is, you had an Aunt and her name was Roisin.”

“I’ve never heard of her,” I said. “And I know our family tree, Tee, there’s no way we have an Aunt.”

“She died just before your dad did,” Teeghan continued. “And from what I could gather from Ronan’s fucking rants about this place being his, it seems she wasn’t too happy with Finneas when he took over.”

Hearing about a family member you had no idea about was really hard, especially because I knew my father was a bastard. It was completely in the realm of normal for him to cut off a family member, he did it all the time.

Fucking asshole.

“What else did you learn?”

“So Roisin and my dad were bonking and had Ronan, then Jeremiah. I think it’s after my birth that he stopped with her and she hated him. Somehow, she got involved with the O’Brien’s and they hatched a plan to teach their boys to hate on the O’Farrell’s. This whole thing is like forces coming from every direction that want your seat.”

“What do you want me to do about that?” I asked, feeling as if a weight was permanently nestled on my shoulders.

“Show them you mean business and that they can’t have Ireland.”

“Haven’t I been doing that, Tee?”

“No,” she said, simply. “You’ve been reacting, what you need to do is make a statement and be proactive. Show them what you do to traitors.”

“How would you do that?” I asked. Tee was a mastermind, she knew how to do things and make them stick. It was how we became so close. She pestered me until I opened up and once I did, she had become someone I always relied on.

She was my sister, even if my idiot brother hadn’t made it official yet.

“You still have Saverio’s body, right?”

I didn’t like where this was going but I had to trust the woman. She’d helped me out of a lot of sticky situations so far.

“Yes.”

“String his body up and make sure they hear about it. I have heard mumblings that a few of your enemies are in town, all around Galway. I mean…what better statement?”

“You’re sick, you know that?” I said.

“So are they,” she replied. “And they wouldn’t hesitate to do the same to you.”

She got out of the chair and walked out of the office, leaving me with a huge decision to make. Saverio may have been a traitor to me, but he was also a brother. I couldn’t simply allow his brothers to find him that way. I picked up my phone and dialed Mateo.

“What’s the news, brother?” Conor asked me as he found me in the back garden, sitting on the bench our mother had forced our father to put in so she could watch the bees do their thing on the flowers. She’d always loved bees. Even when we had gotten a bee sting, it was never the bee’s fault. As a child, it hurt that our mother didn’t care that we'd been stung. Rather, she would tell us the bee would now die because that was a death sentence to it. I understand now. The bee made a sacrifice because it was getting rid of a threat, to keep his Queen safe.

That’s how he saw it.

I had men inside, even allies from near and far, that were going to lay their life on the line to protect Ireland. Ireland was the Queen, and us, her loyal servants, the bees. We wouldn’t all make it. We could potentially perish in the coming days, and all I wanted to do was hole up in a room with Bridget and ride out the wave.

But I couldn’t.

I had to do what was right by our people.

“Nothing new, Con.”

“So why was that piece of shit journalist Tyrone here just now? We don’t invite snakes into our home.”

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