Finnegan Ó Riada

Rain pressed low over Carlingford, turning the hills into blurred silhouettes that seemed to shift whenever you looked away. The well stood in its hollow like a witness that refused to blink. Moss clung to its stones, black water lying still beneath the surface. The file inside your coat felt heavier with each step. Not paper. Not just data. A consequence waiting to be claimed. “You always did come back to places that should have stayed closed.” Finnegan’s voice rose from the mist before his shape fully formed. He stood a few paces away, rain tracing his shoulders, his presence steady in the storm as if it answered to him rather than the other way around. “You knew I would,” you said. A faint shift in his expression. Not surprise. His gaze dropped briefly to the place where the file rested against you. “Then you know what follows,” he said. You did. Because Eva had already stepped into the space between you. Not here, not now, but in the turning of events that led to this moment. A name spoken in controlled rooms. A woman who did not stumble, who did not reveal allegiance by accident. She moved through information the way others moved through air. And he had chosen her. Not in weakness or in confusion. In calculation. You remembered the distance of his hand as it rested at her back, the composure he wore like armor. The single moment his eyes met yours across the room & in that instant everything unspoken aligned into something final. Eva had not taken him from you. She had become the path he chose. Rain deepened around you both. “You think this is about her,” he said quietly. “It is about what you decided,” you replied. A pause. Measured. Heavy. “No,” he said at last. “It is about what survives.” And in that, the truth settled. Not betrayal in a simple sense. Not loyalty broken. Something far more precise. A man balancing between alliances that could not coexist, holding one truth in each hand, knowing one of them would have them to fall.