Maniac - Necessary Evils #7 - Ch. 11 (Patreon)

Okay, next chapter. Unedited, unbeta'd. As always, this is a lot of people to keep track of so be gentle. Chapter 13 should be up tomorrow for $10 tier members. 

Thomas 

The war room was bursting at the seams. Thomas had given talks to thousands of people; CEO’s, heads of state, politicians, hell, even royalty. But he’d never been so nervous as he was facing down his own family. He fought the urge to fidget, to wipe his sweaty palms on his pants or shift his weight. He couldn’t fall apart again. His family couldn’t function without a leader, and that was him.

For better or worse.

He looked around as they all settled into their respective groups, some of them forming surprising little sub-units within the space. It was no surprise that Jericho’s kids all huddled together on the floor, but it was when Arlo and Dimitri settled comfortably in their midst, clearly all familiar with each other.

How had their paths even crossed? That was a question for another day.

His sons, along with Jericho and Lucas, had opted for the office chairs, taking up their usual seats around the immense table. But unlike the others, Zane, Felix, and Noah sat directly on the conference table, careful to avoid Calliope’s elaborate setup, but as close to Thomas as possible without standing beside him.

The three held hands like they were at a candlelight vigil. These three were the ones he feared hurting the most. In the forty-eight hours or so he’d been with Aiden, he’d come to realize that he’d wrongfully painted himself as a villain. That he hadn’t allowed himself the same grace he’d easily given to others…even Shane. But that didn’t make what he was about to do any easier. Hell, if anything it made it harder. Admitting he was fallible and not some kind of superhero like Noah imagined him to be, was going to be much harder than just being a killer.

“I guess we should get started,” Thomas said.

Just as he was about to gesture to Calliope that he was ready to begin, the door to the war room burst open, Archer and Mac all but falling inside, Archer frowning at Thomas. “Did you start without us?”

Start without them? Thomas hadn’t even known they were in town. When he hadn’t seen them among the others, he’d assumed they couldn’t get away or that they just hadn’t been notified. “Why aren’t you in Vegas?”

Archer formed a heart with his hands. “Aww, I missed you too, dad.”

Thomas sighed. “You know what I mean. Who’s minding the school?”

Archer and Mac exchanged amused looks, before looking back at Thomas. “You know we don’t actually run the whole school right?” Mac said. “Boone and the others do the day to day toddler taming. We just pick the assignments and teach the occasional defense class.”

“So there really is a school for baby psychos?” Seven asked, though not to anybody in particular.

“We prefer the term neurodiverse,” Thomas said, giving Seven a stern look. “Psychopathy is a spectrum.”

Asa scoffed. “I, for one, prefer psycho. Neurodiverse makes us sound…soft.”

Thomas gave his son a baleful look. Nobody had ever looked at any of his son’s and thought they were soft. Well, maybe Atticus, but he was only that way for Jericho. His son’s had been called many things from nerd to drunk, but they’d never been called soft.

“I like neurospicy. Makes us sound tasty,” Avi said, winking at Felix who rolled his eyes so hard Thomas feared he might injure himself.

Archer dropped into a chair beside Calliope. “Also-to answer your question-we’ve been here since Aiden kidnapped you. We got the SOS and took the jet back ASAP.”

“Five minutes working on a military base and he only speaks in acronyms,” Adam mused out loud.

Archer gave him the finger without bothering to look in his direction.

Aiden glowered at Archer. “I didn’t kidnap him.”

Thomas found himself fighting a smile at Aiden’s grumpy face. “You kind of did…but just a little.”

Aiden’s gaze cut to his and for a minute, Thomas forgot they were in a room full of people. Aiden was beautiful and forceful. And when he looked at Thomas like that…like he wanted to eat him alive, Thomas lost his ability to think of anything but the man before him. Aiden was bad for business. Whenever he was near, Thomas got lost in him.

“I didn’t hear you complaining,” Aiden murmured.

Especially when he said things like that, while looking at Thomas like he was a slab of meat. Heat flooded his system as memories of their earlier encounter filled his head, temporarily rendering him mute.

“Oh-kay. I am not comfortable with this,” Noah said, looking at Aiden. “Stop flirting with my dad. It’s weird.”

“That’s not what you said yesterday,” Aiden reminded him.

Had Aiden talked to Noah about Thomas? That was new information. What the hell was happening? When had Thomas lost total control of this family?

“Hey, it’s Aiden’s dad too,” August remembered, lips twitching.

Aiden pointed a finger in his direction. “Don’t fucking start, August. I swear I will punch you too.”

“Color me terrified,” August said, tone bored.

“Color me terrified,” Aiden mocked in a pretentious tone that made the others chuckle.

“Oh yeah,” Seven said in a half-whisper. “I forgot he’s like Thomas’s…son? Awkward.”

“More like awesome,” Arsen challenged, grinning as he watched the back and forth.

“Careful, August,” Atticus said. “You don’t want to piss off dad’s favorite.”

“Yeah, he might ground you,” Avi crowed.

“I hate all of you,” Aiden said.

“Our new step-dad’s kind of abusive,” Adam said, then snickered.

Aiden looked at Thomas. “Control your children.”

August laced his fingers together on the conference room table. “Hey, I don’t know what you’re complaining about. You just moved up the rank from son to husband. I’m the one who’s going to have to explain to my children how Uncle Aiden went to grandpa Aiden.”

It was clear to Thomas that August was not at all upset about it. He didn’t even have the capacity to be truly upset. Aiden, however, seemed to be rendered speechless at August’s casual rebuttal. His gaze darted to Thomas like he half expected him to bolt from the room.

But Thomas wasn’t going anywhere. He didn’t know where any of this was going, but he was tired of running. Now that his worst fears had finally come to fruition and everything was about to come to light, Thomas was hit with this weird sense of relief…and a newfound clarity. Nothing good came from keeping secrets from family.

He’d spent the last two decades playing this scenario over and over in his head, the day he might have to finally reveal his past to his children. He’d revealed his past in a million different ways imagining their reactions, but whatever Thomas had expected from this confrontation, it wasn’t this.

The good-natured teasing, the knowledge that his feelings for Aiden hadn’t been as hidden as he’d thought they were all this time. He thought he’d feel embarrassed or ashamed of those feelings, but instead he just felt…relieved. No matter what happened later, at least—when it came to his relationship with Aiden—they all appeared to approve.

But there was still this one final matter to deal with.

He looked to Mac who was the only one still standing. “Sit down, please. I want to get this over with.”

“And then you two can explain where you’ve been for the last twenty-four hours,” Atticus said, looking at Archer and Mac pointedly.

Mac dropped into Archer’s lap beside Calliope’s chair, taking her hand and kissing it. “Looking lovely, as always.”

Noah whipped his head around, expression mutinous. “No fucking way did you already know Calliope in person.”

Mac’s expression was smug. “She works for Elite too, remember. Our paths have crossed. Though it took me an embarrassingly long time to put two and two together. She doesn’t look quite like this when she’s in the office.”

“This is such bullshit,” Noah muttered to himself.

“Enough, please,” Thomas begged, wishing he had a drink. But it was better that he remain clear headed.

Archer waved his hand in a dramatic ‘go-on’ gesture. “The floor is yours.”

“The whole house is,” Levi said under his breath.

Thomas stifled a small laugh, then looked to Calliope who tapped a few keys. The screens behind him lit up. He didn’t look at the photos. He couldn’t. He didn’t want to see it. Not again.

“This is my family,” he said, knowing Calliope would handle the reveal of the crime scene photos. “When I was fifteen and away at boarding school, my cousin, Shane drugged and strangled them all before turning the gun on himself.”

“Woah,” someone said from the floor.

Thomas didn’t look to see who it was, just scanned the sea of faces, hoping to gauge how they all received the news. Noah, Zane and Felix looked shocked, Lucas seemed…resigned, almost like he’d known. Maybe he had. Lucas had most definitely seen…something the day they’d first met, but he was respectful enough to keep it to himself.

But his sons stared blankly, expressions inscrutable.

“That’s really fucked up,” Noah said. “But what does that have to do with you? Why does the blackmailer think you killed your family?”

“Because in a way I did,” Thomas said hesitantly. He didn’t want to have to slog his way through the entire story all over again. Just telling Aiden the details had almost killed him.

“What? How?” Felix asked, his disbelief evident.

Thomas rested his palms on the conference room table, closing his eyes. “Because I told Shane I wanted them dead. And he wanted to make me happy. So he made my wish come true.”

“Your cousin killed your family because you asked him to?” Noah asked, voice dull he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“It’s not like that,” Aiden said, voice dangerously low, like he was prepared to defend Thomas with extreme prejudice. It eased something deep inside him.

Still, there was no time for half-truths. “Isn’t it?”

Aiden shot to his feet. “No, its really fucking not.”

“You wanted me to tell them everything. So I am,” Thomas reminded him.

“No, I wanted you to tell them the truth.”

“That is the truth,” Thomas said.

“No, that’s a small distorted part of the truth,” Aiden snapped.

“So why don’t you tell us what the whole truth is?” Jericho asked, like he was ready to play mediator if he had to.

“Shane was a psychopath who groomed him, assaulted him and somehow convinced him that it was love. He didn’t ask him to kill his family, he said he hated his mom and dad and he wished they were dead. And he  should have because they were abusive fucking monsters.” To Thomas, he said, “Tell the story right or don’t fucking tell it at all.”

There was a moment where the entire room froze. Even Thomas. Aiden had trauma dumped Thomas’s entire life on an unsuspecting audience and they were all fighting to process his claims, even Thomas. And he’d lived it.

“He…raped you,” Noah said, tears forming in his eyes.

“It-” Thomas cut himself off. What was he going to say? It wasn’t rape? Wasn’t it? Would he have called it rape if it was one of his sons who’d been the victim? Yes. Undeniably. “It’s complicated.”

“Your parents abused you?” Zane asked quietly.

Thomas sighed. Why was this so fucking hard? His parents had been horrible people, but talking about them now, to a room full of people, seemed unnecessarily cruel? What was wrong with him? Why was he still protecting them?

“My mother was a narcissist who used her ‘love’ like a reward system for doing as I was told. My father followed along, probably so he didn’t become a victim himself. Nobody physically beat me or assaulted me at home, but I was made to feel invisible in a house filled with people. It wasn’t…good,” Thomas finished lamely.

“Shane was your cousin?” Noah asked. “I don’t remember hearing about him.”

“He was my cousin by marriage. My uncle married Shane’s mother when Shane was fourteen. We went to the same school. We became…friends.”

“You weren’t friends,” Aiden muttered. “You were barely thirteen and he was almost sixteen. He groomed you. For two years he played with your feelings.”

Thomas shook his head. “He was sick. He was a psychopath. He needed help. If his parents had just acknowledged what he’d done and gotten him help maybe…maybe none of this would have happened.”

“That’s why you did it,” Seven blurted, like he’d just been handed the last piece of a puzzle. “That’s why you adopted them. Right?”

Thomas nodded. “Yes. At first, I hated Shane for what he’d done. Then I hated myself. But beneath all of that, I realized that maybe if someone had just intervened, this could have all been avoided.”

“But you taught us to kill,” Adam said, not sounding upset about it. More like he was asking for clarification.

This was going off topic, but Thomas owed them some kind of explanation. “I had a chance to kill Shane myself that day, standing there in the cabin, surrounded by the bodies of my parents, my siblings. He handed me a loaded gun and asked me to kill his parents.”

“He wanted you to kill his parents too?” Felix asked, looking to his brother almost like he just wanted the comfort of his presence, the reassurance he was near.

Thomas nodded. “I could have taken him out myself, but I ran. Luckily, he decided that he’d rather go out on his own terms and put the gun to his own head, but it made me think, what if he’d run? How many future deaths would be on my head. That’s when I realized…it was my job to help those I could and put down those I couldn’t. There’s a line and once it's crossed, there’s no going back. I believed—wrongly—that all psychopaths needed a target for their rage, so I made it my mission to give them one and clean up the mistakes made by a far too fallible justice system. I thought it would be my penance.”

Silence stretched as those in the room seemed to process Thomas’s reveal, until Jericho finally broke the silence. “I’m still confused about why this blackmailer thinks Thomas killed his family? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“What do you mean?” Atticus asked.

Jericho leaned back in his chair. “I mean, what Shane did was obviously covered up. The world thinks that they died in…what a gas leak? Carbon monoxide poisoning? Some freak accident, right?”

Thomas nodded, frowning.

Jericho waited for a minute like he was hoping someone would understand his confusion, before shaking his head. “Okay, so Shane’s dead. Everyone involved in the cover up knows the real story. Right? They must. They know that Shane killed everyone and then himself.”

Aiden’s brows raised. “Right. So what’s your point?”

It was Cree who spoke. Thomas had almost forgotten the quiet boy was there. He was always so still. “So whoever is blackmailing you clearly doesn’t know the whole story. They couldn’t. Or they’d know it wasn’t you who did it.”

“Exactly,” Jericho said. “They somehow had access to crime scene photos that no longer exist, but they’re pinning the blame on you. Why? Why do they think you killed your family? How do they even know this happened? This is obviously personal because they went after Adi and Ara. But why? And how do they only have half of the story?”

“Maybe they just need money?” Nico said. “Maybe they’re just trying to like…incentivize Thomas into giving him what he wants faster? Could they be a family member of a cop or someone on the crime scene?”

“Maybe,” Jericho said. “But, its risky, no? Thomas could just expose the truth. It might be a little bit of a scandal but nothing that would destroy an empire. If anything, it would make him more sympathetic. Not less. Whoever is doing this, believes, in their heart, Thomas killed his family.”

“Which means they either don’t know the whole story or they do,” Noah said.

“What do you mean?” Adam asked.

“Well, we know Thomas didn’t kill his family. But Shane believed that’s what Thomas wanted. So whoever this is, has to know Shane killed Thomas’s family for Thomas. Right?” Noah asked.

“What about Holly?” Aiden asked suddenly.

Thomas froze. “Holly? No. I don’t think so.”

“Who’s Holly?” Lucas asked.

“She was Shane’s ex-girlfriend,” Thomas said absently.

“Another victim,” Aiden clarified. “Shane liked to pit Thomas and Holly against each other to try to entice the other to play his games.”

“But…surely she wouldn’t be on his side. Right?” Lucas asked.

“People who’ve been abused often side with the abuser though,” Mac said.

“She filed rape allegations against Shane. I don’t think she’d blackmail Thomas,” Aiden said. He looked at Thomas.

“It’s not Holly,” Thomas said definitively, hoping that would be the end of it.

“How do you know?” Archer asked.

Thomas sighed. “Holly’s dead. She died of ovarian cancer fifteen years ago.”

Aiden moved to Thomas’s side, placing a hand on his back. “Tell them the whole story. All of it. Start to finish. Just like you did me.”

“I-I don’t know if I can do it again,” Thomas admitted. Just thinking about tearing open that wound made him feel a hundred years old.

Aiden crossed the room to stand beside him, taking his hand and squeezing it. “You have to, Tommy. It's the only way we’re going to figure this out. Calliope, take notes. We’ll go over everything once its all said and done.”