“Nobody at first. She went straight into cover-up mode. She forced me to sit on the love seat in full view of my dead family and very curtly demanded I tell her exactly what happened. I did my best to explain in-between my own bouts of nausea and shock. And when she was satisfied, she started making phone calls. Attorneys. The mayor. The DA. A senator. Hell, I wouldn't have been shocked if she had called the president. There wasn’t anybody she didn’t know.”
“So, they all agreed to cover it up?”
Thomas took a drink, nodding again. “Myself included. Not that I had much choice. Nobody would believe a traumatized fifteen-year-old over the police. Over a senator. They moved bodies. Staged them. Took photos. Tossed around a dozen or so plausible suspects before someone simply suggested they make it look like an accident.”
“Why would any of these high-powered figures agree to this? There had to have been hundreds of people who were agreeing to keep a very big, very dark secret.”
“We were in the middle of nowhere. The police force was small. The sheriff and his two officers were easily bought. The others…well, it turned out they were all culpable in their own way.”
“Meaning what?”
“Shane had shown signs of psychopathy from a young age. By the time he was ten, he’d already hit the markers for the McDonald triad. Arson. Bedwetting. Animal cruelty. She took him to therapist after therapist. But as his crimes worsened, she chose protecting her family name in lieu of institutionalizing him. She called in favor after favor. But she’d never expected things to go that far.”
“She told you that?”
“She told my uncle. He demanded answers, and since I was there, I heard everything. She even said when he’d met me, she thought they’d gotten past the worst of it. That he’d just needed a friend. Someone grounded. Quiet. Someone who understood him. But then, he’d met Holly…”
Aiden’s eyes went wide. “She knew about Holly?”
Thomas tipped the glass to his lips, looking down in disappointment when he realized his glass was empty once more. “Apparently. I listened, but I wasn’t really absorbing things. My family was dead. I was responsible. My boyfriend was dead. He killed my family. His parents—his mom and his real dad—knew he was a ticking time bomb, but they’d set him loose on society anyway, gave him chances to harm others over and over again. It seemed impossible. Like a bad horror movie. I just sat and listened. Once they were sure I wouldn’t tell, they took me home and my uncle did his best to coach me on what would be expected of me going forward as the only living Mulvaney.”
“And that was it. You just became the new king.”
“What else could I do?”
Aiden snagged Thomas’s glass and took it back to the bar for a refill, but, this time, he kneeled in front of him, holding the glass out for him to grab. Thomas’s gaze went hazy as he studied him.
“Drink,” Aiden encouraged. Once Thomas took a sip, Aiden asked, “Why did you adopt them? If you knew Shane was a psychopath, why would you want to raise children like him?”
Thomas’s hand inched closer but stopped short of touching him. “I had my chance to kill him and I failed. I had my chance to put down a killer and I couldn’t do it because, even after what he did, I still had empathy. My feelings clouded my ability to do the right thing. When I began to really dissect the psychopath’s brain, I realized there was nobody better to kill psychopaths than other psychopaths.”
“But how did you know it would work?” Aiden asked.
“I didn’t,” Thomas said. “I could only hope. Because someone had to do the dirty work. Someone had to protect people, and I’d proven that I lacked the courage of my convictions. I had the gun in my hand, but I couldn’t pull the trigger.”
Was that why Thomas had been so hesitant to finish the story? Not just the guilt he felt over his family’s death, but not being able to kill the man himself? He’d been barely fifteen. Why did he insist on dragging his guilt around when he’d never expect any other person in the same situation to bear that burden?
“Back then, I didn’t realize that he needed to suffer for his crimes. That came later. After years of reading about the monsters living among us. Not just psychopaths, but rapists, pedophiles…falling through the cracks again and again. Bad laws. Bad investigations. Bad sentences that let the most vile creatures out so they could re-offend again and again.”
“That wasn’t your burden to take on.”
“If not mine, then whose? Who else had the money, the connections, the knowledge? Do you think Shane’s mother was the outlier? Just some rogue rich woman with connections? No. The rich get away with things the poor could never dream of. And I’m nothing if not filthy rich. So, I learned everything I could, talked to every expert imaginable. And then, when I felt I was ready, I began my experiment.”
“Atticus.”
“Mm,” Thomas said. “He was perfect. The right age, the right temperament. A perfect mirror. He was fascinating. You all were.”
Thomas’s hand found Aiden’s where it now rested on his thigh, and Aiden closed his eyes, letting the warmth of Thomas’s skin bleed into his. For better or worse, Thomas was right. His experiment, though grossly flawed, was a success. His children, all psychopaths, were the perfect killing machines, yet they never crossed the line. Not one of them. But that didn’t explain one final thing.
Aiden looked up, catching Thomas’s gaze. “Why did you adopt me?”
Thomas sighed, pulling his hand off of Aiden’s. He mourned the loss. But then his palm was cupping Aiden’s cheek. “Because nobody knows better than me what it’s like to live in a house where you’re not wanted.”
Something twisted inside Aiden. “Yet, you ended up not wanting me anyway.”
Thomas shook his head emphatically. “That’s not true. I never didn’t want you. I just didn’t want you the way you wanted me. You were a kid with a crush.” Aiden opened his mouth to protest but Thomas covered it with his palm. “And by the time I did want you the way you wanted me, I knew I didn’t deserve you.”
Aiden slapped his hand away. “How was that your choice to make?”
