Atticus moved like he was going to attempt to punch Adam in the face when Jericho snatched him by the arm. “Easy, killer. Just let it go.”
“Boots isn’t a trash goblin. She’s a lady,” Atticus muttered.
“I know, Freckles. I know,” Jericho said, squeezing his arm.
“My babies are my computers. I can’t do what I do without them.” She looked at them all with a dubious expression. “And trust me. You all need me.”
Aiden couldn’t argue with that. When Zane and Felix had left with Calliope’s boys, he asked, “Are the girls okay?”
August nodded, wrapping an arm around Lucas’s waist. “They’re fine. They’re in the nursery with Cricket. We’re going to take turns keeping watch. Just in case.”
“Do you really think someone would have the balls to walk into Thomas’s house and take the children?” Atticus asked.
“Well, it doesn’t help that you left the door wide open,” Aiden muttered.
“Yeah, someone could be living in here for a year and you’d never know it,” Seven said, looking around dubiously.
“Right?” Noah agreed. “That’s what I said. Like, this house is too big.”
Aiden agreed with them but kept it to himself. It hardly mattered. Thomas would never get rid of the place. But that was an issue for another day.
Those who were left returned to the drawing room. Noah and Jericho took his kids and found snacks, bringing them to the ornate coffee table in front of the antique sofa. It seemed absurd but also weirdly accurate to see Fritos and Funyuns sitting next to cheap beer and expensive whiskey on a table that had probably belonged to a king. If that wasn’t some kind of metaphor for their whole fucked-up family, Aiden didn’t know what was.
When Thomas re-entered the room, Aiden’s heart tripped behind his ribcage. Thomas wore white linen pants and a navy sweater, and his hair was dry and styled, his face clean-shaven. That was the man he knew. The man he loved.
That was Thomas fucking Mulvaney.
The war room was bursting at the seams. Thomas had given talks to thousands of people—CEOs, 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 set-up while keeping as close to Thomas as possible without standing beside him.
The trio 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 and Archer and Mac all but fell 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 sons and thought they were soft. Well, maybe Atticus, but he was only that way for Jericho. His sons had been called many things from “nerd” to “drunk,” but they’d never been called soft.
