“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 was 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 moment, 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 at the crime scene?”
“Maybe,” Jericho said. “But, it’s 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 that 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 was 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.
