The sad tale of Nickolas Aden.

"I have to start really early to have everything make sense," Nick says, already feeling himself retreating into his own head. His skin is getting cold as his mind goes back to places he hasn't thought about in years. "My family came to America across the Canadian border some time in the 1600s."

Tommy laughs. "Oh, good Lord, Nicki, that far back, really?"

"It'll make sense soon. The original Audains were trappers and traders, working for the French. Back then, no border controls. My great-grandfather many times removed set up a remote forward trade post in a little valley at the fringes of the French territories. He made deals with the local Native American tribes, made a lot of money, and by the turn of the century, he owned the whole place. Called it Pass Christian. Nice little place, a few dozen families. Trade was good, hunting was excellent, and there were lots of hunters, trappers, and explorers coming through. Business was so good Jean-Marie Audain was able to get a land grant from the French government for the whole valley and everything in it.

"Saying my family were robber barons would be an insult to robber barons. Each of my male ancestors passed ownership and deed for everything down to each eldest male son, all the way from 1658 on. And they charged rents to all the families who worked there, ran the company stores, and did a lot of illegal trading on the side with the enemies of the French. By the time the English took over the area, my family was in tight with them, and still pulling as much money as they could out of the place.

"Let me be clear. These were not nice people. They did whatever they wanted, to whoever they wanted, and the only reason they ever did anything positive for the people of the valley was to keep business moving. They needed people to exploit the valley's resources, and to serve the passers-by. They bought and sold slaves, ran local tribes off their land, pulled crooked land deals, and threatened anyone who dared to challenge their monopoly. It kept going like that for hundreds of years, all the way until my great-grandfather William Aden came along. He was the only child of the family at that point, and, like every man of his generation, he ended up fighting in the Great War. He actually caught a packet steamer and travelled to France in 1915, joined the French Army. He managed to make it through, and when he came home, he decided he had more than enough money for our family, and more than enough of war. So, being a crazy old coot, he set up a rum-running business during Prohibition, financed bringing high quality rum and spirits across the border and distributing throughout the country. There's still a very few places where you can order a Bill Collins in bars. It was his invention, or so he claimed. He was the first person in our family to lower the rents for the people in the valley. Actually started putting money back into the community.

"His son, Augustus Aden, continued the trend, in a way. He also joined up to fight, this time in World War 2. And, just like his father, he decided not to wait and went to England and joined the British Commandos. Won some awards, and saw some really terrible things. When he saw what the Nazis had done in the camps, he swore he'd never let people like that get away with evil unchallenged. Married a Polish Jewish woman named Ida Jenowitz, and brought her home to the valley. He left again to fight for the UN in Korea, of course managing to talk his way into a Polish battalion. There's also family legend that he fought with the Jewish Army in Palestine after the nation of Israel was declared.

"Gus and Ida had one child, a daughter, my mother Hagar." Aden stops for a moment, considers his words carefully. "She was a unique woman. A true free spirit, sort of a child of the sixties, maybe. She grew up tough and strong, a tomboy, hunting, camping, and fishing every chance she could. Grandpa Gus was pretty messed up by all the wars he'd fought in, almost a recluse. Grandma Ida was a wonderful loving woman, and she was what kept the family together for the longest time. When my mother turned fifteen, she dropped everything and took off to go see the world. She even refused to use any of the family money, just disappeared one day. I never did find out where all she went, but she didn't come home for almost five years. When she did, she married a local boy, Carter Bonds. They loved each other in their way; Mother never allowed him to have his hands on anything that belonged to the family, though. She wanted to make sure my legacy was secured. I don't know for sure if Carter was actually my father, but he sure acted like it.

"I have no complaints at all about my parents." Nick smiles at the girls. "Both of you had shit families to some degree. My parents were the stereotypical loving family, with a few little exceptions. Mother's free spirit also made her sort of abrasive and anti-social. And she was fixated on survivalism. She started to get really paranoid that the country was going to descend into anarchy. I mean, she was watching Kent State and the Viet Nam war, and she was convinced society was going to all fall apart. I was a late baby, really late. She was almost 30 when they had me, and by that time she was starting to fray a little mentally. Mild paranoia, a little OCD. She was very functional as a mother, but what she had, she passed on to me. People in the valley accepted that we were the new lords of the manor. They'd see us here and there, and I'd hear them whisper sometimes, point up to our house on the valley edge, a small mountain ridge all the locals called the Hill.

"I was an early bloomer in some ways, but my parents knew by the time I was three something was wrong with me. It was at a playdate with another couple of families. One little boy was tormenting a little girl, doing the three-year-old thing. I stood up, toddled over, and told him to stop. When he pushed me, I stabbed him with a pencil. You can imagine the reaction, the total meltdown. I remember not understanding what the big deal was. They had a huge argument, mom and dad, and for once dad won. They took me to some fancy specialists who did a bunch of tests. It took three months for them to make some decisions."

Nick isn't smiling any more. This is the part he's never really talked about with anyone, and he's worried the girls won't understand. "I have a small lesion in my brain, just near the amygdala. Handles emotional regulation, pain messages, fight or flight responses, all the stuff that makes most people human. I'm defined as a high-functioning sociopath. I had emotions, I could make connections with other people if I tried hard, and I had some empathy. Just not enough to make people feel comfortable. When Mom heard the diagnosis, she pulled me out of school, basically hid us away up on the Hill where we lived. I grew up being home-schooled by my mother and father, whose idea of teaching was to let me loose in our library and take me out in the woods all the time to hunt and trap. Mother taught me early that I was different, that I needed to practice being responsible, ethical, moral. She taught me to be the steward of our land, the woods, the animals, and all the people in the valley. She tried to make sure I was ready to function in normal society, as best as she could. This is a woman who taught me British Commando hand-to-hand combat techniques she learned from Grandpa Gus when she was a little girl. That was what she considered essential education. I didn't even see a TV set until I was fifteen. "

Tommy is holding his hand, Bailey curling up around them both, her eyes on him, supportive. "So, of course, when I became an adult, I'd grown up with all the stories of Grandpa's and Great-Grandpa's military service. I left the valley and enlisted in the Army on my eighteenth birthday, worked hard, wanting to be the best I could be. Like every young man in my unit, I was dumb enough to want to see combat, to be tested, to know I was brave enough and tough enough to survive. Like every young man in history, I was full of hormones and beer; I had a few fun experiences with some girls, and a few guys. Nobody have ever talked to me about sexuality, and I'd never asked. It was a physical need, so I handled it with whoever was appealing at the time. This was back in the days of 'don't ask, don't tell', when you could be dishonorably discharged for being anything other than straight. Because I was so good at my job, people didn't ask, and I didn't tell.

"September 11th changed everything." He stops again, Tommy and Bailey watching his face go cold and far away. "By then, I was a Ranger marksman, on the path to get into Special Forces. My unit was activated for Operation Enduring Freedom, the initial invasion of Afghanistan. Whatever you think about the reasons we went in there, I can tell you it was a shit-show. There weren't enough supplies. We had to buy our own body armour. There weren't enough medics. There weren't enough troops to cover all our bases and run the supply convoys, so we had to call in temporary augments form the other services. I once helped defend a bogged down convoy alongside a Marine sniper, a Navy master-at-arms, and a very upset and confused Coastie who was normally a small boat pilot. We knew the Afghan insurgents were using IEDs, and we didn't even have armor on our Hummvees. The motor pool mechanics were welding spare sheet metal onto the sides of the trucks to give the crews a fighting chance to get out alive. I loved it all. I felt like I was home."

He shakes his head. "I was the perfect soldier, in a way. I didn't care about pain, I didn't feel fear, at least not the way other people did, and I had zero interpersonal baggage so I was willing to go back to back tours for as long as they wanted me to. I made Special Forces by the end of my second tour, and got a call from the Delta boys at the end of my third."

"Delta boys?" Bailey asks, curious.

"The joint forces special operators the military uses to do all the really dangerous and secret stuff. It's got all the best of the best, SEALs, Green Berets, Rangers and Air **** special operations pilots, the whole lot. If you see a dramatic rescue or a major insurgent taken down, the odds are very good it's Delta. So when they asked me to come to the team, I jumped at it. Turned out that was a serious mistake."

He sighs. "I was such a prodigy that it got me attention by some very important and well-connected people. People in the intelligence and black ops realm. The sort of people who give orders to do things morally or ethically suspect. When they saw what I could do, and how it didn't bother me being shot at, or killing the enemy, they figured out I might be what they were looking for. Halfway through my fourth tour in Afghanistan, some men in suits and dark glasses approached me and felt me out about taking the next step. They sold me totally, gave me the whole speech about having my hands untied, being able to do the things that needed to get done without having to sweat rules of engagement and human rights oversight. So I said yes, and they sent me off to a special training camp with five other guys and girls. They taught the techniques and tradecraft normal military units consider off-limits. The course was so tough only two of us graduated.

"I did my first ROADRUNNER mission in 2005. They dropped me and a spotter off in the Afghan hillside, and we spent three days crawling up and down hills and brush until we were able to line up a shot on a high-value target hiding out in a local village. I didn't ask why he was a high-value target, just killed the guy and bagged ass. We missed our extraction flight, and ended up having to walk out on our own to a nearby firebase. The higher-ups loved that. I quickly became the golden child of black ops. Soon, I was getting jobs from all over, being flown here and there to different countries, hitting targets and flying back home. I never aksed any questions, never left any witnesses or evidence. I was working for the military and the CIA at the same time, going in-country in Afghanistan in uniform killing insurgents, then catching civilian flights in civilian clothes and killing suspected members of Al-Qaeda in countries that didn't even have a treaty of extradition with us. I moved up through the ranks, made Master Sergeant, made a few friends who didn't die. I even worked with the Brits and the Israelis, which was surreal, since the Mossad Colonel in charge of the operation was trained by my grandfather.

"I think in all that time, I went home maybe three or four times. Lost touch with home, lost touch with the valley. It was 2015 when I got the call from my family's lawyer telling me my parents had both died in a car accident heading up the Hill in a severe winter storm. I didn't really know what to do. I hadn't spoken to them in person in almost five years, hadn't stepped foot in the valley in ten. I took leave, flew home, buried them both, and felt almost nothing. I checked in with our lawyer, then signed all the paperwork and took over the family fortune. What I found out shocked the Hell out of me. My parents had lowered rents for the people in the valley, so to speak; the rents were reasonable, but not great. With all the money my family had saved over the years, all the rents and the illegal deals and the shady business deals, I inherited about 640 million dollars of blood money."

Both Tommy and Bailey react much the way he expects, stunned shock and disbelief. "You're joking, right?" Bailey asks, shaking her head and looking at Tommy. "No wonder he doesn't lead with that when he meets people."

"It does tend to rank up there with 'hi, I blow up houses full of innocent people' as a way to sabotage a relationship," Nick agrees.

"You've- done that?" Tommy whispers, her eyes sad.

"That and worse." Nick is silent for a bit, letting the whole thing sink in. "High-functioning sociopath, right? If I thought it needed to be done to complete my mission, I did whatever I had to. The way I was raised, I'd never have considered killing a wolf in my forests on the Hill, but I once shot an insurgent through the chest at 2000 yards while he was holding his infant son. Killed them both. I told you I was a terrible person."

Tommy winces, and buries her face in his chest. "Do you need me to stop, babe?" he asks, gently.

She flinches, and he can feel her tears on his skin. "No, get it out, Nicki." she whispers. Bailey has sat up and hugs them both again.

"So I realized my family had been sucking the life out of the valley for three hundred years. Talked to my lawyer, and told him to drop all the rents to a dollar a month. All public buildings free. I didn't sell the land, because I wanted to make sure the valley stayed pristine. It's a big inhabited nature preserve of sorts. I told the lawyer to handle everything, keep me from going bankrupt until I die. I'll be the last Aden on the Hill, and then the whole valley will be turned over to the people and the Nature Conservancy."

He takes a deep shuddering breath, then continues. "I went back to work. Retired from the Army three years ago, and immediately got offered a contractor position with the CIA's special operations people. So I kept doing the same thing, killing whoever they pointed out whenever and wherever they told me to. And then, last year, my number came up. I wasn't actually supposed to be in-country, but another contractor had gotten sick and had to be pulled out. I'd finished a hit job out in the mountains, and I was hitching a ride back to the local firebase with a group of Marines who were guarding a convoy. We were turning through a small town, doing things the right way. Drive really fast, stop for nothing, shoot at anybody who looks suspicious. Makes it hard for the insurgents to hit you. In combat, sometimes you can do everything right, and still get fucked.

"We were passing by a small stone fence almost to the outskirts of the town. Normally, our bomb disposal guys would have tagged that wall for destruction, since the convoys used the road regularly. A sweep team had gone through there the night before and assured us the way was clean. After the bomb techs had gone by, though, some insurgents wired up an American 155mm artillery shell to a remote detonator, and pointed it across the road. Right as we reached the fence, my senses perked up, told me something was wrong, but I had no time to act. The insurgents triggered the shell, and everything changed for me.

"When you fire off an artillery shell as a directed munition, the blast causes a shaped charge to blow out into a super-heated jet of plasma. Makes a huge armor-cutting torch. You can kill tanks with them. Our Hummvee didn't have a fucking chance, even with the extra armor. The blast cut right through the driver side, basically disintegrated the Marine sitting to my left. Two or three inches farther back, and it would have killed me instantly. Instead, the fireball blew through the inside of the vehicle, killing the driver and two other Marines, and seriously wounding the right front passenger, a young Marine on his first tour. The cupola gunner, the guy on the fifty-cal machine gun, he got blown straight up and out of the Hummvee like a champagne cork. I was on fire, and blasted all to Hell, riddled with shrapnel. The worst one was this," Nick says, monotone, tapping the scars on the side of his face. "A two-inch piece of the Humvee armor went into my skull over here by my temple, right into my brain. Whatever it did, it messed me up permanently.

"I bailed out of the Humvee, grabbed the guy from the front seat, and started dragging him clear. The vehicle in front of us was burning from a second hit, no survivors, and the rest of the unit was strung out along the road behind us, getting hit with everything the insurgents had to spare. I went totally cold, totally dead. I felt nothing but rage. I came out firing, and I killed my way through the insurgents in front of us, then doubled back and killed the rest of them. I was shot six times, burnt over thirty per-cent of body, and had seventeen shrapnel wounds, a broken left arm and left thigh, and a sucking chest wound that was collapsing my lung. I killed 26 insurgents with my rifle, their own weapons, and my bare hands. I also killed 16 villagers who were mixed in with the insurgents. And one of our own men who stood up into the line of fire while I was shooting Hell out of an insurgent position. Then I collapsed, passed out. The whole time, all I felt was this cold angry desire to kill.

"I woke up in a stateside hospital to find out I'd narrowly avoided getting the Medal of Honor. To avoid any embarrassing questions, the Army wrote the whole thing up as a heroic private contractor defeating impossible odds to single-handedly save the lives of the rest of the soldiers in the convoy. I knew better. I knew it wasn't about saving them in any way. I was just...mad." Nick is crying again, even though he doesn't feel anything. "The doctors called it PTSD, until I got too honest with them and they realized I'd lost my ability to judge how much **** was too much. In a therapy session, I took offense to something a doc said, and broke his arm in three places. They finally decided to medically retire me. The very next day, a CIA operator came to Walter Reed Hospital and offered to help me find some additional 'private contracting work.' I broke his arm, too. They've left me alone since then. I holed up in that flophouse you met me at, and basically waited to feel something other than rage. And that's when you came into my life, Tommy."

He looks at them both. "I am a fucking monster, girls. I could kill anyone at any time for the slightest of reasons, and feel absolutely nothing. I'm a sick and dangerous fuck, and, much as I love both of you more than anything in the world, I will absolutely understand if you both decide to leave."

"Hush," Tommy whispers, still crying. She pulls his face down and kisses him, fiercely, passionately. "You're wrong."

"Babe, I've done horrible things."

"But you KNOW they're horrible, don't you?" She smiles at him as he wipes tears from her cheeks. "So, if you know they're horrible, that means you CAN and DO still care. It's just disconnected, you know? The part of you that cares is there, it just has trouble communicating, that's all."

"You're not safe with me," he says, knowing they are risking themselves by getting close to him.

"Fuck off," Bailey says, laughing. "I may be out of order, but the way you treated me that first time? THAT is who you are, Nick. Not this other dude who's been trained and programmed to kill. You just need to find your way home."

"And we will be here to help you the whole way, my love," Tommy murmurs, pulling him back down into the bed.