Nadine Book 7

14. Therapy

I snuggle into Johen. I straddle him and snuggle him. I lay my head on his shoulder. He rubs my back. "Everything is ok, babygirl."

Victor pushes Corbin to a couch. Tye and Elek sit by us.

Tre says, "Dipak, we're outside the royal house."

"I'll come out. Give me another minute."

Thora comes in. "Can you ask Dipak if we can go back to our castle?"

Johen squeezes me. "Dipak..."

"Yea."

"Can Thora, Coral, and Gunner go back?"

"Yea that's fine."

"Yea, you 3 can go back."

"Thank you."

We sit and stare into space.

Omar comes in with 10 therapists.

I check my arms and Marcus and Dipak disconnected.

The therapists sit at the conference table and Omar rubs my head. "Nadine, will you let Johen leave please?"

I shake my head fast.

"Nadine, we don't want him to hear what you found down there."

I shake my head fast.

"Victor, you need to go do something else."

"I'm not going anywhere."

"It may be beneficial for Victor to hear everything. It may help him understand."

"The brothers should be here. It was their father. They're going to need to know to heal and understand."

"Fine, but Johen needs to go. Johen, you'll get the toned down version at the table. But I can not let you hear it now."

"You'll be alright babygirl." He rubs my back.

Tye runs out.

Elek picks me up. Then he moves to a couch. He puts me beside him and sit as close as I can.

Marcus pulls Tye in and Amy follows them. "Johen, time to go. We'll be back at the office soon. Corbin sit up." Corbin shakes his head. "NOW."

Corbin runs out with his hand over his mouth.

Omar rubs his eyes. "Maybe we should try this outside. This has been constant."

Amy nods. "Bring peppermint and ginger teas. That will help them."

"How are you doing, angel?"

Elek rubs my head. "She hasn't spoken."

Marcus squats down in front of me. He rubs my legs. "You're ok angel. We're going to talk about it. You can sit and listen ok?"

I nod. "A head. It... And... Heads. So many."

Corbin sits down. "Sorry. I'm trying."

Amy nods and the brains give us each a cup. "This will settle your stomachs. Remember to relax. Put your head back and take a breath if you need to. If you need to throw up, go back out. Tye knocked the window out in the hallway. No one fall out of it."

Omar looks at Marcus. "Amy wants the brothers to hear this. It may help them start to understand. So they are."

I take a drink. "The heads were staring at me."

Marcus nods.

"It. It. It.. It came at me."

Tye closes his eyes. "The sound it made."

Him and Corbin jump up and run out.

I jump up but Marcus blocks me. I turn and puke on the floor.

Marcus picks me up. "Yea, let's do this outside."

The brains take chairs out, and we sit in a circle on them. Marcus and Elek sit at my sides.

Omar stands up. "I have explained this to Nadine before. And I know Marcus has as well. Sometimes people are born without a part of them. If someone is born without an arm or a leg, we can see that. We know they have an issue by looking at them. But sometimes people are born without the ability to love. Or without a conscious. We can't see that by looking at people. They will appear like us. They will act like us. They will blend in as best as they can. From the outside, they appear normal."

Marcus nods. "And once you get to know them. That's when you will understand something is off. Something is wrong. And you might not know what it is right away. But you know it's not right... Corbin and Victor. You have described yourselves as monsters for the things you've done. You feel remorse for them. You are sad you did them. That is a conscious. You wished you hadn't done them. Or you wish you didn't have to."

Corbin starts crying.

Amy stands up. "I want to talk about addiction right here. People can be addicted to any number of things. Stealing, for example. Some people have an addiction to getting away with it. The rush it gives them to succeed. They love that. They get addicted to it. Another addiction is pain. Some people need to feel pain. Another is alcohol. They need to drink enough to satisfy their addiction. Now, you've heard of those. Another is an addiction to hurting or killing people. They need to kill enough to satisfy that addiction. They have to cause pain to other people. It makes them feel better about themselves. It makes them feel powerful. That is what we are dealing with here. Belaye Blayze was a serial killer, he was a narcissist, he was extremely dangerous. He was a psychopath."

Omar nods. "Like I was saying earlier about people being born without parts. He had no empathy, which is, if you see someone get a hand cut off, you know that hurts, so you help get them to a doctor. That is empathy. He did not have it. He also lacked the feeling of guilt. Nadine, if you kill someone and steal their necklace, you will feel bad about that later. That is guilt. The biggest thing he was born without was a conscious. Everyone here can tell you, it is wrong to steal. It is wrong to hurt people. It is wrong to kill people. So, if you do those things, you feel bad. You feel like a monster. Belaye Blayze did not have a conscious. He would hurt and kill anyone. And he would not feel bad about it. He did not have the ability to feel bad for anything he did. He also had no idea how anyone else could feel bad for doing the things he did regularly. He was born without it. He didn't understand it."

Amy looks at us. "We also believe he was born without the ability to love. Which would explain why he killed his soulmate so easily and also every other mate he chose. This feeds back into what Omar was saying. He did not have the ability to love. He was born without it. He did not understand it. I mean, how would you explain love to someone? He never had that ability."

Marcus squeezes my leg. "Now put that together. He had no empathy, no guilt, no ability to love. And no conscious. Then he had a serious addiction to torturing and killing people. He was probably the biggest monster we've ever come across."

Tye wipes his eyes. "How did he sit at our table for that long, and we never even noticed?"

Amy smiles. "These people are masters of manipulation. They will not falter. Even if they are caught in a lie or doing something they aren't supposed to be doing. They will somehow make themselves the victim. This is not you or anyone at the tables' fault. Belaye was pretending to be normal. And he had a long time to practice. He was excellent at it. And generally with people like this. They expect perfection out of everyone working with them. Mates, children, colleagues. They demand perfection. If you are not perfect or if you make a mistake, you are gone. That's probably why he killed some of his mates and advisors." Victor and Corbin nod. "Children are sometimes different though. Sometimes these people will keep their children alive regardless of mistakes. Think about it this way. He had to maintain a perfect image. If he killed his children, that image would be very hard to maintain. So if 1 of them did something wrong, it's possible he went and killed an entire village of people. Or more than likely, he hurt them."

"Nikolas would always try to get in his way. We thought dad killed him a couple of times. He always tried to protect us."

"We got good at pretending to be his version of perfect. We would do whatever he said. If we questioned him, he would at least break a couple of bones. He didn't care what we thought. He just..."

"The brothers will need intense therapy immediately. This can not be avoided."

Omar puts his hand on Corbin's shoulder. "You were protecting each other from a psychopath. You were doing everything you could to keep the peace. To make sure you and your brothers didn't get hurt. No matter how hard your conscious pushed back and said this is wrong. You did it, so you didn't get killed, or get your brother killed."

Marcus stands up. "I'll be back."

Omar nods. "You boys aren't monsters. You were trying to survive. Were either of you trying to get out?"

"Nikolas was working on it. When we could get some gold without our dad noticing, we would. It was never much. But we would give it to him. He bought a couple of businesses. He was trying to grow it. Then he had to find a place we wouldn't be found. He was saving money and trying to get everything figured out. He said he was close."

"The last time I got to talk to him alone, he said he had over 100 bars of gold and a castle for us. But we had no servants or furniture. He wanted a more steady income of money coming in. I guess like half the businesses weren't doing great. He kept flipping them. He was doing his best. I know he was. It's not like we learned how to do anything with businesses. And he said we were going to have to start with no village, so there would be no income from that. He would have got us out though. I know he would have."

"And where is this gold?"

"I have no idea."

"Me either."

The conversation seems to stall so I raise my hand.

"Yes Nadine."

"But why were there heads looking at me?"

"Sometimes serial killers or psychopaths like to keep trophies. They like to be able to see something and say, see what I did. It kind of lets them relive that thrill they got when it first happened. It makes them feel powerful and good."

"The heads were trophies?"

"Yes, trophies can be anything. I read about 1 man who would cut off each of his victims' middle toes and keep them. For Belaye, his trophies were heads. He would see them and be reminded of how powerful he is."

Marcus comes back.

Omar smiles. "When I was growing up. My dad hated rabbits. I mean, he despised the damn things. He would chase them down and rip their heads off constantly. All he wanted in life was for the bunnies to die. That was normal for me. I watched him kill thousands of rabbits. Completely normal. Then, when I got my farm, I had a rabbit problem. So I went and put some gloves on. Going to deal with it like my dad did. The normal way. Grabbed a damned rabbit and pulled its head. I swear it screamed and started crying. I threw that damn thing down and said 'Fine. Take over everything then.' I've never killed a rabbit. It was so normal and easy until I tried it."

"Now, let's say a child grew up watching their parent kill every human in sight. Completely normal. Parent never felt remorse. Just an everyday thing. Then that child tries it. He grabs a human and pulls on its head. It cries. He lets it go and says, 'No. I don't want to do this.' So the parent sees that and damn near kills his brother. Threatens to kill the child for not doing as he's told. That child will kill humans to keep his loved ones safe. There is no option. That leads to very confused children who feel like monsters for doing what they had to do to survive."

Marcus nods. "A monster doesn't do what they have to in order to protect his brother. They would rather have their brother die. The brother wouldn't matter to a monster."

"Let's push back to what they found. Therapy can deal with a lot of what we are discussing now. But if they talk about what was in the room together, it will help them realize it was real. It should limit the shock."

"You forgot the medical area staff when you killed everyone. I got them for you. You're going to need a new doctor"

Corbin and Victor look at him weirdly.

I smile. "Marcus does not like child abuse. Or unreported child abuse."