Chapter Text
In retrospect, he should have know. Should’ve known that after all the shit that went down, there’d be one last bang waiting at the end of it all.
It took him two steps into the living room to realize he’d made a terrible mistake. Not the first, and hopefully not the last. It took him two more to realize he didn’t give a damn anymore. There were eleven million reasons why the gun currently pointed at his head didn’t matter, wasn’t going to stop him from getting what was his, what he’d earned after everything.
He raised his hands as Julia jerked her gun. Taylor had his pointed at the floor, Otto didn’t have anything, but Audrey had her hand casually on the table, the grip of a gun resting lightly beneath her fingers. Three guns, one unarmed man. He smiled.
“Hey, Julia, what’s with the welcome? I mean, I realize you guys are mad at me, but-”
“You wanted your chance to explain yourself,” she interrupted. “Well, you got it, Pete. Explain. Now.” He twitched his fingers toward her gun; it didn’t waver.
“Alright, can I, can I sit down? Or are we just going to stand like this all night?”
“You don’t have all night,” said Audrey, who still hadn’t bothered to rise. “You have about thirty seconds before Taylor here takes you in for impersonation, fraud, theft-”
“Oh, come on, grandma, you take me down, I take all of you down. Don’t bluff when your cards are already on the table.” He lowered his hands. He’d had enough.
“Don’t call me that.” Her voice was steel, but it drifted past him like so much fluff. It didn't matter anymore; their anger meant nothing to him, as long as he could still get what he wanted. Audrey was rising, gripping her gun more firmly as if to raise it. Julia’s own hand wavered uncertainly. Marius sat himself down at the table, laid his hands flat against the wood. Otto still hadn’t said anything, and Carly wasn’t even there.
“So you know,” he said, gaze flicking to all of them. He’d like to say his mind was whirring, but it wasn’t. He was calm in that dead, dangerous way before a storm.
“Yeah, we know. I talked to your parole officer - real risky, that con you pulled. Introducing one of us to someone who knew your identity.” Julia sat down, unconsciously following his lead. She didn’t put the gun away though.
“Yeah, well, desperate times.” He waved a hand, dismissive. He’d been hanging on a thread with these people for the past week; getting burned now seemed the inevitable conclusion.
“Why did you come back?” Taylor’s turn. His face was surprisingly calm, but his hands were bunched into fists on the table.
“I need your help,” Marius hedged, interlacing his fingers on the table and leaning forward, not toward Taylor, but Audrey. She was the one he had to convince. She was always the one. “After everything I’ve done for you, I think I’m owed a little-”
“Done for us!” Otto. He’d been hanging back, but he was angry, Marius could see that now. His face was gradually turning the color of a ripe tomato, and his hands were shaking with barely contained rage. Of all of them, Marius hadn’t expected Otto to be the one most angry. But it made sense, he guessed. After all, he was the one who trusted the most. “You come to our home, our family , put everyone in danger! Lie to us, steal from us, use us-”
“Hey, I never stole from you. I borrowed-”
“You took one hundred and fifty thousands dollars!”
“I gave it back! And in case you hadn’t noticed, Audrey stole it first! If it weren’t for me, you would all still be in that mess-” the slam of a flat palm against the table jolted him and Otto out of their confrontation. Both of them had stood, and they now looked down at Audrey in shock.
“That’s enough, both of you. Pete, Marius, whatever your name is. We’re giving you a chance you frankly don’t deserve here, I suggest you take it. Now explain. From the beginning.” She sat implacable, and Marius slowly slumped down in his chair, looking at all of them.
Julia, pretending to be unaffected, but showing a glimmer of hurt under everything. She’d perhaps been the closest to him, and if regret was something he allowed himself to feel he’d probably be drowning in it right now. They had made a pretty good team.
Otto, quivering with anger at the threat to his family, probably blaming himself for letting a viper into their nest.
Taylor, Taylor, his least favorite family member, watching him with that steady, almost predatory gaze.
And then there was Audrey, waiting, patient. For now.
“The beginning,” he said. Laughed slightly. He remembered Maggie, reading him outside the antique shop. It must be so exhausting . And yes, goddammit, he was tired. Tired of playing every situation, every person he met; even his own brother hadn’t been safe from him. And look where it got him. Nothing. Every time, he ended up with less. And he kept telling himself, each time, just reach a little farther, lie a little harder, everything will come together, you won’t get your brains blown out by a maniac, you won’t have to hear your brother’s screams, or watch a boy knifed in the chest, or a man get his face burned off. You won’t be the one with a gun in their hand next time, ready to shoot.
“Look, me, me and Pete, your, your grandson-” shit, why was this so hard? He told the truth all the time. Nothing but the truth. “We shared a cell, that was true. And he told me about this place, about this family, he built it up like some sort of idyllic haven. I-”
“And you thought you could come in, con a quick buck out of us when you got out? Is that it?” Taylor. He sounded more curious than angry, like he was interrogating a suspect. Like this didn’t matter to him at all.
“No. I-yes. But not how you think. Look, the reason I was in prison. No.” Jesus, this was falling apart. Perhaps the most important con he’d ever tried to pull, and it was falling apart at the seams. Get your story fucking straight, start clear, end clear, no messy divergence unless you want the mess . “Look, me, my brother, and our crew, we were pulling a con on this wealthy casino owner. Only it went south. The guy, he killed one of our crew. I ran, robbed a bank with a gun full of blanks, went to prison.”
“This guy happen to be called Vince?” Taylor again. Cop mode activated.
“Yes. Vince had my brother and another one of us working for him while I was in prison. My brother warned me I had to get clear, hide, that Vince was after us for the money we’d stolen from him.”
“I thought you said it went south.” Audrey.
“Yeah, but before it did we got one hundred thousand out of him. We couldn’t give it back, because we’d already used it to fund the next part of the con.”
“Wait a minute, you got him to pay for his own con?” Julia, leaning forward across the table toward him, eyebrows raised, almost admiring.
“Yeah, kind of backfired. So I came here, pretended to be Pete. I needed to scrounge up the money before a deadline, or Vince was going to start carving body parts off my brother.” A quick survey of the family showed no sympathy. He hadn’t expected any, but he also hadn’t bothered to conceal the memory of the fear and desperation of that time just - God, what was it? Two weeks ago now?
“I had to get it fast, or everything would fall apart. I thought this place was a bust, until I learned about the safe, and what was inside - or should have been inside.” He tipped a casual finger toward Audrey whose eyes narrowed.
“Why did you give the money back?” Taylor, searching for the holes in his story. There were a few. The unadorned truth rarely seemed believable.
“I needed the money as part of a con, a bigger con.” They didn’t need to know the rest, how he’d taken Vince down, how the bastard had been taken away by the feds, missing a thumb and an empire. “We finished the con, walked away with a lot of money, I gave the money I took back-”
“Yeah, I know, but why ? You could have walked away a hundred thousand and fifty dollars richer. Why did you come back?” Taylor’s voice was uncharacteristically soft, as if he was trying not to spook a wild animal.
“You-you needed the money. You were in trouble. I’m not actually a monster.” But I’m not a good man .
“What I want to know,” said Otto, no less angry, but hiding it better, “is why in God’s name Maggie would go along with this?”
“She wanted to protect her son, keep him out of Luka’s sights. They already thought I was Pete, it was safer to go along with it, at first. And then-” and then Luka’d burned a man’s face off for the deception, and sealed his own fate along with it. “Things progressed.” Julia snorted at the understatement.
“And when it was all over? Maggie and Pete. They just left here and didn’t say a word about you.” Audrey’s hand gripped her gun tighter. “Tell me, who exactly was my daughter trying to protect by allowing a conman into our family?”
“I-I don’t know.” Marius was beginning to think he didn’t understand Maggie at all. “You’d have to ask her.” I think she thought I needed you more than she did , he wanted to say, but the words caught against his teeth. Instead, he told them what he’d told Marjorie. “I think she didn’t want to upset you all even more, after everything that’d happened. And I don’t, I don’t pose a threat to you, I swear. I tried to protect you.” He looked to Julia, too proud to plead, but hoping she would remember that he had . She wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“Is that it? Is that your piece?” Audrey, the steel no longer wafting by him but hitting him square in the gut. It wasn’t working. They’d toss him out in the next second, and if he showed his face again they’d probably do worse. No problem though, he’d find a different way to get the money. He didn’t really need them. No, but I want them , was the treacherous thought in the back of his mind.
“I came because I thought you all might like to know… I saw what Maggie put in that vat. And it sure as hell wasn’t eleven million dollars. I just, you know, thought you might want to know.”
Audrey’s eyes flicked up to meet his, bottomless brown depths that showed the faintest hint of a flicker of something. He knew when he’d grabbed someone’s attention; now all he had to do was run and hope they’d run with him.