Julian, four years ago…
There was a roaring inside of his head that seemed to drown out any kind of distractions and a feeling of tunnel vision towards killing Marcus was all that that was pushing him forward.
His mind couldn’t find a way to rationalize how he knew what he saw in his dreams was real, but on an instinctual level, he knew it to be the truth.
Marcus had to die, and he would use William, Thalia’s own birth father, to do it.
He drove himself over to the gym that William typically frequented as made his way inside as he waved at the man himself.
“Julian! Hey! Been a while since I’ve seen you here!” he said with a cheerful smile on his face as he walked towards him and clasped hands with him in greeting.
Julian shook his hand back as he checked in with the gym desk and made his way into the locker with William in tow.
As they went inside, the place was relatively empty enough for a conversation between the both of them.
“I haven’t seen you in the gym for several months man. You looking to start a new regiment or something?” William asked as he leaned on one of the sink counters in the locker room, expecting him to start changing.
Julian walked up to the sink and stared at his own reflection as he worked himself up to how he was going to dump this news on him.
The silence seemed to bother William as he frowned and asked, “Is something wrong?”
“I...yeah. Uh...things have been a little hectic lately. Marcus is going to be leaving us soon and...not everyone is taking the news too well. Myself included,” he said.
“Leaving? What do you mean? Are you saying that he’s just cutting everyone off now?” William asked, very visibly bothered by this as he has been training with Marcus for years.
“It looks that way to me,” Julian said as he turned on the facet and started washing his hands.
William let out a sigh and said, “Son of a bitch… after all this time we’ve known each other, he’s just gonna leave without saying a thing? He didn’t even come to me about this. I haven’t seen him in months either you know. Not since that last time he was here, with you too.”
“Really? He hasn’t come once since then?”
“Nope. I think...it might have had something to do with that talk we had but...I don’t really get it.”
“I was there but I didn’t really hear much about it. What did you guys talk about?” Julian lied.
“Oh uh…it was nothing important really. I was just talking about an old flame I knew many years back. Though when I went into detail about it, Marcus...he uh, kind of freaked out over it. Have you ever asked him the deal about that?” William asked, with a look of genuine concern.
“Come on man. You know he never tells me shit about that kind of stuff,” Julian said with a fake laugh, to which William started nodding along like it made perfect sense.
“Yeah. That kid is so closed off. I’ve gotta say though, he’s a lot smarter than I am. Maybe he put something together that I couldn’t figure out…,” William said, with his voice trailing off as he held his chin in his hands thinking about it.
Julian then took in a deep breath as he turned around and looked him in the eyes as he asked, “Hey uh...I want to ask but I’m not sure how to word this. What do you think about Marcus’s little sister Thalia?”
“Thalia…? I’ve spent a little bit of time around her every now and then. She’s a cute kid. Why do you ask?”
“Because I think...I might have figured out why Marcus freaked out back then. I mean, when you talked about that old flame I mean.”
“Really?! What did you figure out?” William asked, his eyes widening in interest.
“Well uh...why don’t you tell me what her name was first.”
“Oh. Okay, uh...I think her name was Hestia if I remember right. Why?”
“Well...I only remember Marcus bringing it up a long time ago, but he once told me that his mother’s name was Hestia. Hestia Wright.”
William went completely still when he heard that and said, “W-What…? But, he can’t be my kid could he? He’s too old for that.”
“But Thalia isn’t.”
“Thalia…? Is she…? Wait, I have a…” William said, stumbling over his words as he took a few steps backwards, sifting his hair through his fingers.
“I think Thalia is your daughter, and when Marcus figured that out, he freaked out and left,” Julian said, watching William intently to see how he would react.
“Why…why wouldn’t he tell me about something like that? What the fuck… That’s not something that he should be keeping to himself. That’s my kid God dammit!” William shouted.
“I know, trust me. I know. But look, Thalia is the only family he has after his mother died. I don’t think he ever trusted anyone enough to be a part of her life other than himself. He never even allowed her to be alone around me or anyone else unless she was at school. He’s...very protective of her,” he said.
“Where is Thalia right now? I want to see her!” William demanded.
“I don’t know. Marcus wanted to go on a brief vacation with her for a few months but didn’t tell anyone where. But he had to come back because my dad needed his help with something. Where Marcus sent her, she’s probably out of reach.”
“SON OF A BITCH!” William shouted as he started pacing around the locker room, about ready to pull out his hair.
He continued pacing around for almost a minute until he said, “I swear to God, if he thinks he can do this to me, keep me away from my child like this, fuck off to who knows where, and get away with it, he’s got another thing coming. I’m going to beat that little shit’s ass if he doesn’t let me see her.”
He then went to his locker and started grabbing his stuff.
“Wait, William! Where are you going?”
“I’m going to go give Marcus a piece of my mind.”
“He’s not living in Romano’s estate anymore! He recently cleaned the place out!”
“Well then where the fuck is he?!” William demanded.
Julian had no idea how to answer that as he had no idea-
I know where he is…
Julian froze in place as he heard the voice of that woman in his dreams speak to him in his head.
So you are real after all.
Of course I am… Would you like to know where Marcus is now?
Yes. Tell me.
“I think I saw him moving into a new place around --------------”
“Alright, fine,” William said as he slung his bag over his shoulder and was about to walk out when Julian grabbed him by the shoulder.
He stopped suddenly, looked at Julian’s hand, and said, “Take your hands off me.”
He quickly took his hands off him and said, “There’s…something else you should know. I don’t want you to go after Marcus without knowing about this because I don’t want you to get hurt.”
Hearing that, William chucked and said, “Me? Hurt? What is Marcus going to do to me that I haven’t done worse to guys nastier than him?”
“Marcus is The Enderman.”
Hearing that, William’s expression seemed to be torn between disbelief, fear, and anger all at once.
He tried to smile, to play it off like such a thing was ridiculous, but Julian’s looked at him completely serious.
“If you go after Marcus, he might kill you. Don’t do it man,” Julian said, but he knew that William’s anger was too great to be talked out of it.
“If...if he really is that guy, that same monster I’ve heard about, then I turned him into this. He wants to take my daughter away from me and expect me not to fight for her the moment I learn about it, then he he’ll have to learn the hard way that I don’t roll like that.”
Julian took a step back as he put on a mask of understanding and said, “I...can’t stop you but, just be careful.”
Without saying a word, William walked out of the locker while Julian just smiled.
William…
It seemed ridiculous to believe, but at the same time, it made so much sense the more he thought about it.
Marcus had always looked so familiar to him but he had thought it impossible, no, improbable that he had anything to do with Hestia at the time, his little sister even less so.
The first two years he spent training Marcus and even looking after Thalia some days, it really felt as if they had been somewhat of a family together. Even if none of them knew it at the time.
There had been times when the three of them would spend entire nights watching movies, eating take out pizza, going places together like a real family would.
Then Marcus left for two years for who knows what and William had nothing to do but wait around for him to show up again.
Sure he was still being paid to stick around if he showed up again, but that was two years of William’s life wasted.
Why did he bother sticking around back then if that was the case?
The more he thought about it, the more Thalia’s face seemed to become the focus of his thoughts.
With Marcus gone, Thalia had no one.
He left her for two years, almost completely alone.
It had bothered her so much that she had even asked Romano for William to teach her how to fight the same way he had for Marcus back then.
Romano had refused to pay for William to teach her, probably because Marcus would have given him shit for it, but he decided to teach her anyways.
Did I...know?
Had I known on an instinctual level all this time?
Those brief two years that Thalia and him spent together, making sure that she wasn’t alone, actually felt like he had been a father for her when she really needed one...all the while, he was her true father the whole time.
But now Marcus wanted to take her away without saying a damn thing to him about it?
William’s body trembled with anger at the thought.
Thalia was his child. His blood.
Marcus might be her brother, but that didn’t give him any right to keep her away from her own father.
That alone angered him enough, but what Julian said to him after about Marcus being The Enderman…
He could hardly bring himself to believe something so horrible.
There was no way that Marcus could have been that same man who gangbangers talked about in hushed tones.
The same man who had murdered likely hundreds of people for the Romano family.
Sure, he had known about the dealings that the Romano Crime family were involved with, but with the money they were paying him, he decided to ignore it.
As long as he kept his mouth shut, did what he was told, and knew his place, he figured he would be fine.
But to think that he was training The Enderman himself…
As he thought back on the way Marcus had behaved for as long as he had known him, his cold demeanor, his deeply analytic way of thinking, and how fierce he fought when they sparred, it made more and more sense for him to be that same man.
If it came to it, he would put down the monster he had helped create if it meant he could be with his daughter.
There was no way in hell that he would leave her to be in the same room with this homicidal maniac any longer.
When he finally arrived at Marcus’s new home, he spotted him getting out of his car and his eyes widened as he watched William walking down the sidewalk.
He must have just pulled into the drive way when he showed up...
“Ah...hey,” he said with an expression of poorly hidden shock at seeing him.
“Hey Marcus,” he said as he started walking towards him.
“I...uh, are you just in the area or…?” he asked nervously, obviously shocked to see that William had found out where he lived so quickly.
“Marcus… Lets have a chat inside yeah?” He said with a bit of a forceful tone.
Seeing this, Marcus swallowed nervously and confused as he replied, “Uh...sure. The place is a bit of a mess right now though because...I’m just now moving in.”
“Now Marcus.”
“Right…,” he said meekly as he walked towards the front door and opened it. He stood in the doorway to let William inside and closed the door behind him.
“Look, if this is about not telling you about leaving, I’m sorry. I’ve just been really busy with some things and-”
“Is Thalia my daughter?” William asked bluntly, to which Marcus froze up.
He went very still and stared at William with such a focused look in his eyes, as if he had been cornered by a rival predator fighting over the same thing.
“Where did you hear that?” Marcus asked him.
“It doesn’t matter where I heard it or who told me. What matters is whether or not its true, and I doubt you would care about how I found out unless it was true and you were trying to hide it from me. Isn’t that right?”
“I…I wasn’t trying to hide it from you William. I mean, I only learned about it from back then and I’ve been juggling a lot of things since then.”
“Its been months since you and I talked about Hestia back then! You had MONTHS to talk about it with me and you chose not to!” William shouted.
“I know, and I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I just…its not the only thing I’ve had to deal with since then!”
“I could give less of a fuck what you’ve had to deal with Marcus! This is my daughter we’re talking about! My own flesh and blood! Where did you take her?!” William shouted as he took a step towards Marcus.
He held up his hands to try and placate him as he said, “She’s safe! She’s fine! I just…I had to send her away for a while because this city won’t be safe for her until…until I’ve finished fixing up a few things.”
“She won’t be safe around you regardless...Enderman,” he said, with steel in his voice.
Marcus swallowed as he said quietly, “So you know about that…”
“Yeah. I know. Julian told me all about it. This whole time I was training you how to fight, I was training ‘The Enderman’ how to be a better killer. Shit, why didn’t I see this sooner?!” he said, spitting out the words like they had a tangible taste to them.
“I’m sure that...you don’t like the idea of me being a killer, of me being around Thalia, but please listen to me. I didn’t have a choice but to work for Romano in that way. It was either kill for him, or go back on the streets! I had to do this since I was a kid! My mother died and it was just me and her! I...I didn’t have any other option! I had to provide for Thalia somehow!”
“You couldn’t have just gone to foster care? Or wait to be adopted? You had to go straight to being a criminal?! A murderer?!”
Hearing this, Marcus’s expression became impatient as he said, “Oh give me a fucking break! You should know well enough that the foster care system in this country is trash! If I depended on them to take care of us, they probably would have separated us the first chance they got! I had to take her and hide away. I had to steal and shoplift to take care of her back then! I was eight years old for fuck’s sake! What else was I supposed to do?! I didn’t know any better! Romano took us in when I was just a kid and forced me into a position where I had to work for him or get tossed aside.”
William went silent as he didn’t have a response to counter Marcus’s argument.
It was obvious that at the time, he didn’t have any other choice, which he could understand, but he still didn’t like it.
“Where is my daughter?” he asked plainly.
“She’s fine. She’s safe. I…I sent her to the country house that me and my mother used to live at in Nebraska so that she would be out of danger. I couldn’t risk her getting involved with what’s going on now.”
“And what exactly is going on huh? A gang war between crime families? Is that it?” he asked, but the more he thought about it, the more it didn’t make any sense.
Julian said that Marcus was cutting ties with them, so he couldn’t be working with them anymore if that were the case.
“No, its...something else. Even if I wanted to leave, Romano would never really let me be. It would be too dangerous for me and Thalia if I left things how they are.”
“So, what? What are you doing about it huh? You gonna go into witness protection? Its not like they would bother protecting a murderer, and it’ll be a cold day in hell before I let you fuck off to hide away with MY DAUGHTER.”
“NO! No, that would never work. That’s not even the problem William! I have too many enemies as things stand! Too many people out there that would want to kill me for being Romano’s enforcer! I can’t just leave things the way they are! I...I have to kill them! I can’t risk any of them going near Thalia. I have to get rid of all of them!”
“So even after leaving Romano’s business behind, you’re going to keep killing people?”
“Its not like that William! Come on! If I don’t, then they’ll come after her! They’ll use Thalia to get to me! I can’t let that happen!”
“Well then she shouldn’t be with you anymore,” William said, to which Marcus’s expression darkened and he looked back at him with a murderous expression in his eyes.
“William…she is the only blood I have left. I won’t let you take my sister away from me,” he said.
“So are you going to kill her own father for it? Is that it? Because that’s what its going to take! In fact, I should call the cops and have you arrested! You’re too much of a danger for her to be around,” he said as he pulled out his phone and started dialing 911 only for a throwing knife to strike it and knock it out of his hands.
“That’s not happening. Just...calm down.”
“Don’t fuckin tell me to ‘calm down’. This is my daughter we’re talking about,” he said as he started circling him, looking behind him at the kitchen and seeing a knife block on the counter behind him.
Marcus followed his vision and his eyes widened as he realized what William was planning on doing and said, “Don’t-”
As he took a step towards him, William dashed for the knives and pulled out the biggest one before spinning around and swinging it at him as Marcus tried to stop him.
He jumped back out of the path of the knife just in time before he took a step back, holding out his hands, and said, “Please stop this! I don’t want to hurt you, but I can’t let you take my sister away from me. Just hear me out, please.”
“No. There’s no point in listening to another word that comes out of your mouth. I’m not letting my daughter spend another minute with a murderer like you,” he said as he tightened his grip on the knife.
Marcus ran around a chair and tried to put it in-between them as he said, “If you kill me, Thalia will hate you for the rest of your life! To her, I’m the only family she has right now! You don’t want your daughter to embrace you knowing you just killed her brother do you?!”
“SHUT UP!” he roared as he tore the chair away and tossed it aside before charging at Marcus and swung the knife down on him.
Marcus caught his wrist and redirected it away from him before stepping to the side and kicking him in the chest, sending him crashing against the wall.
He then planted his knee into William’s chest while grabbing both of his wrists and held them against the wall.
“William please! Don’t do this! I don’t want to hurt you! You’re not just her father, you’ve been like a father to me too! I don’t want things to end like this!”
William stared down at Marcus with vitriolic hate in his eyes as he said, “You are no son of mine.”
He then slammed his forehead into Marcus’s nose, feeling it break from the impact as he stumbled back.
“STOP!” he shouted, pleading for William to listen to him, but there would be none of that.
This monster had to die, and if it had to be the duty of the one who helped create him, then so be it.
He pulled back his arm and threw the knife at him, aiming for his head but missed as Marcus dove back into the kitchen before crawling back to his feet and making his way into the garage.
He tried to shut the door behind him to keep William from following him but he kicked the door and it slammed into him, knocking him down the stairs.
His head smacked onto the front fender of his car and he groaned in pain as he tried to stand up.
He turned around to watch William follow him into the garage and started looking around for a weapon to defend himself until his hands wrapped around a tire iron and he held it in front of him.
“William, I mean it. Don’t make me hurt you, please. I don’t want to hurt my sister’s father.”
“You’ll have to kill me if you want to stop me from seeing her.”
“I don’t want to keep you from her, but I can’t let you take her away from me either!” Marcus pleaded, desperately trying to make him understand.
But they were long past that.
“There is no version of this where you get to be with my daughter any longer,” William said as his hand wrapped around a crowbar on a rack beside him and he swung it at Marcus.
As he was still dizzy from falling down the stairs, he barely avoided being hit but the crowbar hit a gas canister sitting on a shelf and punctured a hole in it, which sprayed all over Marcus’s chest and arms.
Seeing two other gas cans on the ground behind Marcus, he threw the hammer at him, forcing him to duck as it hit the garage door behind him.
He then kicked Marcus in the face, sending him crashing into the garage door as well as he fell next to the gas cans.
William then reached into his pocket and pulled out a Zippo and lit, holding it in his hands for him to see.
Marcus’s eyes widened in fear as he realized that this was how he was going to die, set ablaze by the same man he had thought to be a father to him. By Thalia’s own birth father.
With tears in his eyes, he reached out a hand to plead with him one last time as he said, “Please don’t-!”
“Goodbye Marcus,” he said before tossing the lighter onto his chest and watching the flames engulf him.
As the gasoline on his chest caught fire, the gas cans on the ground beside him ignited and exploded, immolating him entirely.
Marcus’s body spasmed as he tried to stop, drop, and roll to put out the flames but they only seemed to get more intense the more he screamed.
Not wanting to watch him die, William turned around and started to walk away.
But then he stopped and realized that he would have to dispose of his body somehow…
He’d have to come up with some way to explain to Thalia why he died…
This was going to be a problem…
But just as he was starting to think of ways to go about it, he heard footsteps behind him.
His blood went cold as he turned his head around slowly to look back at Marcus and watched as he looked down at his own burning body in confusion.
The more he looked at him while his clothes started to turn to ashes while his skin remained undamaged from the heat, the more it seemed apparent that the flames were doing nothing to hurt him.
“What is...happening to me?” he asked himself as he looked up at him.
William took a frightened step back as he said with a trembling voice, “W-What kind of...Hell spawn are you?!”
He really is a monster! I have to kill him now!
He started looking around for something else to use as a weapon to finish him off until his eyes fell upon a screwdriver on the work bench between them.
Marcus also noticed it and said, “William don’t-!”
But it was too late as he had already made a mad dash for it.
He lunged for the screwdriver, reaching out his hand to grab it only for Marcus to grab it first and plunge it into William’s heart.
A sharp gasp left his mouth as he felt the sharp pain of the screw driver open a hole inside him and blood start to leak from it.
“You made me do this William! I didn’t want to, but you made me kill you! Dammit it! Why couldn’t you just listen to me!” Marcus cried as he pulled out the screw driver and tossed it aside.
The flames on his body continued to burn and even started to burn parts of William’s own clothes as he slid down the wall, held in his arms.
“Why did you have to make me do this! If you had just waited, I could had let you be with Thalia! Everything would have been fine had you just been a little more patient!” he rambled on.
“I…I would….never allow...her t-to be with a monster…like...you,” William forced out as he started to bleed out.
His vision started to fade away along with his life, but the last thing he saw before it came to an end was Julian watching from the garage door window.
Marcus followed his eyes and spotted Julian peeking at them before he ran away.
“Julian...you’re going to pay for this…,” Marcus said, rage filling his voice as William died in his arms.
The last thought in William’s mind as he died was, Maybe it would have been better if Julian never said a fucking word…
Julian…
Shit! Shit! What the fuck was that?!
Is Marcus some kind of monster or demon? He’s fire proof?
What’s going on?!
He thought that William would have been enough to kill him. He had watched him set fire to the bastard and figured that was the end of him only for him to stand up and kill William anyways.
That didn’t make any sense!
What’s worse is that Marcus saw him running from the scene and probably knew that he had sent William after him.
He had to get as far away from him as possible.
Half an hour had passed as Julian drove off from Marcus’s home and was making his way back to the estate to tell his father what was going on only for a truck to ram into the passenger side of his car and send him crashing into the side of a barber shop and he blacked out.
When he woke up again, he heard the sound of his car horn going off along with sirens from other cars around him while firefighters were working to pry the driver’s side door free and help get him out.
As soon as the car door was free, they tried to pull him out and he was roused to his senses as he pushed them away.
“Hey! Hold on! We need to check on you to make sure you’re alright!” one of them said.
“Get the fuck off of me! Let me go!” he said as he punched one of them in the face and ran off.
They didn’t bother to follow after him after seeing him punch one of their own.
He started to run off into an alley to get away from the scene.
He didn’t know where he was, but he had to find somewhere to hide quickly.
As he turned a corner in the alley, he quickly found himself at a dead end as he ran into a barb wired fence and fell to the ground.
He tried to get up but he still felt dizzy from the car crash and struggled to stay on his feet as he heard footsteps approaching and a familiar voice call out to him
“Julian…,” Marcus said as he stood in front of him, wearing a new set of clothes and holding a silenced pistol in his right hand held at his hip.
They locked eyes and he swallowed nervously as fear started to set in, but barely a sound left his lips before Marcus grit his teeth in rage, raised his hand faster than Julian could track, and shot him in the head.
Thinking him dead, Marcus walked away and left him to rot in that alley way as he left to finish what he started.