If Lucifer had a love child

Chapter 13

If Lucifer had a love child

Nom's paternal family was of old European stock. His grandfather's family could supposedly trace their lineage back to the times before Christianity came to the Baltic coast. In all likelihood they would have still been there, tending the same lands that they had owned for more than a millennia, had not a rather pleasant excursion commonly called the Second World War occurred.

First the Soviets were kind enough to invite themselves in. Deciding that they disliked the educated and nobles, they shipped most of the family off to the gulags on the Arctic coast. Nom's grandfather had managed to miss that vacation but only because he was already in a political prison for engaging in a protest.

A short while later the Third Reich invited itself to the party. Like most eastern Europeans, Nom's grandfather hated the Russians. For centuries they had dominated the region and engaged in whole sale slaughter and mass imprisonment. Like most of his countrymen he welcomed Hitler's men as liberators. He was released from jail and sent to live with his maternal grandfather.

He would soon change his opinion on the Germans. His new guardian decided to shelter a Jewish family. In return for the kindness, the Nazi SS invited him to eat a few ounces of well warmed lead. Nom's grandfather was sent to a slave labor camp for the remainder of the war.

In the aftermath he found himself in Germany; liberated, intelligent, but starving. A German girl eight years his senior took him under her wing. She got him a job, helped him get through high school and medical school, and finally married him. Unable to find work in Germany since the nation was still in ruins in the early nineteen fifties, he and his wife came to America.

By the nineteen sixties most of the imprisoned family had been released from the gulags and allowed to return home. It was a home behind the Iron Curtain now. Nom's grandfather and grandmother set up a little Europe in the suburbs of Detroit. They raised their American children with German as their first language rather than English. By the mid-nineteen-sixties Nom's grandfather had made a name for himself and built a medical empire. He bought himself a modest mansion in the suburbs so that he could have enough room for his six kids, three of which were Irish triplets, and were teenagers by this point.

By the time Nom came onto the scene, the family had settled into a routine. The grandparents' mansion became known as The Manor. It was the place where most of the receptions, parties, reunions, and family gatherings were held. Every night the table was set with the expectation that five or more uninvited guests would come.

Fast forward to Nom's adulthood, the family of eight had grown into a four generation unit of thirty-five people. As with all families, the bitterest feuds were between siblings, only the arguments of Nom's parents' generation had crossed generational lines.

As with most wars, the fighting was over the most trivial and meaningless of things: legitimacy and money. The grandfather had bonded with his second son. In truth they were two sides to the same coin, narcissistic and showing the outward signs of the inner psychopath they each held tightly leashed within. The only differences were that the grandfather was brilliant, while his second son Chegaboud was only good.

The grandfather became an advisor to presidents and served on committees deciding Nobel prizes. Chegaboud went to John's Hopkins and proceeded to torch a promising career by being unable to avoid making everyone he knew an enemy. The grandfather was a political genius who built a medical school and empire. Chegaboud was a washout who could not last longer than five years in a job before all of his coworkers were out for his blood. The grandfather made and ended careers by his will alone. Chegaboud could not even make his own career.

Chegaboud settled down to his golden years as a middling level doctor. He had a trophy wife and four kids. All his life he wanted nothing more than to equal his father but, even in his number of children, he had failed. The one solace that he had, was that in the eyes of his father he was the only successful child.

Nom's father, Hynrik, lacked something that both the grandfather and Chegaboud had in droves, ambition. All Hynrik wanted was to be left alone and to be happy. He hated making decisions, letting his wife run his house for him and, in most ways, his life as well. Despite his efforts to remove himself from the family squabbles, Hynrik had something that Chegaboud never could have. He was the eldest son. In the eyes of an old European family that was all that mattered.

For years, Chegaboud had been controlling the family by proxy through his father. Hynrik had gone so far as to move from Detroit to Montana to get away from all of the infighting. In the eyes of Chegaboud his victory was complete until Nom came back on the scene.

When Nom lost his faith in Christianity, he was left with only one constant in his life and that was the family. A lost young man in his mid-twenties, he began to spend as much time with the family as he could. He moved back to Michigan, made a point of spending as much time at The Manor as possible, and tried to help out as much as he could with family business.

Nom's grandfather noticed this and took kindly to a grandson seeking to reconnect. For years he had essentially used his children as a municipal council. The grandfather always had the final word, and Chegaboud was the first among equals in his eye. Still, it always gnawed at his soul that his eldest son never attended the meetings around the family table.

One day, about a year after he returned to Michigan, Nom got a call from his grandfather. He wanted him to come to dinner that Friday night. Nom, not thinking that this would be any different affair, attended. He was shocked to find that this was not an ordinary family shindig. The only members present were his grandfather and the ruling four. Nom's father never attended. Of the remaining siblings, Eriena, was the only one excluded due to her special needs status.

Nom was invited, apparently with his father's blessing, to take his father's seat. For the first time in twenty years all five clans of the family would be represented.

For the entire meeting, Chegaboud threw verbal barbs at Nom, protesting how he should not be there. When Nom asked questions, Chegaboud told him that he should be quiet and mind his elders.

Nom's grandfather seemed to ignore the infighting as he always had. Nom, fortunately, found an ally in the eldest member of the ruling generation, his aunt Tiesa. As a child she had ruled her brothers, and she ever so constantly reminded them of that fact now.

By the end of the evening, Nom was accepted by all but Chegaboud as a proxy for his father. For two years the battle went on. Chegaboud did everything he could to keep Hynrik away and to make Nom's choice to return a nightmare.

One weekend Nom was staying at The Manor, it was a holiday weekend, and two of Chegabod's kids were staying there during the day. Having nothing better to do, Nom took his cousins: Aden, then six, and Kallie, about twelve, to the movies. To make sure she felt included, he took aunt Eriena along as well.

In most families it would not even be necessary to call the parents, but, given his relationship with Chegabod, Nom called the kids' mother and asked her permission first. She readily agreed. When Chegaboud came to get his kids that evening, he was a boiling thunder head. He closeted himself with his father. Chegaboud demanded to know why Nom had been permitted to be in the same house, let alone room, as his kids.

Nom was unusual in the family; he had not been known to date anyone since he graduated from high school a decade before. He was a loner. His only real social interactions were college, work, and the family. Nom simply had no interest in romantic relationships of any kind. He enjoyed the so called fairer sex in the sack, but the thought of having the same person in his life everyday disgusted him. Nom loved his space and the ability to do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. In short, he was an aromantic heterosexual."

From the shouting that Nom heard coming from his grandfather's study, his lack of proclivities clearly meant that he was either a pedophile or a closeted homosexual. Chegaboud was unsure as to which was worse. In his mind both raped children; they just raped kids of different sexes. How could Chegabod's own father risk the welfare of his own grandchildren?

Nom was unwilling to stay and take more. He went up to the guest room he was using to pack. He got as far as loading his car, when his grandfather came out to ask him what he was doing. Nom simply said goodbye, and that he needed to head home. His grandfather was still intelligent enough still to see why he was leaving. He told Nom that Chegaboud only wanted what was best for the family and wanted to know why Nom could not see that. He offered to make an appointment for Nom with any of the countless psychiatrists he knew, pedophilia and homosexuality both could be treated.

Nom did not go back to The Manor for several months; it took that long just to dig the knife out of his back after his grandfather had planted it. He returned only when he was summoned to another council. By that time, it seemed that the accusations of Chegaboud had been permitted to slide under the rug of family politics.

The meeting was to discuss the one member of the group who was not present. It seemed that the youngest member of the ruling generation, Thodigs, was in some financial and legal trouble. He owned a contracting firm and had apparently managed to run it into the ground. Along the way he had decided not to pay the pension fund for his workers and was being sued by their union. To make matters worse, he had not been paying his personal or business taxes for several years. The IRS wanted its money and a pound of flesh. Unless the millions of dollars necessary to satisfy the union and the federal government were forthcoming, criminal charges were only around the corner.

Nom's grandfather had only found out about the mess when his third son Nomi came to see him. Thirty years before Thodigs and Nomi had been business partners. Thodigs had done something to make Nomi walk away. No one at the dining room table, other than Nomi, knew what that was, and Nomi wasn't about to open up about that.

In the meantime, Thodigs had secretly left Nomi on the company masthead for all of those intervening years. He never cut him a check for the privilege or informed his brother. Since Nomi was the CFO and Thodigs the COO, the IRS naturally came to pay Nomi a visit when they were seeking payment. Thodigs had hidden this issue for years by using his own house as the legal address for the company. He simply shredded every letter intended for Nomi. He did not plan on the IRS going to see them in person when they had a subpoena and warrant to serve.

Nomi was facing multiple counts of tax fraud; Thodigs was facing the same, as well as criminal fraud for the missing union retirement payments. The IRS had already put a lean on the assets of both brothers, including the retirement assets of their wives.

The meeting continued, Nomi having made his case, left so that it could be discussed without him. His outrage at Thodigs was palpable. He was on the same sinking ship, and he begged his father to save him if he could.

After Nomi left, Chegaboud and Tiesa argued about whether Thodigs should be saved as well. Nom sided with his aunt Tiesa. Thodigs should be forced to pay for his crimes, and his wife should be cared for after he met his fate in court.

Chegaboud managed to win the argument with his father. A few discreet phone calls were made to "Old Friends." The charges were all dropped and all concerned parties were given their money by the patriarch of the family.

Naturally, Thodigs found out that Nom had voted against him. He made it his life's mission to seek revenge. Three times over the next five years, Thodigs had to be bailed out of almost the exact same circumstances. Each time the votes in the council were the same, each time Nom's grandfather made his calls and cut the necessary checks.