“My father framed me into doing a large money transfer for him. He was mad at me for wanting to leave the family. To him it was an issue of respect and worrying that other crime families would view my defection as weakness. My father informed me that CSIS and Interpol were following me, and that’s when I broke down. I started drinking heavily and became a real asshole to my wife. Then I was arrested and my cellmate gave me cocaine, which I took willingly,” he explained. I could see how torn up he was over this. It was really hard for him to talk about and a part of me felt guilty that I was making him relive all these bad parts of his life, but I hoped that maybe opening up to me would make him feel better too. He had probably had all his feelings over this bottled up for too long.

“I want to hear everything, Luc.” Maybe I should be scared of him, his family sounded hard core, but he’s just a broken man and I’m just a broken girl.

“Okay…I couldn’t handle the jail cell, I had suffered from claustrophobia since I was a teenager, it developed when my father locked me up in a hole in the ground in one of his warehouses,” he said, causing me to gasp.

“Oh, Luc, I’m so sorry for the things that you have been through,” I said, wanting to hug him, console him, but I know I shouldn’t if I wanted him to talk more. He seemed to want to run away from contact and I didn’t want to push him.

“When I was released on bail, I went out to a bar to drink and I took more cocaine. I knew at that point my wife knew the truth about me and I had to look her in the face and own up to my lies. Only I was a coward, I was scared she would leave me. I found drinking and drugs as a way to cover the pain of loss.” He took in a large inhale and let it out. Still not looking my way. I rubbed his back with my hand and he didn’t flinch. “I beat the shit out of my wife…I put her in the hospital… I almost killed her and I killed the baby growing inside her…. And the worst part is, I don’t remember a thing. I didn’t understand why she wasn’t coming home or why there was blood in our apartment when I finally made it home.” As he said the words, his unshed tears began to fall and I understood why he had been blocking himself off from relationships and women. I felt frozen at the last part of his story, he almost killed a woman, maybe he was dangerous….I pulled my hand away from his back.

I gasped and a cold shiver ran through my body. “How do you know you hurt her if you don’t remember doing it?” I asked, needing to understand more.

“I had one of the family contacts track her down, it led me to a hospital. She was in a psychiatric ward, Vicky. I broke her. I did that to her. After all the abuse she experienced at her mother’s hands, I almost killed her. She told me herself,” he explained with a shaky voice and red eyes.

“I, I…I don’t know what to say….” I said, wrapping my arms around my waist. I knew he expected me to run at this point. Maybe like everyone else that had run from him his whole life, but I wasn’t running. I just needed time to think, to process everything.

“Do you understand now why I am a monster? Why I can’t touch you?” he asked desperately. Maybe he wanted to scare me off, but I still wasn’t running. He was torn up over what happened to his wife, but he didn’t even remember doing it.

“How is it that you don’t remember the attack, Luc?”

“I went to see a psychiatrist when I arrived to New York, I needed to understand myself…he explained that I suffered from a drug induced psychosis. It means that the drugs and alcohol mixed in my system had put me into a psychotic state, in which I must have become paranoid. Because I had been locked up and I was suffering from a severe amount of stress from the slew of charges against me, I cracked Vicky,” his voice cracked as he admitted it sorrowfully.

“You said that you haven’t had sex in two years, but do you drink alcohol or do drugs?” I asked, knowing that this would be the obvious precursor to his bad behavior.

“No, absolutely not,” he answered vehemently. “I’ve always become an asshole when I drank alcohol, it’s like an allergy for me. It does bad things to my personality and brings out a violent side I don’t normally have.”

I nodded my head hoping I understood. The fact that he had a problem with alcohol scared me a bit, especially with having an alcoholic father at home. Only my father hadn’t become violent, only resigned. From the sounds of it, he was a tortured soul. So he couldn’t drink alcohol. It seemed like he had that part of it under control.

“Where is your wife now?” I asked needing to know. Was he still married? Was she dead?

“Ex-wife,” he corrected. “She’s with her high school sweetheart. She had warned me from the start that she wasn’t capable of love. I thought it was because of her broken past and her parents’ divorce. She was never completely explicit about the fact that she had been in love with the same guy all her life, and he had gone and disappeared on her. If she had told me that much I would have understood I never had a dying chance with her. Instead she gave me the part of her that she could, and I had hoped for more….I came to Canada in search of a normal life. Alexis was part of that, she was smart and real, not like the sluts I told you about back home. I put her in danger, Vicky. Since I am coming clean with you, you should also understand that contact with me is dangerous,” he said lifting his t-shirt and revealing a delicious eight pack. His wide shoulders and strong chest were smooth and over his left chest muscle was the tattoo of an eagle with its wings spread out. As my eyes roamed his chest down to his abdomen, even in the dim light of the room I noticed the rough skin in the center of his stomach. Was that why he wore the tank top?

I scoot over the bed to get closer to him and lowered my head to the level of his stomach. He had a serious scar. As my finger ran over the scar, Luc hissed as if my touch had burned him. It made me sad to think that he’d been so broken that it was hard for him to feel the touch of a woman.

“What is this?” I asked, inspecting the scar closely.

“A bullet wound.”

“You were shot?” I asked with round eyes.

“Yes, my father had threatened Alexis, he sent my brother Henri to send a message. He would hurt her if I tried to leave the family. My father called me up to warn me that Henri was going to pay Alexis a visit, and by the time I reached her, Henri was threatening her, we fought. Henri had a gun on him. I think he wanted to scare Alexis or maybe even kill her…” he paused. It must be the look of terror on my face at the mention of threats and guns.

“I told you I was a monster, have I scared you enough for one evening?” he asked with sheer honesty.

“Please tell me more,” I urged him forward, despite the fact that yes, he was scaring me.

“Henri had smashed Alexis against a wall and she was hurt, we scuffled and I got a hold of him, hoping Alexis would run away. Only she was probably in shock and she was stuck in the same spot. Henri had held a gun to her and he still had the gun flailing everywhere as we fought. I feared it going off and Alexis getting caught in the crossfire, but that’s not how it played out.”

“Your brother shot you?” I asked with disgust.

“Yes, then he ran away and Alexis’s boyfriend and long-time love came to help us. He stopped me from bleeding out onto the road and he took care of her.”

“You took a bullet for your ex-wife?” I asked, smacking my hand to my mouth, his story was becoming more than tragic by the passing minutes, and he didn’t even end up with the girl. Who was this Alexis? I didn’t like her one bit by the sounds of it. She led him on. Even though he lied to her, she wasn’t honest either. I now understood why he was being so open and honest about his past and his feelings. He had been burned before.