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Watching him contemplate his next words, I realized what an intense man he was. Everything about him was puzzling and contradictory. How could he be bad when he was so good? Even his looks were an enigma. He was big and strong, and tough and rugged on the outside, but inside was something else. He was broken and soft, despite his rough around the edges demeanor.

Luc’s sad green eyes flicked up to mine as he lay back down beside me on the bed. “The fact that we are alone in here makes me nervous,” he admitted with a boyish grin.

“Why? I don’t understand when you say stuff like that. You’ve said you are experienced with women…” I began to say when he cut me off.

“It’s not because I am nervous because I don’t know what to do with you sexually…” he laughed. “Trust me, Vicky, I know I am good in bed,” he said lifting up a hand. His words caused a burst of lust to surge through my body.

“What is it, Luc? I want to understand.”

“I know,” he nodded, looking like he was collecting his thoughts or maybe garnering the courage to speak. “I told you that my family is involved in organized crime. It wasn’t easy for me to leave the family. My father wanted me to take over one day. I was his eldest son,” he paused but I didn’t say anything; I didn’t want to interrupt. He was finally talking. “When I left France I went to Canada, Toronto… a large city there…” he explained but I still don’t speak, even though I know what Toronto is and I’d been there.

“I met a girl, I fell in love with her. I lied to her about who I really was and why I was in Canada. She was a law student and she grew up with an alcoholic for a mother and no father. She was verbally and physically abused her whole life. I found a connection with her and we fell in love and got married. Only it wasn’t so simple, she had no clue that my family was mafia. She got pregnant and I didn’t want to abandon her, like everyone else in her life had. So I married her, without telling her that I was running illegal gambling sites, high stakes poker games, or any other dirty work my father had me do for him,” he paused and turned his head. Our eyes met. I could drown in those eyes, although hearing that his ex-wife was pregnant made my stomach sink for some reason. He was gauging my reaction so far. I bet he was wondering when I would run out the door. I understood that it was hard for him to look at me when he was speaking. He turned his head back down, so that his eyes were focused on his stomach as he lay beside me.

“Go on Luc, it’s okay, I want to hear your story,” I said, urging him forward. Nothing he had said so far seemed horrific. It sounded like his father forced him into a life he never wanted and wouldn’t let him escape. He was clearly ashamed of his position. His story made me sad because he’d been feeling alone a lot longer than I had. It made my heart hurt for him.

“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?