Break Me

His Lies pt. 2

Carter looked at the box containing his secrets. He knew he couldn't lie or try to weasel himself out of the f****d up predicament he was in. He had to tell Emilia the truth, the whole truth. Emilia watched him sit across from her and whispered, "Marcellus came by. He told me you were a murderer and so was your father. And while I would never believe a word he says, this gun is starting to make me worry."

Carter sighed, "I did lie to you. Not because I wanted to, but because of events I had set off when I was younger have just now started to come back and haunt me. Just when I was getting to know you." Emilia looked at Carter scared, "Start from the beginning."

Carter looked Emilia in the eye, "When I was five months old my father was sent to jail for ordering a hit. Not the first time he'd done so. Not the last. It was my mother's form of punishment and getting justice for the person he had ordered killed." Emilia looked at Carter shocked, "He ordered someone to kill someone?" Carter nodded, "He's a mob boss of the St. Crox clan." Emilia was mortified, "He is? As in still alive?"

Feeling the crushing weight on his chest, Carter didn't hold back, "My mother lied to me for years about him. Said he was dead and had been a businessman. Died in a freak car crash when she was pregnant with me. When I was five, she moved us from here to America, and I didn't know why. She shacked up with some asshole who put her head through the kitchen table if his dinner wasn't right. We were abused for seven years together and then she abandoned me, leaving me with him. I didn't know why she had done that either."

Carter rubbed a hand down his tired face, his eyes haunted with the past. "I am a murderer. The man my mother left me with starved me. He drank all his money and soon we were living a house with no lights, water, or heat. We were on the brink of eviction and with my mother not around to fix it, he took all his anger out on me. One night he cracked me upside the head with a beer bottle for asking for food. I was bleeding out on the floor, I had a trac phone and called the police. He saw me doing it, and he started to choke me out because of it."

Emilia gasped at the thought of a young Carter against a grown man. "I was turning blue when I grabbed the end of the bottle and stabbed him in the neck. I thought it was still whole and had tried to knock him out like they did in movies. I ended up killing him and spending three years in a mental facility. When I got out, no one was there to claim me because all our family was here. So Uncle Nicholas had me brought here." Carter shook his head, "But I didn't live with him. Since he, at the time, wasn't financially stable they pushed me on my grandmother. A mean old b***h who despised me and my father. She fed me sure, clothed me, and made sure I went to school. But she hated me and didn't act shy in letting me know."

Carter groaned, "And then I started getting into trouble. Fighting mostly. I was suspended so many times and brought in for anger management. They even tried to put me on meds. I refused out right and then I was told I could make money for fighting. By the time I was sixteen I had become a brawler."

Emilia looked at boyfriend confused, "Meaning?" Carter sighed, "Meaning I was fighting in cages, alley's, hell abandoned warehouses, I was fighting and making good money doing it. There I met my uncle and cousin. My uncle Jimmy and Aidan, you've seen Aidan...the guy who's showed up here a couple times?" Emilia nodded remembering the guy who made him angry with his presence. "Your cousin? The guy you didn't seem to even like?" Carter smiled bitterly, "I like him. I just...when my cousin and uncle approached me after a fight, they congratulated me and said they'd made big money off of me. They noticed how much I looked like my father and started looking into me."

Admitting the truth Carter said, "When I had gotten to Dublin I had been curious about my father's side of the family. My mother, while a good woman, was a liar. She had told me he had been an only child to only child parents. And that they had died when my father was young. But since she had once told me she'd protect me no matter what, only to leave me when she escaped...I wondered what else she had lied to me about." Emilia could see the pain etched on Carter's face as he admitted, "And I had gotten what I wanted. The truth was my father had a whole family. My grandmother, my uncle, my cousins. I wasn't alone like she had let me believe."

"For years I was with them, despite my grandmother's protest until she died. She kept saying how they were evil and I would become like my father. But I didn't care, I had wanted to be like him. So I got to know them, things only got shitty when I found out about...the mob part. I had been oblivious until I turned eighteen and that's when they tried to bring me into the loop. I declined being anything like them, but I had already immersed myself into their lives. My father had been expecting me to be there when he got out. But I couldn't do it. Fighting someone, hurting them, was one thing. But I didn't think I had the balls to be a killer. An intentional killer."

Emilia slowly nodded, "So you said no thank you, and now it's over? So why keep....this?" Carter looked at the box Emilia pointed to and smiled a little, "My mom had that box every move in America, she kept it close always. It used to be filled with memorabilia of her and my father. But when she left she took it all with her. She left the box for me, I guess a way to remember her by. The gun was for protection, I fired it a couple of times to scare away druggies from breaking in. I also clean it to make sure it wouldn't jam."

Emilia looked at Carter as he let out a deep breath, "My full name is MacRieve Alexander Carter St. Crox III. I am my father's son, I can't deny that Emilia. But that doesn't change how I feel about you. I do love you with my entire heart baby." Emilia couldn't even think. She couldn't believe the s**t that had just been dumped on her, "You said your father was in jail for ordering someone to be murdered!"

Carter nodded, "And he was apprehended because the man he had killed had been an old love interest of my mothers. She had chosen between the two, only to regret that choice. When she found out what he had done, my mother dug up the evidence of another murder he had done himself. She got revenge for her ex lover and fled the country to avoid the wrath of the family. But they knew where she was the entire time. They sent her a letter to taunt her, which is why she left me. She knew without me, they'd never find her again."

Emilia shook her head in disbelief, "So she's not dead either?" Carter licked his lips, "No, when I was starting college she reached out to tell me she was sorry. She only did it because she thought I had taken over and would give her a pardon. She's still alive, she's just dead to me."

Emilia slowly nodded and started to stand, "I should go," Carter stood, "Baby please." Emilia looked at him incredulous, "You lied to me! You not only started out lying you continued to do so. If I hadn't found that damn box or Marcellus hadn't stopped by I would have continued to walk around like an i***t!"

Carter shook his head, "I didn't want to lie to you! But for years being known as MacRieve III ruined my life more than it benefited. I was kicked from classes, I was shunned from some family on my mom's side. The only people who has accepted that part of me are the ones you met, minus Marcellus. He was disgustingly rude about it."

Emilia hummed, "And Cindy? She knew didn't she? She tried to warn me at school, for the wrong reasons but she knew." Carter huffed, "Yes. Annoyingly she found out who I was when she saw me talking to some of the guys in the club. She told everyone who would listen and I almost got kicked out of school."

Carter came closer and urgently said, "When I found out why my father was in jail, I broke off all contact but the guys were still hanging around. The saw me as the heir and I couldn't tell them to piss off. But when everyone was looking at me like I was a criminal, telling their parents, who called the school complaining about me, I couldn't handle it. I severed ties until I graduated and now that that's approaching..."

Emilia looked at him even more horrified, "Wait, okay so you're not telling me this was my past and I'm out, you're telling me this is my future and I'm running towards it! Do you not realize that will make you everything that everyone thinks you are?"

Carter nodded, "I know. And I know what that might mean for me and you...and I'm so sorry. I should have never pursued me and you. I thought I could pretend what was meant for me wouldn't happen. But my father has plans for me, and in his own weird way he does care. I have to do this."

Emilia shook her head and ran to him. Holding Carter tight she made him look at her, "No! You could have us, this. Me and you. We could go anywhere else, but we can't do this together. And I don't want that! Carter I will be your future. We can graduate, get a house, get careers, have babies, and die peacefully surrounded by our family. But we can't do this....if you chose that family over me. You'll do it alone."

Carter nodded, "I know. And I expected it, I just wish....I had told you sooner. Maybe it would have made this easier. Maybe not." Emilia was in tears looking at the man she loved. "But I love you."

Carter cried as he felt his own heart breaking, "I love you too." Cradling Emilia's face, Carter rested his forehead on hers, "You taught me how to love and be loved Emilia. You were the dream I never thought I'd get. I'm sorry I turned into a nightmare."