Chase's POV
"It might be too much for you." I reasoned, looking away.
"Chase, please talk." Emma's patience had thinned out and I could see it.
"Emma," I started, "the reason we're together today is because of this house." She looked at me in surprise .
"I don't get that." She said, Normally, I hated when she made assumptions, but this was literally the one time her making assumptions would have suited me, cause the truth was too heavy for me to say.
"I mean," I had been looking for ways to make myself the only bad guy in the story, but her mom had to go down too, "Your mom promised me this house, in exchange for, in exchange for loving you." I blurted.
"What?!" She screamed. "What did you just say?" She asked. "So this has been a whole fucking deal all the while? My mom? No wonder she turned a blind eye to what happened." Her eyes were glistening, reflecting the little light in the room cause they had tears pooling in them. "I ain't even trippin, it's really something y'all could do. I'm just hurt. I had to be a part of it." She said,
I hated that I was solidifying all the wrong impressions she had of me.
"Emma, she did it because she wanted some sort of security for you." I explained.
"And you're 'security'?" She asked, with a disgusted look on her face.
"I don't know what you wanna hear, but yes. I am." I responded.
"And I thought I was the one who was gonna get fire for being with my Stepbrother. Apparently, it was prearranged." it felt more like she was talking to herself. "Fuck you Chase." She said, and grabbed her shoes.
I had to stop her. It was gonna be all or nothing. I couldn't tell her just one half of it.
"Emma, you've gotta hear me out." I said, getting in her way.
"You've got more disgusting things to say?" She asked. The looks she shot me was enough to break my resolve, but she deserved to know the full truth.
"Your mom did it for everyone." I said, standing between her and the door I was trying to lock from behind. "Emma, my dad is a monster." The gate for me that her face mirrored morphed into something like fear, for my father.
I knew they had quite a good relationship, but she needed to know who Mark Norman really was. The parts I never told her mom.
"He's not good enough for Linda." I said. "But she refuses to recognize that. My father is the leader of the Coven Familia.
I was half expecting her to swoon, but she was strong enough to hold her.
"Please do not sugarcoat anything." She said, getting interested.
It was a good thing that she was ready to know the truth.
"If you haven't noticed, he's half Mexican and half Italian." I heard residual air escape Emma's lungs. "And no, your mom does not know this. All she knows is the next bit I'm about to tell you."
"She doesn't?" She asked for clarification, and I nodded in response.
"He's a dangerous man, a big businessman too, a father of one, his ex wife died under strange circumstances, but the case was snuffed out by his connections in the police.
"What the hell?!" she exclaimed. Emma looked like she'd seen a ghost.
I went closer to her, but all she did was flinch and look at me in fear.
"I'm nothing like that man, Emma. It's the reason we don't see eye to eye on anything. It's also the reason your mom got me this, so I could have you here when problems start for him, like now." Her gaze was fixed to the floor.
"I was only ten when my mom was choked to death by some rival mafia. They came to the house in pizza delivery costumes. We used to live somewhere on the outskirts. We moved to that estate, only after he saw our lives were at risk. While the movers sorted our stuff, his journal, which no other pair of eyes ever saw, fell out. I held on to it for months after that, sneaking it back into his room only when I saw he'd been getting very suspicious of me."
"How did you cope?" She asked in tears, at least she cared.
"To be honest, I can't say." I replied truthfully. " I knew from then on that my life depended on my discretion."
"My dad needed the mask of a family man, and that's when he started to get in contact with Grays mom," only when I mentioned it did I remember that I wanted to get in touch with Gray after his absence from the grad ceremony, "They didn't work out, that's where your mom came into the picture." I explained.
Emma held her head, limp, in her hands.
I had taken a seat at the foot of my bed myself.
"Emma, at the onset, I thought I'd get over it and then that it'd all blow over and we'd live our separate lives." I started my apology, "there, over there," I pointed to the house papers where I had stacked them up, with the designer lighter I got as a birthday gift from my dad, "I do not know, and I can't imagine how I've made you feel, but i could give it all back if you want me to." I pleaded.
"None of those feels worth it without you by my side. Emma, the house is too lonely, too cold for me. I want nothing more than to be in your good books, better still, to have what we had back, even better."
"I love you, from the bottom of my broken, shattered, black heart." I begged, rubbing her sexy pink feet. "I swear I didn't mean to get too attached, I can't imagine what I make you feel right now, I feel like shit myself…"
"You should." She shot at me.
"I know, baby, please. I'd give you my whole world if you promise to stay by my side. Emma, I lost my favorite woman in the world ten years ago, ten years later, I'm not looking to recreate the same mistake. I love you, I want to fight for you. I've fallen deep for you, our meeting wasn't random. It's destiny Emma, please don't throw me out. I knew I had fallen into a bottomless pit, taking a chance to fall in love with you. However we came together, baby, it doesn't matter. What matters is that I've fallen for you, Emma." I stopped only to catch my breath.
"And yes, Emma, I applied to MIT, and I got in." She'd pushed me to apply to the same school as her, while I did so, I also sent applications into other schools, just in case after this, she never wanted to see me again.
"Get off me, Chase." She spoke finally.