The Carrero Contract - Selling Your Soul (Mafia Romance)

I slide down and do something I have done since I was old enough to bathe myself. I keep going until I fully submerge under the water, hold my breath, close my eyes and blot everything of the world away to hear only the high-pressure thrum of being underwater.

I can ignore my knees getting cold as they stick out to accommodate my laid down position as the respite from the world is always worth it. Even in an uncomfortable half sized tub that scrapes my bum with its cracked enamel.

I taught myself to hold my breath for up to two minutes as a child, even though I have never learned to swim. I used to count the seconds out and make myself do it for longer and longer. It was my escape, my secret underworld which cleansed my soul of all the sins put upon me while hiding me from the reality of my life. I used to wonder if it would be as peaceful to drown and finally be free of all that tormented me.

I can manage half that time now, seeing as I no longer do it ritually or often enough anymore. Only when I feel highly stressed and need escapism.

I relent after a minute and push myself up, wiping the water away as I inhale the cold musty air, and come back to focus on what is real. The disgusting grimy surroundings. I have to just accept this is my life now.

Tomorrow is another gruelling long shift, another monotonous Thursday when we stay open late. Fridays are no better as I work six days a week and have no respite until Monday, my one day off. I work weekends, not that I have a life to have other plans that require the odd break to use in my own time. I am carrying on that age-old tradition of no friends, no one getting close and therefore … no need for weekends.

I also feel wretched. This damn cold has been building for a few days and it’s wiping me out. My eyes are puffy; I’m constantly sniffing, feeling thirsty and have an itchy sore throat. These past months I just keep catching one thing after another as though I never fully recover before I am floored again. I seem to be sick all the time.

I know it’s because my immune system is shot, and I am hardly living in healthy surroundings; it all adds up to just being constantly under the weather. Just another layer to drag me down and make me feel like maybe it’s time I upped and left and found somewhere better to step up to.

This place is a prison that I have chosen to dwell inside of and I no longer know why anymore. Why I am doing this to myself when I have a few grand under the floor to just start someplace else.

I sit up in panic as a coughing fit hits me suddenly and almost drown myself in the process as I slide about helplessly, grabbing for a towel and wiping my face free of water. It wracks through me, burning my lungs painfully, and I end up with a runny nose and watery eyes cursing myself that I don’t even get to enjoy a soak in the tub anymore. Not that this tub is worthy. It’s well matched to my shithole surroundings. Tiny, chipped and flaky and has temperamental water flow when I manage to get it to work at all. Water that even on a good day, is always a weird shade of yellow or brown.

I get out quickly and clumsily, feeling frustrated and just not in the frame of mind to wrestle with my own patience and stay in the bath. Not even spending time washing myself or my hair, but the mood is gone and I dry myself fast.

This place is too cold and dusty to walk around naked, so I throw on the pyjamas I keep hanging in here, only place to use as a wardrobe seeing as the one in my room has rat shit and roaches inside it, crawling about and making my skin crawl. My clothes are kept in bags on the couch for more than just my need to leave, it’s also for fear that I may get critters in them and I’ve been bitten by many strange bugs here already.

I really need to up my living conditions.

to sort my shit

bed, knowing I’m going to need it if my nose keeps running, and climb into it. Not that it’s much of a welcoming place with a hard mattress and rough bedding that I got on sale in a

world and read a book. It’s not like I use my couch nor have anything to do when I get home from work. I spend my time here on this bed just sleeping my life away, or reading. I don’t even own a TV or anything which makes a noise and might attract people to investigate the new tenant’s belongings. Nothing of comfort that would just waste my money either and I only have books because people leave them in the

my cup of tea, but better than staring outside my dirty windows until sunset and

my only source of escape – reading a

I leave and that does me till breakfast most days, so that means hitting a gym or doing any sort of workouts isn’t needed as I am not eating enough to really gain weight. I know I am not taking care

up before heading home in a bid to shift this bug, knowing it’s dumb but I want it to knock me out for the night. It

Club Carrero, and now there are more sinister men scaring me shitless in

wake up with my book over my face haphazardly, where it’s obviously fallen when I drifted off, jumping in alarm at god knows what and blinking in the darkness of my room as I open my eyes to pitch black. My heart’s pounding crazily and the sweats hit me fast as I come to, in disorientation. Groggy from the effects of the meds

Pushing it on to my bedside table as I feel around with shaking hands. I roll to my side to try and drift back off, but a little noise in the

heard and strain so very hard to listen over the sound of my shallow breathing and erratic pounding rhythm as fear takes a low grip of

much so I can hear the blood rushing inside my head as adrenaline courses through my body. I know I

as stealthily as I can muster. My bedroom door is closed, which it makes it hard to hear anything at all but it’s unmistakable as it comes a little clearer and closer. I push my bedclothes back and sit very still, poised in a sitting position; completely petrified with a million things

Footsteps!

light on their feet, but every time they venture nearer my room, the floorboards make a dull aching thud underfoot, where they are loose and I

people inside my

knows who I am

Holding my breath, nerves on an all-time high as I vibrate inside, I try to

an intruder last month, he took nothing of value and the attack seemed to be purely sexual. I am not about to go down without a fight if that is what this is. I am not some mere girl who will

stranger to it, but it’s

keep a baseball bat under my bed and I reach for it quietly, crouching down as low as I can to slide it out slowly without making a single

door and I pause, heart hammering through my chest, body turning cold with tingles and clammy with fear. I have been in situations like this before and I know I need to keep my wits about me until I get out the other side. Women are murdered every day in this city, and I am no