The Carrero Contract - Selling Your Soul (Mafia Romance)

Chapter 139

“What?” Everything in me halts to some weird frozen moment, suspended in time and my manic panic calms instantly to surreal numbness. One questioning word jerked out of me in response to his statement.

Standing in the lift facing him while he holds the doors wide, only feet apart and so close to escaping I can almost taste it.

Tears stop and my body stills. I openly stare at him in complete shock. Brain stuttering on his words and unable to react whilst in a state of disbelief.

I stop my noisy breakdown and hold very still, breath paused, emotion idling while I wait. The hysteria of a moment ago fades to this eerie silence between us as I pause for an explanation, an expansion of his sentence. Of a meaning to him saying the word love, to me, of all people.

He can’t love me. It makes no sense. He hates me. He hurts me, he always has.

But he just told me he loves me, and he will do anything to keep me.

My brain is melting. I don’t know how to process any of this.

It must be a game plan. This is who he is—a manipulator. Cruel sadistic devil and he doesn’t love. He could never love me.

He shunned my confession of the same thing not so long ago. This can’t be real.

I lean back against the lift wall heavily, to steady my suddenly lead weight of a body and jelly legs and give myself space to try to process some of this.

I can’t believe we have come full circle and here we are again.

The same apartment where I poured out my soul at his feet, and he pushed me away into the cold and lonely solitude of a broken heart. Where I put a gun to my head and tried to ease myself of the pain he inflicted.

This place where he shunned my love. He now has the nerve to tell me he loves me. If that isn’t some sick twist, then I don’t know what is.

I’m almost afraid to breathe. It’s like his words have stopped everything around us and between us and even time itself is hovering in some suspended alternate reality.

Alexi looks panicked, eyes on me widening as he glances away down to his feet nervously and then back at me hesitantly, swallowing hard. The atmosphere filling with his own trepidation and consuming the air around us. I don’t know how to feel but the delay seems like an eternity and the waves of his own emotion are upping the tension of every ticking second.

Waiting for him to lie again and cut me down over and over. That’s what this is, surely? A well-planned devious manoeuvre. To crush my soul again.

It’s agony. A form of torture and I wonder if this is all part of another sick move. I don’t know why he needs to keep hurting me. I don’t know what I ever did to him that was so bad he needs to destroy me this way.

“I said …” He clears his throat finally, an awkwardness overcoming him, and he can’t seem to keep still. Nervous energy overtaking, moving almost in a fidgeting manner as he inhales heavily, almost willing himself the courage he doesn’t feel.

This is not the Alexi I know, and it only deepens the knot of something large and painful, growing in the pit of my stomach.

Fear maybe. Anxiety? Anger?

It’s a far cry from the self-assured manipulator I know and hate. This is a glimpse of someone entirely new. A side he keeps well hidden from the world and I don’t know if it’s even real. A side that is throwing me off kilter and I’m suddenly faced with a stranger and a head full of doubts and chaos that’s threatening to choke all oxygen out of my body.

A rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck. Knowing I’m about to be mowed down in another Alexi head fuck. I should run. Go. Not wait for a reply, but my feet won’t move, and I hold my body still in anticipation. My dumb heart clinging on by one thread that maybe it isn’t a lie.

Stupid pathetic girl.

I should know better.

It’s always a lie.

reality. Hurting myself with my own shoes and bag which

a fool, here I am, and I just stare at him, holding my breath and waiting … endlessly

Tick, tick, tick.

kind

He says it huskily, softly, with less conviction, more haste and obvious

pain so intense it feels like he

as though he struggled to get the words out a second time and he cannot look me in the eye as confidently as he did. Eyes finally coming to rest on mine, and for the first time in all the months I have known him, Alexi looks scared and so very young. He looks like those words are terrifying to him and he

and I try to shake it away, frowning at him while my insides bleed out and my head is filled with a foggy confusion. My whole-body

to digest these alien words from the devil’s tongue. Lie or

I reply desperately, voice strained and raw. All the stilled emotions coming back in force all

out what sort of angle this gives him or why he is trying for this instead of

with him. I knew it would change everything once more. Start another round of his specific kind of cruelty. This

mean it … I just …” He sighs through his words heavily, still acting like a completely different man. One who is almost shy and awkward and not him. Not Alexi Carrero by any means. It fuels my suspicions and

battling to be dominant and she takes a grip of me steadily, firmly,

body all over again. Just for shits and giggles. Just because he enjoys destroying me over and over. Just because this is who he

at him, tears drying

reason to believe me first, so I had to prove it to you. I knew you would run otherwise, because you had no reason to trust me.” He moves towards me suddenly, but

lair and the focus of all his attention. I’m no fool. I’m vulnerable

this shit to me, Alexi? You spent months torturing me, making me feel worthless. You sent me away, you broke me into a thousand pieces and told me to my face I meant nothing to you. Why would I believe you suddenly did a U-turn and changed everything you

up. You made it so I was all over the place and I didn’t know what I was doing

at me pointedly, voice hoarse and eyes steadfast on mine. His apprehension fading away and hints of that domineering arsehole peeking back

almost choke on his words though, pain and bitter anger rising inside of me. So much

despair. Angry that it all comes down to this. That he thought I was playing him all that time. That his cruel wanker side was on the

deep my feelings for him ran or how for the first time in my life I tried to be someone else. Someone

you.” Alexi seems completely submissive once more, backing down at my spew of pain. Shell-shocked in his posture and just not his usual confident sadistic self. Every

and heart are torn at whether

in front of me right now, and my head is swimming and reeling and knocking everything out of whack. I’m just engulfed with so much hostile energy as it brims up inside of me, needing a release. I can’t trust him. Anytime I do he flips

man’s hands … I’m now suffering a pent-up release of everything all at once and it’s manifesting in sheer rage. Bubbling up like

stares at me as though he has no clue how else to be, or maybe this is part of

this even is anymore. I don’t

memories and thoughts, conflicting and confusing facts. I push off from my corner, stand tall and come at him

You don’t do that to someone you love. You don’t treat people the way you treated me and then tell them it’s because you loved them. You don’t fucking come back from all of

understand the depth of what he put me through. There’s a permanent black hole in my

rage stops the weakness in me from believing his sweet little words and love confession. It stops me being a dumb hopeful and falling

starts but I don’t let him finish. That inner psycho gaining

my emotions? Am I supposed to swoon at your feet and forget it all because … Oh, my Lord

nothing but a game. I repeat this to myself like a mantra and try to block out the way his soulless eyes are

outcomes, but I don’t care. I want him to feel awkward and uneasy. He has no clue what it’s like to not be the man moving the chess pieces. The one in control. It’s nothing compared to how he made me feel for months

out of his depth. If I could wound him the way he

to be. He changed that. I can’t be the cold bitch I

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