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.

to the things in my hands for some sense of grounding to reality. Hurting myself with my own shoes and bag which

am, and I just stare at him, holding my breath and waiting

Tick, tick, tick.

new kind

huskily, softly, with less conviction,

words that steal my air with a pain so intense it

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

effect as punching me in the throat unexpectedly and I try to shake it away, frowning at him while my insides bleed out and my

to digest these alien words from the devil’s tongue. Lie or no lie? Believe or

are you saying that to me?” I reply desperately, voice strained and raw. All the stilled emotions coming back in force all at once, in a tidal wave, and I’m so very overwhelmed with a dozen conflicting feelings. Trying to pull apart my tangled

need to figure out what sort of angle this gives him or why he is trying for this instead of letting me leave. If there is more to his games,

once more. Start another round of his specific kind of cruelty. This

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 rakes the burning embers deep down inside. Anger and hatred growing in the

dominant and she takes a grip of me steadily, firmly, giving my soul a

from my body all over again. Just for shits and giggles. Just because he enjoys

the hell do you get out of this? Why do you need to do these things to me?” I snap at him, tears drying on my skin as a sense of self-preservation floods me instead. Head trying to grasp on the most obvious answer—Alexi and mind games. It’s all this

you to have a 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 I recoil and sink slightly into my feeble position, shifting to the corner of the lift in a half-crouched foetal position. Still so afraid of this man’s ability to maim me. He pauses, seeing my obvious fear as it envelops me, and holds still. Raising his palms a little to indicate he won’t come any closer and has to quickly grab the door as it starts to close again. Keeping his hands locked firmly on the sides of

heinous ways, and I’m still trapped in his lair and the focus of all his attention. I’m no

my face I meant nothing to you. Why would I believe you suddenly

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

voice hoarse and eyes steadfast on mine. His apprehension fading away and hints of that domineering arsehole peeking back through. Somehow it gives me more courage to see the familiar in

though, pain and bitter anger rising inside of me. So much rage for what he just said to me. The utter bullshit in that little

my defences until I was nothing. You made me love you, you complete fucking idiot, and then you destroyed me. I did nothing wrong. I never deserved that.” I wail at him, in frustration, heartbreak and 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 full offensive because he believed I was

was, how deep my feelings for him ran or how for the first time in my life I tried to be someone else. Someone who could hold her head a

that to you.” Alexi seems completely submissive once more, backing down at my spew of pain. Shell-shocked in

torn at whether I should believe this.

much hostile energy as it brims up inside of me, needing a release. I can’t trust him. Anytime I do he flips

pent-up release of everything all at once and it’s manifesting in sheer rage. Bubbling up like an explosive volcano and I have so

no clue how else to be, or maybe this is part of his game.

knows what this even

it in. All the memories and thoughts, conflicting and confusing facts. I push off from my corner, stand tall and come at him with all the fire and fight that dragged me

fucking liar. I was there. I remember all of it. 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 that with a little sorry.” I’m

justifies what he did. He can never understand the depth of what he put me through. There’s a permanent black hole in my soul that is devil shaped

at him because rage stops the weakness in me from believing his sweet little words and love confession. It stops me being a dumb hopeful and falling for his bullshit all over again. It stops me hoping that I can ever mean something to anyone and being stupid enough to get

That

to stop playing with my emotions? Am I supposed to swoon at your feet and forget it all because … Oh, my Lord … the sadistic prick actually loves me?” I spit it at him, tears clouding my vision from

a mantra and try to

and uneasy. He has no clue what it’s like to

overwhelmed and out of his depth. If I could wound him the way he has wounded me in

the girl I used to be. He changed that. I can’t be the cold bitch I once was, even if

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