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.

heart races, clinging tightly to the things in my hands for some sense of grounding to reality. Hurting myself with my own shoes and bag

stare at him,

Tick, tick, tick.

kind

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

a pain so intense it feels like he has

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

has the same 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 head is filled with a foggy confusion. My whole-body

alien words from the devil’s tongue.

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

he is trying for this instead of letting me leave. If there is more

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

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 rakes the burning embers deep down inside. Anger and hatred growing in the doubts at this contradictory

she takes a grip of me steadily, firmly, giving

be a trap of devious proportions and he could be poised and ready to rip my soul from my body all over again. Just for shits and giggles. Just because he enjoys destroying me over and over. Just

lower than low. What the hell do you get out of this? Why do you need to do these things to me?” I snap at him,

things are different? I knew you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. I knew this would be the reaction if I just came out and said it. I needed 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

has the power to ruin me in heinous ways, and I’m still trapped in his lair and the focus of all his attention. I’m no fool. I’m vulnerable and unable to hold my own against him. He proved that

believe you saying 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

up. You made it so I was all over the place and I didn’t know what I was doing or feeling, didn’t know what I had. How could

on mine. His apprehension fading away and hints of that

me. So much rage

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 nothing more than a manipulating whore out to get his money, his power, or maybe just his heart, so I could become his puppeteer. Just a devious gold digger in his eyes who came

no clue how wrong he 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

know how else to say that to 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.

and heart are torn at

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

everything all at once and it’s manifesting in sheer rage. Bubbling up like an explosive volcano and

though he has no clue how else to be, or maybe this is part of his game. His plan.

even is anymore.

unable to hold 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 out of those dirty London streets so

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

never understand the depth of what he put me through. There’s a permanent black hole in my soul that is

being a dumb hopeful and falling for his bullshit all over again. It stops me hoping that I can ever

explain.” He starts but I don’t let him finish. That inner psycho gaining strength. So not doing this shit with

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 the sheer force of everything coming out. Voice

like a mantra and try to block out the way

him uncomfortably, uneasy at his lack of control of the 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

of his depth. If I could wound him the way he has wounded me in the past I would, but I know I don’t have it

to be. He changed that. I can’t

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