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

I just stare

Tick, tick, tick.

kind of

softly, with less conviction, more haste and obvious fear.

with a pain so intense it feels like

rest on mine, and for the first

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 prickling with

clue how to digest these alien words from the devil’s

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

out what sort of angle this gives him or why he is trying for this instead of letting me leave. If there is

more.

is almost shy and awkward and not him. Not Alexi Carrero by any means. It fuels my suspicions and rakes the burning

fire in me is battling to be dominant and she takes a grip of me steadily, firmly, giving my soul a massive shake, rattling my

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

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

have spent weeks trying to show you that 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 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

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 so many

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 felt about me?” I gasp and thrust my words at him, sounding more venomous than I feel inside. Pulling myself back up to standing but I still

mess; I had no idea how I really felt when everything was so fucked up and confusing, and I didn’t want to trust you in any way. You fucked me up. You made it so I was all over the place and I

away and hints of that domineering arsehole

choke on his words though, pain and bitter anger rising inside of me. So much rage for what he just said

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

first time in my life I tried to

else to say that to you.” Alexi seems completely submissive once more, backing down at my spew of pain.

head and heart are torn at

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 me upside

at this man’s hands … I’m now suffering a pent-up release of everything all at once and it’s manifesting in

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

even

push off from my corner, stand tall and come at him

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 seething and spitting teeth, unable to conceal my fury anymore.

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 and nothing in the world can

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

I don’t let him finish. That inner psycho gaining strength. So not doing this shit with him

could and now tries to pull this shit on me? That I’m supposed to believe you now, because for some reason, you decided 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

like a mantra and try to block out

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

If I could wound him the way he has wounded me in the

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

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