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.

myself with my own shoes and bag which only remind me I was running away to save my sanity. I shouldn’t have

and I just stare at him, holding my breath and

Tick, tick, tick.

new kind of

says it huskily, softly, with less conviction,

so intense it feels like he has stabbed me

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 just let out the biggest secret he has harboured deep

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 cold shards

Thrown, I have no clue how to digest these alien words from the devil’s tongue.

all at once, in a tidal wave, and I’m so very

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

have had sex with him. I knew it would change everything once more. Start

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

a grip of me steadily, firmly, giving

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.

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

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

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.

face I meant nothing to you. Why would I believe you suddenly did a U-turn and changed everything you

any way. You fucked me 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 I admit I loved you when I didn’t know what was real? I didn’t trust you. I didn’t know

steadfast on mine. His apprehension fading away and hints of that domineering arsehole peeking back through. Somehow it gives me

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

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

time in my life I tried to be someone else. Someone

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 part

heart are torn at whether I should

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

at once and it’s manifesting in sheer rage. Bubbling up like an explosive volcano and I have so

no clue how else

knows what this even is anymore. I

conflicting and confusing facts. I push off from my corner, stand tall and come at him with all the fire and fight

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. Hating that his excuses are to justify

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

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

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

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 actually loves me?” I spit it at him, tears clouding my vision from the sheer force of everything coming out. Voice breaking but I don’t care. He has me stripped naked and raw in all my painful glory and now he

game. I repeat this to myself like a mantra and try to block out the way his soulless eyes are devouring

like that. It was … complicated.” Alexi looks around 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 he made me feel

to feel overwhelmed and out 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

I can’t be the cold bitch I once was, even if he deserves

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