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.

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

like a fool, here I am, and I just stare at him, holding my

Tick, tick, tick.

kind of

softly, with less conviction, more haste and

a pain so intense it feels like he has stabbed me

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

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

no clue how to digest these alien words from the

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

him or why he is trying for this instead of letting me leave. If there is more to his games, and I have

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

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

of me steadily, firmly, giving my

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

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

Why do you think I 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

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 times in

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

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 didn’t know what I was doing or feeling, didn’t know what I had. How could I admit I

apprehension fading away and hints of that domineering arsehole peeking back through.

inside of me. So

me even when I didn’t want it to be so. You changed everything for me … and you ripped down all 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 nothing more than a

first time in my life I tried to be someone else. Someone who could hold her head

at my spew of pain. Shell-shocked in his posture and just not his usual confident sadistic self. Every part of him is almost screaming at me

at whether I

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

once and it’s manifesting in sheer rage. Bubbling up like an explosive volcano and I have so much desire to smack him around his

he has no clue how else to be, or maybe this is

knows what this even is anymore.

from my corner, stand tall and come at him with all the fire and fight that dragged me out of those dirty London streets

liar … you are a 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 what he put me through. There’s a permanent black hole in my

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

I don’t let him finish. That inner

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

myself like a mantra and try to

don’t care. I want him to feel awkward and uneasy. He has no clue what it’s

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

changed that. I can’t be the cold bitch

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