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 reality. Hurting myself with my own shoes and bag which

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

Tick, tick, tick.

new kind of

with less conviction, more haste and

my air with a pain so intense it feels like he has

lower and raspier as though he 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 like those words are terrifying to him

away, frowning at him while my insides bleed out and my head is filled with a foggy confusion. My

how to digest these alien words from the devil’s

to me?” I reply desperately, voice strained and raw. All the stilled emotions coming back in force all

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, and I have re-opened that

it would change everything once more. Start another round

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

of me steadily,

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

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, 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 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.

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

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 stay jammed in my little space

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

hints of that domineering arsehole peeking back through. Somehow it gives me more

though, pain and bitter anger rising inside of me. So much rage for what he just

frustration, heartbreak and despair. Angry that it all comes down to this. That he thought I was playing him all that time. That

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

I’m sorry. I don’t 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. Every part of him is almost screaming at me that

torn at whether

swimming and reeling and knocking everything out 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

a 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 much desire to smack him around his stupid

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

this even

it in. All the memories and thoughts, conflicting and confusing facts. I push off from my

it’s because you loved them. You don’t fucking come

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

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

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

at your feet and forget it all because … Oh, my Lord

to myself like a mantra and try to block

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

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

that. I can’t be the

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