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 bag which only remind me

I just stare

Tick, tick, tick.

kind of

it huskily, softly, with less conviction, more haste and

my air with a pain so

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

me in the throat unexpectedly and I try to shake it away, frowning at him while

no clue how to digest these alien words from the devil’s tongue. Lie or no lie? Believe or don’t

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

is trying for this instead of letting

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

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

she takes a grip of me steadily, firmly, giving

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

out of this? Why do you need to do these things to me?” I snap at him, tears drying on my skin as a

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

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

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

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

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

rising inside of me. So much rage

once played games with you. You had 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

or how for the first time in my life I tried to

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 this is not an

at whether I should believe this.

this man in front of me 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 it brims up inside of me, needing a release. I can’t trust him. Anytime I do he flips me upside down and crushes my soul

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

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

knows what this even is anymore. I don’t

off from my corner, stand tall and come at him with all the fire

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 that with a little sorry.” I’m seething and spitting teeth, unable to conceal my fury anymore. Hating that his excuses are to justify

what he put me through. There’s a permanent black hole in my soul that

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

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

my emotions? Am I supposed to swoon at your feet and forget it all because …

like a mantra and try

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

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

the girl I used to be. He changed that. I can’t be

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