The Carrero Contract - Selling Your Soul (Mafia Romance) novel Chapter 45

I literally feel like I have walked the streets of the Hamptons for days, alone and afraid, and yet it’s only been hours. I have never felt so distraught and sick with regret in all my life. I have walked in circles and gone through a million doubts and emotions in the meantime, and feel completely ravaged mentally.

I got to the bus depot not long after I got away from Mico, and then lost my courage when I saw two boys who could have been Alexi’s brothers at the terminal and realised I am in the land of Carrero. They all live and breathe around this part of the world, word would fly fast about wherever I was heading. I mean there are not many harlot redheads in this part and I stand out like a sore thumb.

Five foot six, slender with large breasts and a trim body, red hair, pouting red lips on a pretty attractive face and dressed head to foot in designer black, figure-hugging tailoring and high-heeled boots. I am hardly easy to hide even with a mismatched baseball cap. I tried to track a flight out of here, but it’s only a small private airport and getting a plane is like trying to get blood out of a stone. Alexi would trace my flight easily as they all pretty much go to JFK. From there I would then need to get another flight and risk hanging around in the city being trailed by CCTV.

I know he has the means and I wouldn’t put it past him to fly after me and make my life a living hell for running away. I literally have nowhere to go, nowhere to hide now reality and logic have set in and I realise how stupid this little adventure really was. His reach goes far beyond this city and this was the dumbest idea I’ve had since sleeping with him.

I’m sat in a park, on a swing, and just staring at the ocean in the distance until it gets too dark to see much without the light of the streets. Hoping to find calm in the sea and the waves to still the crushing panicking beat of my heart and nerves. I don’t know what to do, and the reality is I have no one, nowhere to go and nowhere to hide. Victim of my own designed circumstances. I have been alone my whole life, never had anyone to care or watch out for me … until him.

The man I hate with a passion because he takes delight in my pain, and yet he’s the first person who gave me a glimpse of what secure feels like. He gave me a home and a job and stopped other men from touching me; as fucked up as he is and how much of a controlling arsehole he can be, he’s never touched me against my will either. I can’t say that about any other man who ever came near me.

Prick Alexi is the first man who actually gave me some sort of respect and responsibility, even if it was only running his club. I’m already running from one monster that haunts my dreams and my life, makes me check behind me at every turn and watch over my shoulder in case he might be lurking. Running from Alexi will be so much worse.

Rick was a small-time pimp with a violent personality and paedophilia tendencies. He hated to lose, but he never had the means to find me or the cash to follow me. Alexi has both, and the power to do so much more. I won’t just be running from some evil narcissist with a bad temper and a hate at being fucked over by a little girl.

I’ll be running from a mob boss I still owe a shit load of money to, and he will not like that it makes him look bad. Being defied, disobeyed and made a fool of. His reputation will be on the line and he will make an example of me. It’s so much worse and I was stupid to not think all this through first.

I have to go back; I have to walk back to that house and beg Mico not to tell him because I am terrified of what he will do to me. If he goes apeshit over me picking my own dress I cannot even imagine what he will do to me knowing I ran away.

It’s a betrayal, even if he says he doesn’t trust me, and in his eyes, he owns me. I just threw all that back in his face. No matter how much of a sadistic prick he is, he demands loyalty, and no matter what I feel, I owe it to him—he saved me more than once, and despite the emotional hell he inflicts upon me, he has sheltered me from a life that was killing me. He gave me a new start, a sense of purpose and something to be proud of, a job, home and responsibility.

I’m praying Mico has been looking and not told him for fear of repercussion; maybe if I get my arse into gear and go home I can make a deal with him to not let it go any further. I will literally let him fuck me to keep this secret from Alexi. I’ll suck him as much as he wants and however many times just to keep this quiet.

I left my phone at home this morning like I do every time I leave the house, so I couldn’t be tracked, and now sitting here I realise I can’t even pave the way and soften the return. Mico seems like the kind of guy who will give me a slap, if not more. I haven’t seen him push anyone around, but he has that violent vibe. Although, saying that, so does Alexi ,and yet he’s never hit me and I know he never would. He just uses other means to hurt me.

I know I have no choice in this at all. It’s a clear-cut decision—remorse and beg for forgiveness OR ultimate painful death. I get up and will myself to turn towards the road and head towards the direction of Alexi’s house. It’s about a thirty-minute walk or more, and if I don’t go now I will end up sleeping out here and probably decide to throw myself in the ocean as it’s a far better choice than any of the other options. I have zero courage and yet my legs start aiming homewards. If I can call it that.

I’m wracked with anxiety and terror, shivering because I am both cold and scared, and I paste on a determined look in a bid to convince myself that it’s all going to be okay.

Alexi won’t just put a bullet in my head for running scared—will he?

I stare at the unfamiliar sports cars in the drive, one dark slate or black and one a sort of dark navy, even in this darkness I can see they are not the same colour, although they are the same model. One is parked like it’s been abandoned; half on the grass at an angle and something deep down is telling me this means something.

Mico has a four by four, it’s not here and neither is the other car some of his other goons use. Just two new sports cars, identical except in colour and my head keeps racing back and forth to two twins who are identical in every way—except with different coloured eyes. Grey and blue.

Fuck!

I take a deep breath, count to ten and realise it will never be enough. I will never be ready to walk in that door if he’s here.

Crapping myself mercilessly and having to dig deep for an ounce of courage I have inside of me. I can’t even think up a plausible lie as there is nothing to explain my missing person for the last few hours. I literally legged it from Mico.

Mico must have told him, he must have come and that has to be his car. It’s way too expensive a sports car to be generally used by his suits, and I imagine being twins means the same taste in cars is plausible. He did say Gino was close by and I brace myself for the inevitable.

Be smart, think about this, he won’t physically hit me or beat me. He might try to use sex again, but I won’t let him. Not after the last time. I physically do not want him to touch me ever again and I think he has killed the power of seduction he had over me now, so it takes that out the window too.

Tying me up? I have endured worse, and if that’s the route he chooses then I’ll numb myself out and make myself zone into another place like I used to. I have the skills to survive so much more than Alexi Carrero. I have and will survive anything he can throw at me. I just have to have some self-belief and stop thinking my recent couple of years respite from this life has made me soft. I endured hell and have the internal scars to prove it.

I can survive anything if I set my mind to it. I just need to find my courage and stop letting my fear of him drown it out. I need to stop goading him and fighting him, try to keep my head down and behave. Become a ‘‘Yes sir’’ woman like he wants. Stop giving him reason to do this to me.

I jump when a car drives by in the street and realise standing out here is pointless, I need to just bite the bullet and go in before this gets any worse, and before one of his people in the house see me out here, standing like a terrified freak and contemplating the end of my life. I take one last breath, eye up the abandoned black car that looks like Alexi parking in a rage, chewing his own lawn up and giving no shits about it. Seems like something he would do.

I take the steps up to the huge front door while my body aches to run in the opposite direction, swallowing down the lump of tightness in my throat and straining to breathe through a heavy chest. I am on the verge of an all-out panic attack. Faced with two huge wooden doors that are normally kept locked, they are all that stands between me and certain torture, except I didn’t bring a key and I figure I should try the handle before I knock.

Hand trembling visibly and I tense myself in a bid to make myself reach out and grab the cold metal knob. It’s not locked and that just feels more like a sign that he is probably here.

Shit!

I open it and push it slowly to slide inside, blinking at the bright lights of the hall and dredging up courage from somewhere down in my toes to do this. White marble and cream walls blinding me after the darkness of outside as my eyes adjust to the modern interior. I don’t get very far into the hall when a voice makes me jump ten feet in the air. My heart flips over, and that voice alone can make cold fear sweep my body in a nanosecond.

‘’Where the fuck were you?’’ Alexi shouts in a rage and a real one. Not that cold scary tone, but a very verbal angry tone, such as I have never heard. It’s the worst sound ever, his growling, accusatory and fury ridden voice makes me melt into a puddle of shaking jelly. Visibly recoiling into myself. I turn to the direction of the voice, seeing him coming at me from the other room and I just freeze. My eyes wide and misting up.

He’s walking towards me at speed with a killer look in his eye that makes me doubt whether he would physically hit me, as Gino intervenes by walking in front of him and stops him with a palm on his chest. He murmurs something to him, two bookends in white shirts and black trousers and even though a set of cold grey eyes under a furrowed brow are giving me the death glare, he stays put, listening to his brother and just growls at me instead.

That look could melt steel. He’s like an animal waiting to be unleashed and I’m the Sunday roast. His brother restraining him in a way, and even from here I can see the energy of rage bubbling under the surface and how badly he wants to beat me to within an inch of my life.