The Carrero Contract - Selling Your Soul (Mafia Romance) novel Chapter 53

It happens so fast I don’t have time to think or breathe, and as I am rammed face first against a wall with a hard body biting at my back I can barely move. I’m knocked for six, instantly stunned as the doors slide shut, and I’m left with a complete stranger holding me captive. My heart starts hammering as my body turns cold.

Why does this shit always happen to me?

‘’Keep it quiet and I’ll be nice, Camilla.’’

I have no idea who he is other than he’s the blonde rough guy I spotted earlier and I have no connection to him. I feel sick with that infernal constant terror I feel nowadays and yet the fact he knows my name makes it more intense.

This isn’t random, he knows who I am. He also has me at an immediate disadvantage by pinning me face first against the wall and restraining me. Instant terror on its own, even if I did know him. A million scenarios run through my head from Rick paying this goon to finally find me, to any number of men or women I screwed over in the past tracking me down for revenge before Santagato crosses my mind.

He was too polite and distancing himself tonight, too ready to play nice and forget that little drama from before. Knowing Alexi and his manipulative gameplay I can almost be positive that this is Santagato’s doing.

I try to twist and free myself but he pulls his hand off my mouth, spins me, so we are facing one another and crushes my back to the wall cruelly. A relief to be out of that infernal position, but a short-lived feeling. He slides a gun out of his inner pocket, brings it up to hold at my temple and all bravado drains from me. Taking away all my fight as he smirks evilly, eyes running up and down with a look of creep with more than kidnap on his mind.

‘‘Who are you? What do you want?’’ I blurt it out, my body shaking and suffocated with the proximity, aware of how much danger I am in, yet I have no idea how he got past all of Alexi’s men; heads will roll for this shit when he finds out.

Up close I can see this guy is late forties, rough and not well shaven or well groomed. He has an air of street thug with watery blue eyes that seem devoid of life.

‘’I’m no one, just a hired hand leaving a message. Seems someone of importance values you enough to warrant me to make a mark.’’

Shit!

Santagato never backed off at all, he’s not convinced that Alexi isn’t into me and still thinks I am a weakness. It has to be. I don’t even know how he still managed to keep a firearm after getting in here as Carrero's men pat everyone down, and we have metal detectors on every entrance. If he has a gun in here then he obviously had it left for him, meaning someone on the inside is involved, and he knew to wait until he got me alone.

‘’I’m nobody—just a hired whore, I have no value to anyone.’’ I try to keep my cool as cold metal digs into my skin on my face and try like crazy to keep my wits about me. No tears, no weakness. I have more steel than this. My insides maybe crumbling to dust and screaming with hysteria but my mask is in place and I can do this. I just need to bide my time until we get out of the lift and someone else, possibly security, sees us. We are in Alexi’s building.

‘’A hired whore he hid in his mansion to keep safe, do you think people don’t watch his every move? He shows a weakness, my boss takes advantage. That’s how this works baby, and he’s waited a long time to find an angle to change up the dynamics with Carrero.’’

It IS Santagato. The slimy back-stabbing prick.

‘‘Why me? Why not any one of his family? He has a ton of them who are more important to him than I am and more accessible.’’ Keep him talking and hope he takes me to either the office or the apartment, as both have silent alarms that I can activate, and the desk man watching the cameras is outside the office twenty-four-seven.

‘’You don’t harm a Carrero, that would start a war of epic proportions. You though, you’re just a whore he’s taken a shine too, that would just fuck him up, and his family won’t back that kind of backlash. You’re an edge to a negotiation, and he can get you back when he agrees to a few demands.’’ He snarls yet moves in closer and runs a nose close to my neck and jawline, inhaling my scent in the freakiest perverted psychotic way and I wouldn’t put rape past this creep.

‘’Back?’’ I try to bring his attention away from mentally undressing me.

‘’We’re going up in a lift of a building that Alexi has armed to the hilt, how do you plan on getting me out?’’ I know goading him isn’t the best plan but if I keep him focused and talking then he’s less likely to start stripping me for his own desires.

I can see the way his eyes are glazing over and his erection is prodding me in the pelvis already. Men like this use sex as a means to feel powerful, and he wouldn’t be the first arsehole to do it.

‘’You think this is an opportunist moment? You’re a dumb broad. Offices have windows, high buildings have ways down and I have a van waiting outside. This building isn’t watched from the outside looking in because Carrero is more interested in what goes on inside.’’

I pale, alarm bells ringing because I know what he says is true. There’s an alleyway behind the building that you can access from another street, the building isn’t watched from outside and there’s a fire escape that runs half way down to above the height of a van. If he gets me down that he can pass me off to anyone standing on the roof of a transit. This was planned, they have been waiting for a chance and my return gives them that.

They knew I was coming back, what I don’t get is why no one snatched me the night I ran? I was an easy target then, less hassle than this. Maybe that was all just confirmation for them. My running and his hightailing it to be there to find me.

They missed a chance because they weren’t sure I would be a weapon, and now they are.

Fuck! Except I’m not, Alexi won’t bend to save me because I’m only a toy and not of long-term value. He’s not stupid, he will let me go the second he realises I affect his standing in this world and he’ll let them kill me.

I should be terrified of that prospect but I’m not. I’m strangely calm and devoid of feeling, much like I was when Tyler’s men made it clear that day it was the end of my road. I swear I am broken and if it was Alexi making threats on my life I would probably be a hysterical puddle on the floor, yet here I am, solid and stable as a rock.

I told Sophie something about me because I had no one else to remember it after I was gone. Who I was, my real name. I was disappearing after a lifetime of being invisible, and I told her something true and meaningless. I don’t know why, I guess it was like an acceptance that I never amounted to anything, and someone should know a girl named Lisa once lived in this body.

Lisa was born with so much promise … but fate gave her a shit path, and she died somewhere after her eleventh birthday.

Camilla isn’t a real person, she’s a guise, a façade, a mask, and she is truly worthless. A body that’s been used by hundreds of men, a dirty vile hooker with no moral compass and no one who ever gave one shit about her. She fought to survive and hurt countless girls in the process; her death will not mean anything to anyone and therefore, I feel nothing about it happening.

He drags me out of the lift on the office floor, tripping on my heels on the thick carpeting but I don’t reach out to grab hold of him. I would rather fall and make it an effort for him to get me moving. The guard up here is new, he’s only been here for the last two months, and instead of offering me relief at seeing a saviour he just nods and grins, and I swear I baulk at it.

He’s completely unshocked by the appearance of some greasy thug dragging Alexi’s hostess by the arms with him to the office, and it dawns on me that this prick has been paid off.

The nerve of the slimy little weaselly bastard.

He’s the insider? Someone who sits every day watching over Alexi’s club like a silent protector; someone we put our trust in? He’s new to here but I know he’s been a paid hand for years in Alexi’s empire.

What the hell? Alexi was right, you can’t trust anyone. They are all just opportunists waiting for a better deal, no wonder he keeps his circle of trust to blood only. No wonder he believes I will do the same, this guy has worked for him for a decade.

As the hired hitman drags me towards the open office, I make to fight, twisting and digging my nails into his wrist with vengeance as I realise my last hope of help was a complete fail. It gets me slapped hard across the jaw for my efforts, and sends me flying into the open office door, so I land face first on the floor and lose a shoe in the process of carpet skidding and burning up my arm as I yelp in pain. It burns like hell and I scramble around trying to right myself, so I have a better position for a second wave of kicking back.

‘’Be fast, Mico comes up here to check in every so often.’’ The gravelly voice of that traitorous bastard sitting at his bank of monitors makes me rage, and I literally will Alexi to find out what he’s done. I want him to make his torture slow and fucking painful and I hope he drags it out for weeks and endures the worst kind of hell before he dies.

‘’The van should be there in two minutes exactly, everything is working to plan.’’ The thug is over the top of me grabbing my limbs and body and dragging me across the carpet as though I am weightless. Effectively moving me without breaking a sweat, no matter how hard I am trying to resist.

‘’Shut the door in case anyone comes up to check on me.’’ Traitor is up on his feet, picking up my shoe, and he tosses it into the room we are heading for.