The Carrero Contract - Selling Your Soul (Mafia Romance) novel Chapter 56

I wake up in Alexi’s bed alone, memories of last night flitting through my head like it was all a dream from another place, another dimension and none of it was real at all.

Alexi made love to me for hours. Not like before, not like anything I ever expected of him. Silent in the darkness of his room, my body surrendered, and he brought me to heights of pleasure over and over.

No rush, no war between us, no pain, no punishment, no being held down or bound. No aggression, dominance or ownership, in fact, we never spoke at all. Just two people locked in getting pleasure from one another and all else faded away to unimportance. Alexi made me feel like he had an ability to be something more and gave me a taste of what it would be like to be loved by someone like him.

Just a glimpse, the fact he can be gentle and considerate and fulfil a need when you don’t even know what it is. He made me feel better, he took my mind elsewhere, and not once did he put me in a position that gave me fear. He responded to my noises and seemed to know exactly how to give me what I craved at every turn and didn’t stop until my body drifted into exhausted sleep.

In the cold light of day however, I realise he was, in fact, securing the silence of his witness. My sense no longer foggy or clouded, my brain able to put things into perspective this morning, see things clearly and I realise I was just stupidly fantasising.

Always a manipulator; always bends his method to suit what he requires. He made love to a woman whom he knows has feelings for him in a bid to make sure her loyalty and heart would keep her mouth shut. He didn’t use fear or threats, this time he used sex and affection on a girl who has been screaming for both. It was the more powerful tool at his fingertips.

Alexi is still the same cold bastard. He lost his power over me where sex was concerned. He knew it when I wouldn’t let him touch me in the club. He just took it back and enabled his right to do to me whatever he wants. He made me weaker and made sure my refusal was less likely because he knows I can’t refuse the possibility of another night like last night. I’ll crave it and hold onto it in the hope of getting another.

He predicted and counted on it.

I am so tired of this game. So tired of everything always having an ulterior motive. I thought I could trust him last night, I thought I was seeing something more in the hopes that maybe there is something inside of him when it comes to me. Now I see it was all a ruse to control me. He was failing before, so he tried a new angle. He knows I am in love with him, it’s obvious. It’s just another weakness to extort, and I am becoming predictably easy at cajoling and playing whenever he sees fit.

When did I become so easy to manipulate and so goddamn basic?

I have a pounding headache; I’m stressed to the max and have been living upstairs like a hermit for the past two weeks. I’m on a ban from going anywhere, according to Mico, and Alexi doesn’t want me on the club floor either. I am going out of my mind with cabin fever and had to turn to the internet for things to keep my mind occupied.

If I see another makeup guru with bronzer overuse or another movie about sisters doing it for themselves, then I think I may have a psychotic break.

Alexi never came back after that night. After hours of being connected to every part of my body and soul, seeing me in every single vulnerable way he could and devouring me whole. He just left while I slept and never returned.

He hasn’t contacted me, talked or sent any messages other than through his shadow and sidekick Mico. I am to stay put, lie low and leaving this house will be a pain worse than death for me. Like a sad pathetic cling-on.

I have sent him a text a few times and even tried to ring his phone in my weaker moments. He doesn’t pick up, and he doesn’t reply, truly icing me out and acting like I no longer exist. I just wish it didn’t hurt me so damned much.

He has a new way to inflict pain and it’s this. Silence and lack of presence. He’s just removed himself from my life and initiated the worst kind of torture.

I am losing my mind.

Security has quadrupled, and my listless jaunts to the floor below to stretch my legs and get a new scene to gawp at just confirm the club is in lock down. Mico hasn’t left this building in two weeks either and every day I appear lower than the apartment he’s all over my arse to get back upstairs, barking orders and frog marching me up here with a no-nonsense grip on my shoulder.

I get that they are all probably dealing with the fall out of that night, things in the pipeline and some war starting somewhere else. I just don’t know why he had to add pain to what is already hell, by cutting me off after a night like that and icing me out.

It couldn’t have all been just a game plan, I was there, I felt something between us that was more than sex. The way he touched me, held me and kissed me. That wasn’t the Alexi Carrero that I know, that was someone else who made me feel like I was anyone else for just a few short hours. He cradled me to him, and he was in tune with my body, took me to places I never knew I had the ability to go. I was his completely in the way he’s been trying to possess me from the start.

I surrendered my soul and let him take me over and over until there was nothing left to give. Voluntary submission—something he told me he craved in his women. I stopped fighting and just admitted defeat, that I love him.

Somehow through the layers of cold, evil demon I found something that my heart wanted and I gave in to it fully. I am completely lost to Alexi in ways I never knew I could be, and that night pushed me past an invisible line I can never go back from. If it’s all about control then he’s winning, he owns my mind, body and soul.

I can’t get that night out of my head for the other obvious reason, images flashing in my brain and the noise of that crack. I swear I hear it everywhere I go and my body shudders. I cannot stop seeing his face when I close my eyes—it’s there like a madman prodding inside my skull. Not Alexi, but the man who tried to abduct me. He deserved to die, I know this, and I know what he had planned for me would have been horrific, but it doesn’t make it go away or stop it leaching inside my mind, making me feel insane.

I’m so much more emotional in the past couple of weeks, up and down. Body aching because I’m coming down with flu or something. I’m run down, getting sick from stress and anxiety as it destroys my immune system. I always get sick when I am going through something traumatic and everything is just getting on top of me.

I swear being locked in the apartment is like forcing me into depression and making me breathe stale air. I need fresh air, space and freedom, before I go insane.

Joanne is running my club now, as much as it kills me inside. Mico was very blunt about that fact, and while I’m holed up like a hermit and wasting away into hell, she’s down there swanning around and doing God knows what.

She couldn’t run a piss up in a brewery, and she is probably destroying all of our club’s credibility with her cheap tacky taste and incompetent management skills. If Alexi has been here, then he hasn’t come near me.