The Carrero Contract - Selling Your Soul (Mafia Romance) novel Chapter 57

I don’t know if this was all part of his punishment brewing from running away and this is maybe the backlash. Romancing me in bed, only to make me feel like a meaningless whore by cutting all ties and leaving me out in the cold for weeks on end. I know he’s probably fulfilling his needs between someone else’s thighs. I try not to think about it, trying to convince myself that I didn’t imagine something else in him that night, but when facts are slapping me in the face it’s hard to hope for anything.

Only I would fall for the devil himself who makes me feel completely worthless in every way.

‘‘Lex says you need to pack up, I am moving you.’’ Mico breaks into my listless daze as I sit on the couch, staring blankly at my laptop. Some video droning on endlessly about some vague, obscure shit that I clicked on for something to watch. I have no idea what it’s about, and I am startled by his sudden appearance, but the real reaction comes from his words. Heart elevating its beat instantly.

‘’Alexi is here?’’ My stomach does a little flutter, and despite myself, I get a high happy flip of insides that I might see him. I hate that in the past two weeks I have missed him, kept checking my phone and bringing up his name like a love-sick puppy and then felt like a pathetic idiot each time.

I cannot control my internal reaction having first confirmation that he is actually in the building, where I am, close by, finally.

‘’Just do as you’re told.’’ Mico frowns, avoiding eye contact and then leaves me to it but I can’t just take that as an answer. If he’s here then I want to see him! I want him to face me and know why he has completely just iced me out after everything. I want to know first-hand if it was all a lie and I imagined the whole thing.

I’ll know by his reaction to me, I will know by his eyes, his tiny tells and how he behaves when seeing me again. I need to know, it’s clawing up inside me like a persistent ache.

As soon as I know Mico is gone I run like the wind to my room filled with stubborn determination and throwing all sense out the freaking window. I pull on a dress and discard the sweatpants I had on, pull my hair out of its ponytail and make myself presentable in minimum time. I was always good at flash prepping to get ready in a hurry and do so with amazing skill.

I’m not going to sit up here in the hope that he comes up. I’m going downstairs to see him and finally dull down this gnawing ache of longing I have for him, pining away like some sad idiot.

***

I walk out of the lift on the ground floor cautiously, looking around warily for signs of security doing their walkabout. Getting in and down here was almost like mission impossible when it stopped on the office floor and I had to hide against the wall so Mico didn’t see me. Damn lift and its need to open on every floor. I just thank my stars they never switch on the cameras in there.

I could see that Alexi wasn’t in the office, the door wide open, and just black shadows milling around as Mico barked orders about taking my cases and boxes to Chicago.

Why the fuck is he sending me to Chicago? He’s not got a chance in hell of sending me so far away from him. I would rather die. I primp and preen myself as I walk down the corridor, my eyes everywhere as I go. Still, a hint of nerves at coming down here, as it’s my first time on this floor since that night and there’s a sense of unease around the lifts. My stomach churning in knots as I move fast down the lobby to the main bar of the club, but my mind is on one goal, and I can almost feel him calling to me from somewhere in this building.

I yearn to see him again. And then there he is, across the room instantly, with his side to me and every fibre of my being stops still and inhales fully. I wasn’t expecting him to just be there, so effortlessly easy to find, and it hurts my heart to look at him.

Nothing prepared me for the sucker punch to the stomach that seeing him again could give me.

Alexi is standing with Joanne and a few of his men in the middle of the floor and my heart literally stops beating as soon as I see him. Tall and gorgeous with that perfect bad boy face focused on a clipboard in his hand. Perfectly sculpted male, oozing testosterone and confidence, and he just looks like my idea of heaven.

How Satan himself can make you feel this way about him is beyond me. I guess the devil is a charmer and uses his wiles to seduce more than his power to terrorise you. When he made me afraid, he couldn’t control me, so he made love to me instead, and now I’m powerless against him.

He’s not in a suit for once. A leather jacket and jeans which look strange on him and his stubble is more prominent than normal. It’s like Alexi is having a casual day, weirdly, yet he looks sexier than ever and I halt when I get to about ten feet away.

It’s almost like he senses me there and looks up and towards me with a slight head turn, eyes locking on me as soon as he realises what pulled his attention.

Much to my heartbreak he just blanks me and goes back to what he’s doing as though it was nothing more interesting to him than a passing bird. Disinterested, unemotional and doesn’t even scald me for being on the club floor. Nothing, not even an ounce of anger for my disobedience.

I feel like he just ripped out every part of me inside, and yet like some deranged teenage girl I still walk towards him in a bid to get his attention. Craving him, longing for some sort of show that I mean something. All self-respect sliding away with the last ounces of my dignity, and yet I can’t stop my feet from taking me towards him. I know I’m being pathetic and breaking all the rules and codes of the boy-girl game but I need him to acknowledge me.

He owes it to me after what we had, and I deserve to be treated like a human, someone with feelings and worth, not some sort of disposable object without any value in his eyes.

‘’Alexi?’’ I say it loud enough to catch his eye when I am practically at his group and they all stop talking and glance at me. Security don’t react, it’s only me after all, and go back to looking at what he is pointing out. Alexi ignores me and Joanne smirks at me with catty eyes and props a hand on her hip while eyeing me up with hostility and new-found confidence.

She thinks my absence means she won my club, and him. She is standing close enough to him to make it obvious there is more going on there than an admirer and I just see red. Little tramp has been fucked by him more than once, I can tell. She has that smitten look of a woman who hasn’t been burned by him yet and has only sampled the charming side when he wants something from you—like your soul in a bottle, or your heart on a platter.

‘’Alexi? I need to talk to you right now!’’ I repeat, snapping at him with desperation, mixed with anger at how he is treating me. Stupidly vocal but it’s fuelled with despair and heartbreak and my better sense is not engaging in any way. His whole manner changes so subtly it’s almost missable, yet I see it.

Slight furrow of anger on that brow, tightening of the jaw and his body stiffens. I just pissed him off.

Alexi exhales slowly and steadily, lifts his head to his main goon and hands him the clipboard with a nod and that complete air of control and lack of care.

‘’Do it and let me know.’’ He waves him away, ease of command and even though all of the suits move Joanne stays rooted firmly to the spot like an unwanted bad smell as he finally brings his eyes back to me steadily and scowls. Everything inside of me just dies with that look and now I know for sure that it meant nothing and that I mean nothing to him.

The last flickering ounces of hope die a death and fall by the wayside as my heart plummets into darkness.

It was sex, a manoeuvre to keep me quiet and now we’re back to how it’s always been. I’m a disobedient possession and he has no time to be dealing with my behaviour. He has a new toy and she’s clearly well trained. I’m just an annoyance in his day and the novelty he had over me has worn off. I am no value anymore.

He has his club, he has someone to watch over it and keep the money rolling in and I have become excess to his needs. If anything I have become a liability to him, and my debt will probably never find a way to be paid off. If I had just been obedient and not fought him, not made everything harder and a challenge. Been a ‘’Yes Sir’’ then maybe I would be the possessive bitch standing next to him with a smug look and a sense of self-worth. Alexi has a type and it was never me.

‘‘What do you want, Cam?’’ he walks towards me leaving skanky whore standing watching me, but there’s no amusement in his face, only cold indifference. Coming at me to cut down the need to talk loudly while ears and eyes are all around.

‘‘To know what’s happening … Why I haven’t heard from you in two weeks?’’ It chokes me, pain in my heart and throat as the words tumble out, and I am in fear of crying in front of him. I sound like a needy woman who doesn’t understand what a one-night stand is.

‘‘I’ve been busy, and I had no reason to see you.’’ It’s like his words are bullets and every single one is slowly killing me.

‘’Just like that … discarded, no longer of any use to you?’’ My voice breaks and I can see bitch smirking over in the background. I want to throw something at her but Alexi just brings my focus back to him with his voice.

‘’You’ve been replaced. I have somewhere else I can use you. A place I bought in Chicago, a regular club, not like this. It needs an assistant manager that can up the class a little.’’ He doesn’t even look me in the eye as he says it, he just pulls out his phone and reads the screen before pressing something and putting it back inside his jacket. He doesn’t care about me. He never did.

‘‘So you’re sending me away? The further the better, didn’t I mean anything? Didn’t that night mean anything?’’ I can’t stop the tears breaking loose, despite trying hard to hide them and destroying my self-composure. I don’t care anymore if she can see he’s ripping me apart, she should know she has all this to come. He will chew her up and spit her out so effortlessly.

‘‘You’re embarrassing yourself, Cam. It was sex. You were emotional and irrational, and I took your mind off it. You were a liability and I couldn’t have you crying to the wrong person.’’ Alexi turns to walk away from me but I grab his arm and haul him back. That crazy anger spiking from emotional devastation that is coursing through me like a pulsing throb.

‘‘Why are you doing this? How can you say that? I was there, it wasn’t just sex.’’ The desperate wailing of a bruised heart. I am one of those pitiful, hysterical women clinging to a man who used her, hardly unique. My brain unable to really believe that what he did with me had no emotional effect on him in any way. I was cold and heartless and unable to love, yet he completely changed all that. Surely that had to have done something to his dark soul somewhere in its depths. I had to leave some sort of impression in there.