The Carrero Contract - Selling Your Soul (Mafia Romance) novel Chapter 59

So the storm becomes a hurricane of epic proportions and New York City is stuck in a typhoon that lasts two whole days. I’m stuck in some lifeless, airless apartment on my own with Mico on phone duties should I need anything and yet it’s not like I care.

I’m sick, glands all swollen and body aching with a fever. I toss and turn in bed and just can’t seem to do anything but drift in and out of shallow sleep for small bursts. I don’t know if it’s emotional and I’m just run down, or I should be worrying about something more.

Alexi never used condoms, yet he sleeps with so many women he could have given me something. I never thought of that aspect before, as I used to see his discarded condom wrappers in the bin when he has stayed over, and it never dawned on me he would be careless. I don’t know why he never used them with me and it’s not like I worried. I’m not on birth control anyway, I don’t need to be.

They told me at fifteen when they operated on my internals for eighteen hours straight that the chance of ever conceiving a child was a million to one, my botched back street abortion, that almost killed me, made motherhood impossible. I almost bled to death from the tortuous treatment from some dirty quack that Rick made me go visit. He was so worried that my age would bring in authorities if I showed up at a sexual health clinic with the product of another unprotected rape.

Clients who wouldn’t wear condoms usually didn’t like being asked and always ended up taking me forcefully. By the age of fifteen I was an empty shell and emotionally dead already, being told motherhood was out of the question didn’t bother me in the slightest; why would I reproduce and bring another worthless life into this world.

I don’t bear any outward scars from all the years I endured Rick’s kinks and clients. All his perversions were about making me feel it inside anyway he could. Toys, objects and violent sex and it amazed me that I still found a way to focus on enjoying the act even after he was done with me, but I guess the human brain can normalise anything when it’s done enough.

I only have one visible scar, hidden by a tattoo of a dandelion head on my hip. One mark where Rick slashed me in rage because I wouldn’t hold still while he drunkenly abused me. He smashed his bottle and somehow managed to get me across my hip bone. I had seven stitches and the stem of my tattoo means you never see it.

Cleverly placed, so unless you trace it with your finger it looks like a stem and nothing more.

A dandelion, a weed you can find everywhere. Common and ugly, unremarkable because of how many of them grow, until that is, it morphs into delicate light seed heads that find the wind and fly to freedom on the breeze. Such pretty things that have so much potential to go far, and I told myself that’s what I was and what I was doing when I changed Lisa to Camilla.

Stupid sentiment, stupid tattoo!

I can barely look at it at all anymore.

I guess Alexi assumed I was on something to keep pregnancy at bay, and no doubt when he got my bills from the hospital from my recovery, he probably already knew if I had a clean bill of sexual health. It was something he made sure of for all his escorts and by the way he so effortlessly included it in his demands, I think he’s a guy who makes sure his whores are clean.

I know I am, I got myself checked when I moved to New York and several times in the past after I was raped without protection. It becomes as natural as breathing to check it regularly. All Toms tend to do it if they care about living, and it’s a necessity when your life is all just sex.

Alexi owned me, therefore he figured he could fuck me bareback and it would come to nothing because all good girls in this business take care of little problems without harassing the men who caused them. Rick always used condoms which was my saving grace in the first few years when he abused me exclusively. He just couldn’t stop getting hard for little girls and I thanked my lucky stars that when I started to mature and fill out quickly, his sexual urges towards me waned until he found someone younger.

It didn’t stop him coming to me to let loose his sadistic side every so often though. I was one of the few girls who could take a beating, a brutal rape and a night of being tied and tortured relentlessly, yet still get up and face the world the next day.

He tried to break me all those years, and he never won.

As soon as I get better I will book myself into the clinic and be checked, even though Alexi is the only guy I have had sex with in a while. It would give me great pleasure to have Mico inform his dickhead boss that he gave me an STD. Some lasting fucking impression that would be.

I drag myself out of bed determined to go in search of a pharmacy for some medication to shift my epic headache and bruised aching glands. If it’s flu then I can at least find something to ease the symptoms. I’m just so drained in every way and fed up of lying in bed endlessly.

Feeling low doesn’t help and my emotional state is far from okay. I don’t think I have slept enough, despite my body trying, and I just feel like a walking zombie. Sleeping pills may be an option to help me get some respite.

I force myself to go out, even though Mico made it clear I should ring him if I needed anything at all. I figure some air and a little walk might help me shift this overall fatigue, heaviness and cotton wool brain. After weeks of being apartment bound and then stuck here, I maybe just need a little exercise and a change of scenery to feel better.

As luxurious and well decorated as this modern man-pad is, it’s still like being trapped in a five-star prison, and I am sick of being behind walls all the time.

The weather is awful, still windy, pouring with rain and completely hostile. I barely get two streets, struggling to face the onslaught of lashing rain when I realise this was a dumb idea and I should never have ventured this far. It was a struggle to get here, and I am so out of breath I can barely gasp enough oxygen to fill my lungs. I am so run down and sick and I overestimated my ability to venture outside.

Alexi’s apartment is in Manhattan upper east, so I find myself surrounded by swanky bars and restaurants with how far I have come and duck into the nearest one for a little shelter, so I can catch my breath and possibly drum up enough strength to head back again.

I look drowned, my jeans clinging to me and moulding my jumper to my body. My ponytail is slick, water running down my back and my jacket is almost transparent it is so moisture filled. I never bought a jacket for extreme weather and this wind catcher is useless.

I start coughing like crazy, my throat aching with the effort and the concierge just looks at me like I am clearly in the wrong place.

‘‘Can I help you?’’ Some upper-class bitch in a taupe dress, tapping her menus on her hips asks. Ironically, she looks a lot like me on a good day and if I wasn’t dying of the lurgy I would sass her right back. Instead, I’m already trembling with a mix of exertion, sickness and cold from the rain. Pondering how to get back home without passing out on the way. I feel so much worse and I am starting to sweat, despite shivering crazily.

‘’Just need shelter for a moment before I brave the weather again.’’ I answer with haughtiness and my accent alone makes her pipe down. It’s one of the reasons I worked so hard on perfecting that well known English dialect over the more common one I was given in life. It exudes class and sexiness and now it is as natural as breathing and I don’t have to try anymore.

People here tend to immediately assume you’re royalty or upper-crust with the exact and lazy slurring of some syllables. It’s why I drop the R in ‘‘Dahling’’ in such a dramatic way … people eat it up like I’m the Princess of Wales.

She double takes my outfit in a moment of doubt and I can almost see her summarising the likelihood I am of importance. Sodden jeans, a light jumper under a soaked pale jacket with no makeup, pasty pallor and red -rimmed eyes, my hair plastered to my head and a swollen neck. Drowned rat chic. I just roll my eyes and take the hint that I am lowering the tone of her snooty establishment by being underdressed.

‘’Never mind, I’m leaving.’’ It comes out a little strained and raspy as my voice breaks, hurting my throat more, so I cringe with the sharp grating pain I get from swallowing and just exhale heavily that when life gives me lemons, it likes to throw them all at my fucking head.

I turn to walk out, moving to dodge incoming people, and walk straight into the chest of one of the incoming customers using umbrellas to shield them from the weather as he appears from behind the group. Hurting myself with a thud due to how frail my body feels and almost fall until the stranger catches hold of me and rights me on my feet, soaking his overcoat in the process.

‘’Sorry … I’m just …’’ I break into a coughing fit, scratchy throat prevailing as I chuck up a lung, trying to catch my breath and end up leaning forward in a bid not to choke. I know I must be a pitiful sight and as a familiar voice pours over me, despite my position, it makes my body recoil.

I would know that voice anywhere, and I am in no way prepared to hear it right now.

‘‘Camilla? What the hell are you doing out here?’’ I jerk back up as the umbrella recedes into the hands of the black-clothed escorts and realise I am face to face with Alexi Carrero, his shadow of entourage and his busty date in the doorway of a Five-star restaurant.

FUUUUUUUUCKKKK!

I straighten up, regain a tiny ounce of composure and try to act like being caught half drowned while sheltering unwantedly in a plush pad is completely normal for me. Not out of place or sick at all. Despite how our last encounter played out, and how much of my heart and soul he has destroyed with his toxic self in the last few months, my heart still somersaults at the sight of him and my eyes hone in on the woman in searing jealousy that bites harder than my cough.

She doesn’t look street whore, she looks like a blue blood, in the money, mafia boss’s daughter in a way, and she’s linked to his arm like a dog in heat scanning me with very suspicious eyes.

I really do not need this at all and as I sniff and cough my way into the gap to get past them I just try to avoid him completely. I am no match and therefore I am doing the first sensible thing I have done when it comes to him and one action I shall adopt from now on, getting the hell away from him; my eyes down to the ground and blanking him out.

‘’Looking for a chemist, see you around.’’ I toss back at him without following with my eyes and make a break for it.