The Carrero Contract - Selling Your Soul (Mafia Romance) novel Chapter 61

I don’t care what he’s thinking about, I just want to get my medicine and be left alone for all time. His presence is like a lead weight and as much as I have ached to see him for the past Fort-Eight hours, I realise that it just reminds me how much I hate him, hate what he’s capable of making me feel.

‘’Here.’’ He holds out his handkerchief to me and despite wanting to push it away I have water running down my face and a nose that’s running like crazy, I accept it despite wanting to tell him where to go and just avoid eye contact once again.

‘’Stop being nice, I don’t like it and it just makes me suspicious of your motives, which means I can’t relax.’’ I snap childishly and start drying my skin, dabbing my face and blowing my nose as discreetly as I can. As soon as I have done all I can I just sag, so I face plank my own knees and sigh heavily; face against the damp rough fabric but being horizontal is far better than upright as another wave of dizziness overtakes my brain. He’s the worst kind of headache and I don’t need more.

‘‘What are you doing?’’ His annoying tone grates on my nerves. I close my eyes to blank him out feeling surreal and dreamy as my fever ups a gear and starts to seep over my entire body.

‘‘I’m so sick.’’ I can’t face sitting up, it’s better to be down here, my voice is getting croaky with every attempt at talking and I wish I had never come out at all. The weather has made this a hundred times worse, and I just want to close my eyes and sleep it off while he has us driven across town to get what I need. For a moment I am actually grateful he decided to drive me.

‘‘Take this off, it’s making you cold.’’ Alexi tugs at my jacket but I just yank away from him again.

‘‘Cooling me down, so it stays on.’’ I battle, half coherently without opening my eyes and I can even hear the slur in my own speech. I am not really enjoying being in soaked clothes but I have zero energy to lift myself back up and I don’t want him to know how weak I really am in this state. My legs have turned to lead, and my body is giving up on me. That wave of fatigue hitting me hard and I tell myself if I just rest my eyes for a few minutes then the overwhelming sense of falling will pass.

‘’Stop fighting me Cam, just for once.’’ Alexi sounds fed up and I ignore him, curling my arms around my head and just close my eyes tightly to block him out. I know my position is fucking weird, but it’s helping me feel less crap and also has the added benefit of not having to look at the arsehole or acknowledge him in any way.

Wonder what happened to London? Guess that was just a cute name when he was trying to keep me under the thumb. He has decided to give me the heave-ho, so the pet name is gone too.

Wanker!

‘‘Whatever.’’ I answer softly, letting the motion of the car soothe me as my body hits the extreme shivers, only this time I get a wave of cold enveloping me on top of them and I try to block it out. Letting my body give in to the feeling of relaxation, and just let darkness move in for a little while to give me some relief.

I jump with the jerk that jolts through my body and try to sit up in alarm, failing epically as heaviness pulls me back own. Confused, dazed and realising I’m topless, just in a bra and Alexi is yanking my wet trousers down my legs. I have no clue where the hell I am as I was just sitting in his car thirty seconds ago and I don’t know how I even got in here.

I’m so out of it, it’s like I am on something, wondering if he would drug me to be compliant and remember I never took anything from him to get this way. It must be the fever hitting me full blown as I am so out of whack I am practically walking on clouds.

I seem to be on the bed of the apartment I have been staying in. Mico is setting up a tray by my bed with an assortment of fluids and medicines before switching on the TV on the wall behind him. I have no idea which reality I just woke up in where Carrero men are bedside nurses and Alexi is willingly looking after me.

‘‘What the hell are you doing?’’ I blurt out groggily, my voice weird and speech slurred and incoherent and then lay very still as another wave of dizziness overtakes me, losing my fierce as vulnerable and weak takeover.

‘‘Taking your wet clothes off, you’re burning up and I need to cool you down, get you dry.’’

‘‘I don’t need your help.’’ I try verbally again, crazily disorientated to the point everything is swaying and I can barely focus. I toss on the bed as bright colours obscure my vision and jump when I realise Mico has duplicated and there’s two of him.

No.

Four wandering across the room throwing me a weird look and then his whole self blurs out of focus and everything blends into one weird coloured mass. I try to roll but my body feels weirdly unconnected to me and the weight surrounding me might possibly be my limbs which have ceased to function. I can’t open my eyes properly anymore.

Shit, I think I’m sicker than I thought.

‘’Yet here I am.’’ Alexi sounds different, normal, far away and I toss and turn again in a bid to clear my head and shift the overwhelming sensation of heat and cold waving through my body in intervals. I’m jerked again as he pulls the legs of my trousers free and all I’m left in is wet underwear, somehow aware that I’m lying on a bed mostly naked, and yet I feel detached from reality as though I’m stuck in a bubble in my mind and the normal world is getting to be so far away.

‘‘You can’t put her on a flight like this. Airports are starting to open in the morning according to Jake but no way in hell is she fit for a journey.’’ Mico’s voice waves through and I give up trying to look where it’s coming from. I close my eyes and relax into the sensation of being bodiless. Stop fighting and become weightless, so I can fly around the room like a dandelion seed.

Maybe I am that weed after all and I finally found my way to flying free on the breeze.

‘’I know, I can see her you know? She needs a doctor, call Wilson. We need to cool her down, she’s spiking a fever.’’ Alexi sounds almost human for a moment, I hardly recognise him and wonder if he is different when he’s alone with his family. He sounds more like his brother and for a moment I forget how much I despise him.

‘’Go to your dinner, I can take care of her. I’ll get Wilson up here and do whatever he says.’’ Mico sounds like his normal solid self and I think I like him, really. He’s not the hard arse bastard I thought he was, and he genuinely seems to give a shit. I have never really felt threatened around him, never got the vibes he was undressing me in his head, and he has never touched me sexually or inappropriately apart from that time he bodily carried me to the car.

‘’You were already supposed to be taking care of her, yet I find her walking the streets in this state. No one checked on her to see how she was in two days? Did you know she was sick? What the fuck do I pay you for? She looks like hell.’’ Alexi sounds pissed but I’m literally washing away on an uncomfortable hot breeze that feels more like I am being baked in a sauna. I swear I’m sweating and my face feels damp and clammy as sunlight burns my skin off, it’s suddenly very bright in here and I couldn’t open my eyes anymore if I tried.

‘’You told me to get rid of her, you didn’t tell me to babysit. I was running around doing shit you told me to do.’’ Mico is snapping back. I have never heard him disobey or argue with Alexi. Alexi seems to disregard his petulance, surprisingl. Seems he only punishes women for talking back.

‘’Go turn the shower on and turn the temp down to lukewarm I’ll take her in there. If she keeps getting hotter she might have a seizure.’’

‘’You’re just sending her mixed signals Lex, leave her to me and just go. She got the message loud and clear … she knows you don’t give a shit and want her gone, all this does is confuse things.’’