The Carrero Contract - Selling Your Soul (Mafia Romance) novel Chapter 69

Drunk me, is not a good thing and I remember in my hazy stupor why this is not something I ever do to myself. I am an emotional mess, sobbing into my own lap on the floor and cradling my umpteenth cocktail of hard liquor while pulling my mental state into disarray.

I am a bad drunk and I can’t switch off the depths of feeling going off inside me like a hot flowing volcano as lava bubbles out through my body. I was stupid to do this to myself, and instead of drowning my sorrows I have opened Pandora’s Box and can’t seem to switch off the all-consuming pain and turmoil coming from the dark recesses of my brain.

It’s like I have my own cinematic tragedy on replay, reminding me of my life and all my woes and stupid buried memories which are springing out in all directions, to add to how devastated I already feel.

Despite all of that, HE is still foremost in my brain, plaguing me like the tormentor he is so apt at being, and even in his absence he still has that hold over me.

Go figures that the demon would star in my self-inflicted daymares.

I fall back on the floor and spill my drink all over his white plush rug as I let out another wave of gut wrenching sobs until I can’t breathe anymore. My nose is runny and blocked, my eyes burning with the watery makeup that’s poured down my entire face and left little dark droplets on the rug around me. I don’t care though, screw his stupid ridiculously expensive rug in his stupid Manhattan apartment. Fuck Alexi and all that he is. I can’t remember feeling this way in a long, long time. Not since the day my mother held me down at the age of eleven and let Rick rape me for a ten pound bag of heroin.

The feeling of complete hopelessness and devastation as she stole what was left of my sanity that day, for a pitiful little bag of smack and showed me how little value I held in her life. After years of beating me into submission and verbally stripping me raw of any self-respect or self-esteem I may have naturally had, she made sure she took the last ounces of me away that day. I was her punching bag in life and the source of all her anger. I was the baby who ruined her life, her marriage and the reason she was a scummy piss poor addict in the worst part of Hackney.

A forgotten child that no one noticed, no one cared about, and I have never forgotten that is what, and who, I am. I spent years hiding the reality of my life from school and those who lived around me, but my story was not unique and many kids like me had abusive addict parents and lives that no children should endure. I had to learn to suck it up and deal with it. I had to learn to fend for myself and not rely on anyone else for anything in life. I fed myself, made sure I made my own money in any way I could just so I wouldn’t starve or freeze. I stole, I begged, I manipulated people just to get by and I learned that if you are streetwise and savvy and put all your frail feelings in a cold place to die, then you can survive almost anything you set your mind to.

Age is just a number and the smallest children can find strength in survival. That’s what I did. I learned that men and women can be equally cruel, that people will turn a blind eye to something distasteful rather than help, even when you are a child. I learned that those in positions to help are sometimes as bad as those who abuse. I learned you should never trust anyone, as all humans have their own motives and it is never about your welfare in the end.

I have seen it all. I watched kids being taken by social workers, buckled into cars and whisked away, only to end up in the children’s homes and running away at every opportunity they could. I didn’t have friends, because I couldn’t trust anyone not to tell what I was enduring and fear of becoming one of those kids being whisked off to a home to endure other kinds of wrong. I heard rumours, watched the fear of kids when the workers came round, and it was enough for me to never trust police, care workers or professionals who claimed to take us away from cruelty.

I learned to adapt by embracing the abuse and using it so I could rise above a lot of the street rats I knew around where I lived. I excelled because I was taller, slimmer, and prettier, than a lot of them, and I was smart enough to know it had a use. I started improving my dialect to appear older and more educated, from a better standard of living which gave me an advantage in making cash for myself.

I tried to keep myself clean and groomed, so the school wouldn’t be suspicious over my care, and so richer men would want to fuck me for faster profits.

I dropped out of school on my sixteenth birthday, as soon as I legally could without question, and never looked back at further education. I played the game and hid what was done to me, what I was being used for. I learned how to make men want me and act as though I liked what they were doing. I learned how to make them come quicker and I became a queen of seduction and sex, made it an art form in a way.

By the age of fourteen, I had lost count of how many men had used me for their pleasure and games, it was just a way of life and some sort of sad acceptance of what I was. I stopped feeling. It stopped being something degrading and wrong and became an act with a means to an end. I learned to lie, hide and manipulate from a very young age, accepted that I was a prostitute no matter how I tried to pretty it up and my days were spent screwing men and being exposed to indescribable acts on my body and soul.

I died a little every second in the early days and never turned to anyone to rescue me, as I knew that was never going to be a reality. There are no knights to come sweep you away from the crap I lived through. You need to rely on you and you alone and that is how you survive in life.

I let myself rely on Alexi and that was stupid. It was my undoing. I broke my own rules of not letting someone close or letting someone else call the shots. I flipped my entire gameplay on its head for him and didn’t even try in any way after my first hurdle to play him to meet my own ends. He was better at it, colder, smarter, and crueller, and I knew I was no match for him. He was a different kind of breed to most men, and I let him lead me by the nose.

I only have myself to blame. I was too weak to deny his touch, too pathetic to keep my heart and head out of this and too in awe of his extreme lack of emotion to try and manipulate him.

Drunk beyond belief and crying myself raw all I can think about is Alexi, that complete arse of a man and how he can discard me this way, treat me this way. For all that I was in my past and all that I am capable of, I did my best to be loyal and fair when it came to him. I never once played him or tried to stab him in the back. I went against all I have been in my life, the person I made to survive ... all for him.

I knew my limits and what side my bread was buttered with the chance he gave me. Safety, security and shelter, that’s what I had by toeing the line in his world and it was all I have ever wanted. So I made sure I didn’t screw it up by being foolish.

Except I was stupid, but not in the way I have been in the past. I was dumb enough to think he meant it when he said sex meant nothing and would not interfere. He lied, he got what he wanted and it changed everything between us. He took everything from me for absolutely nothing connected to the job I did. I excelled in every way at running that club, and he chose to be a petty arsehole and put sex over business. He is the one who wanted sex without effect, and he is the one who let it destroy all he gave me. I deserve an answer for all of that, a reason he changed all the rules. I did all he asked and yet he gets to decide my fate and throw me aside.

Why does he get to choose my future? Why does he get to use me and drop me so easily? Why does he get to walk away as though I meant nothing without any sort of explanation? Why does he get to take away my chance at a safe existence?

He said sex wouldn’t matter, and yet all it did was change everything and push him to despise me. I want to confront him and be angry about all of this, yet I also want that night too. I want that feeling of being safe, of being home finally. He showed me a possibility of another life, in another way. He showed me what loving someone could feel like and it left its mark on me and now I am ruined. He made me love him.

I know that he doesn’t want me near him anymore and I know it’s partly my fault. I made it too obvious that I cared, clung to him. Maybe I was needy or overly obvious about how I felt and it suffocated him. I triggered him, I disobeyed him and I found ways to rile him when I know what he’s like. I told myself so many times to just close my mouth and nod in obedience and yet failed to do so.

Stop it Camilla!

You are justifying his behaviour, accepting his torment because you are weak. Stop being like her, stop accepting his treatment because he has twisted your head to feel like you deserve it. Stop excusing what he is doing to you. He has made you believe it’s what you deserve, and you are so far beyond that. You deserve more. You deserve an ounce of respect for what you did for him!