The Carrero Contract - Selling Your Soul (Mafia Romance) novel Chapter 70

Loving someone is not a reason to treat you shittily. You deserve answers from him. I’m battling myself, fighting my own thoughts and yet the overwhelming aching pain is taking control. Alcohol fuelled stupidness and I cannot seem to stop myself, dragging myself onto my feet as I sway around crazily, mentally yelling NO while my body aims for the bedroom with a set mind to finding my phone, with tears dripping off my nose.

I want to hear him say it in his own words. Why I’m not good enough? Why he doesn’t trust me? Why I’m good enough to fuck and yet so easy to discard? I cannot seem to apply the logical ranting refusals to the parts of me which are in control and looking for where I left it, tripping over my own feet as I search the bed and bedside cabinet.

I am two people in one brain and the dumb part, completely intoxicated and ignoring reason, is in control of my physical movements. My heart shredding with the stupid intoxicated stupor I am in and blanking every warning bell and alarm call going off like a neon sign over my head. He doesn’t want to talk to me and if he does he will find some way of being the arsehole he always is.

That night was a one-off, never to be repeated and I need to stop clinging to empty hope and fantasy. Even telling myself this, I still keep looking for it. I locate my phone on the floor by the bed and slump down in a dishevelled heap beside it to pick it up, stabbing manically at the screen in an attempt to pull up his number and smiling to myself in satisfaction when, through my haze and blurry vision, I see his name across my screen as it connects.

It’s short-lived when it goes straight to his answer machine and I hang up and try again with a touch of bitterness. Seventeen times in a row like a psycho stalker not taking the hint, and seventeen times I have worked myself into a frenzy of rage because the arsehole has clearly turned off his phone after leaving me here to rot. Alexi never turns off his phone, so why today when he’s dumped my arse on Mico.

I wonder if he has blocked my number and another sob hits me full force with this realisation.

Bastard! I wouldn’t put it past him to be this cold. He truly has wiped his hands of me without one single tiny ounce of decency, and I, for one, am not going to just disappear without a fight because Lord Carrero deems it. I want to fucking see him and yell at the bastard, I want to have it out and hear him tell me what I did that was so fucking wrong in his life that he has to hate me the way he does.

I want to know exactly why he never wants me near MY club again after I was the one who made it what it is. I put my all into that place and now he is replacing me with some airhead in a cheap dress who couldn’t run anything, let alone my upmarket establishment. It’s the worst part of this.

I struggle to my feet and move around the room trying to locate something to put on my feet and scoop up the first pair of boots I see. I slide them on and fall off the end of the bed with an almost comical thud which I am too drunk to feel. Groaning as the room spins around me I pick myself up clumsily to pull on the first coat to hand and yank it on. Pulling my heavy body back up, using the bed as support, I start stubbornly walking for the main door, once again tripping over nothing and spending a few minutes more getting off my face to try and go outside.

This time I have to spit out fur from the rug that is all up inside my mouth and nose and shake myself a little to be more coordinated in a bid to get on the path I have set myself. Everything is swaying awfully, my head spinning and my insides feel like they are on a washing machine spin cycle.

Emotionally I am a mess of rage and heartbreak and cannot stick with one or the other, I can’t think or see straight and one thing is on replay in my head. Alexi does not care about me. But he is sure as hell going to face me one last bloody time! That little voice of sense and reason, so far away in the back of my brain, yet here I am, swaying down the hall with keys in hand and zipping up my tiny jacket to shield me from the horrendous weather outside. The desk clerk watches my attempt to walk by, and even though it’s obvious I am completely inebriated he just goes back to typing on his expensive pc at his polished marble desk and ignores my hazardous departure. The door man does the same and it just adds to the sense of tragedy, the emptiness inside of me, and the fact it’s obvious I am in no state to go out alone, yet they do not give one shit about it.

I am invisible, worthless and no one cares.

The street is dark and wet, and I immediately get hit in the face with a cold biting wind and lashing rain—not that I care—it can’t be any worse than my makeup I stupidly applied after Mico left being in stripes down my face now. It’s probably one of the reason both men just ignored me, I must look like hell. Some drunk mess who has severe mental issues by the looks of her, and they wouldn’t be wrong.

I give no shits at all. Maybe I do. I mean, why else would I be running towards a man who makes me feel this crap in general?

All because I want to see him, because he doesn’t want to see me, because he is sending me to be someone else’s problem and no longer wants anything to do with me, because he is taking what I worked so hard for away. I know this is why this heightened panic has hit me in this way, this sense that tonight is the last chance I will have of seeing him. Getting this out between us!

He is not an easy guy to get time with as he’s always shrouded with his men or moves around a lot. You don’t just bump into someone like Alexi very often if you do not move in his circles, and once I am out of his loop I will probably never find him again, never get to see my club, my baby, ever again.

I don’t quite know how I manage it, being that I can barely see straight, but somehow I get a tube ride downtown and end up two blocks from the club while still slurring every word coming out of my mouth and walking like an injured fawn.

People are avoiding me as the crazy drunk woman who is still sobbing her heart out, and I am more than aware of the pathetic spectacle I am making of myself. Typical New Yorkers avoiding something they deem is none of their business.

I know I am pretty much signing my death certificate by coming here and trying to see him, and I have no idea what to say or what I will do when faced with him, but all rationale has gone out the window and all my blurry stupid head is repeating is ‘’Find Alexi’’ I just need to see him. I have a speech in my head of what I want to say, angry and sad at the same time, my mind turning over a chaos of words and accusations that I know I wouldn’t have the guts to say if I was sober.

I walk the rest of the way as the rain turns to drizzle and I’m soaked through to my underwear. My hair is still tied up in a ponytail and acting as a tap for the water to run down my back and into my boots. I feel like my clothes are stuck to every part of me and I must look like I went swimming while fully clothed. I just have nothing else on my brain than the task I have set myself upon, too stupidly, drunkenly stubborn for my own good.

When I get close to the back alley I start sticking to the shadows and avoiding the street lights. If any of his men catch sight of me then it's game over, and they will stop me before I get to see him. Mico will march my arse right back to the upper side and dump me back in that apartment and probably chain me to a bed.

It’s not lost on me that hours ago I was making a break for it and running away from this man, and yet here I am stalking him stupendously in a bid to see him once more, even if I am planning on telling him a few home truths and where he can go fuck himself when I am done.

This is how crazily fucked up he makes me and I have no idea which way is up anymore. I'm doing dumb arse things in a bid to claw back some sanity.

I get to the street which runs down the side of the club and the secret side entrance and hide behind some bins to watch for security. The door is closed and it’s still only ten p.m., so the club won’t be open just yet. Lately, he has been pushing entry time to eleven and I can guess that the door staff won’t be standing behind it this early. I know the code for the entry pad and I just need to slide in unseen.

I look around for cars back here, the closed off car park they use, and I don’t see Mico’s car or any that Alexi is normally chauffeured around in and start doubting he is even here. Heart sinking with the realisation that maybe I just ‘‘Mission Impossibled’’ it over here for absolutely nothing.

Almost as though fate willed it, I see headlights flash my way and I recoil to hide behind the metal container out of sight as a sleek dark sports car slides into the car park. I recognise it as the one he brought to the Hamptons the night I ran away. Its Alexi’s car for sure, if not his then Gino’s, and I stay concealed while the engine tones down to a hum, signalling he is parking.

I slide out as it manoeuvres to a stop quickly and brush the rain out of my eyes, so I can see who is getting out. He has his back to me and it could be either of them, dressed in dark jeans and a t-shirt under a leather jacket, annoyingly causal. It’s not normally an Alexi outfit, but there’s something about him that screams Alexi rather than Gino and I cannot pinpoint it.

I watch with bated breath, taking in the trainers and casual attire from the back and really doubting this isn’t Gino. When he turns sideways I catch sight of his neck tattoo and my heart elevates to a rapid beat, confirming I was right. This is Alexi, looking very Saturday night rather than workday chic and achingly handsome.

I have to catch the sudden urge to sob and inhale quickly to calm the instant lack of breath and prickle of tears at seeing him again. I already feel frail and close to meltdown but now I have the added palpitations and shaking limbs to go with it, my heart upping its beat and my palms getting clammy, despite being sodden from the rain.