The Carrero Contract - Selling Your Soul (Mafia Romance) novel Chapter 78

I get off the subway and slowly walk the four blocks to my apartment. Tired, dirty and mentally exhausted from a day’s gruelling shift, repetitive life, and generally just can’t be bothered anymore.

I have been feeling this lack lustre and completely empty for weeks on end and cannot seem to shift the hovering grey clouds which follow me everywhere I go.

I should quit, move on and find another job, but I’m stuck. Like I am superglued to the cesspool I accidentally landed in for some respite in the sun, and now I’m withering away in the heat of the day.

I have no clue what I’m going to do beyond this and no energy in me to try. I haven’t been able to function properly in months, and every night I still dream about that complete monster, Alexi Carrero. Tormenting me, making me hate him over and over. Heart breaking to icy shards every time he walks into my dream with those soulless grey eyes and an evil smirk on his face.

I can’t deny that his face alone gives me an incomparable heart ache.

In between the shadows and the monsters and the bad memories, he’s always lurking, face shaded and shadowed sometimes, so I can barely see who he is … but I know. I can feel him, smell him. Close enough to touch. He stands in my dreams and stares at me silently, in the most foreboding way. Then other times he’s there in my face, in clear daylight and stroking my cheek tenderly as though he might actually care, melting me to liquid and destroying my mind all over again. That is, before pulling out his gun and forcing it into my hand with a cold smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

‘Do it.’ It’s all he ever says and then I wake in a flood of tears, unable to breathe with the freezing biting feel of that heavy steel still in my palm.

It haunts me still. That I stooped so low as to try and end my own life because I was that broken. How far he pushed me to that cliff and only fate saved me from carrying it out. I was so caught in his power that I couldn’t see how weak I became until it was too late.

I shudder at the thought, a weird chill creeping over my entire body, and I try to shake it off. Sometimes when I am working, I can still feel it in my grasp and rub my hand across my hip to remove the horrible sensation from my skin. It’s something I will never do again.

I have no longing to die. I don’t even know why I did what I did, and I am eternally disgusted at myself for letting him push me. I hate him for making me go that far.

Despite all I dream about, he is the most terrifying of them all, even though mostly, all he does is watch me, stare at me, close enough to hear him breathe. It’s all in the mind games and the way he could pull me into his control and it’s the last thing I will ever let happen again.

I will never let someone like him ever have that control again. I will run far away and always protect myself from here on in.

In these months I have built up hardness in my heart and a wall of thick steel that no smooth Carrero charm will ever be able to penetrate. No one will ever get close to hurting me like that again. He will never get a chance. No one will. If he were to walk back into my life, I would run a million miles in the opposite direction.

I was weak and stupid and I gave him too much to use against me. I let him in and I let him break me. I fell in love with the parts of him he designed to draw me in as I was supposed to do. He sought out my deepest cravings—security, safety, a home, a chance to be someone else, have someone to care—and he used them to bring down all my defences. The hints of caring, the split personality character, it was all a ploy to grind me down, get under my skin and into my head. He is a devious player, with a Masters in manipulation, who needs control and destruction to thrive and I will never make that mistake again.

I push open my door in the dark, damp hall, the smell of black mould and years of disrepair hitting my senses with a bitter foul scent in the air that dries my throat on impact. Keeping my senses alert even though no one is around. It’s not a good neighbourhood, Washington near 14th street, the crime central and downtrodden area of the city where both attacks and break-ins are frequent. I’m already tense and on high alert, overly aware of every noise and sensation as my skin prickles in anticipation. I always feel this way coming back here at the end of the day. It’s hardly a home at the end of the day. It’s a stop gap.

I carry mace and a taser with me at all times again, and always on the watch for men in the shadows. I look around quickly, scanning the hall for followers, before I slide inside and immediately lock the several deadbolts I put on the door when I moved here. Not that they are much of a deterrent. They are barely gripping the rotten wood and one of them has fallen off twice. I have no doubts that with a little force they would be worthless. Sometimes I feel like it’s a waiting game before my apartment is targeted. It lay empty for a long time before I moved in, rotting away, and I try to make it seem as though it still is; less chance of being the next break in, in this building.

I pull myself up to stand when I slide the last low bolt near the foot of the door and sag against the chipped and peeling surface with a heavy sigh. I feel empty. Going through the motions, tired and just drained of life. My mood has been desolate for so long now that I don’t remember how to feel any other way. I honestly do not know what happened to Camilla, this Meghan I have become is a depressive state of affairs, and she is a pitiful shadow of the girl I once was.

I catch sight of myself in the mirror I have propped by my door as I pull off my sodden crusty dress and apron and dump them on the floor hatefully, disgusted by the smell and mess of them.

Camilla is long gone and this new me ‘Meghan’—she is a pale comparison to who I was.

I sneer at the mousy brunette in the mirror, with her pale face, no makeup and chipped and broken nails, discarding the dress like every other city server who makes less than minimum wage.

I look like a no one. A girl you would step over if she was sitting crying in the street.

I look like a long-forgotten version of myself, whom I despise with my very soul. Plain faced, nothing extraordinary, just a young down-and-out trying to make ends meet. Someone who has had their very soul ripped out and never managed to find it again.

I wonder if Alexi has it—in a jar on his desk—along with all the other souls of broken women he has left in his wake.

Only, that would imply he cared enough to treasure it, even as a trophy, which I doubt. It’s probably rumpled and strewn in the gutter behind his club where he swept it out of his building after he was done with me.

I’m disgusting and pathetic.

Lisa was weak and naïve; she only knew how to keep running and looking for shelter. Escape was her only thought and nothing else. She did what she needed to do to survive, and she learned to take all that made her frail and broken and shove them deep inside an icy cavern to die of exposure. She numbed everything out.

Camilla rose from her ashes and held her own for a long time. She built a business and for a while, she thrived at it. She was bold and sassy, even while underneath it was all a lie. She played the part of accomplished hostess, and somehow along the way found a little self-worth, despite it all. She would never have accepted this as her fate and would have kept chipping away endlessly to claw herself back to some sort of cushy life and social standing. She was born to be in charge of her fate and her mindset was that of getting somewhere that she would never have to be controlled by anyone again.

Why did I let him take it all away from me?

He didn’t save me from Tyler’s men. He just prolonged my death. He strung it out and made it stretch over almost a year of agony before snapping me like a twig.

Meghan, she’s the ruin that is trying to limp on. She works, she eats, she sleeps … then she repeats. Not living, not going anywhere, just trying to breathe and lick her wounds in the hopes that one day she wakes up and that spark of something is still there to get her out of her self-made hellhole.

Meghan is eternally tired and has no eye on the future.

Alexi destroyed me and I can barely look at myself anymore.

I walk away from my reflection and yank off the rest of my clothes clumsily, heading to the bathroom to run a bath and dodge the buckets I have propped around this leaky room. Pushing my foul mood and self-pity aside and dropping it on the floor with my discarded underwear, dishevelled.

It’s a miniscule apartment, barely enough room to swing a cat but it’s safer to be in small confines; even shitty run-down ones.

The pipes overhead are always dripping, but my landlord is an arsehole who requires blow jobs for favours, and I am so done with all that bullshit. I would rather live in squalor than do anything for a man in return for basic needs.

Sex and seduction, they aren’t part of my life anymore, and I am breaking habits of old at work to try and tone down my learned mannerisms and dialogue. I have tried to sound New York as much as I can, keep my sexy on the low, and avoid any sass or flirty skills to make life easier. All the things I spent twenty-eight years perfecting, and I am trying to throw them off like an unwanted coat in a bid to hide in this world.

Camilla is gone … this weird American accented nobody is nothing like her and anyone looking for Cam would think she was dead already. I guess in a way she is. I miss her. She was the realest me, I guess.

I have kept my nose clean and my head down and don’t intend to change that any time soon. Living in poverty is temporary while I regroup, and I am not passing out sexual tasters to anyone for anything anymore. I would rather sweep up pig shit all day. I just have no set plan on where I will go, or what I will do, and I am biding my time until I can figure it out.

I scan what’s left of my expensive cosmetic products and sigh dejectedly. That heaviness sweeping over me once more. I have been scrimping what I can, knowing it’s foolish to waste money on the stuff I really don’t need. That’s why my hair and nails were first to go, and I sold a lot of my expensive wardrobe, jewellery and perfumes, to pad out my savings.

No more designer or elegant clothes, no more shoes or handbags. I pawned everything I could to travel light and blend into the shadows. I have nothing of value anymore. Just a shoebox filled with all my money, hidden under the floor with my passport, ready to go at a moment’s notice.

I haven’t even unpacked my bags. I live out of them, never settling down and setting up this place as a home, as I never had any intention of staying, even for this long. I’m perched just waiting to go on to the next place when it’s time and I see an opportunity. Scraping everything I can together to build a fund that will take me a million miles from here or anywhere I have lived before.

I’m thinking somewhere hot and sunny and far out of the reach of any Carrero. Somewhere I can fade into a peaceful existence without anyone lording over me ever again.

That is the only thing keeping me going lately.

I climb into the tub and soak my weary bones in the hot almost clear water, sliding down to submerge all of me to the very edges of my face and try to drown out the noises of downtown New York. Body relaxing from stiff, stressed out achiness to an almost relieved sag.

The sounds of sirens, traffic, constant noise and motion, is never-ending, especially around these parts. It’s a high crime dump after all and only two days ago, a body was found only one block away. Daylight robbery gone nasty.

I can still hear the wail of a car alarm nearby and hear the screaming of the couple upstairs as they have another violent fight. Scraping furniture, heavy thuds and raised hysterical ranting overhead that echoes through the walls eerily. She gives as good as she gets and the gnawing grate of wood on wood over my head signals another epic battle.

Fuck love if that’s what it does to you.

Why tie yourself to someone for a lifetime if they treat you like a punching bag?

Why give your heart to a man who pounds it to dust like it doesn’t mean a thing? Like HE did. Alexi never deserved mine.

I should have run far away from him that night in the Hamptons and I know it now. I had a chance and I should have just kept going. Instead of being a feeble fool who let her fear rule her decisions, I should have had the sense to trust my gut.

My pathetic weak heart held me back every time I had a chance to go, and I was stupid not to see it.

I numb it all out mentally, push it away expertly and shove the heavy lump lodged in my chest back down to the empty gut and try to relax and let today go. Try so hard to push the tension and pain I feel every second I let him in my head out of my limbs and body, and concentrate on hot water and the drip, drip, drip of my tap.