The Carrero Contract - Selling Your Soul (Mafia Romance) novel Chapter 80

I wake up with a throbbing face, shooting pain across my entire skull and forehead and the worst kind of headache from hell. I am on the cold, hard wooden floor of my apartment and for a moment I have no clue where I am. My body is stiff from it, and freezing from being here for a prolonged time in a very awkward position, like a dead animal.

Disorientated and woozy, I turn on my side and throw up when the taste of blood hits the back of my throat making me gag, and I realise that my face is covered in it. Feeling out my features, I can tell that my nose is a mess, blood crusted around it, and it feels like it could be broken at the bridge where it’s swelling badly and near unbearable to touch. Tracing it tenderly, so very carefully with my fingertips and recognising the burning ache of a bone that has to be at least cracked. My face already feels puffy and even though it’s still so dark I can tell I am completely alone in my surroundings. It has that eerie feeling of emptiness that comes when you are truly alone. It’s a moment that causes me internal pain and a huge wave of fear as I realise, I have been out completely cold and vulnerable in a place you wouldn’t want to find yourself unlocked.

My brain jumps to my last memories and I automatically push my hands to check my body and clothes erratically, feeling myself out and exhaling heavily as I do so. Pyjama bottoms are still on, as are my underwear and tank top over my sports bra. So I can thank my lucky stars I haven’t been raped … this time. They don’t tend to stop and re-dress you after the act.

The overwhelming ache of emotion hits me harder and I push it down, along with the burn of tears, thanking my lucky stars I won’t have to drag myself to a sexual health clinic and try and explain this away to be tested. It makes my head and heart throb as the realisation hits me how lucky I was this time; how lucky I am he didn’t kill me with the force he must have hit me, or did worse to me. I am so lightheaded with an obvious concussion that I barely feel like this is real.

I crawl until I get to the nearest piece of furniture and use it to lever myself to my feet, almost knocking it over on uneven legs, shaking and swaying all over the place before I slump down on top of it and feel around for the lamp on the table beside me. It’s not there, and as my eyes adjust to being awake, I can see my apartment is trashed, the lamp laying a few feet away in the light cast by the moon from the sitting room window. They must have been braver with me contained and dead to the world, and went through this place like enraged animals in a bid to find something of worth.

The door in front of me is wide open and I get up and walk unsteadily to it to close it. Not sure what else I should be doing.

It’s completely fucked up; bolts and locks are mangled from what I suspect was a crowbar entry that I slept through in my drugged stupor and my supposed security has ripped clean out of the woodworm ridden door almost effortlessly. They knew this door wasn’t a match and probably didn’t make much noise getting it open anyway. Sheer luck it was on a night I had put myself into an induced deep sleep to get well.

My door won’t shut and when I switch on the overhead light my eyes immediately go to the gaping hole in the floor by the window as the dull illumination shows me the full horror, and I literally sink to my lowest. I don’t care that the apartment looks worse than it did; it’s not really hard to make a shithole look more like a shithole. It’s what I can see that rips my soul out and the breath from my lifeless body in one fell sweep.

The hidey-hole for all that I have scraped and saved and kept together, the loose floorboard by the window, they found it.

I don’t even check, even from here I know it’s all gone and as I sink to the floor heavily, losing all life, I cradle my face in my hands and start to cry.

Everything inside of me dying all at once as all hope and light of a way out of this place is taken away on the breeze. They have just snubbed out my chance of a new anything; the theft of all that I had, my plans, what I could squirrel away, gone.

It’s one thing to start over when you have something behind you to enable a future, it’s another thing entirely to start over with absolutely nothing except a pot to piss in when you’re completely broke and all you had just got stolen by some arsehole looking to fuel his drug habit.

I’m screwed.

I literally have nothing anymore.

I now need my job more than anything just to bloody eat, and well, this place looks like home sweet home for a very long time at this rate. Even with its roaches, damp infested rotting walls and floors, and a million and one broken things needing to be repaired. This is my reality.

I let it all out in a long bout of sobs; gut aching with the effort and hating that it’s brought me to this state of desolation. Ever since that bastard broke me, all I seem to do is cry when shit gets on top of me. It’s not who I was, and I despise that it’s how he has left me. Camilla would have taken this in her stride, picked herself up and put herself to rights. I am so tired of trying to be strong and find a path through the hellhole that is my life. I’m beaten down and so sick of fighting tooth and nail to survive. A heavy, lingering sadness that’s always trying to drag me down with every step I take.

I sit and allow myself to cry it all out until I am weak and woozy and so exhausted that tears dry of their own accord. Not because I am able to stop them, but because my body doesn’t have the energy to sustain them.

I pull myself together, swallow the self-pity down with shame and struggle to get upright. Pushing back my hair, I try to get my mind on the task of securing my apartment and seeing what else they took; readying myself for the second wave of stomach punching realisation that it really is all gone.

The police are pointless, they won’t be able to do shit and all they will do is make me hang around while they take statements and then harass me to go to the emergency room, which I can’t afford. Not anymore.

I’m fucking penniless.

I turn to try and wedge my door shut, but it just keeps opening the more I push it, warped, broken somehow, fighting me all the way. I am too weary and dizzy for this, and I eventually jam a chair up against it in a bid to keep it closed while I get to the sink and clean the worst of my face up and assess how bad it is. It feels like I have been face palmed with a shovel.

The horrendous image blinking back at me under dim, buzzing bathroom lighting in a cracked mirror is sobering.

I look awful, my eyes are starting to circle with the tell-tale blue darkness and the bridge of my nose is swollen and bruised already. My skin pale and blotchy from tears and traces of being unwell and my eyes look red and veiny. The blood cleans away to reveal an ashen face and a swollen top lip. I’m guessing he got me right in the centre of the face and I might be lucky with just a cracked or bashed nose rather than a broken one. It feels extremely tender and makes me nauseous when I touch it.

It isn’t the worst I have had to deal with, it’s just going to get a lot of questions at work and piss Joe off that I’m not his star turn on for sleazy customers looking like this. My head is pounding and I’m not sure if it’s from this or the fact I feel like death and barely capable of staying upright. The room keeps swimming and the turbulent motion going off inside my stomach is making me queasy. My nose is running with both blood and mucus so that I have to sniff, which then hurts my bloody face. I am in some mess.

I go back to the door and try again to figure out a DIY way to secure it, but to no avail. The wood’s rotten as it is and the busted parts which once held the screws and bolts are now splinters, gouges and splits. I have no tools and no knowledge on how to repair a broken door. I also can’t pay anyone to come fix it either, so getting this shut and able to keep me safe from intruders just isn’t happening.

Fuck my life.

I slump down on the floor and look around at the mess surrounding me, kicking the door with my bare foot and stub my toe in the process. Yelping, mad at myself while I cradle my throbbing foot and glare around me. So much going off inside of me; the turmoil has me antsy, enraged and just overwhelmed.

They really did do a number on the place, checking every cupboard, drawer and bag and turning this room upside down. It feels violated and unsafe and somehow no longer any sort of place I want to be in. My skin has goose bumped in high alert, and I am aware that it’s still night and I cannot take my eyes off the now unsecured entranceway until morning. Not in this neighbourhood. An open door is like an invitation.

They obviously thought they would find more things of worth than I actually have and had to go to the extra effort to find something to steal at all. Getting myself knocked out just gave them time to have a good look around and I guess that’s how they found my space in the floor. When you walk over it, it tends to pop up a little at one end and make a loud creaking noise, that’s how I found it.

It’s my own fault for keeping my money here instead of in the account Alexi set up for me to be paid; stupidly never learning from my childhood tricks of hiding things under floors. I mean, how many times did my mother find my secret stashes in our old flat? Little boxes where I hid what money I could stash for bills and food, and she would waste it on shit she could inject into her arms. She never found the one in my bedroom though … I left all I had behind in that rotten hole in the floor. Journals, pictures, memories of my life and I never went back for them.

I should have used my cash account, it has no ties to him other than he used to pay me there, but I didn’t want anything to do with him anymore and I didn’t want to be traced. Bank accounts and cash withdrawals are the worst kinds of paper trail if you have the means to look; which most people from his world do. I wasn’t just running from Alexi, I was running from that whole world and all the ones before who might still have ideas of exacting punishment for my past sins. Tyler surely wouldn’t turn his nose up at a second pop at me.

My new job is happy to pay me cash in hand without question, so it was an ideal solution to hide my money in one place where I could grab it at a moment’s notice—ready to run, like always. I went off grid, hiding from everyone and this is where it got me.

Robbed!

In a shithole apartment in a shithole part of the city, and the only thing I have to look forward to is going to my shithole job to serve wankers shithole food for eight hours.

I sigh and look at my lap for the longest time, so exhausted, yet I know it’s dumb to sleep while my apartment is accessible. In this neighbourhood, any passing junkie or opportunist will come to see what’s left for the picking and I can’t be sure I wouldn’t be on the list of things to take if I let my guard down for even a moment.

I get up and start rummaging for anything to help me jam the door shut enough to get one of the bolts operational; determined to find some safety tonight, so I can recover from being knocked out. Pulling drawers and wading through the mess they left everywhere, tripping over crap and hurting my feet some more as I struggle with a pounding head and minor dizziness.

I check my hidey hole with a heavy heart, preparing myself for what I know is inevitable and like I expected, the shoe box is missing its envelope of cash. It’s not in the hole but pushed to the left under the sofa carelessly. All they have discarded over the floor is the few pictures from various parties over the years and my passport which was in with it. The one in my real name – Lisa McAllister.

It doesn’t stop the heavy thud of regret and heartbreak hitting me all over again. I physically sag as I try to stay positive on what I need to do. They didn’t want them obviously and I scoop them out of the box to put in my bag, which is overturned all over the sofa, and start pulling it all back together. There are clothes everywhere, some on the floor and kicked under the couch beside the box which once held my funds and I notice there is still something in there. I bend to retrieve what they have left behind.

Pulling out the box from under the edge of the couch, to see what it is more clearly, I stop when I catch sight of a familiar black card shining back at me in a completely unexpected way. Its high gloss coating catching the light and my heart and brain stop simultaneously with the familiarity of it as memory floods back to the night Mico handed it to me. It’s a bittersweet reminder of safety and belonging, even while Alexi was making me insane.

I stare at it for a long moment, pondering the decision to pick it up and pack it too, and just look for the longest time. It’s almost as though I am afraid touching it will open the floodgates of feelings and memories I have tried to outrun for months, even though I know it’s ridiculous.

Black and simple with just M.G. Carrero in gold embossed lettering. Just the name alone sends spikes of pain shooting through my chest. Underneath that is says … Carrero Corp. That’s all it says on this side and I pick it up slowly, stupidly careful as though it’s a ticking time bomb, to flip it over revealing two phone numbers and a business address in Manhattan. I assume that’s Alexi’s offices and just that thought alone is enough for me. I drop it back down in the box as though it’s burned me and kick it under the seat, determined not to use that avenue for help. Never going back to that means of security, knowing what comes with it.

Mico told me to keep it in case I ever needed him, and that day is not today.

Nor will it be tomorrow, or the next.

I discard my clothes and move off to keep searching for something to secure my door. That small bit of defiance that his name swirling in my brain has given me, I get some of my determination back, an ember of fire as anger bites. I won’t be left looking elsewhere for help ever again. I have to do this on my own. Screw all Carrero men!

I find a screwdriver and a hammer in the chaos under the sink and set about trying to bang my door back into shape haphazardly with no real clue as to what I am doing. It doesn’t take long before irate neighbours start screaming at me because of the noise at stupid o’clock and rattling floorboards over my head to quieten me down. I am attracting too much attention.

A shifty-looking pair of teens take up residence along the hall and watch me messing with my door. Dressed in dirty tracksuits and looking gaunt and spotty, it’s not hard to tell they are resident drug users and opportunists. I have only managed to draw them to the fact my apartment is accessible and it’s not even three a.m. yet. Daylight savings time means we are still in semi-darkness and for some reason that makes them more likely to attempt something.

I know that I’m drawing attention to the fact I can’t get it shut so I push it closed and hold it there with my body, so I am blocking them out. I hope it looks like I’m done, so they will push off, but a peek through the spy hole tells me they have wandered closer and seem to be eyeing up the door, nodding to one another.