The Carrero Contract - Selling Your Soul (Mafia Romance) novel Chapter 107

‘You don’t like my family?’ He asks seriously, frowning at me, and I can’t tell if he is annoyed by that fact, or just curious. He’s being his usual self and giving nothing away about what he’s feeling or thinking. Sometimes I just wish I had a little tiny inkling of what goes on in his head—just once.

‘Your family seem nice and I already knew a couple of them. I’m fine. Just not really in the party mood yet, I take time to warm up,’ I answer calmly, quietly, dodging his intense focus and keep on glancing at passing clouds right by the window.

‘You regret coming?’ He presses the matter a little tighter toned.

Jesus, he’s like the Spanish Inquisition and I don’t get why he cares so much about this.

‘No, it’s just … nothing.’ I exhale in defeat, body tensing with increasing stress levels. No idea why I feel like I owe him an explanation. I turn away and look out of the window more obviously in the hope he’ll leave me to sit here alone and let me be. I need quite head space to sober up and stop being such a downer.

‘It’s something, what is it? Is it me? You worried I’m going to be an asshole to you? Has somebody made you feel unwelcome? Have I?’ He nudges me a little forcefully and I glance back to give him an irritated look, rubbing my arm where he touched me. He’s hardly Mr Gentle at times and drunk I can see he’s more aggressive than normal. I don’t think he means to be, he is just a naturally heavy-handed person that is oblivious to his own strength. It just exasperates me and all his pushing is doing is making me feel overwhelmed like I might cry and pathetically I blurt it at him.

‘I don’t know how to do this.’ It comes out feebly, like a small broken child. I sound so weak and hate myself for letting him hear my vulnerability over my own dumb inadequacy.

I drop my eyes and go back to looking out the window, feeling stupid and ashamed, shame flushing from my toes and heating my face. Mortified that I’m admitting this to him.

‘Do what? Get smashed in the air and let your hair down? Forget to hate me for five minutes? Enjoy time in my company?’ He sounds exasperated with me and I just sigh harder. He has no concept of what I even mean.

Why would he? Even he can fit in with normal social scenarios.

‘No.’ I don’t want to just come out and say, ‘act like a normal human in a normal social setting and just be normal.’ How do you tell someone like him that you never had to be involved with people when you weren’t angling for some reason or goal? That being in a family or friends setting just makes you feel incredibly small and invisible, because no one taught you or showed you how to behave. No one loved you or cared about you. That you spent your whole life by yourself, or with abusers, and nice people stayed well away from you in case you infected them with your worthlessness. I never had value to anyone, let alone him … now he wants me to blend in and act like I belong with this group of semi-strangers and find something meaningful within myself to share with them. There’s nothing like that inside of me. Even I know that.

‘Then what?’ Alexi is starting to lose his temper, and I am aware that maybe I’m embarrassing him in front of them by not being the social bee he thought I would. By being weirdly quiet and a loner when they are all getting drunk and merry, and being so touchy-feely and family like with one another. He assumed I would be Camilla the hostess and peruse and charm my night away like a pro. He doesn’t understand that all of that is a lie, an act, a mask I wear. It’s my job to be that way and I have to constantly work at it.

I can’t relax and just be like the others here. They are doing it naturally.

I mean, right now Alessandra is sitting on Gino’s lap and Jackson’s wife is leaning over the seat in front of them to chat about God knows what, both smiling. Mico’s sitting draped across two seats like a kid with Mandy’s hand in his, stretched across to her; Doe-eyed and talking to one each other and Gino at the same time, all smiles and happy faces. The others are all lounging in a little group as they all intermingle and chat as a whole. It’s effortless and comfortable. They gel, they get on, and they know one another inside out.

I’m the black sheep in a plane full of white horses.

‘Look, I’m sorry if I am showing you up in front of them, you should have left me in the city,’ I snap back at him quietly, trying to keep my voice hushed so they don’t hear us, and Alexi just sighs at me, tapping his thumb on the table. I can tell he is getting increasingly agitated at my lack of playing nice. He’s not famed for his patience or empathy.

‘Is that what you think this is? I’m annoyed because you’re sitting quiet and not blending in?’ He lowers his tone to a growl to match the volume of mine, trying not to draw attention either as those noisy passengers further down erupt into laughter at something that’s been said.

‘You’re pissed because I’m an embarrassment who doesn’t know how to act like a normal person when surrounded by people who don’t want anything from me.’ I blurt it out tearfully, sadness getting the better of me and my voice trembles. Alexi just narrows his eyes at me. Scanning my face for signs of a lie probably, then he just looks like he always does … slightly psycho in a very unemotional way.

That’s always reliable anyway.

‘Don’t assume you know what I’m thinking when it comes to you.’ It comes out like a warning and it just pisses me off. How he can turn sentences into veiled threats without any actual threat in them, and just knows how to irritate the shit out of me with a tone and a look that tells you fuck all. It’s really bloody annoying, that shitty trait of his. Hiding everything he feels and thinks under a mask of robotic indifference and I actually loathe it with a god damn passion. I hate that it leaves you always guessing and never knowing anything truthful about what he actually wants!

‘Why did you want me here?’ I blurt out in exasperation at him. I can’t figure out if he thinks I’m his plaything for the night or if his motives were purely just that he thought I might actually enjoy myself. Which I highly doubt! He had to have known I wouldn’t just fit in with his family and their women, and I am still no closer to reading him and the things he does.

‘I wanted you to come. Believe it or not, I like your company, for the most part.’ He looks away sulkily, furrowed brow, eyes gaining stormy dark hues and that edge to his tone; Always a fucking dig in his words that takes what he says and makes it something else entirely. This is what he does. Says something almost nice and yet in a way that makes it clear he doesn’t mean it or is just messing with you, or putting you down.

‘Sure … Is that why you spent so much time and energy trying to kick me out of your life last time around?’ I snap in response, still holding on to ounces of hurt and resentment for all that has gone on before. I knew drinking was a bad idea and my mess of emotions and old grudges are now starting to spew out from that little box I swore to leave it all tightly packed away in. Temper churning when fuelled by bitterness.

Alexi glares at me. That deathly anger of a madman and shakes his head as though I have no right to say that.

‘Let it go. I had my reasons and you’re here now, aren’t you?’ He looks away as though dismissing me for something minor and I lose my temper completely. Blood and rage bubbling up like an overfilled pot on a burner.

‘No!! I have a right to be pissed and hurt for how you treated me. You think because you gave me my job back and treat me marginally better this time that I should just fall at your feet again? Please … explain what your reasons were, as this is news to me!’ I spit, voices still drowned out by his loud family but I’m not keeping quiet anymore. I cannot contain this.

‘I’m not doing this here. Drink your champagne and leave it alone.’ Alexi clamps down on me through gritted teeth, that I assume is meant to hush me before they hear us.

Always caring about what everyone else sees and thinks of him.

‘Good old Mr Carrero. Don’t defy, question or cause conflict, right? Do as he says, shut up and look pretty. Don’t question him in front of anyone! What will you do if I don’t, huh? Bodily throw me off your plane?’

I have no clue how I went from sombre to spitting teeth and trying to goad him into a fight, but I have all this pent-up anger in me that alcohol is stirring up and it has nowhere else to go except at him. He caused it and now it’s bubbling away inside of me like a little cauldron of hissing rage.

‘Fuck’s sake, Cam. What do want from me? An apology? An explanation? What will it change? The past is the past and I brought you back, didn’t I? I cannot undo what I did but it doesn’t mean I don’t regret it. Sorry is just a word … One I have said to you already!’ It’s an effort to pipe me down with hushed angry words but it has the opposite effect.

I have never in my life been as raging mad at a single human being as I am right now. The pig-headed attitude of this man and his refusal to back down and admit he did anything wrong makes me want to smother him with his own jacket. Sorry may just be a fucking word but it happens to mean a lot when someone has royally screwed you up and treated you like shit. He has never actually told me, not once, that he was sorry in a meaningful way for what he did with any real kind of remorse. He has only thrown it at me to get me to obey him and I don’t for a second believe it was genuine. Any time!

‘You are fucking unbelievable!’ I slam my palm on the table and get up, forcefully pushing past him out of the seat to get out and sit anywhere but with him, and jump when he grabs me by my hips and hauls me onto his lap aggressively so I fall harshly.

I land ungracefully in a sitting position against him, held taught with his vice-like grip on me, side on and unable to move as he restrains my arms to my sides with a force that silences me. My breathing laboured and heart thudding inside my ribcage as every part of me rises to outrage like a volcano.

‘I’m sorry. I was wrong. I pushed you away. Is that what you need to hear? You want the word; you can have it … Sorry. Sorry. SORRY! Does it make you feel better, hate me any less? Magically undo the shit that went on before?’ It’s delivered in that even husky tone of complete pissed off Carrero. He could be reciting a fucking shopping list for all I care.

I wriggle my arms free angrily, body ignited with hot rage and shove myself away from his chest, abhorring his touch, and struggle to get loose, but he only yanks me closer.

‘You have a lot to learn about apologies,’ I spit in his face, glaring, hating him with every fibre in my body.

Alexi, however, goes into that dead calm control he is an expert at and despite holding me tight, so I can barely move, he seems effortlessly still. It’s that danger tone that used to pull me to heel.

‘You’re not the only fucked up person who has issues you know! It was never just about you. You think you understand it, Cam? You think you know what I felt, why I did what I did? … I had reasons!’

We’re nose to nose, angry and sizzling, a voltage between us that could probably short out the plane, so much anger and hatred and venom pouring out. Unlike every other time, it does not quieten me into submission but fuels my temper

‘What is that supposed to mean? You treat me like shit because you’ve had a crappy life? Yeah, I can see how being born rich in a family who gives a shit about you would screw you up and make you this way. Arsehole! Or wait, some sob story about being misunderstood and shunned by Mummy, is that the excuse? She didn’t love you enough so you took it out on a woman who actually did!’ This time I manage to yank myself free with a violent jerk and shove him hard in the upper chest, no longer caring about drawing attention. Stupefied with the words I just threw at him and yet I don’t care anymore.

I told him I loved him, he knew I did. What does it matter, confirming it!

Alexi lets me loose with unveiled anger on his face, and something else. If I didn’t know better I would call it hurt. I fall out of his embrace and onto my feet, pulling myself away from him quickly by clinging to another seat.

I scramble upright and walk down the aisle trying to act as unaffected as I can, smoothing down my clothes, and taking slow even breaths to reel it all back in. I head on two rows to the first seat that faces forward and turn my back on him; Sulking upset and furious. So much bubbling inside of me that I cannot contain. My whole body is tingling from toes to scalp with irritated goosebumps.

No one has looked this way, none the wiser to our spat and now I really do just want to go home and be done with this. I am on the verge of a complete emotional breakdown, fighting myself over stupid tears and wishing I never agreed to this at all. My chest is so heavy and achy I feel I might be having a heart attack.

I wondered when his mind games and head mess would start, and should have known any olive branch to something out of business always leads to this—Alexi trying to fuck me up for his own amusement. He always turns me into a raving loony. I don’t get why he has to do this to me every time!

I jump when he slides in beside me and honestly just laugh, sarcastically, bitterly; at the nerve of him. He’s an eternal dog with a bone and if he thinks he can push me to insanity again, he has another thing coming.

‘Leave me alone!’ I semi yell it at him, but the noisy crowd is onto singing and drowns me out with a chorus of Oasis’ Wonderwall, someone is playing on an iPhone.

Drunk people!