The Carrero Contract - Selling Your Soul (Mafia Romance) novel Chapter 180

Somehow, we managed to pack, navigate to the airport and fly to JFK as a group with very little meaningful chatter. Mostly small talk and nursing hangovers from our heavy night previously; a sombre mood, and the strained atmosphere is so thick it’s almost opaque around us. Gino seems very aware of my turmoil about being Mrs, and after a brief joke about a shotgun wedding, Alessandra elbowing him hard in the ribs, no one brought it up again.

Alexi didn’t react, just kept his eyes on his phone, which he used so he didn’t have to talk to me after we left our room. He seemed completely disengaged, from all of us, abnormally sombre and quiet and disinterested in anything. He even bailed on dinner with our companions and left the three of us to eat while he was in the room, working apparently.

Consumed with a text conversation with God knows who, he left me to sort myself out, follow him at a distance and try not weep at the fact he was blanking me. It was a quiet, less animated group of friends returning from an exhaustive two days with a lot to think about.

I feel lost. Wretched, prickly, emotional and just all out of whack. Trying to keep my ‘give no shits’ facade and pretend like he isn’t literally messing with my head on multiple levels with this whole icing me out, cold shoulder bullshit.

Alexi is closed off and simmering. He doesn’t touch me once in transport from Vegas back to New York. Keeps a distance between us, only speaks to me briefly when directing or giving a yes/ no answer, and although not making it so obvious, I can tell he is trying to avoid me when he can. Always a few feet between us no matter where we are, and he rode up front with the driver on the way to the airport. He has never, in all the time I have escorted him, sat up front, for any reason at all.

Clipped, polite and commanding. All affection and love have been pulled back into that little emotionless bubble around him for the time being and I left him to it. In his icy orbit with prickly terrain. Knowing when to poke the bear, and honestly, I don’t have the emotional energy right now. I am all out of sharp sticks.

I’m bruised inside from how cold he seems, a little mad at him for doing it this way but understanding that this is Alexi hurt. Experience has taught me in the past that he lashes out at me when I hurt him and this is, I guess, a less volatile reaction. He doesn’t want to punish me for damaging his heart so he’s keeping us apart and limiting interaction. I don’t have to fucking like it and nausea swirling in the pit of my stomach is definitely linked to my emotional anxiety, rather than the residual hangover. He has me all kinds of tense and stiff.

Another pointer that he really is trying to show me I can trust him in every way, by not flipping out at me and doing something heinous to wound me back. We will never go back to the way we used to punish each other before.

It’s depressing though, clawing at me internally so I get fidgety and restless and glance at him obsessively. Craving his attention. Wanting him to just stop and love me again. Be my Lexi. Just look at me, even for a second.

I end up sleeping most of the flight just to avoid bursting into tears at the huge loss I feel at his manner. Breaking inside with how easily Alexi can fuck me up and how dependent on him I have become. This one change in his demeanour towards me and my whole security and happiness is on a shaky ledge over a crumbling precipice into a hellish abyss. It’s sad that I’m that easy to dent, but it is what it is.

I love him so much that it kills me to be denied his softer side, even for mere minutes. I need it to feel sane. Without it I rip myself to pieces with over thinking, insecurities and lack of faith that he loves me. I’m pathetic and weak and needy. Doubting all of this.

Easy to screw mentally, when your name is Alexi. Not that I don’t deserve it, but still. My chest aches with the effort to breathe and my heart feels like he has rammed about ten knives in there between my ribs.

I allow him to usher me from airport to cab, sit well apart silently and then to the private airfield for the second leg of our journey out to The Hamptons. It’s the early hours of the morning when we finally land in the little private plane and stumble through the tiny office to an awaiting driver. Barely taking in the scenery at all while I obsess over that jerk. A standoff of sorts as we walk parallel, zero conversation or contact and he never once looks my way.

Every tiny instance just notches another cut in my already pining and bleeding soul.

Alessandra is leaning against Gino as we walk and looks ready to fall asleep as soon as we get in the limo. Spreading out to face one another in the interior and Alexi immediately pulls out his phone and slides away from me on the seat to sit against the window and look out. The gap between us is not huge, but it feels like a massive gulf to me. Sitting opposite a cuddling couple of lovebirds who are wrapped up, intertwined lovingly, only draws attention to how lonely he’s making me feel. Aching and craving just one touch, one look to settle my agonising worry and remove the insecure pangs of panic growing inside my icy veins.

No hand holding, no touches, kisses, caresses. He barely acknowledges me at any point. I don’t know how much more of this I can take. I feel emotionally distraught and so fragile like I may crumble at any moment.

Outwardly though, good old Camilla is doing her finest at acting like she doesn’t give a shit. Tired, confident and just seems bored. That impeccable mask that shields everything and always has done. Two of us, alarmingly alike in our accomplishments. I always knew my ability to act my way through life would be my one saving grace in all things. I never thought I would have to revert to this with him though. I guess some habits die hard.

Alessandra nudges me with her foot and smiles gently, catching my attention and I smile back. She can see it too and she’s trying to soothe me with an ‘it will be okay’ look. It doesn’t take away the huge cavity forming inside me, but I just put more effort into appearing absolutely fine, so she believes I am.

I must have dozed off as we drove from the small airfield as next thing I know, a warm hand brushes my shoulder to rouse me, and I flick my eyes open. A slight moment of joy that he’s finally over his sulk, but Alessandra is the one leaning over me gently. Crouching in the car to accommodate her so she doesn’t end up sitting on top of me.

“We’re here, Bambina. Alexi and Gino have gone to open the house and switch on the lights. It’s very early.” That sexy Italian sultry accent of hers, so thick and familiar but it just adds another wound to my heart; he left her to wake me and bring me in rather than do it himself. That instant dissolving of a tiny flicker of happiness, and I’m left with a gaping hard dark hole inside of me. Straining to smile while my face aches to crumble.

This is getting beyond a joke.

There’s sulking and there is being a cold fucking bastard who is trying to punish me by freezing me out.

There is a fine line between the two and I’m starting to think it’s the latter. Proof that maybe I was right all along about him being a dickhead in marriage. He’s punishing me and now it’s blatantly obvious.

“I’m coming, go ahead.” I clear my raspy throat, teetering on the brink of tears over something stupid and move in my chair to bring my dead limbs back to life as she moves away and climbs out of the limo ahead of me. I just need a few moments to wake up fully and compose myself before I burst into a flood of pathetic tears.

He’s making me feel much like he used to. Like I’m a worthless nothing to him that gets discarded when he’s had what he wanted. It stings deeply, crushes my throat so swallowing and breathing become laboured, but I hold it in and push myself into numbness.

One last look around to make sure I have everything as I pull my shit together and realise my coat and bag are all still rumpled on the chair beside me, shoes on the floor by my feet. I have got so used to him picking those things up for me to carry that I just see it as another reason to feel pissed and broken. It’s stupid and subtle but it’s a clear fucktard message from Alexi. He’s trying to get to me with these trivial things.

Wanker

Clever, devious fuck. Sulking and pissed because I won’t do what he wants. Hurting me for hurting him in that manipulating way of his. To anyone else, I look like a crazy bitch for reacting to something like this, but I know him.

I should have known better than to think he was just hurt by rejection. It’s starting to feel more like he’s pissed at my disobedience.

Or maybe I’m just grouchy, tired, jet-lagged and in much need of unbroken sleep and some headspace, and I’m over thinking this completely. Either way, he can fuck off and leave me alone if he is going to be like this for the rest of the night. I’ll go to bed and leave him sleeping somewhere else. I don’t need him toying with me this way, and I swore if he ever did, I would run from him as fast as I could and as far as I could so he would never find me.

I won’t let him see he is getting to me.

I’m better than this.

I clamber out of the car, into the cold dawn air and grey light. I shudder and freeze when the house comes into view, stopping me in my tracks as my foot hits the pavement, the chauffeur patiently waiting with the open door, averting his eyes from me. It’s like an assault I’m not expecting, and I guess my fragile mood is the reason it hits me in this way. Already simmering and boom … a blast from the past to fuck me up even more. My heart drops to my feet and I stand motionless for a few seconds as I take in the building before me with a sense of dread.

I have so many memories of this place from last time I was here and the haunting flickers of seeing Gino and Alexi’s cars on the lawn the night I ran away from here hit me harshly, deep in my stomach. I haven’t been back since that night and all that followed and the goosebumps that run across my entire body send a cold wave of mixed fear, sadness and pain through me.

It’s hardly a good feeling to stand here now with this huge house bearing down on me in that strange twilight between dusk and dawn when I’m all alone. Staring up at illuminated windows, rustling trees and can feel the oppressive weight of the past, reminding me of how cruel he can be. Not when I’m feeling this insecure and shaky with how things are between us.

This is the house where I think he finally broke the first major piece of me off and turned it to ashes. Reducing me to hysterics in the bedroom up there, behind the window I’m staring at, and I shiver involuntarily as I blink away that memory. A tear fills my eye and I brush it away, angry at my weakness, my own pathetic lack of resolve when faced with nothing more than a distant memory. Body stiffening from cold, both externally and internally.

He holds so much power over me already, and we have only just begun.

I take a breath, pull myself to a full stand and let it all out heavily. Refusing to be beaten this way. Mind over matter, push it away, don’t let him get to you. Never again. It’s just a house, a moment from the past that can’t hurt me now.

I walk purposefully up the path to the huge doors, trying hard to push all the little visions, noises, feelings, and horrible thoughts away. The doors are still ajar for me and I brace myself before stepping inside to the brightly illuminated grand hall. Taking one last breath for courage and steeling my nerves.

Unsteady legs, turning to jelly, my hand trembles as I clutch my coat and bag to my side, dropping them on the chair by the door as I get inside. Just trying to be calm.

Memories flood back instantly as my eyes scan the familiar hall. Alexi pacing in here angrily and his brother holding him back, devilish and about to commit murder for my attempted escape. The night I ran because he corned me upstairs and used my past to destroy me.

My blood runs cold, brain fighting me to stay in the present and I wonder why I’m having so much trouble shifting these thoughts.

I spent months with him since being here and have never been plagued as I am now. It’s like the house has kept all these images lingering in the air to push back into my brain the second I laid eyes on it. Tormenting me, putting me back in my place to quell the last ounces of resolve I had brimming before I walked in here.

I jump when a warm hand touches my back and I spin like a shocked deer in the headlights at the huge form standing behind me to one side. Tall, male in shadow as the lights behind almost darkens him out completely. Like a blast from the past and distant haze of hospital rooms and sinister first meetings. My heart skips a beat, lurching in fright and for a moment I swear I don’t know where I am. I flinch, lift my hand defensively and cower impulsively, eyes wide and I gasp in panic.

Head so lost in another time and place with that flight-or-fight instinct switched on while my emotions are all over the place.

“Hey. You okay? Don’t be scared.”

It’s Alexi. I would know that sexy tone anywhere, and as my eyes adjust, I can see his tattoo peeking up under his jacket collar to confirm I’m not imagining things. Bringing me back to the here and now even though my body is poised and caught in an instinctive ready to run mode. Heart hammering through my chest as I try to work him out, steeped in mistrust. Guarded and nervous.

“So, you’re talking to me now?” It’s a knee-jerk reply, covering my thundering heart rate and shaking limbs, ignoring his question and I pull away from him, so his hand no longer moulds to the base of my spine, aiming to walk away and give him a dose of his own medicine. Put distance between us so he can’t see how rattled I am. How emotionally fragile this is making me.

Two of us can be cold and uncaring. If he can’t touch me, he can’t feel how much of an effect this place and his mood is having on me.

I haven’t felt this alone and afraid in weeks, maybe months. I never thought I would feel it because of him again.

Alexi catches my wrist as I start to move away, to gain some breathing space, and pulls me back to him firmly but gently and gives me no choice but to follow. He slides his arms around me and pulls me up against his body, despite my initial rejections. I have no say. He is strong and swift, and I’m manoeuvred into a hug with very little effort. I don’t even fight him, tiredness sucking all my energy away, and combined with his touch, I just give in.

“I’m sorry. I needed some headspace and time to think. I didn’t mean to upset you. You look like you’re thinking of running straight back out the door. What’s wrong, Cam?” He sounds broken too. Voice raspy, low, unsure. A hint of sadness in there that indicates he isn’t lying.

That ends me and all my combative instincts on the spot. Like being hit with a sudden shot of warm air after being out in the cold. Return of soft and loving and I’m a complete wuss. Crumbling to him like some needy wanton pathetic woman, so desperate for the side of him that only I get to see. I wrap myself up in him and slide my arms around his waist, nestling my face against his chest, inhaling his smell, and close my eyes to breathe him in. Tears brim up instantly and I literally give up all my strength and sag into him, relieved for this contact and a return of the man I love. All the pain from the last couple of hours forgotten in one cuddle. I’m completely hopeless.

“You,” I mumble quietly, everything from my defensive ‘show him you don’t care’ slipping away and I’m once again at his mercy. Close to breaking down and sobbing against him. Relieved to just feel him, for that gentler side to be mine all over again.

“I’m an asshole, we both know that. I was processing, and you didn’t seem to want me anywhere near you.” He kisses me on top of my head, strokes my hair down my back and squeezes me snugly to him with both arms.

I squint at that statement and look up at him questioningly, head racing over the last few hours but he looks back and raises his brows as if to confirm it. A look that says ‘right?’

Thinking back, I guess I really was just as responsible for the icy space between us coming here. He was closed off, and I made no attempt to talk to him either. I didn’t touch him, didn’t walk with him, and anytime I felt his eyes stray to me I held my ground and didn’t acknowledge him. We were both doing it and I spent the entire time acting like it didn’t affect me. Maybe like me, he pondered that I didn’t want him near me and was hurting as much as I was. With more reason. Glancing my way, agonising over my coldness, and being affected and insecure as much as me.

I rejected being married to him then I literally kept my distance all the way here. I can see why he didn’t wake me in the car now. He felt pushed away, and that’s why he seems so sad now. Both of us lost in our own heads to cool off and think while we should have been talking and touching, like this.

Seeing it that way makes me feel shitty, and I push it out and away realising he wasn’t punishing me at all. He was doing what he did when I was in hospital and removing himself because he thought it’s what I wanted.

I’m an idiot sometimes.

“We just haven’t been here since …” The words catch in my throat painfully as I try to change the subject, shamed at being such a fool. Like I just rammed a cactus down my neck, unable to finish the sentence as it bites me.

Alexi sighs heavily, his embrace noticeably firming up to get me as bodily close as possible. That sense of security flanking me as he does. I can almost feel his relief at being able to touch me again and realise it must have been killing him to be so close yet so far apart while torturing himself over this whole mess. His distance was because he knew proximity would make him touch me impulsively.

“I have so many regrets when it comes to you. This house I guess harbours a lot of them. I’m sorry. You know that, right? I would never hurt you that way again, in any way. I swear, Cam. The things that happened between us, none of them are how I would ever treat you again, for anything. No matter how mad I am, or how hurt, I will never cross that line and risk losing you—ever. I need you to trust that, even if you don’t trust me. I’ve changed.” He buries his face in the top of my hair, his voice and breath warming my scalp, sending tingles and goosebumps all over, from my temple down to my feet. I screw my eyes closed harder, and just let myself fall completely under his control. The place I’m always safest. He’s a magician when he wants to be, and I’m so far under his spell. Powers of persuasion run deep with this one, keeping me rooted to the spot. Smoothing it all away as easily as he can inflict it.

“It’s so hard to forget and just let go,” I mumble, finally letting go of my tears as they begin to fall down my face softly. Not wracking, heaving sobs but a broken, warm outpouring of so many harboured scars. It’s hard to stop hurting, overthinking and seeing things in a skewed way, when sometimes, like the last hours, they are not what I see. Once the waterworks start, I can’t seem to stop them. I guess it’s partial relief that all that worry and pain thinking he was going cold on me, was me being a fool and not taking it at face value. Something I do a lot with him because of my own stupid head and its insecurities. So much inside me, a lifetime’s worth of pain and I never ever just let it go. Today just helped it all come to the surface, I guess.

All that fear and seeing him and Rick as one, blurring lines because I feel trapped and can’t get my head around it. I’m turning something that others see as pure and good into something terrifying and twisted. Lost in my own head and not seeing what it might be to him instead.

“I don’t want you to forget … you never will. I just want you to forgive me, more than anything. To stop punishing me for things I will never do again and seeing the worst in me. I’ll do whatever it takes to fix it all. To trust that I won’t do anything that causes you pain in any way, ever. I need you. I don’t think I could go on living if I lost you a second time, it was hell on earth and I never want to feel that way again for as long as I live. You’re my universe, London. I would move mountains for you. You have to believe that I will do anything you need to earn your trust, your faith in me.” He sounds as desperate as I feel. His husky low tone, quiet and soothing. Words only for me, so hushed in the large space around us. Heartfelt. Just the two of us alone in the world in this place as though no one else exists anymore. Moulded as one and it fits so perfectly.

Time stands still.

I stop and just take note. Knowing what he says is true and I do keep running away and punishing him because I’m afraid. I jump into hatred and accusation before logic shakes my arse and wakes me up again. It’s my form of protection, even if it’s dumb. The past is exactly that, over and done with, and Alexi has done so much to try and show me that he won’t ever cause me that feeling of terror and heartbreak ever again. I need to stop dragging him over hot coals and using it as an excuse to run from him.

Everything he has ever done, even before, always had hints of wanting to keep me safe. Even when he was crushing my soul he still jumped to my defence whenever he thought I was vulnerable, and it wasn’t a game. The opera, the attempt at the club, my being sick in the rain, moving me to The Hamptons and then exploding when he thought I had run away. Knowing him the way I do now, I can see the care behind his reactions. The truths through the bullshit. Yelling at me in sheer frustration in the times he thought I was in danger and he was powerless; like after I was robbed, and I went walking in the streets while they found my apartment empty. He yelled because he was afraid and then relieved to see me in one piece. He doesn’t know how to express in a healthy way, so his fear, worry and anxiety comes out as anger and aggression.

He pushes people away, pulls up the aggressive mask and uses his wall of hostility to sway you away from the truth. It’s what he did to me over and over, punishing me for making him love me while he thought I didn’t care. We both did it. In different ways, wearing different masks, so alike. It’s what I keep doing to him now, even if I don’t mean to. Fucking up his head, hating him when he keeps trying to prove his worth. I have been emotionally bruising him for weeks.

Alexi cared, even while he hated how much I was hurting him.

He tried so hard to make me see it when I came back. The club, my job, giving me a gun, keeping his distance, my birthday, Miami … and Feral. He was screaming it at me in his own painful silence all along, and I was too blind to see he was holding out a hand and hoping I would just take hold. He has still been clinging on no matter how hard I fight because he can’t let me go. He looked for me; he went to London and destroyed someone who hurt me and wiped my past from physical history the only way he knew how. That’s how Alexi loves.

I have always read him wrong. I have blamed him, pushed him, hurt him. Accused and misunderstood. Much like I’m probably doing now with this marriage problem.

“Don’t close me out and leave me feeling alone. I hate being alone. I was always alone, until you. Don’t do that to me. Even when I deserve it … I can’t handle it.” I whisper so softly it’s almost inaudible. Knowing I deserve it because I keep trying to make him do it.

I’ve been pushing him, knowing somewhere deep down he would keep chasing me. It was a power that I was aware of even though I questioned it, but somehow it was a way of feeling worthy. Pushing him and making him beg, plead, chase. It’s not healthy and it’s not going to give me his heart forever.

These past few hours of him not chasing me, it’s opened my eyes and slapped me in the face. Showed me the devastation if he just stopped coming for me and caring, and I can’t live with that.

This marriage thing, it’s not a tool or a game for him. It’s not a validation of ownership. If I use it to wound him, he won’t keep coming and I’ll end up losing him with no one to blame but myself. I need to stop using his heart against him, just because I know I can. It’s drawing a line in the sand.

The dam bursts and the sobs follow. Probably relief that he’s right here with me once more and it’s not too late. I can choose to leave loneliness behind me and take a leap of faith, even if it scares the shit out of me. Stop pushing him and hold on tight.

Those three sentences that seem so insignificant to anyone else, they are at the centre of everything that’s wrong with my life, my past and my memories. All that has ever been wrong.

I had no one. No one loved me, no one cared. I was a forgotten little girl whose own mother despised her, and her father never wanted to see her again. I spent my life fighting to look after myself and not let anyone close for fear of being hurt over and over. I have lived through deprivation and horrendous ordeals, just to shake myself down, and struggled to survive just one more day. I trusted no one and knew no other way to be. My life had no meaning.

When you live a life knowing you are eternally alone and no one would notice or care if you ceased to exist, it’s hard to be any other way. No one cares if you starve, or you bleed, or you’re so cold you sleep in an alleyway night after night among the rubbish just to try and retain some heat and shelter from men wishing you harm. To beg for scraps and hide in shadows because safety doesn’t exist anywhere in your life. There’s no home, no person to turn to when you cry in despair night after night. No one to help ease your pain or your burden. No one to comfort you when you’re sick. No one to help you find money to eat or clothe yourself. No one gives a shit if you live or die. That was my existence from the second I was born.

I was invisible all my life. An object for abuse and nothing more. No worth to anyone unless they had the means to use me; I was their possession and nothing else. Even for my mother to sell off. I had nothing really. Always destined to end up back where I started, no matter how hard I ran away from it. Pulled down into the gutter time and again, no matter what. It’s where I belonged.

I never knew care, safety, or love … until Alexi. If he takes it away now, I’ll die. It’s the worst form of cruelty he could ever inflict on me. Having felt its warmth and power, it would be so much worse to end up back in the gutter now. I wouldn’t survive it anymore. He broke the coldness in me, and now I don’t have what it takes to go back to hiding in the shadows.

“I’m sorry, I really am. I won’t, I swear. That’s not what I was doing, I just thought you needed me to leave you be for a little while, even though I hated it. You’ll never be alone because I’m not letting you go for anything in the world. You’re my forever. I waited a lifetime to find you and I’m not about to let anything take that from me. Not even the dissolving of our marriage. I would follow you around the world for the rest of my life, you have to know that. You’re my perfection, the other half of my soul; I would die without you.” The raspy raw tone that matches mine, sodden with emotion and a slight strain, hints he is welling up too. An intense truth behind his words. Probably the most honest, human moment in his life and it is for me. Mirroring how I feel about him in every way.

Words I have longed for my whole life.

Alexi breaks me. Only this time it’s not from cruelty or coldness. He breaks me in a new way entirely.

Really drumming it home that the stupid shit I do needs to stop. I’ll lose him. He deserves a real chance with someone who can forget the past and take him at his word. His actions scream so loudly, and I need to stop jumping to conclusions and tarring him with a brush he no longer deserves. Alexi loves me more than anything in the world and I think I finally, truly understand that now. I can feel it in everything he does … even what happened in Vegas.

He married me on the hope that maybe I would be okay with it once I had time to digest it because he knew I wouldn’t marry him of my own volition or sober. He saw it as a way where I could truly be his, not in the way I’m seeing it. He wanted to make me the centre of his universe. Protect me in ways he felt he couldn’t and show the world he had someone he valued above everything else and he didn’t want to hide it anymore. He put me in the forefront.

I let it all out with gusto. Clinging onto him as though my life depends on it. Wracking sobs, ungraceful heartfelt tears from the soles of my feet into Alexi’s chest, and he just holds me close, strokes my hair and lets me cry. There’s nothing else to say right now. It’s all just pain and blubbering and a huge vessel being emptied with no holding it back until the damn thing is empty. I feel like I have been holding this in my entire life, and somehow this is the key to opening the void and draining it once and for all. He seems to sense it and lets me get it all out.

Accepting it, facing it and choosing to let it go.