The Carrero Contract - Selling Your Soul (Mafia Romance) novel Chapter 131

I wake up in my own bed. Well, once again ON my bed, with a throw over me, and yet again, it’s mid-morning and I cannot remember anything after falling asleep. There’s no way I just slept right through from five p.m., but as I check my bedside clock it flashes nine forty-three a.m. at me and I rub my eyes in disbelief. I didn’t dream, no night terrors, no crazy shadows and monsters dragging me out of slumber—a silent dreamless sleep that almost never happened before I came back here. This is happening more and more lately and I feel refreshed from a full night’s rest.

I am still wearing yesterday’s dress, so Alexi must have brought me through and put me to bed at some point. This is getting to be a habit for him, and I sit and ponder for a moment the fact that he didn’t even try to wake me or do anything beyond let me sleep.

I still don’t trust him, but somehow, lately … I don’t hate him quite so much either. He keeps showing me glimpses of another side, and as much as I keep telling myself that it’s a lie—an act, a way to get at me—there’s a part of me that wants to believe in those parts of him as something real.

The same idiot girl who looked for love in a heart incapable of loving her … I am a fool.

I fell asleep on Alexi’s lap like some damn trusting moron; I don’t even know why I keep falling into this cycle of caring for him.

Yesterday was exhausting, the fights in the car that we never finished, and the way he was with me after Feral … which reminds me of my loss. It hits hard again with a thud to my stomach which I immediately mentally block out and push away.

I learned the best way to deal with emotional pain is to push it away quickly, stop thinking about it and focus on anything else until it stops hurting so much. That’s what I intend to do to forget that beast and remove its little claws from my heart strings.

Alexi has left me feeling strange and disconnected somehow. Confused hopelessly over what he is to me—who he is anymore.

He’s not the person he was before I left. He’s not the Alexi who made me crumble to dust anytime he saw signs of my weakness or used them against me. I still have those same weaknesses, yet he hasn’t dared to breach them again.

He hasn’t tried to control me or hurt me in any real physical way … except after Miami when he called me a whore … but we were both calling each other names and it was a reaction to rejecting him. He hasn’t forced a seduction on me, even when he went for a kiss and I said no.

When I said NO before I left, he would just use his hold over me to bend my will and catch me in his trap of powerless submission. He could do it again so easily if he wanted to, and yet he hasn’t—Not once.

He was genuinely hurt at my rejection that night, and instead of sadistic or manipulating, he walked off with a wounded expression and left me alone.

He has kept to a boundary even if it’s on his terms …

No touching equates to no sex for him and not general day to day touchy-feely. So, in his mind, he’s doing what I asked by not seducing me.

Stay away. Well, that one he just seems to ignore and is here more than not, just like last time. Not that I can complain. His presence has helped me move on a little, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t sometimes like him around.

Keeping this business between us? I guess him not seducing me is what he deems enough, and maybe growing closer neutrally is a sign he really is trying to build a platonic relationship. I see hints of it.

Like last night.

Alexi is multi-layered and complex and I don’t know what’s real anymore.

I keep waiting for the punishments, the cruelty and the blows to my heart with the cruel words of how little I matter to him, and yet they don’t come. Not this time. It’s almost like he is afraid he may push me to that point again where I held a gun to my head and willed my life to be over. He seems cautious around me as though that night left a mark on him too.

It’s in the small things. The way he keeps avoiding standing directly behind me, he even apologised for it that day in the office. He knows it’s something that makes me uncomfortable, and he actively tries not to do it now. He bites his tongue most of the time instead of reacting to my anger, and when I flew for him in Miami, he has never brought it up again that I dared to lay hands on him. I know it’s a huge trigger for punishment, and yet, nothing.

Alexi has changed … when it comes to me anyway.

He told me he cared, he always cared and I don’t know whether I should believe him or not. He never ever told me that before. He always made a point of making me believe the opposite, to wound me. It’s like hurting me is the last thing on his agenda this time, even if his impatience and frustration get in the way.

He said he read who I was wrong and that he thought it was all a lie …

Does he mean my tears, my reactions to what he did to me? Surely, he couldn’t think how I reacted in the Hamptons to what he did was all just an Oscar worthy act to get under his skin. I was completely powerless and he traumatised me.

But then …

If he saw only a manipulative woman known for her skills in working any angle to get her way, combined with his deep-set mistrust of any mere mortal without the Carrero bloodline, then maybe he didn’t really see me as genuine at all.

If the tables were turned, would I believe in someone I picked off the street, who had screwed a known drug mule for fifty G, and then proceeded to try to manipulate him in the first days of meeting him? My reputation for lies and deceit and cold-hearted opportunism preceded me. Alexi had to have known all about my colourful existence, and the way I made my money and manipulated men effortlessly. I thrived by seducing men and lying to get what I needed.

His guard was up before he even knew me. And who am I kidding? Manipulating and using him was exactly the plan I had in mind for King Carrero. Fate is the one who whipped the rug out from under me and made me show him the genuine someone else I could be, without even knowing why I was choosing him to be the one. He didn’t know that coming into his world gave me a chance to be someone else and I took it.

I just don’t know anymore. I will never be able to justify what he did to me—Even if it was misguided and based on mistrust. He still crushed me, and when I told him how I really felt, he destroyed my heart. I tried to tell him the truth and whether he dismissed it as a lie or just didn’t care, I will never know.

If he had actually cared … it would never have gone the way it did.

Maybe this is just more manipulation, and telling me he does now is more about pulling me close and keeping me obedient. He gets more of that when he plays nice, and maybe he has realised it is far more effective than cruelty.

That sounds more like Alexi’s way of thinking … keep her sweet … keep her amicable … keep her obedient. And we all know how much he loves control.

I push myself out of bed with a heavy sigh. The weight of heartache still lingering as a grey cloud over me and I walk out into the lounge with slow steps. I just feel wretched today, a doom and gloom hovering, and I cannot bear to think of that little furball. The ache in my chest from knowing he’s not out there anymore is heavy and exhausting.

I jump, startled and insides leap to my mouth when I walk into the view of Alexi on the couch in his workout hoody. The one with the sleeves cut away so it’s all tanned and tattooed arms and shoulders on show and sweatpants as he works on his laptop. He has his feet crossed on the coffee table, face down as he reads his screen, and I blink at him twice. Normally he is a rise early and fucks off kind of guy, and yet he’s still here at a time he normally never is.

‘Hey you. You hungry?’ he asks, spotting me. As if this is the most normal thing in the world for us, and I frown at him, not sure if I am still dreaming. There’s a weird air of domesticity in this scene that doesn’t sit right with him here.

‘Not really. I just woke up.’ I answer groggily and pad over to the kitchen dodging looking at him, aware I have bed hair, probably really smudgy makeup from sleeping in it, and yesterday’s wrinkled dress. He doesn’t even seem to notice. I am the one who is overly aware of how shit I must look next to fresh and fine over there.

‘There’re bagels up there if you want them. Mico picked them up for you.’ His steady voice follows me to the counter and I avoid looking back knowing his eyes are on me. I can feel them as my body prickles all over annoyingly.

‘Mico? Where has he been hiding lately? I feel like we have become two ships in the sea at night, that never cross paths very often.’ I point out, glancing back and catch Alexi’s instant frown. A hint of something in that face that makes me turn properly to stare at him, and I perch myself against the cupboard behind me.