The Carrero Contract - Selling Your Soul (Mafia Romance) novel Chapter 81

My heart sinks as that age-old knowing fear takes a grip of my throat and I know my apartment will see a second break in before sunrise. I am too tired for this.

This city is full of people with no scruples, and I am an easy target, especially in this state. I don’t have the energy to fight off two teens, even with my baseball bat and mace, not while I’m sick and messed up and close to falling down with fatigue. I have no one around here that would intervene in any way and the sad fact is … I have nothing worthy of protecting except myself.

I don’t hesitate. I shove everything I own into my two holdalls, not that I have much to pack, then pull on some sweatpants and trainers and a hoody over my lighter pyjamas. I’m not waiting around for a second assault in my own home, and as the place already looks like Armageddon swept through, it’s not going to make much difference to me. They can come see for themselves it’s all gone and I won’t be here to be the second choice. I make for the door, weighed down with two bags and a steel grit of getting the heck out of dodge.

Something in me pulls me back, and despite myself, I walk back to that darn couch and yank out the box and lift Mico’s card hurriedly. I stuff it into the open zip of the bag hanging on my shoulder before I exit the apartment and make my way outside onto the street.

The teens watch me go. I walk fast, keep my head down, and avoid a couple more randoms up at this hour in the dank hallways as I get down the stairs to the ground floor and into the street. It’s dark, cold and misty from incoming bad weather and the air around me smells like factory smoke and dirty air that hurts my already fragile throat. I pull up my hood to shield me from the biting elements and as I walk away I glance back and up at my second-floor windows. From outside, I can already see shadows across the window of my apartment as they check it out, snooping for remains of the spoils. I can’t believe the nerve of them but then again, it’s hardly a shock that this shit happens to me all the time.

I swear I am cursed.

Good luck boys, you won’t find anything of value and I won’t be back until I can find someone willing to help me fix my door.

I walk the streets for an hour, dragging my limbs, shivering incessantly with a banging head and heavy body. I have no idea where I am going, other than trying to kill time until daylight is blazing in the sky and the building I live in wakes up and fills with more than just night crawling psychos. I’ll feel safer going back when it’s morning and I can spend more time trying to get the door shut before I need to get ready for work at least. It’s only a couple of hours, maybe, before sunrise and I can handle street living until then. I mean, this was once my entire existence when I couldn’t find a place to stay, and I was flat out broke after getting to America. I have slept under bridges and all sorts. I am no stranger to being homeless; I just didn’t think I would still be doing it at my age. I had bigger plans than this.

I have no doubt those boys will be snooping into everything in there for something worthwhile and I don’t care. I have all I want with me and will carry it wherever I go, not that it’s much. I sold everything of value and have only my basics now.

They have musty old broken furniture and the pots and pans that were there when I moved in and not much else. I don’t cook in the apartment at all; eating at work or buying ready to eat cold dinners. The cooker stinks of gas when you switch it on and sometimes cuts out after only seconds to make a whistling sound. I never trusted it so never use it.

It’s probably why I am always so tired and unwell; the lack of decent, non-greasy hot meals and a varied diet. I have always been someone who needs a healthy diet to function well. It was one of the perks of living with Alexi—he was obsessive about health and good food. I miss his well-stocked refrigerator and the on-hand cook downstairs with her grilled cheese plates.

I could murder a decent meal right now.

I end up sitting on a bench in the park as the damp air clings to every part of me and worsens my runny nose; watching the trees in the wind and listening to the city noises all around me. Even at this hour, it never sleeps and it’s a constant thrum of noise echoing over the rustling leaves.

I sit and look around at the semi-lit area, streetlamps not doing much for this shadowy part and sigh sombrely.

I always feel so alone and this makes me feel more so.

It’s early hours, cold and wet, inhospitable really, and I am sat with all that I own in two holdalls in a place that isn’t the safest, with no one caring where I am or what happens to me. I am almost twenty-nine years old and I am invisible in the world. It’s pretty pitiful.