The Carrero Contract - Finding Freedom (Book 3 of Contract Trilogy)

7

My stomach is swirling at the thought of a repeat of that agony and it makes my insides tighten with anxiety.

"It was nothing. Went as planned." He dismisses me with a look that's his normal 'conversation over' face and I gawp at him. The urge to smack him on the head is curbed instantly and instead I follow him a tad aggressively to where he sits down and stand in front of him.

"As planned? What are you talking about? You knew there would be a shootout?" I never once thought he would be behind something like that and put himself in the middle of danger. That takes all sorts of insane, and I thought he was smarter than that.

He surely doesn't mean that, does he?

Alexi frowns, sighs heavily and sits for a moment, regarding me as though torn about what he should tell me. Either that or wondering why I walk around his apartment in see-through black lace scraps of satin lingerie when he's not allowed to touch. I can never tell with his facial expressions, to be honest.

It could be he's annoyed that he has to explain himself to me or justify his business actions, but he seems to know better than to deny me right now. I move beside him and sit-down, eyeing him up accusingly and see him relent as he catches my stubborn brow lift. A sign I'm going nowhere without answers.

He sighs heavily. His frustration is evident.

"I set it up ... it had a purpose. It's a need to know." He shrugs it off and picks up his cell from the table, swiping the screen and I get annoyed, yank it out of his fingers and slam it down on the leather couch impulsively. Exasperated with the return of King Carrero attitude, I swear he has more personality changes than a woman on her period. It's like he forgets he's supposed to be keeping me sweet.

"What in the actual fuck do you mean you set it up? Oh, and you bet your arse I need to fucking know!" I say it slowly and precisely, rage consuming me that I went through all the worry and agony when he could have just told me it was his fucking doing. He could have pre-warned me that he had shit going down and was in full control the whole time.

It takes a serious kind of fucking arsehole to do that to a woman.

Alexi glares at me for my obvious anger at something he did, my nerve at taking his phone and pulls it back from the seat. Putting it back on the table in front of us, slowly and precisely to make a point that it annoyed him and grits his teeth. He's pissed that I'm not behaving like a submissive good girl and he can't do shit about it.

Yeah, tough cookies, sweetheart.

I'm liking this hold I have over him. Guess it works both ways and I could get used to this.

"I needed Santagato to owe me, so I could use him to my advantage. He's not an easy man to get under the thumb so it had to be extreme." He glances at me sideways, but I do not move an inch, still inwardly seething that I went through that emotional hell and he was the one who 'planned' it. What a complete jackass and I wonder if he manipulated my upset to see if I gave a shit about the stubborn headed wanker.

I wouldn't be surprised. I bet it's why neither he nor Mico would answer my calls.

Sadistic, self-centred asshole of a man. Honestly, what I see in him is completely beyond me. I need my head examined.

"By shooting your men?" I ask in stupefaction. Wondering how the hell he can choose to sacrifice his own family in such a horrible way. Surely, he isn't that callous.

"By having someone shoot his son and intervening to save the kid's life. He owes me now. He owes me big."

I literally drop my jaw and stare at him as though he has two heads, mind blown and unable to put all that together in any logical way. Suspicion of underhanded manoeuvring of my emotions dropping away. It's like a sick game between all these powerful men, and yet I'm struggling to figure out how shooting Santagato's son ended up in losing some of his own. My brain is replaying some cartoon gunfight at the O.K. Corral and imagining flying bullets whizzing past his head in some Al Capone type shit.