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

18

I look up from my seat at the bar where I'm sorting through receipts as the group of men walk past. Alexi deep in conversation with Santagato amid them and I try my best to blank them completely. Still pissed as hell and overly prickly from earlier. He pauses as they come level and looks at me coldly, pulling my eyes to his with just the power of that stare and I curse myself for the tingles that spread across my body like wildfire. Averting my gaze just as quickly and trying to zone him out.

"Walters?" He almost barks it, prickish tone and bossy shithead demeanour fully engaged and I slowly lift my head deliberately to hide the fact I'm hating on him and he is not exactly helping the situation.

"What, Mr Carrero." I ooze hostile charm and sarcasm as I glare right at his smug bastard face and his eyebrow twitches slightly. Think he has finally realised I'm so livid I'm beyond furious and maybe he is a little too convincing.

It's not a game for me. It's not an act. I'm genuinely wounded and right now I could easily stab him in the face with my pen.

"Inform my guest for the club tonight that I won't be here. I have plans, won't be back before dawn and will rearrange during the week." Doesn't skip a beat, just a smooth command with no hint of anything in it. Another reason to up my level of anger at him.

I know he has no specific guest for tonight, so this is code for 'baby I'm dumping you and fucking off with my Mafia sidekicks for sex and drugs and wanker antics somewhere else tonight. Don't wait up'.

"I'll get right on that." I droll, bitch and frost so intense even Jackson looks at me with a questioning glance, and then at Alexi and walks off. Knowing he should keep out of the firing line and not able to react.

I just stare Alexi down, pull my gaze back to my paperwork as if I don't give a rat's ass and try to go back to pretending that he is dead to me. I will freeze the arsehole out and see how much he likes it. Let him dangle at the other side of this and see how it feels to be treated as unimportant.

I don't bother looking up again when I hear the footsteps progress towards the main door and try not to get hit with that wave of pure disappointment as he leaves with them. No real attempt to smooth things over, even if they were close by and just fucks off and leaves anyway.

Does he not have a clue that when your woman is contemplating packing her bags and heading for the hills because of your arsehole behaviour, then the last thing you should do is leave her to go cavort with men she fucking hates!

It's not even 2 p.m. and Alexi is obviously planning on making an entire half day of whatever they are doing. I don't even want to know.

As far as I'm concerned, Alexi can go fuck himself.

You don't treat people that way, for any reason. You don't try to make amends for the past by turning right back into the same arsehole who made me hate you in the first place and think I will be fine with it.

Because I'm not, in any shape or form, and he has underestimated the importance of my hostile mood. I don't care if he doesn't come back for a week. I don't want to see him after this.

I go back to my papers, scattered across the marble bar in a haphazard mess, determined to just put him out of my head and my heart and forget everything he said to me in the last two days.

Dismissing it all because really, how can I feel anything warm and fluffy when he's shown he can still be an evil sadist who doesn't give two shits about my feelings.

He has me seething, restless and utterly desolate inside. As though a cold front moved in and killed all my internal organs so that even crying is impossible. My tears have frozen like jagged little icicles inside me to inflict even more pain.