Chapter 115

I feel like he just ripped out every part of me inside, and yet like some deranged teenage girl I still walk towards him in a bid to get his attention. Craving him, longing for some sort of show that I mean something. All self-respect sliding away with the last ounces of my dignity, and yet I can’t stop my feet from taking me towards him. I know I’m being pathetic and breaking all the rules and codes of the boy-girl game but I need him to acknowledge me.

He owes it to me after what we had, and I deserve to be treated like a human, someone with feelings and worth, not some sort of disposable object without any value in his eyes.

‘’Alexi?’’ I say it loud enough to catch his eye when I am practically at his group and they all stop talking and glance at me. Security don’t react, it’s only me after all, and go back to looking at what he is pointing out. Alexi ignores me and Joanne smirks at me with catty eyes and props a hand on her hip while eyeing me up with hostility and new-found confidence.

She thinks my absence means she won my club, and him. She is standing close enough to him to make it obvious there is more going on there than an admirer and I just see red. Little tramp has been fucked by him more than once, I can tell. She has that smitten look of a woman who hasn’t been burned by him yet and has only sampled the charming side when he wants something from you—like your soul in a bottle, or your heart on a platter.

‘’Alexi? I need to talk to you right now!’’ I repeat, snapping at him with desperation, mixed with anger at how he is treating me. Stupidly vocal but it’s fuelled with despair and heartbreak and my better sense is not engaging in any way. His whole manner changes so subtly it’s almost missable, yet I see it.

Slight furrow of anger on that brow, tightening of the jaw and his body stiffens. I just pissed him off.

Alexi exhales slowly and steadily, lifts his head to his main goon and hands him the clipboard with a nod and that complete air of control and lack of care.

‘’Do it and let me know.’’ He waves him away, ease of command and even though all of the suits move Joanne stays rooted firmly to the spot like an unwanted bad smell as he finally brings his eyes back to me steadily and scowls. Everything inside of me just dies with that look and now I know for sure that it meant nothing and that I mean nothing to him.

The last flickering ounces of hope die a death and fall by the wayside as my heart plummets into darkness.

It was sex, a manoeuvre to keep me quiet and now we’re back to how it’s always been. I’m a disobedient possession and he has no time to be dealing with my behaviour. He has a new toy and she’s clearly well trained. I’m just an annoyance in his day and the novelty he had over me has worn off. I am no value anymore.

He has his club, he has someone to watch over it and keep the money rolling in and I have become excess to his needs. If anything I have become a liability to him, and my debt will probably never find a way to be paid off. If I had just been obedient and not fought him, not made everything harder and a challenge. Been a ‘’Yes Sir’’ then maybe I would be the possessive bitch standing next to him with a smug look and a sense of self-worth. Alexi has a type and it was never me.

‘‘What do you want, Cam?’’ he walks towards me leaving skanky whore standing watching me, but there’s no amusement in his face, only cold indifference. Coming at me to cut down the need to talk loudly while ears and eyes are all around.

‘‘To know what’s happening … Why I haven’t heard from you in two weeks?’’ It chokes me, pain in my heart and throat as the words tumble out, and I am in fear of crying in front of him. I sound like a needy woman who doesn’t understand what a one-night stand is.

‘‘I’ve been busy, and I had no reason to see you.’’ It’s like his words are bullets and every single one is slowly killing me.

‘’Just like that … discarded, no longer of any use to you?’’ My voice breaks and I can see bitch smirking over in the background. I want to throw something at her but Alexi just brings my focus back to him with his voice.

‘’You’ve been replaced. I have somewhere else I can use you. A place I bought in Chicago, a regular club, not like this. It needs an assistant manager that can up the class a little.’’ He doesn’t even look me in the eye as he says it, he just pulls out his phone and reads the screen before pressing something and putting it back inside his jacket. He doesn’t care about me. He never did.

‘‘So you’re sending me away? The further the better, didn’t I mean anything? Didn’t that night mean anything?’’ I can’t stop the tears breaking loose, despite trying hard to hide them and destroying my self-composure. I don’t care anymore if she can see he’s ripping me apart, she should know she has all this to come. He will chew her up and spit her out so effortlessly.

‘‘You’re embarrassing yourself, Cam. It was sex. You were emotional and irrational, and I took your mind off it. You were a liability and I couldn’t have you crying to the wrong person.’’ Alexi turns to walk away from me but I grab his arm and haul him back. That crazy anger spiking from emotional devastation that is coursing through me like a pulsing throb.

‘‘Why are you doing this? How can you say that? I was there, it wasn’t just sex.’’ The desperate wailing of a bruised heart. I am one of those pitiful, hysterical women clinging to a man who used her, hardly unique. My brain unable to really believe that what he did with me had no emotional effect on him in any way. I was cold and heartless and unable to love, yet he completely changed all that. Surely that had to have done something to his dark soul somewhere in its depths. I had to leave some sort of impression in there.