Chapter 134

Sat alone in the bedroom as I pack everything I own with a complete lack of interest, I cannot help the tears rolling down my face. Mico is in the other room making calls and figuring out where he is going to put me from now on. Alexi didn’t come back and I gather one of the heated calls shortly after his departure was him. Mico sounded enraged and left the building to finish his call, barely able to lower his tone as he continued their argument.

The girl must have disappeared when Alexi got here as she has vanished into thin air and for that, I am actually thankful. I don’t want anyone to see me sobbing and pathetic, like some poor battered woman at the hands of a cold bastard and his words.

I just feel desolate and in pain. Alexi has cut me loose and I should be happy about it, but I am not. I still harbour this dumb tiny little flicker that somewhere deep inside I mean something to him and as toxic as we are, I love him. I can’t help or control how I feel about him.

Despite it all, he found a way to make me feel again. I guess the apple didn’t fall far from the tree after all, and I am exactly like my mother. Loving abusive controlling men who inflict pain in so many ways, and still clinging to the wreckage like a drowning victim, praying for some little tinge of salvation.

Alexi doesn’t care about me. I am a plaything he likes to wound, and I can now free myself of his torment. I just need to get my head and heart to catch up and work together to rid myself of this disease.

This wasn’t what I imagined freedom would look like, but it’s a hell of a lot better than running and surviving on my skills. I am so done with my old life and my old ways. This respite of not relying on manipulations and seducing men to get by has been the breather I needed, to really see how miserable I was and am as a person. Tired and weary and sick of running, fighting, every goddamn day just to stay afloat. I can’t do this anymore.

The older I get the lonelier my life becomes, and I am starting to cringe with every male touch laid upon my body, abhorring that my body is a vessel for them to use and own. Years of overcoming my scars and internal battles to keep doing what I am good at, and it’s slowly unravelling. I don’t want to play games and use my female wiles anymore, I don’t want to constantly look over my shoulder and run at the drop of a hat. I don’t want to endure touches and perversions to scrape by.

I am exhausted and weary and even though I am only twenty-eight, I feel like I have lived a life twice that long. I’m used goods and scarred deeply, so there is no chance of a happy ever after for someone like me, but I can at least accept that life could be something else if I tried.

I never imagined I could ever fall for anyone and I guess this is Karma’s way of punishing me for my life choices and decisions of my past. Making me fall for the devil himself and bringing with it a world of pain and an inability to carry on as I did before. It hurts so much it’s like an aching tooth in every part of my soul, and my chest is heavy with the weight of trying to breathe. The thought of never seeing him again, never having reason to hear his voice, even if he is cruel and cold towards me, is killing me.

I jump, startled when Mico appears at the door and knocks gently to alert me to his presence. It’s open, but I guess because I am sitting on the bed, slowly folding random pieces of underwear half-heartedly while staring at nothing, he must assume I am fragile.

I guess I am, I’m still feeling poorly and running a temperature, still exhausted both physically and mentally, sat like some deranged idiot who is leaking all her bodily fluids out of her face and down her sodden top.

‘’I need to go sort out some fine details about where you will be staying and what you will be doing. You can stay here tonight, and I will come by for you in the morning. You have my cell number if you need me, just be ready for nine a.m. and I will pick you up.’’ He is trying to sound upbeat and smiling, ignoring my obvious distress.

‘’Fine,’’ I answer so softly it is practically inaudible.

‘’Are you okay?’’ He surprises me with that question and I just throw on a mock smile through my tears.

‘‘Sure, maybe not right this second but I will be. I always am.’’ I shrug it off and wipe my nose on my sleeve like a child. It’s times like this when he seems calm that I really see how much he shares of his cousins DNA. Tall, broad, handsome and very clearly of Italian descent, dark hair and green eyes over olive skin and if I wasn’t so enamoured with one sadistic prick from this bloodline I would see Mico’s appeal.

He must be around his early thirties, like Alexi, yet he has a youthfulness about him when he smiles, something else which seems to run in their family. The rare occasions Alexi actually smiled he had it too and surprising dimples.

‘’You’re a warrior, nothing keeps you down does it?’’ He nods a smile at me, impressed maybe, admiring a quality I doubt I possess. I have no choice but to keep going in life, it’s hardly a choice to be this way.