Chapter 300

Alexi, the sweet, grey-eyed, handsome boy in those pictures, did not deserve that at all. He was an innocent little kid who had done nothing back then to be punished for. She should have loved him no matter what. She should have pulled him closer because of his flaws and reassured him. He didn’t ask to be different. It wasn’t his fault.

“She put you on this path, Gino is right. She maybe didn’t force you to follow your father, but all the bricks were laid in the years leading up to it.” There’s a stern tone in my voice but he just takes my hand in his and interlaces our fingers snugly, like he did last night.

“No, she didn’t. That night did. It showed me what I was capable of. I asked my father to take me under his wing with his men. I wanted to be useful in a place my behaviours could be a gift rather than a curse. I wanted to belong somewhere that she would never get involved. She didn’t push me there, it was my choice, and he said no.”

Still trying to divert any kind of blame from her. He may not see it, but Alexi still craves her acceptance even now. There’s a part of him still suffering from her lack of love towards him. I can see it all over him. She made him believe that no woman would ever love him the way I do, and it coloured how he treated me when I got close. No wonder he never trusted me. He was programmed to believe he was unlovable. A sadistic monster abhorred by women.

“He loves you. He didn’t want you to follow in his footsteps at all, did he?”

Alexi shakes his head and sighs heavily while I stare in disbelief, learning his father never wanted this for him. It doesn’t add up. His father named him as his successor; I know that much. How he got from that to this is a mystery.

“He eventually bought that house in The Hamptons to keep me in the family fold after almost eighteen months of my mother refusing to let me come home. Gino came too. I had a nanny and a housekeeper, but I spent a year of my life living with my Uncle Giovanni and his family and some time in Sicily with my Italian family. My father tried to keep me on the path like my cousins. Law-abiding, school, college, business, family and kids. That was what he wanted for me. It was never this, even now I don’t think he likes it, but he has to accept what is.”

“You didn’t want that? A normal life with normal things?”

I can’t imagine it to be honest. Alexi in an average job with a doting wife and children while following the rules and going to church. His soul is too dark to be content with that get-up.

“No. I wanted to feel like I fitted in. I didn’t in the life he wanted for me. I was still a problem at every turn, and I didn’t feel things the way I should. I had a serious violent streak, and after beating way too many stupid kids at school he put me into professional fight training to expel some of it; he thought it would exhaust my aggressive tendencies in a controlled way. My mother hated everything about me, which only fueled my need to be aggressive. It’s how I release my emotions. When I’m sad, hurt, angry, frustrated, I need a physical outlet in some way. I’m fucked up.”

Also explains his need to use women so frequently yet never let them get close to him. He used sex as his way to blow off steam for all the emotions he can’t process properly. The same way I kept people at a distance and was cold to everyone who grazed a little too close. The way I burned Sophie for making me feel something for her. We’re not that different; he’s just a lot more physical than I am and a lot more testosterone-fuelled and dominant.

I can work with that. Understanding him, how he ticks. I can find a way to stop it from happening between us. His reactions every time I got under his skin, it was always cruel and physical, and he seemed to go too far. Then he would stop. Try to undo a little of what he did, even if I couldn’t see it at the time. Alexi reacted with actions and tried to wound those who wounded him. I was a threat and he hurt me because I got to him. Yet he also regretted it; the signs were all there. All this has opened my eyes and a lightbulb flickers on.

Physical exertion in different forms to handle different emotions. Logical ones. Sex for stress, sexual cruelty for anger or pain. Violence for rage … it’s finally making sense.

There’s logic to him even if it’s not normal male logic, there is a pattern which means there’s a way to live with him and work this out.

“A no-win situation then. So, let me guess. After a few years of your father still saying no, you found a job and fucked off to the city to go it alone. Cutting yourself off from all of them and trying to figure out who to be?” I answer for him, seeing how this might have panned out, and he shrugs then nods at me.

Oh, Alexi.

That fighter in him and stubborn streak a mile high. He punished his father for saying no in the only way he knew how. Outright rebellion and isolation.

“I got a job in a factory near here, spent my weekends getting trashed with fellow workers and fucking girls. I went to work, came home, slept, fucked and tried to forget the name Carrero.”

Sex replaced violence. Control became his obsession to make sure he stayed on a better path. His control is all about policing himself by controlling his environment and those who come near him. He needs to be in charge to feel sane. No surprises out of his planned outcomes. No wonder I can make him crazy when all I did was rebel, stand up to him and do the opposite of what he wanted me to do.

A control freak to feel sane. It’s necessary for him.

I pushed him as much as he pushed me. We drove each other to the brink.

Alexi is a psychology goldmine. No wonder he has a shrink. I messed him up because he had no control over me or what I was making him feel. I was the worst thing that walked into his life and he was struggling to rein it in, while his gut told him to mistrust everything about me. After all, his mother taught him that no woman would ever truly love someone like him, because of the things he does. She ingrained this belief that he couldn’t trust women because no one could love a monster who kills for those he cares about.

And not to mention my own little reputation and what he knew of me. Manipulating gold digger who played men for money and screwed over my drug supplier.

We were the worst thing that could ever have collided, and our lack of honesty only made for a really messy pairing. It was all games and deception while we both hid real feelings for each other and broken hearts.

My head whirls with just how dented he truly is, that underneath that cool, calm exterior and persona of a killer is a lost boy who just needed his mother to love him. She set him on his path and then took no responsibility for how he turned out. Left him to go it alone, and he did. Getting so much more detached from emotion and sense as he did so. She made him the way he was so I can thank her for all he did to me in the past, for the mistrust and the cold heart he came at me with.

Fuck her.

“Your father came looking for you though, right?” I surmise, guessing the way this story is going. He gave his dad no option but to take him on in the life Alexi wanted or continue to be estranged. His father clearly adores him and couldn’t bear to let his son live like that. At least he had one parent who loved the bones of him, flaws and all. Another reason he puts all his faith in his male family and henchmen. No man has ever let him down the way his mother did. She set the mould for how and who he trusted.

It all makes sense.

“Yup. He came looking, offered me a position in the lower ranks with his henchmen, knowing I wouldn’t want favours because of being his son.”

I already know the rest of that story because it’s well distributed myth and folklore in the criminal underworld.

He climbed the ranks of his family fast, because of how good he was at cruelty, violence and emotionless decisions. He was made to be a leader and was his father’s right-hand man by the age of twenty. Alexi took over from his father at twenty-four, the youngest head of any Mafia family in history. His personality was almost engineered to be exactly what he is. Logic over emotion thinker, as long as no British redhead fucks with his head, who could carry out what is necessary to keep the family strong and safe. He pushes aside feeling when responsibility must come first. Alexi is the perfect soldier.

Snubbing out life, making the hard decisions and feeling little to no remorse when he must act upon the worst of them.

“And now here you are,” I finish, making it clear I don’t need more details. I’m both enlightened and heavy with the weight of so much knowledge in one go. I thought I knew what I was getting, and now I see there is so much more to him than I could ever have predicted. It will take more than one night to truly get to know and understand how he ticks, although in one conversation I feel like I have made a huge breakthrough in understanding him.

He’s not what he seems. He’s so much more. Complex doesn’t seem like a strong enough word.

“Here I am, and here we are.” He smiles warmly at me, relieved at getting it all out, I guess. Once again brushing back the hair that constantly falls over one eye on my face and I bask in the softness of his touch. The proof that he can be a gentle lover and a caring man. The hints at something more in him.

Alexi needs nurturing to show more of this side, he has spent so long pushing it away as an unnecessary part of his personality and now he is trying to reignite it for me. I don’t doubt there was a time he was softer, gentler and much more tender with people he knew. That dead dog got to see that. He hardened over the years, much as I did, but there’s hope. He’s choosing to let me in, and he already trusts me. He did the hard part. Now I need to find the way too.

“You just wanted your place in the world, where who you are would not be a problem. You wanted to fit in. I know how that goes. I know what that longing is like.”

I sympathise, knowing how deep it can go until it’s all that consumes you.

Looking for that place that feels like home.

“I excelled a little too well.”

That’s an understatement if I ever heard one.

“Your mother, does she still ostracise you?” I’m curious about how things stand with them now he is master of their family crime business. Has he regained honour in her eyes now he is no longer an unruly teen runaway? Does she see the respected businessman, or does she know about his dark dealings?

Knowing him, she probably thinks he’s a banker.

“As long as on paper I’m respectable and play nice when I go home then I would say we have an amicable relationship nowadays.”

That sounds strained. A loaded sentence for sure.

“So, you put on a good son mask and businessman of the year persona and avoid all talk of henchmen, snapping necks, and arms deals?” I raise a brow at him and he just shrugs.

“That’s the norm for men in Italian Mafia families, London. Women don’t get involved. She wants to go to church, do her charity bake sales and pillar of the community crap. As long as I don’t rock the boat in which she sails then she plays adoring mother to her reformed son.”

Ugh. The thought of it makes me sick. She gets away with years of neglect and abuse and is treated like a queen at the end of it. He’s still dancing to her tune, even after all these years and all he has become.

I hate her!

“How can you be bothered with all the fakeness?”

There is enough dishonesty in his world. Home should be the place where it doesn’t live. Even I wanted a place where I didn’t have to put on a show and lie all the time. I found that when I was in the club apartment and it’s a necessary respite.

How he can stand to look at her is beyond me.