Lahat ng Kabanata ng The Carrero Contract (series book 3): Kabanata 71 - Kabanata 80

He walks around the car and I almost break in two when he opens the passenger door and helps a tall leggy blonde out, resting his palm on her back in a gentlemanly and very touchy-feely manner as he guides her towards the building confidently. Rushing her out of the rain.I want to scream and drag her away from him, fiery rage instantly coursing through my veins and my brain crashing like a tidal wave. Anger and pain coursing through me, jealousy and heartbreak with a crushing ache from him being with someone else.I hate him. I don’t know what to do. I wasn’t expecting him to show up here with a date and I had no plan for what I should do if he had a woman with him.I sag and start to cry against the metal bin, burying my face in my arms to let it all out before I start to try and get my head together. I should go and not keep doing this to myself, but something inside of me doesn’t want to. I came to see him, came to confront him one last tim

 ‘’DON’T CALL ME A WHORE!!!’’ I scream at him irrationally, flashing rage at that little trigger word, anger fighting to the forefront over the pain and I’m getting erratic. Whore is a word I hate above all else, a word I have been called over and over by anyone and everyone who wants to put me down. Someone giving me a label like that means they can justify how they treat me, as though I am not human and don’t deserve any sort of respect.A whore is a choice, and it never was for me, it was a means to survive, and I am sick to death of being treated like that’s all I am. A vessel to fuck, a body to abuse …Alexi doesn’t react to my outburst, just stays calm and unmoveable. Sometimes I wonder if he is even human at all. He’s so devoid of normal emotions and reactions, it’s like he’s a bloody cyborg.‘’You fuck men to make money, you’re a whore … get over

Light flickers painfully through the gap in my lashes as I try to open my eyes. Completely disorientated and aware of noise and chaos around me, but it all seems so very far away. Strangely calm and floating inside a weird, weightless bubble of blurred reality, with sounds muted and distant.I reach out to touch my head, disembodied with a heavy limb, aching so badly all over. I feel like my skull has been split wide open and throbs gnawingly, but a warm hand stops me mid-air. Bringing me to a focus.‘Hush now there, darlin’, just relax. Momma Jo got you. You take it easy young lady and let me check your stats like a good girl. Don’t you move, ya’ hear. I won’t be just a tick.’ The caring honey laden voice of a southern woman washes over me and stills my movements soothingly. I flinch when her feathery touch awakens my arm, as though somehow it hadn’t been part of me until that second, and my limb tingles as I drift in and out

‘Can you just not?’ I snap at Lorraine, the other waitress in this hellhole, and shove her out of the way with my arse as she lounges in the hatch in my way for the millionth time today.I am already tense and irritated by my day and having her fat ugly face hanging around me is making me even more so. ‘What’s eating you, sugar?’ She drolls lazily, that fake New York twang she tries to mimic, even though she is from Texas and eye rolls at me. Her frizzy, over processed nest of almost white hair over pudgy fake tanned and badly applied makeup is giving her an air of late fifties, rather than the forty-two she told me she is. I swear she’s on the verge of getting a fork in her eye today, and I am not in the mood to be dealing with a menopausal old hag with a laziness disorder. She needs to tuck her disgusting spotty food baby away as it overhangs, giving her a muffin top on the trousers she has on today, and I wonder why I am the

I slide down and do something I have done since I was old enough to bathe myself. I keep going until I fully submerge under the water, hold my breath, close my eyes and blot everything of the world away to hear only the high-pressure thrum of being underwater.I can ignore my knees getting cold as they stick out to accommodate my laid down position as the respite from the world is always worth it. Even in an uncomfortable half sized tub that scrapes my bum with its cracked enamel.I taught myself to hold my breath for up to two minutes as a child, even though I have never learned to swim. I used to count the seconds out and make myself do it for longer and longer. It was my escape, my secret underworld which cleansed my soul of all the sins put upon me while hiding me from the reality of my life. I used to wonder if it would be as peaceful to drown and finally be free of all that tormented me.I can manage half that time now, seeing as I no longer do it ritually