The Carrero Contract 2: Amending Agreements
Auteur
L. T. Marshall
Lezers
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Hoofdstukken
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Camilla Walters thought her luck had run out when she was cornered by drug runners she couldn’t pay. But fate intervened in the form of Alexi Carrero, head of the powerful Carrero family. Alexi’s rescue wasn’t without strings—Camilla had to make a deal with the devil to save her life. Thrust into his dangerous world, Camilla finds herself battling her emotions as she’s drawn deeper into Alexi’s web of control, danger, and irresistible charm. This isn’t a love story full of hearts and roses; it’s a tale of survival, power plays, and forbidden attraction. Let the games begin.
Chapter 1
Light flickers painfully through the gap in my lashes as I try to open my eyes. I am entirely disorientated and aware of the 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’, 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 a tick.’ A southern woman’s caring honey-laden voice 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 of this strange fuzzy haze. Disembodied in my strange foggy world.
I have no idea where I am or what is going on. I can’t see properly, a sleepy blurring mist of movement as I try to focus and get the sensation that I am lying on a bed. I cannot be sure if that’s what is happening, although I know I am lying flat and uncomfortable. I can make out forms, maybe people moving in front of me, yet I have no clue what I am looking at. Everything is disconnected, so far away, and heaviness holds me prisoner, in my strange state.
The harsh, blinding brightness clicks off with a loud noise beside my left ear, amplified and echoey. It makes me cringe again, and that voice comes back in a gentle wave.
‘Is that better, honey? The lamp is a bit bright, and you should rest. It’s after two a.m.’
I am trying so hard to blink and open my eyes fully. They feel like they are glued shut and only as tiny slits with no ability to see much. I can’t even make out the face hovering over me despite its closeness, and the new shadows and darkness from what I presume is her switching off the lights for me make it harder to see what’s going on.
A larger form further back appears, standing out in a white top and dark bottoms, seeming more prominent than the blue haze of the woman nearer me, and I can tell it’s male. It has a large eerie presence that draws my consciousness towards it like a magnet. It’s as though my mind seeks refuge in whatever it is.
‘Is she aware of what’s going on?’ The voice seems so familiar to me, husky, masculine and warm, but I can’t keep my eyes open as I try to hone in on the shape. I can’t pinpoint why it’s so familiar to me. Fatigue is swimming in as it takes over, and I try to hold onto the reality in which my brain is badly connecting. I am so confused and trying hard to grasp any understanding of how I got here.
‘She’s still in and out. It was a nasty, big old bump to her head, and with all that liquor we had to flush outta her system, she’s struggling to make sense of things right now. She’ll be alright. Just let her sleep it off in the best place for her, Mr Carrero.’
My brain perks up at the name, brain connecting, clawing for voice recognition. It could be Mico, or it could be Alexi. Maybe it could be Gino, for all I can fathom right now. I don’t know. Nothing makes sense, or even why they would be here with me in this crazy place. I am so out of whack, floating on a weird, strange cloud, yet my body won’t respond. I am trying so hard to see; eyelids heavier now and no longer under my control, as they blank everything out. Fighting to keep them open marginally.
‘Does she know I’m here?’ The voice is so far off and low it’s almost inaudible. Deep, sensual, male, Carrero, but indistinguishable as to whether it’s Alexi or his cousin when it’s this far off and surrounded by beeps, clips, whirs, and noise, making everything blend into one.
‘Well, she has one mighty concussion and a hangover from hell, so it’s hard to tell. Now hush up and let the girl sleep. She will open them pretty blues again soon enough and wish she hadn’t downed that boat full of alcohol to do away with whatever this little thing was trying to drown.’ She laughs merrily. A throaty and deep bellyache of a laugh, but there is something kind about it, and it’s the last thing I hear as I fall back into weightless darkness at an alarming speed. Trying to cling on desperately with a limbless body as I will myself not to fall down the rabbit’s hole. I struggle to stay in my conscious state and grip onto flickers of noise and movement instead.
I don’t want to fall into oblivion. I want to get up and figure out what the hell is going on. How I even got here and what’s happened to me.
I have no idea at all. My memory is hazy and filled with odd images, flashes of dark, light, nonsense and breaks in thoughts. I blink hard again as I try to get them open again and realise, lifting my hand to touch my face, that I have something over my nose and mouth. Feeling out the air tube under my nostrils, blowing a gentle breeze across my clammy skin, the distraction is enough to bring me back to the present once more.
I must be in a hospital, but I have no idea how I got here or why. The last thing I can pull together in my mind is being drunk and trying to get into Alexi’s apartment. How drunk and stupid I was. All I can visualise is waiting for him on his floor and drinking so much more booze than my body could handle. No wonder I feel headless; maybe I am still wasted.
I wonder if I passed out?
I feel wretched, trying to sit up, straining to move with soft grunts, internally fighting to throw off the blanket of darkness holding me down. Sighing and giving up with the heaviness of my body right now as another wave of fatigue hits me hard and threatens to pull me under. Still not attached, I try to clear my throat to speak out as a last-ditch attempt to make them aware I am with them in the room. I hate feeling like I am a floating entity and invisible somehow.
Lifting my hands to rub my eyes open and clear the cotton wool surrounding my brain clumsily as heavy fingers twitch and slump on my cheek, lacking grace. Nothing is coordinated. Nothing is real or lucid; I could be high on drugs for all I know.
‘Don’t try and get up. Just sleep. Shhhhhh.’ It’s that voice again, gentle, soothing, caring, and I know it can’t be Alexi. He would never sound this way when it came to me—the woman he loathes. The woman he takes pride in breaking at every turn. Alexi would not piss on me if I were on fire.
It has to be Mico, he’s the only compassionate one in his cousin’s world, and I relax and do not fight him as his hand cups one of mine. Bringing warmth to my limb that up until his touch felt numb and cold still. I want to get with reality and look at him, ask him why I’m here and what’s going on, but nothing works, and I am locked brutally inside my weary head.
I can’t move or roll in any way, so weighted and achy and ready to fall out of orbit with every inhale. Being dragged backwards repeatedly into the quiet, I lose the energy to fight to stay here. I can’t seem to stay awake.
‘Cam, relax and rest. You’re going to be okay. I would never let anything happen to you.’ He soothes me huskily, a gentle fanning on my cheek of his breath as he leans close to whisper to me. The soft touch of alien heat as fingertips trail my temple and my face tenderly. The touch ends all fight in me, almost like he has some powerful magic, and like slipping silently from the water’s surface, I let go, fully submerging.
It’s all I hear as I succumb to the gentle waves lapping over my lifeless form and burying me in the still silence of nothingness.
***
I wake up gasping for air, panic-stricken as my heart hammers through my chest and my body springs alert in clammy awareness. I sit upright with speed and a force that yanks the tube from my face harshly and makes me yelp as the drain in my arm tugs savagely in synchronised timing. My arm and nose are simultaneously stinging with a sharpness that makes me feel nauseous from the depths of my churning stomach. I am panting from the nightmare which ripped me out of slumber and disorientated with my surroundings.
I seem to be in a small room, filled with moonlight and shadows, breathing hard and sweating as the last fading dregs of my dream slip away, and my view comes into focus clearly, to calm me. It’s still dark, and I jump, insides somersaulting, when a tall looming figure moves from the window and turns towards me sharply, casting a shadow that hits me with a huge déjà vu, and I recoil in terror. My skin goosebumps all over.
‘Alexi?’ It’s out without thought, body draining of blood as cold fear grips my spine, trembling voice and tears prickle as he moves closer. Stupid reactions hit me before sense does, and I try to dash up the bed to get away from him. Clambering fitfully and awkwardly, so afraid, so traumatised by the memories of my dream and what he is to me.
The monster who haunts me.
The monster who pushed me to hold a gun to my head and end it all.
I remember everything now. I know why I am here and what Alexi made me do to myself in a bid to end my pain.
I shot myself in the head!
Except? … I can’t have.
I’m still here. I am breathing.
Maybe I’m dead, and this is my personal hell? My tormentor for an eternity. It proves he was always the devil as he stands before me now, on the other side.
I feel utterly sick as nausea consumes me, churning my body inside out with a weakening lurch.
‘Camilla, calm down … it’s me … it’s Mico. Stop!’ The light flicks on over my head as he hits the lamp, and I’m dazzled by brightness, stopped in my tracks by him illuminating the room around us. Half hanging off my bed in a hospital gown as he clings to my arm to stop me from facepalming the floor. Desperately holding my writhing body as I stop bucking and fighting to run and realise it’s not the devil himself after all.
I hold still with paused breath and frozen fear as my brain catches up and connects the dots. Seeing him, taking in the room and face, seeing no one else here that would hurt me right now.
I recoil my tight and stiff limbs and relax a little, breathing heavily to self-calm the waves of anxiety-ridden panic, my body pulsating and clammy as they disperse slowly.
I allow him to pull me back onto the bed carefully and cautiously. He’s being overly gentle but firm. Eyeing him up like a deer caught in the headlights and still so coiled to flee.
My heart rate and lungs are pounding in unison as I drag in the air to seem less hysterical.
‘I’m sorry.’ It comes out with a wave of tears, emotion hitting me hard. So exhausted suddenly and distraught in the blink of an eye. My body sags with both relief and sheer weakness. Not fit for anything, let alone a fight or flight response as my heart still jackhammers in my chest. I grimace as he rights me, aching body and all, and my head hurts like crazy, more so than it did. A banging drum of aches going off like a pulse in the back of my skull.
‘Don’t be. You have had a rough few hours. How’s the head?’ He nods at my head, and I automatically lift my hand to touch the one spot that hurts worse, right at the centre back, where I am shocked to find a lump the size of an egg. It’s a complete shock to me.
‘What the hell? How did I get a ….’ I trail off as something else dawns on me, mind rambling over newly-found memories, and it blurts out instead.
‘Why am I not dead?’
I held a gun to my head and pulled the trigger with every ounce of decisiveness in me. I didn’t hesitate and put it right to my temple. I intended to end it all.
How does that translate to lying in a hospital with a banged head?
Mico pauses for a second and looks to the open door, his expression cagey for a moment, leaning in so as not to be heard, and lowers his voice.
‘Gun jammed, and the bullet stuck in the barrel. Alexi pushed you back to get the gun out of your hand and knocked you for six into the concrete wall. We thought he had killed you.’
His calm tone and serious frown tell me this is not a joke or a dream. I am not floating in the afterlife or hallucinating in a coma.
Everything drains from me, realising what I tried to do and how low I sunk. And yet …
‘Why did he try to stop me?’
It’s the burning question in the forefront of my mind. Despite everything I can remember, my foolish heart still clings to a flicker of something, and I inwardly scowl at my weakness. I hate myself for even thinking about him at this moment.
Didn’t he want me gone?
Wasn’t he the one pushing and pushing and goading me to break? Who stood there and did nothing to alter what I was doing? He had to know what I was planning; it was obvious.
He doesn’t deserve to dwell in my mind and thoughts. I need to put him where he belongs for all eternity. In hell with his sadistic ways.
‘He’s a son of a bitch, Camilla, but not a completely heartless one. Alexi wanted to end your connection, not watch you die. He never wanted that.’ Mico looks away as he speaks, something on that face, but I don’t know him well enough to translate it. He seems uneasy and unable to look at me, and I shake it away, along with the visual of that cold bastard peering at me from inside my head.
Instead, I blink around my surroundings, trying to free myself and focus on anything that is not Alexi Carrero. Take note of the sterile surroundings instead.
The fact that we seem to be in a regular hospital means they were told I knocked myself out and never mentioned the gun incident. It’s not the private one I was in last time, so I guess I was rushed to emergency with only the mention that I had banged my head while plastered on booze cocktails. It would explain his apprehension at being heard.
I know better than to mention the gun either. It only muddies the waters and lands you in shit. The last thing I need is to be put on suicide watch and have a psych trailing my recovery. I had that once before when my injuries from Rick seemed self-inflicted. I knew even then never to open my mouth and let the truth come out.
