The Carrero Contract - Amending Agreements (Book 2 of Contract Trilogy)

3

'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 only one who gets stuck with the shitty pink waitress dress.

I hate working here most days, but in the last forty minutes, I think that turned to extreme loathing.

I have the first traces of a mega cold, banging sore head, swollen glands and if one more sleazy construction worker feels my arse when I am serving him lunch, I may actually scream. Flu doesn't make for a witty and happy, overworked slop server.

Four months, five days, seven hours and twenty-three minutes since I walked out of that hospital with only three suitcases and a hat box and here I am.

Living the fucking dream!

That is if your dream is to be a shittily paid, overworked grease servant in a grubby back alley diner that stinks every day of fried food. Manhandled by sweaty mucky men and barked at by your Hitler of a boss as he also eye rapes you and can't seem to dig his eyeballs out of your cleavage on a daily. I don't think it's a mistake he supplied me with uniforms that are two sizes too small and I can barely move without a button popping over my bust.

I am working to pay for a crappy one bed shithole across town in the dump dive better known as the lower west side, or the meat packing district. Hardly a safe environment for a young woman alone, but it's all I can afford if I want to stay in the city.

I told myself it was downtime; a plod along stop gap until I got stronger and more able to climb back on the horse. And then I just kept telling myself I wasn't ready to get back on the street to start hustling for a better life. Really should have known from the moment I was arguing with myself over my reasoning, that I was not Okay.

I'm different somehow.

Alexi broke me in so many ways, and the thought of going back to canoodling with dark-hearted, suited men in the world of drugs and sex, terrifies me. I've lost my confidence and my ambition is shaky. My heart is fragile and bruised and I don't think I would have the ability to swoon and charm men in a bid to get the upper hand anymore. He showed me that there are men who are more terrifying and effective than being sexually assaulted. It's a different kind of brain fuck and the afterwards is equally devastating.

I am still healing from being touched by him.

I have enough money to live this out for a while, putting away what I can to make a real start somewhere else. I'm just biding my time and trying to figure out where to go and what to do from here on in. Making plans for a different life, a safer one.

I have no ambitions of grandeur, not anymore. I never finished school, never earned any qualifications, and besides my looks and my effortless skill at making men want to have sex with me, I haven't a lot else to work with. I know my youth and beauty won't stay with me forever, so I need a better plan for a life that outlives it.