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

38

I wander listlessly around the club, picking my nails, watching the floor without much interest. Angst is my new current mood, and I am finding it hard to breath with the weight that has settled on my chest. The hours have been dragging so slowly it feels like time has stopped, and I'm obsessively clock watching like a freak. Mind unable to stay with my task at hand.

'Miss Camilla ... Camilla?' Jackson is following me again and I look at him as though he has two heads, unsure why he is repeating my name incessantly. He has been like a suffocating shadow all evening and I don't normally get this irritated with him.

'What?' I snap, that feeling of inner turmoil making me cranky.

'You're pacing like a mindless bot ... maybe you should go have a break?' Jackson has been very attentive to my anxious pacing all night, overly aware of my sensitive mood and snappy tone with the staff.

I can't help it—it's now well after eleven and Alexi has not come back, not replied to any of my texts and not answered any of the times I rang his phone. I'm obsessing over his safety and worrying myself sick over it. My insides are so strung out it feels like I might throw up.

It's a dinner! They usually never run majorly late, and he hasn't contacted me to say he's staying away, even though he doesn't really have to, but he should have come back by now. He said he was coming back.

He promised me!

I know I'm being ridiculous and maybe it's a night of drinks and God knows what. It's none of my business what he does outside of these four walls ... or even in them sometimes. I just cannot shake the foreboding fear that my initial gut instinct was right, and he knew there was something tonight that I should be worried about.

'I'm fine ... I just need to go do something, then I'll be back.' I dismiss him coldly.

By something, I mean call him again, or Mico, because I'm edgy and tense and all I need is a little 'we're fine' and I'll calm down. I have put off texting Mico because I felt stupid but now I just can't stand it anymore. My phone is in the kitchen on charge and it will take a minute to bite the bullet and do it. It could just be that Alexi has his phone on silent because of his dinner and doesn't know I have been trying.

'Wait!' Something crosses my mind as I go to walk away and I turn back to him.

'How far is the reach on your wireless thingamajig?' I point at his ear thing and motion at his chest where I know the other part will be concealed.

'Hundred yards or so ... out of Mico's reach if that's what you're asking? I can try their channel but it won't reach.' He gives me that knowing look and I exhale heavily—instantly disappointed. It must be obvious that my earlier upset is plaguing me once more, and I blow out a long steady exhale to calm my trembling nerves.

'I need to call him. Something's wrong, I can feel it.' I sound like some needy wife, and I am aware Jackson is giving the weird eye as though I am one, but he just doesn't get it.

My life, whether I like it or not, is completely tangled up with Alexi Carrero on so many levels; it's not just about this club, this income, this opportunity.

He makes me feel safe.

If it wasn't for him I wouldn't be here, I wouldn't have the apartment upstairs or my standing in this club as part owner. If it wasn't for him I would still be on the streets, hauling arse and begging for scraps in the shitty direction my life was going in. If it wasn't for him I would have probably met my end at Tyler's hands a long time ago and be another nameless face in the morgue, swept under the title of 'unknown victim of crime.' If it wasn't for Alexi I would just not have a life at all.