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.
Alexi has made sure that my survival depends on him, and he somehow managed to solidify it by dragging my heart in too. I just cannot imagine a life in which he doesn’t exist and the thought absolutely terrifies me. If he died … I would die too.
We are weirdly connected, and as much as I hate the fact, I can admit it. Alexi changed me in irreversible ways, so that I can no longer just go back to the street and pick up where I left off. Those four months were proof of that.
He broke me, picked out the worst parts of Camilla and turned them to ashes, but in her place, he rebuilt something else when he gave me another chance. He shaped a woman who has no desire to ever go back to selling her body to survive. To live on her wiles and manipulate and lie to everyone in her wake. To screw people over and always be looking behind her, over her shoulder, for the last person she ripped off. To keep living alone with no ties to anyone; She was a despicable worthless deviant, and she died with the part of me that Alexi ripped down … she never came back with me to this place.
I want more! I want to be proud of what I do and have something to have pride in. I want the security of people around me who care. I like my life now, even him sometimes, and I have no designs on manipulation or upper hand in any way. I have everything I need, all I ever wanted as a child.
A place to belong—Safe and warm … sheltered.
I want for nothing, and even when he is being a boorish prick, I have always known he would never let anyone hurt me.
In his own fucked up way, he has been trying this time, to make me feel valued and worthwhile; healing some of the wounds he left on my heart. Even if he can’t actually say the words and make them sound like he means it, he has been showing me a different side to him. I have seen it, even if I denied it at first. I may not be dumb enough to fall back into his claws, but I appreciate the fact he has been trying to heal some of the things he did to me. I have seen his efforts even if I sometimes mistrust them.
I pace away from Jackson, leave him watching me with an exasperated expression. He obviously isn’t having the same panic over Alexi’s safety as I am and doesn’t get the depths of fear coursing through me.
I avoid people milling around and head out to the corridor, using my pass to get into the kitchen out of the way, glad to see it’s empty.
I head straight for my phone, pull it off the charging dock and immediately swipe to Alexi’s number and hit dial, tensing my whole body and holding my breath as I put it to my ear.
It rings out for what seems like an eternity then goes straight to his answerphone and I try again.
Two, three, four, five times in a row with mounting panic as each one trails off then goes to his voicemail. I take a heavy breath and shake myself, instead pulling up Mico’s number and try him with a sense of hope and my fingers crossed.
I get the same result.