Chapter 2

It fuels my suspicions and rakes the burning embers deep down inside. Anger and hatred grow in the doubts at this contradictory show.

That inner fire in me is battling to be dominant, and she takes a grip on me steadily and firmly, giving my soul a massive shake and rattling my senses into high alert.

This could be a trap of devious proportions, and he could be poised and ready to rip my soul from my body all over again. Just for shits and giggles. Just because he enjoys destroying me over and over. Just because this is who he is.

“Stop it. This is lower than low. What the hell do you get out of this? Why do you need to do these things to me?” I snap at him, tears drying on my skin as a sense of self-preservation floods me instead. My brain is trying to grasp the most obvious answer—Alexi and mind games. It’s all this could be.

“I’m not lying. Why do you think I have spent weeks trying to show you that things are different? I knew you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. I knew this would be the reaction if I came out and said it. I needed you to have a reason to believe me first, so I had to prove it to you. I knew you would run otherwise because you had no reason to trust me.” He moves towards me suddenly, but I recoil and sink slightly into my weak position, shifting to the corner of the lift in a half-crouched foetal position. Still so afraid of this man’s ability to maim me. He pauses, seeing my apparent fear as it envelops me, and holds still. Raising his palms a little to indicate he won’t come any closer, he has to grab the door as it starts to close again quickly. Keeping his hands locked firmly on the sides of this box-like prison.

Angry or not, this man still has the power to ruin me in heinous ways, and I’m still trapped in his lair and the focus of all his attention. I’m no fool. I’m vulnerable and unable to hold my own against him. He proved that so many times in the past. He doesn’t need to touch me to end me.

“Believe you? BELIEVE YOU? Why the fuck would I believe you saying this shit to me, Alexi? You spent months torturing me, making me feel worthless. You sent me away. You broke me into a thousand pieces and told me I meant nothing to you to my face. Why would I believe you suddenly did a U-turn and changed everything you felt about me?” I gasp and thrust my words at him, sounding more venomous than I feel inside. Pulling myself back up to standing, I stay jammed in my little space to keep him far from me.

“I know, Cam… I know! My head was a mess; I had no idea how I felt when everything was so fucked up and confusing, and I didn’t want to trust you in any way. You fucked me up. You made it, so I was all over the place, and I didn’t know what I was doing or feeling, didn’t know what I had. How could I admit I loved you when I didn’t know what was real? I didn’t trust you. I didn’t know what this was between us.”

He looks at me pointedly, voice hoarse and eyes steadfast on mine. His apprehension fading away, and hints of domineering arsehole peeking back through. Somehow it gives me more courage to see the familiar in him.

I choke on his words, though, pain and bitter anger rising inside me. So much rage for what he said to me. The utter bullshit in that little speech.

“It was always real. I never lied to you. I never once played games with you. You had me even when I didn’t want it to be so. You changed everything for me… and you ripped down all my defences until I was nothing. You made me love you, you complete fucking idiot, and then you destroyed me. I did nothing wrong. I never deserved that.” I wail at him in frustration, heartbreak and despair. Angry that it all comes down to this. That he thought I was playing him all that time. That his cruel wanker side was on the full offensive because he believed I was nothing more than a manipulating whore out to get his money, his power, or maybe his heart so that I could become his puppeteer. Just a devious gold digger in his eyes who came with a bad reputation for being that.

He has no clue how wrong he was, how deep my feelings for him ran, or how I tried to be someone else for the first time. Someone who could hold her head a little higher. I wanted to be better than I was.

“I know that now. I do, and I’m sorry. I don’t know how else to say that to you.” Alexi seems completely submissive again, backing down at my spew of pain. Shell-shocked in his posture and not his usual confident sadistic self. Every part of him almost screams at me that this is not an act.

My head and heart are torn at whether I should believe this.

I don’t know this man in front of me right now, and my head is swimming, reeling, and knocking everything out of whack. I’m engulfed with so much hostile energy as it brims inside me, needing a release. I can’t trust him. Anytime I do, he flips me upside down and crushes my soul, and I shouldn’t believe him.

Maybe because of the climactic emotional breakdown followed by an overly majestic orgasm at this man’s hands… I’m now suffering a pent-up release of everything all at once, manifesting in sheer rage. I am bubbling up like an explosive volcano, and I desire to smack him around his stupid head with my shoes.

Alexi silently stares at me as though he has no clue how else to be, or maybe this is part of his game. His plan.

Fuck knows what this even is anymore. I don’t know.

My internal fear and chaos erupt beautifully, and I am unable to hold it in. All the memories and thoughts, conflicting and confusing facts. I push off from my corner, stand tall and come at him with all the fire and fight that dragged me out of those dirty London streets so long ago.

“You’re a liar… you are a fucking liar. I was there. I remember all of it. You don’t do that to someone you love. You don’t treat people like you treated me and tell them it’s because you loved them. You don’t fucking come back from all that with a little sorry.” I’m seething and spitting teeth, unable to conceal my fury anymore. Hating that his excuses are to justify what he did to me.

Nothing justifies what he did. He can never understand the depth of what he put me through. A permanent black hole in my soul is devil-shaped, and nothing in the world can fix that.