The Life: Sacrifice (The Life 3)

Though I couldn’t let kids be left in whatever hell they were in, I still had my own thing to take care of, so we were working in tangent. While he dug into Luna and the trafficking ring, I put my all into my new scheme. Now I was ready to take the first step. I’d put it off this long in the hopes of finding Gianna, to at least give myself peace of mind, but now I’ve had to shut it off in order to pull myself out of the limbo I’d gone into when I couldn’t find her.

Physical exercise, something I’ve used in the past to sharpen my mind, hadn’t worked too well, and not even working on my plans for Sicily had, nothing has been able to keep me from thinking about her at least a hundred times a day. But I’ve put my anger and frustration to better use.

The person I was eight months ago is long gone. She was the final insult to my already unwarranted life. The last thing I am willing to lose, the last hurt I’m prepared to suffer. Nothing and no one can get to me now because I have nothing left to give. In short, I’ve morphed into something approaching subhuman.

I don’t even try to pretend anymore. I know it bothers the family, but that can’t be helped. It was bound to happen anyway, this distance between us, because they can’t be a part of what I’m about to do no more than she could.

* * *

GIANNA

* * *

“Okay, okay, we’re almost there. I knew we should’ve headed into town days ago.” I squeezed the hand of the middle-aged woman who sat in the backseat with me while her husband drove us the long miles into town. She’d said the same thing about three times now.

“I know; I thought I had more time.” More like I was afraid the closer I got to my due date. Somehow in my pregnancy brain, I thought that if I put it off, I wouldn’t have to face it. Silly, I know, but I guess it’s the mind’s way of protecting itself.

The last eight months or so have been like a rollercoaster ride. In the beginning, I vacillated daily between joy and fear. Joy that I had a part of Gabriel the jerk as much as I told myself I hated him, with me forever. And fear because I have no idea what I’m doing.

I spent hours, days, weeks, and months on the Internet doing research. One of the first things I did was get my permit and learn to drive before getting my license because the fear of going into labor alone all the way out here away from civilization scared me more than anything else. Not sure how I thought I could drive the hour or more into town while in labor, but again, pregnancy brain.

That’s how I met Connie and Ron; there was a sign on the turnoff to the little dirt road that leads back to my cabin with a truck for sale. Now I could easily have walked into any showroom and paid cash for a top-of-the-line luxury vehicle, but I felt nervous making such a big purchase; in fact, I was almost sick to my stomach.

I guess the month and a half of living the good life with the Russos were no match for years of going without, so I easily fell back into past habits. As it turns out, the truck was only a few years old and had only about fifty-thousand miles on it, but they needed to sell because Connie had some medical issues, and they needed the money.

They’d moved out here from a big city in the Pacific Northwest to get away from the hustle and bustle of life where they’d both worked corporate jobs before Connie fell ill. At sixty and fifty-eight, they’d never had kids after thirty-five years of marriage and had no real ties keeping them in their former lives, so they moved off the grid to live out the rest of their days.

From that first meeting, when I went to look at the truck, it’s like they took me under their wing. They never asked any questions beyond the obvious and accepted my explanation that I was escaping a bad breakup. They complained about me going into town on the bicycle I’d bought, especially when they found out about the baby, and short of exclaiming that I didn’t know the first thing about taking care of myself, decided to be my new family.

Their place is still a good ways away from mine, about a fifteen-minute drive, so they’d taken to parking their camper on my property, far enough away to give me privacy but close enough to hear me if I needed them. They can have no idea how much I appreciated them, especially when my tummy got too big for me to tie my own shoes.