There were houses spread throughout the surrounding area, and the small village had a center for shopping, apartments, and a few restaurants. It wasn’t a tourist stop because it was far away from Nice and the French Rivera. It was full of natives, and thankfully, my French was pretty good.
It was three in the morning, so Cato knew I was gone by now.
He knew hours ago.
I hated to picture his reaction when he walked into my bedroom and realized I was gone. That I took nothing except the sonogram. I didn’t even let him have the one picture of our unborn child.
It was pretty cold.
The guilt weighed heavily in my stomach, not because of my decision, but the way it must have hurt him.
He probably felt betrayed.
He probably questioned how I really felt about him, if my feelings for him were really genuine.
Of course they were.
But he wouldn’t give me what I wanted, so what choice did I have?
I had to run off to the middle of nowhere just to escape.
“This is a good place to settle.”
“It’s way too close to Italy.”
“If he really wants to follow you, he’s probably going to look at Ireland, America, or Canada. The middle of France is the last place he’ll think of. Sometimes it’s best to hide in the backyard—the last place anyone would look.”
It really was remote. It didn’t seem like they would even get cell service here. I wished I could have sold my house first so I would have some money. I didn’t have anything to my name. Thankfully, Landon had cash that could get us by for a long time. I would have to find a job in a bigger city working with art, but for right now, that was too dangerous. Cato would probably check every art gallery in Europe.
Landon pulled over to the side of the road, in front of a small inn on the main street. “I say we sleep here and find a place to live in the morning.”
“You think they’ll take cash here?”
“I think they’ll prefer it.”
When we woke up the next morning, we went house hunting. There were a few small houses in the vicinity, some of them close enough to walk to town. Since we only had one car, that was ideal. There were no schools in the area, so eventually, we’d have to move somewhere else when the baby started school.
But that was many years down the road.
Landon and I found a small place that we both liked. It was a two-story house with two bedrooms. It had a small kitchen, a garden, and a garage that could only fit one car. It was cheap, and Landon insisted we buy something meager so it wouldn’t draw attention. He bought it in cash then we got the keys.
This was really my life now.
I would live with my brother in a small house. When the baby came, it would be even smaller.
Landon bought furniture from a store a few hours away and returned with a moving truck to get all our stuff inside. After a few weeks of ordering everything, we eventually had everything we needed. The small house turned into a home, and we had a dining table, a refrigerator, a dishwasher, a microwave, and furniture for the bedrooms. The only thing we didn’t have was a washer and dryer.
The house didn’t have the hookups for it.
Now that several weeks had passed, I was further into my pregnancy.
And I’d started to show. My stomach had swelled until it had a distinct curve down the front. I didn’t feel any kicking, but somehow, I knew there was life pulsing inside me. Sometimes, I had the impulse to ask Cato to press his hand against my tummy, but then I realized he wasn’t there.
We hadn’t spoken in all those weeks.
It seemed Landon’s plan had worked—Cato couldn’t find me.
That relieved me, but it also pained me.
Because I missed him.
There were times when I woke up the middle of the night from a nightmare, but Cato wasn’t there for comfort. There were times when I wanted to talk to him about the pregnancy, but he wasn’t a phone call away. I hadn’t realized how much I needed him until he was no longer there.
I felt safe in this small town, but not like I did living at his estate. Even when executions happened right outside the front door, I was never afraid of something terrible actually breaching the property. I felt untouchable, like nobody could hurt me except Cato himself. I didn’t care for luxurious things, but now that I didn’t have Giovanni’s cooking or those extra soft sheets in my bed, I realized the finer things in life were actually valuable.
A couple weeks later, I started to feel really lonely.
Landon was always there. We watched TV together, played games together, and not once did he complain about his sudden change in lifestyle. When he needed his own time, he went to Nice for the weekend and hit up the bars for company.