Chapter 70

Aurora POV

The hotel turns out to be much nicer than I’m expecting.

Gianna and I’s room, while small, has a balcony attached to it overlooking the city. There’s a hammock on the balcony and a small, tiled pool down below with kids already splashing around in it.

It’s honestly paradise.

Gianna groans from one of the twins beds as she stretches, the morning light from me drawing the curtains apart apparently waking her. “I slept good. Did you?.”

I step off the balcony and head back into the room, leaving the sliding door open to let in the fresh air and morning light. “It was alright. You passed out like a light, though.”

“Yeah,” she grins. “It’s nice not having to look over our shoulders.”

“True.”

She sits up, her hair messy as it falls around her face. “You know what I’m craving?”

“What?”

“Food. Let’s go eat. I’m starving.”

That first day leading into night, we drink and eat on the beach with plastic cups and let the ocean whisper against our ankles as we lounge in the sun. Gianna twirls in the surf after tanning like she’s drunk on life. I sit down in the sand right where the water pulls away from the beach to head back out to sea and stare out at the endless horizon.

For the first time in years, I’m well and truly free.

It feels weird. Like I’m in a dream and at any moment, I'll wake up. I try not to wish it all away by being paranoid. This city is big enough to hide us forever. Spending our days worrying about the next shoe dropping is the last thing Gianna and I need to be focusing on.

We’re here and we finally are in control of our lives. For the first time in our lives, we can do whatever we want.

We spend the next few days soaking it all in. Long mornings sleeping in, warm afternoons on the beach, late nights dancing to the local music and experiencing the night light of the city. Neither of us have any answers on what we’re going to do when we grow sick and tired of this but it doesn’t matter.

We have the rest of our lives to figure that out.

It’s a few nights later when I wake up to the sound of muffled crying.

At first I think it’s just the waves outside of our window—something that I’m actually grateful to Camilla for booking us. She could’ve put us up in any shitty motel room and called it a day but instead, she decided to gift us with extravagance.

A part of me knows the reason behind it: she wanted to make our stay here as comfortable as possible so that way there would be no room for regrets and contemplating going back. But another part of me wonders if she’d actually done this with what little shred of kindness she has left in her heart.

I suppose at the end of the day, I’ll truly never know.

When I hear the sound again, I sit up, blinking in the dark.

“Gianna?”

She sniffles but doesn’t answer.

I throw the sheets off and cross the room, turning on the lap by her beside before sitting beside her. She’s curled up, knees tucked to her chest, shaking slightly as she tries to muffle the sound into her pillow.

My heart twists.

“Hey,” I whisper, brushing her hair back. “What’s wrong?”

“I just…” she breaks off, voice cracking. “I miss my dad.”

My heart sinks.

I say nothing, just slip under the covers beside her and wrap my arms around her. She turns and buries her face in my shoulder, her tears soaking into my shirt as she sobs harder.

“I didn’t even say goodbye,” she chokes out. “He’s probably losing his mind. And I can’t even tell him where I am, because if I do, Alek or Dominic will find us. I hate this. I hate that I had to leave him behind.”

“I know,” I whisper, holding her tighter. “I know.”

For a long time we just lie there like that, the sound of her crying mixing with the distant hush of the waves through the open window.

Then something clicks in my mind.

“Hey,” I say softly, “what if you called him? From a payphone. One that’s not attached to the hotel. Even if someone were to trace it, it would come back as a random location. We could catch a cab to a few towns over.”

She pulls back to look at me. “Would that even work?”

I shrug. “If we find one in a remote location, we should be fine.”

She blinks, swiping the back of her hand over her cheeks. “What if he hates me?”

“I think,” I say gently, “he would be happy to know you’re alive. You deserve to hear his voice and talk to him even if he’s mad.”

Gianna nods slowly. “Okay. Yeah. You’re right. Let’s do that.”

We set out the next morning.

Finding a payphone turns out to be a little harder than we thought. Most have been ripped out of the ground or don’t work no matter how many coins we feed it. We end up taking a long bus ride through several sleepy beach towns until we finally find one near a gas station with a chipped canopy and a cat sleeping in the window.

Gianna stares at it for a minute like it’s some kind of ancient artifact then she slides a few coins into the slot and dials. I keep watch with my back turned, trying to give her some privacy.

Her voice is low at first, then I hear her let out a choked sob. “Hi, Dad…”

It breaks my heart.

She keeps her voice quiet as she speaks, never saying where we are. Just that she’s safe and that she misses him. She explains how she can’t come home yet but she will call again but she isn’t sure when.

I can only hear her side of the conversation, but I can tell what he’s saying just by the way her mouth trembles. She cries a little more before telling him she loves him.

Then she says goodbye.

When she hangs up, she leans forward, pressing her forehead to the metal of the phone booth. I wrap my arm around her waist and guide her back toward the curb.

She exhales, long and shaky. “That was harder than I thought.”

“You did good,” I say quietly.

She wipes her eyes, then turns and pulls me into a hug.

“Promise me we won’t go back,” she whispers. “No matter how much I cry and beg. We can’t go back.”

“I promise.”

We hold each other for a long time, the late afternoon sun beating down on us. When we turn back toward the road, ready to flag down a cab to take us back to our hotel, that’s when I see him.

A man leaning against a parked car just a few feet from the curb. Clean suit, arms crossed casually over his chest like he’s been watching us for a while. A familiar smile spreads across his face like a serpent uncoiling.

“You’ve gone quite far,” he says, in a voice that sends ice through my veins. “Haven’t you?”

Alek.

I’m frozen in place. Unable to look away from him. This… can’t be real. He has to be some figment of my imagination.

How did he find us?

“Let us not cause a scene,” he says smoothly, giving us that smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Why don’t you both get into the car. Then we will talk.”