mother.
“Good night, Elle,” Daniel whispered, and she saw his reluctance to leave her alone.
“Good night, Daniel.” He started to leave. She stopped him with a question. “Daniel—what am I going to do?”
Daniel turned around in the doorway and looked back at her.
“If you took orders from me, which you don’t, but if you did...I’d order you to go back to Søren and marry him.”
Elle rolled onto her side and gazed at Daniel through the dark.
“Now I remember why I left you,” she said.
“Because I wanted to take care of you?”
“Because you don’t know me at all.”
The smile faded from Daniel’s face.
“Rest,” he said, and shut the door behind him.
It wasn’t an order, but Elle followed it anyway. She slept an hour or two and when she woke up, there was a terrifying moment when she couldn’t remember how she’d got here. But the moment passed, and she remembered.
What was she going to do? No Søren. No Kingsley. No town house. Jesus, she didn’t have a real job. She had a little less than five thousand dollars to her name, a college degree in English literature and almost no work experience other than a few years at a bookstore. What was she going to put on a résumé? That she gave good blow jobs and could take a beating better than any masochist in New York?
She sat up in bed and buried her face in her hands. Panic threatened to overwhelm her. Slowly she breathed, slowly she calmed herself. She would not cry. She could not cry. If she started crying over Søren, she’d never stop. And if she cried, that would mean it was real, that she had left him and that she was never going back.
When she was calm again she whispered into the quiet of her room, “What am I gonna do?”
No one answered, not even her.
Wincing as her sore muscles protested the movement, Elle got out of bed. She walked down the hall to the bathroom where she’d stored her duffel bag. On the way back to bed she noticed a light on in Daniel’s library. Wasn’t he supposed to be on the night shift taking care of Marius?
She crept to the half-open door and heard him speaking to someone. She saw no one else in the room and then noticed he had a small mobile phone to his ear.
“She’s not well,” Daniel said. “Let her stay here a couple days until she feels better. Than you can come get her.”
Elle froze.
“Not tonight, King. She’s not in good shape. Mentally or physically. Let her rest. We’ll take care of her.”
Rage welled up in Elle. She took one step forward and then stopped. Kingsley had warned if she had to flee, she’d have to be smart about it. She’d been stupid before but she wasn’t going to be stupid again. She crept back to the bathroom, grabbed her duffel bag and got dressed. As quietly as she could, she left the house. She didn’t leave a note, didn’t lambast him with accusations and recriminations. She didn’t call him a traitor or an asshole or an arrogant piece of shit who thought he knew what was better for her than she did. She did something much worse and much better at the same time.
She stole his car.
Thankfully Daniel wasn’t some rich dipshit who drove a flashy Maserati or a Ferrari to show off his money. Daniel had a classic black Mercedes-Benz sedan. Nothing that would attract any unnecessary attention. She took the keys right off the rack in the kitchen. She coasted out of the driveway with the lights off and resisted the urge to squeal the tires as a final fuck you and fare thee well.
He wouldn’t call the police. That wasn’t Daniel’s style. And he wouldn’t have to. She’d dump the car somewhere the cops would find it, and it would be returned to him in one piece.
More or less.
After ten minutes on the road the adrenaline rush faded and the reality that she was alone again with nowhere to go set in. No...not nowhere to go. She had lots of places to go. Unfortunately there was nowhere she could go where Kingsley wouldn’t find her eventually. Especially now that she’d stolen a registered car. Wherever she dumped the car, that’s where Kingsley would start looking, and he would find her in a matter of hours.
Which left only one option. She would have to go somewhere Kingsley and Søren couldn’t follow her. Even if he knew where she was, it would be somewhere he couldn’t enter. She thought about getting herself arrested and sent to prison. Seemed a better option than her only other choice.
Then again, she’d faced prison once before and Kingsley and Søren had got her out of going then. He would do it again if she was foolish enough to get herself arrested. Kingsley took care of things. That’s how it worked. She needed a ride somewhere? Kingsley’s driver would take her wherever she wanted to go. If she needed a vacation, Kingsley would send her and Søren to Europe. If she got injured during kink, he’d send her to his doctor, who knew how to keep his mouth shut. If she got pregnant...well, he took care of that, too, didn’t he? Whether he wanted to or not.
Kingsley...she kept her mind on him. If she thought about Søren, really thought about him, she’d turn the car around and drive straight back to Connecticut. Instead, she focused her mind on Kingsley. Was he okay? She hadn’t seen him in a few days. He hadn’t offered to go with her to the doctor. He’d made the appointment for her, had the car take her. But he wasn’t there when she left, wasn’t home when she got back. If she’d asked him to come with her, he would have. She knew that. That he hadn’t volunteered was proof that he didn’t want to face it any more than she did. So she didn’t ask him. She went alone and didn’t make him more a part of it than he already was. Kingsley was more dark knight than white knight, but whatever his sins, he had one bright, pure and beautiful hope—that he would be a father someday. She wasn’t going to make him stand there and watch her put an end to that dream.
“King...I’m sorry,” she whispered as she reached a crossroads. If she drove south, she’d be in Manhattan in four hours.
Or...
Elle pulled the car over on the side of the road.
She had to do it, right? What other choice did she have except to go back? And that was no choice at all. Because if she went back she’d be admitting defeat. If she went back she would be walking straight into a different sort of prison.
Even now, her heart raced at the thought of Kingsley tracking her down and bringing her home. That wasn’t right. She should be able to leave if she wanted to leave. She should be able to go if she wanted to go without fearing someone was following her. That’s how it worked in the real world, right? Women got sick of the lives they were leading and they could do things like move out and move on and start over without an ex-assassin for the French government dragging her home by her hair.
Right?
Was it too late for her to be part of the normal world? If it wasn’t, did she really want to go there? She didn’t know the answer to either question. But she did know the longer she sat in the car, the sooner Kingsley would find her. It was nine o’clock now. The summer sun had finally set. By sunrise, Daniel would notice
