Chapter 12
The escape
Andrea
Prisons have walls. Mine seemed to follow me around wherever I went.
First it was Alejandro’s mansion – a huge villa where the Market ended and the Hillside began. I had thought about escaping that prison so many times, I had lost count of the ways I had come up with to make a run.
But my prison wasn’t bound to a certain place. It was bound to Alejandro.
Even if I had walked out on him, for Eddy’s sake, I was still bound to him. Even now that I was running away to save my son, I felt Alejandro’s breath on my shoulders.
I sometimes thought of him as a presence, lurking in the shadows, waiting for the right moment to strike back at me and make me pay for what I did. Leaving him. He wasn’t the sort of man you could leave.
“You will pay for this,” he had told me once, just once but it was enough for it to haunt me.
Once you see how cruel and soulless his eyes can be, you’ll never sleep soundly again.
Never.
I couldn’t stop my hands, my legs from shaking.
Two things I knew I could never escape from: Alejandro and the questions.
Questions from Eddy, that I feared just as much as being caught by my ex-husband.
“Where are we going, mommy?” he asked, looking back at me, while safely wrapped in Sebastian’s arms.
We were running through small, narrow streets. I was holding on to Sebastian’s hand, not knowing the direction and not knowing our destination.
I shook my head, I didn’t dare speak, the only sound were the thuds our feet were making on the cobble roads.
Where were we going? What would become of us?
Will I live to see you age? I pursed my lips and held back from speaking.
Eddy snuggled up in Sebastian’s shoulder and closed his eyes a little. He didn’t press on, he let it go.
This time, I thought. But the time will come, when Eddy’s questions would demand an answer. No prison, no hiding would save me then.
Silently, I prayed to see the light of day.
We ran for half an hour, never stopping once. I never felt so much energy, the fear of getting caught was above all the strongest.
I ran, fast, my hand in Sebastian’s the whole time, as he guided us into a large parking lot, somewhere in the outskirts of Rome.
We were so far out by then, I could see the shining lights of the eternal city in the distance.
Not all that shines is gold- I remembered an old saying.
Those lights had blinded me and I had landed face first in a never-ending nightmare. The nightmare was still on. I was still running, I was still trapped.
“Keep quiet,” Sebastian told us, as we stopped beside a car. He looked at Eddy and smiled. “Do you like this car?” he whispered
My boy looked up at the grey SUV and nodded, his beautiful cheeky grin so contagious I couldn’t help but smile myself.
“Good. Let’s get inside,” and with a strong pull, Sebastian opened the back door to let us in.
It had taken him one minute to force the lock.
The smell of new materials hit me and I immediately felt guilty, for taking it away from someone. But for us it was the only chance we had to make a safe run.
It was now dark outside and hard to see anything, but Sebastian kept the lights off all the same, until we were on the road.
We travelled in silence for a while, I could tell Sebastian was thinking of what to do next and I didn’t want to interrupt his reasoning.
At some point, I watched him mumble something under his breath, before opening the car window and tossing his phone out.
We were on our own now. No Alejandro telling us what to do, where to go.
We couldn’t risk being tracked by the killers, Sebastian told me later.
He kept looking in the rear-view mirror and I kept cuddling Eddy, who slowly drifted into deep sleep. It was midnight by then and we were still driving in little side streets in the middle of nowhere.
“Where are we going?” I found the courage to ask him.
“Somewhere safe, that I only know about. It’s going to take us another three hours, we must avoid highways and main streets, in case there are any police check points,” he told me and I nodded. “Try to sleep.”
“I can’t,” I told him shaking my head.
I just couldn’t give in to sleep. I couldn’t let my guard down.
“This is a good moment to rest. It will take us a while to get there,” he pressed on and I knew he was right. I knew he was but still, my pulse wouldn’t slow down.
The tension, the fear, were breaking me. I could feel I was breaking.
“What are we going to do?” I whispered with the little energy I had left in me, but Sebastian heard me.
“We will figure it out,” Sebastian said. “Sleep now Andrea. You need to rest, Eddy needs you to rest”
I lowered my stare, my eyes focusing on my son’s curly brown locks, and I bent down to kiss his little forehead. He didn’t move, not one bit.
How I wanted to be able to sleep like that, like the rest of the world didn’t exist. Like I was part of my own little dream world. Eddy was totally absorbed in his sleep, he looked peaceful like I knew I could never be.
A war of emotions shook my core. I felt like the walls of my prison were finally closing in on me, leaving me no room to breathe.
In the darkness of that stolen car, I started to think that maybe I wasn’t meant to get away. Maybe I was meant to die. Maybe I had been avoiding death all this time, changing the hands of my killer- first Alejandro, now gangsters from another clan. No matter who would kill me, fate was trying to tell me something.
I needed to get Eddy somewhere safe. And that somewhere wasn’t necessarily meant for me.
Someone opened the door, I couldn’t see who it was. It was too dark but I could tell it was more than one person.
I stumbled, trying to move further into the car, in the centre where Eddy was sleeping but It was no use.
Two, four, maybe six hands were on me all at once, pulling me by my legs and dragging me out of the car.
I was on the ground within seconds. Grass, my face was on wet long grass. I desperately tried to dig my fingers in the dirt, trying to find something to hold on to.
“Puttana,” “Whore,” one of them growled and someone pulled my hair.
I screamed, at the top of my lungs, the car was far away already. I could still see it in the distance, the lights were on.
They stopped dragging me and for a moment I stopped screaming, the only sound were those men panting from the run. They growled, roared like animals. I couldn’t’ see their faces but I could feel them staring down at me.
And then just as someone tore my shirt open and pushed his body on me, I screamed again, my eyes back on the car.
Hands were on me, everywhere, holding me down, spreading my legs, violating all of me but I kept my eyes on the car.
Don’t cry, don’t show them that you are scared. They want you to die, they want you to die. You are not here, you are not here.
But I was and I lost it.
“Please,” I begged, my eyes watery.
Someone took Eddy from the car. I could hear him scream, I could see him kicking, trying to run away but the man was too strong. He held Eddy tight and took him around the car.
“No, please. No!!!” I screamed and heard the men groan with excitement.
They thought I was begging them to stop. They thought they had me but I couldn’t care less, whatever they had planned for me. They had taken my baby. They had taken him, the only reason I was still alive, away from me. I was dead already.
“Please!!!” I screamed again, hearing Eddy call my name.
That was the last time I heard his voice. It all went quiet, as my eyes darted sideways trying to make out what was happening back on the road.
That was when I saw his small, lifeless body being tossed to the side of the road.
I screamed again, my heart, my baby, I was broken. I was dying. They broke me.
“Andrea,” I felt his big rough hands on my cheeks and recognised them immediately.
Sebastian, I opened my eyes quickly and saw his dark, handsome face watching over me.
“You were having a bad dream,” he said and I just nodded, still in too much of a haze to be able to speak.
I blinked a few times, my eyes still on Sebastian as he caressed my face- gently, slowly and with the sort of care I had never received from anyone in my life.
How incredible- I thought- that someone everyone calls the Killer, can be so attentive with me, with Eddy.
Everything about him screamed danger- his looks, his worn-out face, his strong muscular body- and yet his hands touched something inside of me, making me feel at peace. Cherished.
“Where are we?” I eyed Eddy to the side and smiled wide.
He was awake and his face was covered in cookie crumbs and chocolate.
As If he could sense my eyes on him, he turned and smiled wide, his teeth dirty with the food, and I think my heart must have burst then.
He was alive, he was eating and we had survived the night.
“We just arrived at the place I was telling you about,” Sebastian said and I sat up on the car seat, to scan the surroundings.
A big, yellow building rose in the middle of a wide yard. The gate and fencing were a little rusty, the grass hadn’t been cut in a while. It looked abandoned and far out from any city. I couldn’t see any other houses nearby.
It’s perfect.
“Is it safe?” I asked, once we were out of the car, Eddy skipping around us with another cookie in his hand.
“Nobody can find us here,” Sebastian reassured me, taking my hand.
I held it tight and smiled, a real smile for the first time in years.
In that moment, I wanted to believe the lie. I wanted to live the lie.
The nightmare, I wanted to forget all about it.