Chapter Two #2
Before Jordi, she’d tried her hand at flirting with Gabriel on occasion. He was so tall. And he was a man who smiled. No one in the palace ever smiled. Not a real smile.
She thought Gabriel Marti might be the only man she’d ever met who was actually happy.
He was not happy now, and she didn’t understand why, or what he was doing. Why was he trying to get her in a car? She looked around. No guards. No one watching. If Gabriel could actually get her off the palace property, she could…
She had no idea, but she got in the car all the same on that little spurt of hope that maybe, just maybe, on the other side of this lay freedom. One little sparkle of hope, that Gabriel might in fact be like her brother, might in fact do something that allowed her the freedom she was desperate for.
Gabriel climbed into the driver’s seat. He pushed a button and the car started—quietly, almost silently. Then, he began to drive. Toward the palace exit. She looked behind them.
Just twinkling lights surrounded by darkness. The shining lights of the palace getting dimmer and dimmer. No headlights. No shadowy guards dashing after them.
She was afraid to hope. Hope was dead. Except Gabriel was fanning a little ember back to life. “We’re escaping?”
“Yes. To a new life, Evelyne. Courtesy of your brother. So if you’d stop arguing with me at every turn and behave, perhaps we could actually save you.”
He drove without being followed. It was a positive, but not certain freedom. Not just yet.
He couldn’t go to the royal airport without being found out, but if he could get across the border into France, there was a small regional airport not far. His connections outside of Alis were legion, so he already had a plane waiting for them that could not be traced to him or Alexandre.
But he had to make that border crossing first, something that would have been fine if he didn’t have a princess in tow.
Luckily, he’d always had a backup plan in case King Enzo had decided to try to keep him in the country, or if Alex needed a quick escape.
And it had started years ago, when Alex had convinced King Enzo to hire Gabriel’s fledgling company to design the wall around the country and some of its security features.
The argument had been that with a novice security design and logistics company like Gabriel’s, an Alis native, the king would be wholly in control, with no competing clients to take away focus.
It had been true at the time. And it had given Gabriel the opportunity to design in some…fail-safes.
Maintaining a casual and unsuspicious speed, Gabriel pulled off onto the little-known dirt road that would take him up beyond the border checkpoints. Because there was a point up here where no one knew that Gabriel would be able to get through, car, princess and all, no border checks necessary.
“Gabriel, where are we going?”
“Don’t you trust me, principessa?”
She sighed heavily. “Alex trusts you, so I will endeavor to, but how are we going to leave Alis if we are just following the border? We will need to go through border patrol, and they will never let me through. Even if Father isn’t aware I’ve run away yet, they won’t let me through.”
“I have my ways. Relax.”
She laughed. Bitterly. “Yes, it’s been quite a relaxing day.”
He was not sure, despite her upbringing, he’d ever heard bitterness from Evelyne. It must have been a family trait, because Alexandre was rarely bitter either. Stern, stoic, determined, but not bitter.
Evelyne was usually cheerful, bubbly, full of…life or hope or something. It was easy to be drawn to Evelyne.
Which was why he needed to get her situated somewhere quickly—so he could resume his distance over being drawn. She had all the marks of someone who could pull him under, and he would never be pulled under again.
He took an almost unmarked pathway into snow and coaxed the car toward the wall.
Evelyne shifted in her seat, leaning forward, squinting at the wall the headlights of his car illuminated.
“Wait here.”
He got out of the car, strode to the wall. With the flashlight of his phone, it only took a minute or two to find the hidden control panel. Alex was lucky Gabriel traveled with a screwdriver on his key chain. Or he was lucky. Or Evelyne was.
He unscrewed the necessary components, hit the correct order of buttons, then replaced the cover and screwed it tight. There was an easily pushed button on the other side to close it.
He heard the engine inside engage, though it rattled a bit. It hadn’t been used since Gabriel had tested it when he’d first installed it himself all those years ago. Hopefully it still worked.
He got back into the car, rubbing his hands against the cold.
“What are we going to do?” Evelyne demanded. “Drive through the…” She trailed off as the motorized entryway he’d designed began to move, open. With enough space he would be able to drive the car right through.
The terrain would be rough on the other side, but it would get them into France undetected.
Evelyne was uncharacteristically silent as he drove through the opening in the wall, stopping the car, then getting out to push the button that would close it. Even when he started driving again after waiting for the door to close—this time with no road or path—she didn’t say a word.
But he could all but hear the wheels turning in her head.
“Does Alexandre know about that?” she asked once he’d finally maneuvered the car back onto a road—this time on French soil.
“In a way.”
“What does that mean?”
“He knows I designed some…escape routes into the wall, should they ever be needed. But to protect himself, and no doubt me, he doesn’t know exactly where they are.
I would of course give him the information should he request it.
Instead, he tasked me with getting you out undetected, so here we are. ”
She said nothing else, all the way to the airport. He supposed she was working through the implications of what escape really meant. Not just a vacation or a lark, but something a little bit dangerous, and a lot life-changing.
Her father was a vindictive man, and she’d never lived anywhere but the palace. Though Alexandre had been sent to boarding school and royal training throughout Europe, Evelyne had been educated in the palace under her father’s patriarchal views that a woman did not need worldly experience.
Gabriel arrived at the airport and parked the car where his associate had instructed—an associate who was not supposed to own or operate said plane, so certainly wouldn’t go telling anyone that Gabriel had borrowed it.
In the hangar, Gabriel parked out of the way of the plane, turned off the car engine, then got out. Evelyne did not wait for him to come open her door. She got out of the car and eyed the plane.
“I suppose we will need to wait for daylight to fly.”
“Not necessarily. What we will need to wait for is me to return to the castle.”
She whirled to face him. “What?”
“Only briefly. To make an appearance so no one suspects I am the one who absconded with you as I was the last one seen with you. I’ll drop a word to the guards that you voluntarily left with a shadowy figure.
And I was distracted by another young lady.
Something along those lines.” He flashed her a grin. “Easy enough to be believed.”
Evelyne’s eyebrows drew together as she thought this over. Then her eyes narrowed.
“Tell them it was Jordi Ferriz. Not a shadowy figure. An aide.”
He found her fervor suspicious. “That would put a target on this Jordi’s back.”
She lifted a regal chin. “Good.”
Ah, some sort of…lovers’ tiff, he thought. He did not know this aide named Jordi, but he did know something about revenge. And what it did to you. “Vengeance is a dangerous game, principessa.”
She lifted a bare shoulder, and Gabriel might have been frustrated with her, except he was too distracted by her.
The dress was a torture device, Gabriel was quite certain. It skimmed every curve, something about the green color seemed to gild her skin with gold. A gold that reflected in little flecks in her dark eyes.
And he did not have any clothes for her to change into on the plane. He couldn’t risk grabbing something of hers at the palace to bring back. He wouldn’t be there long, with any luck. Just a quick appearance, a word to the guards, then off again.
“Get on the plane. Wait for me there. I will be back in under an hour.” Hopefully.
She met his gaze. There was trepidation there, but she nodded and allowed herself to be helped up into the plane.
She hesitated at the top of the stairs. “Gabriel… Are you sure…” But she didn’t finish that sentence.
“Would you rather return to the palace, Evelyne?”
She immediately shook her head. “No, I cannot stay. I cannot marry the general.”
“No, you can’t. Your brother agrees. So we will find a new life for you.”
“What about Alexandre?”
“Alex is the only one who has any hope of surviving your father’s reign, especially after marrying Ines. I think he knows this as well as you and I do.”
Evelyne let out a shaky sigh. Gabriel took it as agreement and turned to leave, but Evelyne reached out, her slim hand curling around his hand.
“What if Father punishes Alexandre? What if…?”
“He won’t,” Gabriel said with more force than he actually believed, but she needed reassurance, and he supposed he did as well.
“First, your father needs his son, his heir. If he didn’t, Alex would have been punished with much worse long ago.
Second, Alex will not know where you are, just that I have taken you somewhere safe.
There will be no evidence connecting you to him, so while your father could decide to blame him, he can’t prove it.
He won’t want to prove it. He’ll probably make up some boogeyman who stole you.
Send General Vinyes on a wild-goose chase. ”
“I suppose you’re right.” She chewed on her bottom lip, a distracting and brain-draining move that distracted him enough to meet her golden gaze. “What if he punishes you?” she asked, eyes worried, voice soft. “What if the chase is General Vinyes to us?”
“Do you underestimate me, Evelyne?” he quipped, but her eyes were wide and shiny as she studied him.
He had never seen Evelyne look vulnerable. He knew, from Alex, that the king was especially hard on her, but Alex had always been vague about what that meant. And Evelyne never seemed to be troubled. Sociable, confident, cheeky even.
He saw the troubled in her now.
“Everything will be all right,” he assured her, with an odd gentleness from himself he did not quite recognize. “You have my word.”
So he left her there, determined to see his word through.