Chapter 6 - The Quiet Town
Six hundred miles away, in a sleepy coastal town along the Oregon border, the fog rolled gently through towering pine trees.
I sat on the front porch of my late grandmother's seaside cottage, gently swaying in the very rocking chair my mother had helped me load into the moving truck weeks ago. Nico was asleep against my chest, his chubby cheeks flushed pink from the clean, salty ocean air.
Here, there were no ringing phones demanding casino floor updates, no flashbulbs, and no lingering scents of betrayal.
My mother brought out two mugs of steaming chamomile tea and set them on the wooden railing.
"The lawyer called an hour ago," she said quietly, pulling a knit cardigan tight around her shoulders. "Vincent hasn't signed the custody agreement. He refused to look at the paperwork."
"He doesn't have a choice," I replied, watching the gray waves crash against the rocky shore below. "He can delay it, but he can't force me to stand in that penthouse like a piece of decorative furniture."
May you like
"He fired half his security team yesterday because they couldn't track down where we moved," she added gently, not judging, only warning me. "He is looking for you everywhere, Clara. A man with his resources doesn't stop."
"Let him look," I said, kissing the soft crown of Nico's dark hair. "The Clara he is looking for died in that hospital bed when he walked out the door. The woman sitting here has nothing left to say to him."
