Before Jordi, she’d tried her hand at flirting with Gabriel on occasion. He was sotall. 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 actuallyhappy.
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 heardbitternessfrom 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 beingdrawn. 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.
