Chapter 2 - THE FROZEN PATHWAY TO FREEDOM BEYOND THE IRON GATES OF A GOLDEN CAGE
Savannah gripped the steering wheel of the old,
silver sedan she had bought in cash months ago,
her knuckles white against the worn leather.
The heater was blasting,
but she couldn't stop shivering,
the adrenaline coursing through her veins like liquid nitrogen.
She had planned this,
second by second,
for the moment she realized Roman was never going to change.
The snow was thick,
a white veil that hid her from the cameras,
and the guards had been distracted by the shift change she knew happened at 2:00 AM.
She had driven through the service gate,
the one meant for deliveries,
the one they always forgot to double-check during a storm.
Every mile she put between herself and the estate felt like a year of her life returning to her.
She looked in the rearview mirror,
half-expecting to see the black suburbans with their tinted windows trailing her,
but there was only the white void.
Her stomach tightened,
a sharp,
twisting pain that made her gasp,
and she pressed a hand to the swell of her belly.
"Not yet,
little girl,"
she whispered,
her voice cracking in the dark cabin.
"We have to get further,"
"we have to get to the safe place."
The safe place was a small apartment in a part of the city Roman wouldn't touch,
a place where the buildings were crumbling,
and the people didn't recognize the name Carter.
She had been funneling money,
bit by bit,
from the household accounts for a year,
hiding it in an account her mother had left her.
She wasn't the fragile flower Roman thought she was;
she was the daughter of a woman who had survived much worse than a cheating husband.
As she drove,
the memory of the photo flashed in her mind,
Roman and Claire,
locked in an embrace beneath the city lights.
It didn't hurt as much as she thought it would;
instead,
it felt like a key turning in a lock.
She was free from the obligation of loving a ghost.
She reached the city limits,
the skyline of Chicago looming like a jagged tooth against the gray sky.
The wind howled against the car,
trying to push her off the road,
but she held steady.
She thought about Margaret,
the look of terror in the older woman's eyes as she watched Savannah pack.
Margaret knew what Roman was capable of,
but she also knew what Savannah was enduring.
"Go,"
Margaret had whispered,
handing her a thermos of hot tea and a stack of cash she had saved.
"Don't look back,
Savannah,"
"he will only ever see you as a prize to be kept."
The words fueled her,
pushing her through the exhaustion and the growing pain in her back.
She pulled into a crowded parking garage,
switching the silver sedan for another car she had stashed there weeks prior.
She was a ghost now,
moving through the city like a shadow,
leaving no trail for his hounds to follow.
She knew Roman would be waking up soon,
if he wasn't already home,
and the hunt would begin.
He would call the police,
the private investigators,
and the men who did the jobs the police wouldn't do.
He would claim she was mentally unstable,
that the pregnancy had made her delusional,
anything to regain control.
But she had the truth,
and she had the strength of a mother who would die before letting her child be raised in a house of lies.
She finally reached the small,
nondescript building on the south side,
the brickwork stained by decades of soot.
She climbed the stairs slowly,
each step a mountain,
carrying her bag and the weight of her new life.
The apartment was cold,
smelling of dust and old wood,
but as she locked the three deadbolts behind her,
she finally let out a breath.
She sat on the edge of the small bed,
the only furniture in the room,
and watched the sun begin to rise over the frozen lake.
It was Christmas morning,
and for the first time in her life,
she had given herself the only gift that mattered.
She was no longer Savannah Carter,
the trophy wife of a monster.
She was just Savannah,
May you like
and she was finally,
beautifully alone.
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