MY ANGEL BOYFRIEND

CHAPTER 1

My family has more money than most people will see in ten lifetimes. Private jets. Houses in three countries. A last name that opens every door. And still, they could not stand the thought of me being alone.

“Sarah, you’re twenty-six.”

“Sarah, people will talk.”

“Sarah, we just want you to have someone.”

They said it over breakfast, over dinner, in the back of the car on the way to charity galas. Soft voices. Careful smiles. Always the same message underneath: find a boyfriend, any boyfriend, so you will not look incomplete. I smiled back. I nodded. I let them believe I was listening. Inside, something in me had already closed the door years ago. Love, the kind they meant, felt like a contract written in someone else’s handwriting. I did not trust it. I did not want it.

So I started looking for a way out that did not involve arguments or explanations.

One night, long after the staff had gone to bed, I sat on the floor of my bedroom with my laptop and searched for places that barely existed on maps. I found a small village tucked between two ridges, three hours north of the city. No real name. No tourist page. Just a handful of old stone houses and a listing for a two-room cottage that had been empty for years. The price was nothing to my family, but it was everything to me because it was mine. I transferred the money myself. Cash. No agents. No one in the house knew.

I packed slowly over the next week. Clothes that did not have designer labels. Books. A first-aid kit. Tools I had bought years ago and never used. I left a short note on the kitchen counter the morning I drove away. I need some time. Don’t look for me. I turned my phone off before I reached the highway.

The village was quieter than I expected. The cottage sat at the edge of the last road, facing the mountains. Two rooms, a narrow kitchen, a porch with a broken railing. The air smelled of pine and cold stone. I spent the first day cleaning. I swept dust from the corners, washed the windows until the glass shone, stacked firewood against the wall. At night the silence was so complete I could hear my own breathing. No staff. No schedule. No one asking when I would bring someone home.

By the third evening I had arranged the few pieces of furniture I bought in the nearest town. A bed. A table. Two chairs. A small shelf for the books. I cooked simple meals on the old stove and ate them looking out at the dark shapes of the mountains. For the first time in years, no one was watching me.

On the fourth morning I woke before sunrise. The restlessness came without warning. The mountains were right there, rising behind the house like a wall of green and gray. I had read that hunters still set traps higher up—old steel jaws left in the undergrowth. The thought of something lying injured and alone for days settled under my ribs and would not leave.

I loaded the back of the car carefully. Bolt cutters. A crowbar. Thick gloves. Rope. A folded blanket. Water. The first-aid kit. I locked the cottage, started the engine, and drove toward the rising ground.

The road climbed in long, slow curves. Pavement gave way to gravel, then to packed earth. Trees pressed closer on both sides. The air grew cooler. After nearly an hour the track narrowed between two steep rock faces until the sides of the car scraped stone. I stopped, turned off the engine, and sat for a moment listening to the quiet. Then I stepped out, locked the doors, and swung the tool bag over my shoulder.

I walked.