Chapter Thirteen: The Distance Between Us
Lena didn’t look back as the car pulled away from the villa.
She’d packed light: a duffel bag, her sketchpad, two changes of clothing, a burner phone Nikolai had once insisted she carry “just in case,” and a scarf he’d never seen her wear—sun-washed orange, stolen from a market years ago.
Her driver was silent.
Hired by her.
Not him.
And that mattered more than she wanted to admit.
The ride was quiet, winding back through the cypress trees and into the open Tuscan countryside. It had been weeks—maybe longer—since she’d been away from Nikolai’s world. From his eyes. From his silence.
She told herself this wasn’t an escape.
It was an experiment.
But her heart beat like it was running.
**
She stayed in a small pensione on the edge of Flore
