Elena's pov

I didn’t sleep. Not really. Not the way you mean when you say “sleep.” It was more like lying with my eyes closed and letting pictures shove each other across the inside of my skull Marco’s glass catching light, the way the wine made a soft sound when it hit the table, his hand falling away from the arm of the chair. The sound of it keeps looping. God, that tiny clink. I can still hear it.

Every noise outside the window turned into a thing to be scared of. A bike backfire = gunshot. Footsteps down the hall = someone checking the lock. A dog barking two streets over = a tail. Sirens, somewhere, felt like the place was tightening its grip on me. I counted breaths until counting made me dizzy. In. Out. In. Out. It did nothing.

By daybreak I knew something obvious and horrible: I couldn’t stay. Not here. Not in that flat that smelled like steam and fried onions and old regrets. Not with the one stupid thing I did folded up inside me like contraband. Damian, would put it together. He always did. If he hadn’t already, he would. And when he did… I couldn’t imagine his face. I couldn’t imagine the way his jaw would set, the way his eyes would turn into small, dangerous pools. I didn’t want to be in front of him. I didn’t want to be in front of anyone who could make decisions with a look.

Damian here and there

Well…that is what he told me his name was.

So I moved like something hunted. Slow, at first finger fumbling through my drawers, a sock here, cash shoved into a pocket there then faster, because waiting was a kind of death I couldn’t afford. I grabbed what fit into a bag: two shirts, an old jumper, the coat I kept because it hid too many things. I slipped my passport into a coat lining, because you always pretend you’ll be clever and leave the country like in the movies. I flushed scraps of paper, receipts, anything with my name. Flushing them felt ritual. Stupid. Necessary. Like I could drown evidence with toilet water.

Clara’s face kept coming back at me bright, panicked, the way she leaned forward when she wanted to be heard. I didn’t want to drag her deeper into this. I would have done anything to protect her. That’s why I had said yes. Because they’d shown me the photo of her waiting by the bus stop, smiling, and I’d felt my bones go cold. We owe each other what little we can give. Except what I gave cost a life. Or might have. Or would.

My hands shook when I dialed. Of course they did. My finger hit the call and I watched the seconds crawl like someone trying to steal from me the breath I needed to calm down.

She picked up fast. “Elena?”

Her voice was like a warm blanket. For a second the tears prickled, because it was a voice that didn’t accuse. But then I remembered the sharpness beneath that steadiness part of her I’d seen when she told me once she wasn’t going to be used and the blanket felt thin.

“Clara.” I sounded tiny. I hated myself for it.

I told her in bits. Staccato. The private room. The glass. How his laugh sounded small, because I couldn’t stop seeing him smile and thinking I did this. How the men had eyes like knives and had shown me photos. How I ran. How the mask had left one of our nights behind me like a footprint.

Silence after I finished. Long, soft, pressurized. I waited to be told to go to the police. To confess. To do whatever big, brave thing people wanted from someone like me.

Instead Clara said, without the shaking I felt in my own voice: “Then you can’t stay there. Not another night.”

“What? No” I started. Because you say no when someone tells you to run. That feels normal, like a cough you can clear. But Clara didn’t give me room to argue. Her voice became brisk. “Pack what you can. I’ll pick you up. Meet at the bakery at nine. Wear something plain. No phones. Bring cash.”

She told me like she’d been waiting for this call. Like she’d already packed the bag for me. There was a practical calm to her that almost made me trust that we could hack our way out of chaos. I said yes like someone who’d been given instructions in a language she half-remembered from childhood. Because yes felt safer than starting the conversation about what to do with the rest of my life.

She went through details no bank cards, only cash, a burner phone she’d hand me, don’t look back. Her words were bolts: efficient, cold, exactly the thing that fixed cracks.

I did what she said. I shoved clothes into the bag; my hands were clumsy. I packed light like she told me to, even though every tiny thing felt like the last piece of my old life that I could touch. I packed the sweater that smells faintly of smoke because it makes my shoulders feel smaller. I left behind necklaces, photos, the stupid little thing Marco once gave me because I thought stupid maybe the weight of all that would slow them down from finding me.

On the street, the city was doing its usual things. Buses coughed out people. A shopkeeper swept. A kid chased a football in a doorway. Normal. The normal made my chest twist in the worst way, like the world was pretending nothing happened. It was obscene. I walked like I was trying to keep my face still head bowed, eyes moving only enough to navigate. Clara had told me to look distracted. I looked haunted. Close enough.

The bakery bench was cracked and cold. I sat and smoothed my hands over my bag until my knuckles white-knuckled it. Minutes stretched. Ten felt like an hour felt like a day. When she pulled up late, mercifully late and not late at all my whole body breathed out. She slid from the car with sunglasses and a scarf and the kind of posture people get when they mean business.

“You look like you’re about to hurl,” she said. She said it like a fact. Not mean, not unkind, just direct. I laughed, a brittle sound that surprised both of us.

She pressed a disposable phone into my hand. “Call this if anything goes wrong,” she said. “Use it for me only. Don’t answer any other number.”

She handed me a thick envelope of cash and the look on her face when she did it like she was giving me a lifeline made my throat close up. I wanted to tell her she didn’t have to do this. I wanted to tell her everything. I wanted to collapse into her and cry and make it legal.

Instead I swallowed, because the words wouldn’t form. I mouthed, “Thank you,” which was useless and true. She only nodded. There was no heroism in her. There was only something like fierce, tired loyalty.

At the bus station she ran through instructions like a drill sergeant: sit near the back, head down, act like you’re moving to another life not running from one. Don’t answer the phone unless it’s that number. If you see anyone suspicious, get off two stops later. Change buses. Keep your hood up. Her voice was small and fierce and the details made it all feel possible. Not because the plan was good. Because she didn’t give up.

When the bus pulled up, it was the ordinary kind of cacophony: old men with newspapers, kids with backpacks, the hiss and groans of brakes. The normalcy felt like mockery. I clutched my bag, the strap digging into my palm. Clara kissed the top of my head quickly, like a benediction, and pushed me up the steps.

“Promise me you won’t come back,” she said when I turned. Her sunglasses hid the wetness in her eyes if there was any. Her mouth was a hard line. “Promise.”

I swallowed. The word stuck like soda in my throat. “I promise,” I said, but it felt like lying.

She waved me off like a mother waving a kid to school. The bus door closed and the city receded like someone pulling a curtain. Through the window, I watched her small in the driver’s mirror, waving, then slipping away.

And I felt very alone.

The bus took me out of the city edge, out of the noise. It moved through places where the lights were fewer and the houses smaller. I did not sleep. Not even close. I stared at my hands, the way my fingers trembled, the way the bag shifted slightly when I moved. I thought of blood, of Marco’s skin, of the ease of his smile like a confession how easy he’d been to fool. My stomach rolled and I cramped my hands tight in my lap until the knuckles turned white.

Why him? Why did it have to end him? I kept asking myself, even though the answer slashed back at me: because I let it. I say that, and the thought kills parts of me over and over.

People sleep on buses. I watched them and envied them. A child snored, falling on his backpack. An old woman with hearing aids read a paperback like nothing bad had happened in the world. That normalness again felt like an insult, and I couldn’t reconcile it with the mess I’d left.

Hours passed in a blur. I changed buses twice because Clara told me to and because it felt like movement, like I was undoing footprints. I kept to the back, hood up, face down, watching the city move by in slats of light and shadow.

When I finally let myself think a thought that wasn’t just panic, it was a small, ridiculous, ugly thing: what if they came for Clara anyway? What if I left and she still paid? That thought made bile rise so sharp I had to stand and lean against the bus pole until my vision blurred.

Survival becomes a list after a while. Don’t look. Don’t answer. Don’t trust. Don’t go to places you’ve been. Don’t touch the phone that knows all your numbers. Don’t send messages that can be traced. Don’t tell your bones to rest when your head screams to run.

I thought of Marco’s face a thousand times. His laughter like a little reckless bell. The way he’d said my name like he’d offered it as a gift. That is what eats me. That is what I carry like a stone.

The bus slowed and people drifted off, and I kept going because going felt safer than staying. The city rolled away; the sun climbed mean and indifferent. I kept telling myself a mantra that I’d survive, that Clara would be safe, that someone would pull the knots from this and tie the loose ends into something that didn’t cut. But mantras are thin.

At one stop, an old guy looked at me and said, “You look like you lost someone.” He wasn’t judging. He just said it, like a statement about the weather.

I nearly told him everything. I nearly told everyone. Instead I shook my head and told a lie I’d been practicing in the mirror “No, sir. I’m fine.” The lie tasted like iron.

By night I knew, deep in my bones: Clara had given me a way out not because she wanted me gone forever, but because she wanted me safe. Maybe she was right. Maybe the costs of staying were too high. Maybe this was the only way to keep the one person I loved alive. Maybe that was the kind of love that looked like exile.

I didn’t know which was worse: the guilt that threatened to eat me or the relief that thinly threaded under it like a poisonous comfort. Both felt like knives.

When the sun finally dipped, when the bus skidded and my small town came into view, I stepped off feeling as if I were both less and too much at once.

I watched the city lights fade in the rearview mirror like a dying constellation. I had left my life behind like a sweater on a chair. I stuffed my hands in my pockets, felt for the little disposable phone Clara had given me, and thought, stupid thing, I am alive.

But I also thought: she wanted me gone.

And some promises wound up feeling like sentences.