Chapter 2: The Price of Freedom

 

 

Elena had never been one to surrender, but freedom had come at a cost.

She had been young, full of wild dreams and reckless passion when she met Victor, a man twice her age with a fortune vast enough to promise her the world. He had fallen for her fire, her unpredictability, the way she seemed to float outside the rigid expectations of his refined circles. But his love was not the kind that nurtured; it was a love that bound, that gripped tighter with every day she spent in his gilded prison. He wanted her tamed, molded into something polished, obedient. She wanted the wind in her hair, the ability to make choices without permission.

So she made the hardest choice of all. She left.

Her daughter, her sweet Sofia, had been only a baby when Elena had walked away from Victor's estate, her heart heavier than the suitcase in her trembling hand. She hadn't wanted to leave her behind, but what future could she offer her child when she had nothing but defiance? Her family had taken Sofia in, promising to keep her safe while Elena did what she had to—survive. She would send money, build a foundation. And one day, she would return.

That day had not yet come.

For ten years, Elena had drifted through a foreign land, working jobs that drained her spirit but filled her pockets just enough to keep sending home. Waitressing, cleaning, enduring the leers of men who saw her as an object, a fantasy. Each night, she returned to a rented room barely big enough to house her loneliness. And every night, she dreamed of him.

A man she had never met, yet felt in every corner of her soul.

The dreams had started the night she left Victor. A tall, broad-shouldered stranger with warm brown eyes and a quiet strength in the way he held her. In her dreams, he never spoke, yet she understood him. He was home. He was safety. But the cruelest part of the dream was waking up to a world where he did not exist. A decade of hope had turned into a decade of doubt. Perhaps he was merely a fabrication, a manifestation of longing woven into the fabric of her subconscious.

Still, she searched. In every man who passed her by, in every fleeting romance that left her emptier than before. She chased shadows, trying to find him, trying to prove to herself that he was real. But reality had little mercy.

And now, sitting on a dimly lit patio, listening to Bill prattle on about destiny, she felt something she hadn’t allowed herself to feel in years. A bone-deep exhaustion.

Elena rubbed her temples as Bill droned on, his words blurring into white noise. Another man with another empty promise. She had wasted too much time on illusions. She had a daughter waiting for her, a past still catching up.

Maybe it was time to stop dreaming. Maybe it was time to wake up.

But the question clawing at her heart was simple—had she already slept too long?