Fire Love Escape To Monte Carlo

“Then we use another door.”

“There are no other doors that lead out without crossing the servants’ wing.”

His gaze shifted toward the dark corridor. “There is the conservatory.”

“That passage is alarmed.”

“So is this one, apparently.”

The key trembled between her fingers. “The front door was supposed to be open.”

“I know.”

“You said you checked.”

“I checked the latch.” His voice tightened. “I didn’t expect someone to throw the deadbolt afterward.”

The accusation landed because it was not quite an accusation. Luca had made the plan. Mara had trusted it. Trust, between them, had always been a dangerous currency - spent in kisses, withheld in daylight, demanded when neither could afford the price.

A floorboard creaked above.

They froze.

Mara’s pulse stumbled. The sound came again, faintly, followed by the whisper of fabric against a banister.

Luca drew her into the narrow recess beside the coat cupboard. His hand settled at her waist, not claiming, asking. She nodded once before he pulled her against him.

The cupboard smelled of cedar and old wool. His chest pressed to hers. Every breath became an argument against making a sound.

Footsteps crossed the landing overhead.

Mara could feel Luca counting them by the way his fingers moved against her side: one, two, three. His thumb paused over the seam of her dress.

She lifted her face. His mouth was inches away.

“If we’re caught,” she breathed, “you’ll tell them this was my idea.”

His eyes lowered to her lips. “It was.”

She pinched his side.

He nearly smiled. “You’re the one who packed the passports.”

“And you’re the one who bought tickets to Monte Carlo.”

“Because you said you wanted somewhere no one could find us.”

“I said I wanted somewhere no one could tell me what my life was supposed to look like.”

The footsteps stopped.

Luca’s expression changed. The teasing fell away, leaving the man who had stood across from her at their own dinner table while her family discussed their marriage as if it were an arrangement between estates. The man who had kissed her in secret for three months. The man who had asked her to leave with him and then given her one night to decide.

“I know the difference,” he whispered.

Mara’s throat tightened. “Do you?”

His hand slipped from her waist. “What does that mean?”

“It means Monte Carlo is your escape too. You want me beside you, but you haven’t said what happens when we get there.”

The house seemed to lean nearer.

“We find a room,” he said.

“A hideout.”

“A beginning.”

“For how long?”

His jaw flexed. “As long as we need.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“No.” He glanced toward the landing. “It’s the only honest one I have.”

The footsteps moved again, away from them.

Mara should have felt relief. Instead, the silence between them grew more dangerous than the sound above. She had spent the last hour folding dresses into a leather case, slipping jewelry into a false lining, and watching Luca move through the library with the calm precision of a man who had already chosen her. Yet the question remained lodged beneath her ribs.

If he wanted her, why did she still feel like something he was rescuing?

“I’m afraid,” she said.

The words escaped before she could dress them in anger.

Luca looked back at her.

Mara had not meant to say it. Fear was not the thing she showed him. She showed him impatience, desire, the bright cruelty of a woman who refused to be pitied. But the locked door had stripped something loose inside her.

“I’m afraid I’ll leave this house,” she continued, “and discover I only wanted to be wanted by someone. Not necessarily by you.”

His face went still.

She forced herself not to look away. “And I’m afraid that once we’re gone, you’ll discover you only wanted to win.”

For a moment, he said nothing.

Then he reached for her hand and placed it against his chest. Beneath the shirt, his heart beat hard and unevenly.

“I have been losing to you for years,” he said. “In every room where I had to pretend you were only my wife. At every table where you smiled at men who thought they could buy your obedience. I don’t want to win.”

His fingers tightened around hers.

“I want you to choose me when no one is watching.”

The confession struck deeper than any vow could have. Mara felt the heat behind her eyes and hated him for seeing it.

“I am choosing you now.”

“Then choose the door.”

A faint metallic click came from the entrance.

Mara turned.

The brass handle had shifted. Someone was trying the front door from the outside.

Luca pulled her behind him. The hallway seemed to narrow, the dark pressing in from both sides. A second click followed, then the scrape of a key against the lock.

“They know,” Mara whispered.

“Not yet.”

The handle dipped again.

Luca caught her hand and led her toward the corridor beside the staircase. His movements were silent, but urgency sharpened every gesture. Mara gathered her skirt and followed, her bare feet slipping on the polished floor. The leather case waited near the library door, too large to carry without striking the walls.

Luca saw her glance at it.

“Leave it.”

“My passport is inside.”

“Then take the passport.”

She darted back, unlatched the case, and plunged her hand beneath the folded clothes. Behind them, the front door groaned.

“Luca,” she hissed.

He stood at the corridor’s mouth, listening. “Mara.”

She found the passport and a small velvet pouch containing the only money she had kept from the household accounts. The rest could be replaced. The passport could not.

She ran to him.

They reached the conservatory passage, where moonlight lay in pale bars across the floor. At its end, a glass door opened onto the rear garden. A red alarm light glowed above it.

Mara stopped. “No.”

Luca examined the panel beside the door. “There’s a manual release.”

“And the alarm?”

“Will sound.”

“Then we can’t use it.”

Behind them, a door opened somewhere in the house.

A man’s voice called, “Is anyone there?”

Mara’s skin went cold.

Luca looked at her, then at the alarm. “The kitchen.”

“The kitchen connects to the courtyard.”

“And the courtyard gate?”

“Bolted from inside.”

“Good.”

“Luca, the servants’ corridor runs past the pantry. If anyone is there - ”

“We don’t have time to be invisible.”

He stepped toward the conservatory door.

Mara caught his sleeve. “You said we wouldn’t be noticed.”

“I said we’d try.”

Another voice answered from the entrance hall. This one belonged to the night steward. “Check the east passage.”

The house had begun to wake.

Luca covered Mara’s hand with his. “When I open this, the alarm may give us thirty seconds before they reach the corridor.”

“May?”

His mouth curved without humor. “I’m trying to be honest.”

She should have slapped him. Instead, she pulled him close and kissed him.

It was not gentle. Her fear gave it teeth. Luca made a rough sound against her mouth, one hand finding the back of her neck while the other held her waist. For three fierce seconds, the house disappeared - the locked door, the voices, the life they were abandoning. There was only his breath, the warmth of his lips, and the certainty that she had chosen this man before she had understood what choosing meant.

When she drew back, his forehead rested against hers.

“Don’t make that a goodbye,” he murmured.

“It isn’t.”

“Promise me.”

Mara looked into his eyes. “I am not promising forever because you’re frightened.”

“I’m not frightened.”

“You are shaking.”

“So are you.”

She almost laughed. The sound broke in her throat.

Then she nodded. “I’m coming with you.”

“That isn’t the promise.”

“It’s the truth.”

He accepted it. For now.

Luca turned to the alarm panel. He slid a thin metal pick from his pocket and worked beneath the casing. The red light blinked across his knuckles. Mara heard the hurried approach of footsteps, closer now, the soft slap of shoes on the marble.

“Luca.”

“Almost.”

“Now.”

The panel snapped open.

He pulled the manual release.

The alarm erupted.

A shrill bell tore through the house, followed by the violent flash of red lights along the corridor. Mara flinched as Luca shoved the glass door wide. Cold rain blew in, striking her cheeks and bare shoulders.

They ran.

The garden stones were slick beneath her feet. Luca seized her hand as she stumbled, dragging her between clipped hedges toward the kitchen wing. Behind them, voices burst into the conservatory.

“Back door!”

“Stop them!”

Mara’s breath came in ragged bursts. Her dress caught on a rose branch, tearing the fabric at her thigh. She kept moving. Luca’s hand was the only fixed point in the spinning dark.

They reached the kitchen entrance. Luca tried the handle.

Locked.

He swore under his breath.

Mara pressed against the door, listening. Beyond it, the kitchen hummed with the low vibration of the alarm. A light flickered under the threshold.

“Can you open it?” she asked.

“Not without breaking the glass.”

“Then break it.”

He looked at her. “You’ll cut yourself.”

“Not if you wrap your coat around my arm.”

A new sound carried across the garden - the scrape of the conservatory door, then running footsteps.

Luca took off his coat and wrapped it around her forearm. His hands moved quickly, but his eyes stayed on her face.

“Tell me to stop,” he said.

“Don’t.”

He smashed the small pane beside the handle with the heel of his hand.

Glass burst inward. The alarm swallowed the noise. Luca reached through, unlocked the door, and pulled Mara into the kitchen.

Heat struck her first, thick with yeast, onions, and damp stone. Copper pans gleamed along the walls. They crossed the room at a sprint, knocking a wooden stool aside. It clattered across the tiles.

From the corridor came a shout.

“They’re in the kitchen!”

Luca found the courtyard door and wrenched the bolt free. Rain hammered the flagstones beyond. The gate stood at the far end, black iron and twice their height.

Mara stared at it. “That gate is locked too.”

Luca looked back toward the kitchen, where moving shadows spilled beneath the doorway.

“Then we climb.”

He boosted her onto the lower rail. Her wet skirt dragged at her legs. She reached for the top, fingers slipping on iron slick with rain.

“Luca - ”

“I have you.”

Below, the kitchen door slammed open.

Mara hauled herself higher. Luca climbed after her, one hand braced at her ankle, the other gripping the bars. A beam of light swept across the courtyard.

“There!” someone shouted.

Mara swung one leg over the gate. The metal bit through her palm. Luca pushed from below, and she landed hard on the other side in the narrow lane, pain flashing up her knee.

He dropped beside her a heartbeat later.

For one breath, they crouched together in the rain, listening to the alarm shriek behind the walls.

Then the gate rattled.

Luca rose and pulled Mara against him. His coat was gone, his shirt soaked through, his hair dark against his forehead. He touched the torn place at her thigh, careful not to expose more skin than the rain already did.

“Are you hurt?”

“Only enough to blame you.”

“Good.”

“You call this good?”

“It means you’re still arguing.”

A distant engine turned over at the end of the lane - their driver, waiting where he had been told. But from inside the house came the unmistakable crash of the gate being forced.

Mara looked toward the car, then back at Luca.

The plan was gone. The quiet departure, gone. They had traded minutes for noise, certainty for a bleeding hand and a compromised route. By morning, everyone in the house would know.

Luca took her face between his palms. “We can still turn back.”

The offer hurt more than pressure would have.

Mara glanced at the dark windows of the house, at the life behind them that had never once felt like hers. Then she looked at the man who had asked her to choose him without promising to make the choice easy.

“Drive,” she said.

His eyes searched hers. “To Monte Carlo?”

“To wherever the road stops belonging to them.”

Behind them, the gate gave way with a thunderous clang.

Luca caught her hand, and together they ran toward the waiting car as lights flared behind the house.

End of chapter one. 7 more chapters and about 17,351 words in the full book.