Chapter seven

Adriana panted as she closed the door to her room and leaned heavily against it. When that didn’t seem to calm her down, she started to pace back and forth before finally settling down on her bed, her mind racing on what to do next.

It didn’t seem to dawn on her yet that she had a whole life growing inside her. A life put in her by a potential killer. She recoils at the mere thought. Adriana cautiously looks down at her belly as if the baby would disappear if she moved the wrong way or tilted her body the wrong way. She wraps both arms gently over her stomach like some sort of signal to her eyes, before she starts to cry uncontrollably.

What was she going to do? She could not get an abortion. No. Piper and her made a promise to their late mom, when they were younger. It was sort of an inside joke between all three of them, but still, Adriana felt like it was the least she could do to appease her dead mom for turning out the way she did. Keep a joking promise.

Run away.

That was it. Her mind was made up. She was going to run away with her unborn child. She tried to convince herself that was the best thing for everyone involved. If she involved Piper or her best friend, they would either try to talk her out of it, convince her to abort it or be in danger of Niklaus harming them for information. And Adriana could not have that. She could not let her sister's life get ruined because she fell for the charms of a killer.

“What are you doing?”

Adriana laughed dryly. “ What do you mean? I’m helping out of course.” She replied casually. Piper stared back at her like she had an alien growing on her forehead, she shrugged and went back to mixing her cornbread batter.

Adriana tried to make conversation. “How is everything at work? What about the homicide case? Did you get it sorted? Oh! How have Ray and Scott been handling school? You know, with the whole change of neighborhood.” Ray and Scott were Piper's seven year old twin boys. Piper was let go at her old small time firm in Brooklyn. Adriana remembered how happy she had been when an old friend gave her a solid rec at one of the biggest law firms in New York. She was even happier when she got the email affirming her new position at her new job. And so they had to put their whole life in Brooklyn to a stop and move to Manhattan permanently.

“ What is with you?” Piper asked in between laughs as she placed the corn bread into the oven. She turned to face Adriana fully after wiping her hands on a Napkin.

“ I know you literally don’t care about my work life. The kids, maybe. But definitely not me. So come on, spill, what do you need?”

Adriana watched Piper say she didn’t care about her, her tone more serious than ever. She tried to subtly blink back the tears threatening to spill, when it wasn’t working as fast as she wanted, she feigned a laugh and avoided Piper's gaze as she pretended to grab a condiment from one of the cabinets, making her turn her back to her sister. The tears had cleared by then so she turned to face Piper again.

To say Piper and her were like twins growing up, despite the six year age gap, was an understatement. It was easier then to lie that they were twins because they looked so much alike back then, even though they had different hair and eye color and even different features. Still, they managed to look alike somehow. Must have been their sisterly bond. It hurt Adriana to agree that they were no longer close.

Neither of them would admit it, but their bond fell apart when their mom died. How could it not? Their dad had bailed the moment their mum got sick and the chemo expenses became too much. Piper was 22, barely done with college and Adriana was 16, still trying to fit in and trying to figure out why she had huge, red, painful bumps on her face whenever she got her period and stuck between waiting till prom night or waiting till college to do it for the first time. They were just kids who barely knew how to live for themselves and suddenly had to start living for each other and their late mom.

“ I care about you Piper.”

She hesitates before continuing. “ I just feel like I don’t even know what is going on in your life anymore. We used to be so close. We told each other everything. We had the best kind of fun. What happened?” She finally said. It was obvious she was reminiscing about simpler times, as a smile slowly took over her face.

Suddenly, she had forgotten she was pregnant with a potential killer’s child. She forgot she was about to change the course of her life and possibly her sister’s life as well, completely for that matter. Piper would be devastated to find out she ran away. She forgot her unborn child would have to go to school and see other kids get picked up by their dads. Or their dads show up for them during career day. She forgot she was running away and leaving the best part of her life— Piper and the boys, Celine— behind, without even a proper goodbye. Her hands started to sweat.

Piper sighed a deep and exhausted sigh.” Well, life happened Addie. We had to grow up quicker than we should ever have to.”

Adriana smiled a little. “One of us had to grow up.” She sighed sadly. It was one of those ‘ I wish we could turn back the hands of time and do everything differently’ sighs.

“ Damn right!” They laughed in unison.

“It was always something with me wasn’t it? Oh! remember the day you caught me smo- well trying to smoke weed with that 19 year old weed dealer at the rooftop of Freda’s?”

Piper threw her head back slightly at the memory. “Heaven’s sake! Do I remember?!” She asked dramatically.

“You were supposed to be in school Addie. And then I get a call from Freda that you were on the rooftop of her restaurant with some 40 year old drug dealer smoking weed.” She paused to laugh. “Would you forget something like that Adriana?”

“You wouldn’t let me defend myself. And he was 19 and dealt weed not drugs Piper, you’re being dramatic.” She replied defensively then rolled her eyes.

“ Potato, potahto Addie.”

“ I love you Piper.”

Piper fake gasped. “Okay, who are you and what did you do with my sister?” She noticed Adriana staring at her with all seriousness. Which was a first. So she hugged her tightly before saying, “ I love you baby sis.”

As she’s seated quietly in her taxi, on her way to the airport to board her flight, Adriana tells herself again, like she has done for the past two days since her decision to leave Manhattan. This is the best decision for everyone. Yes. She was going to start a new life with her baby in Chicago. Even though she didn’t know how yet. Hell, she didn’t even have a solid plan. All she did was book a flight.

She tried not to panic and steadied her hands in between her thighs to stop them from shaking. She had the urge to take a glance at the taxi driver from the rear view mirror —expecting to catch him staring at her with concern for himself—so she did. She sighs in frustration when she sees him perfectly focused on his driving. The past few days had her so on edge that she actually might have developed paranoia. Or maybe it was the fact that she had asked the taxi driver to park at a safe distance from her sister's house, and he must have watched her— dressed in all black— sneak out of the house with a huge suitcase in her hands like a literal thief in the night.

She decided the previous day that leaving at night would be easier. She had gone back and forth so much on whether to leave her sister a note to let her know she was fine or just bail. She settled for the former, when she realized Piper could panic and search endlessly for her if she left without any word. So she left a note for Piper about how she could no longer be a burden to her or her family. And she was going to seek a better life. You know, the usual. Cliché but true.

Adriana had concluded that if she had to be on the run for the rest of her life to protect her child from Niklaus then she would. Without hesitation. She had one regret though. She regretted not telling Celine she was pregnant. She regretted not calling Celine to tell her what she had seen at Niklaus’s mansion that day. She would have known what to do. She regretted not even calling Celine to ask how her writer's retreat in California had been going. Most of all she regretted not telling her best friend she was starting a new life in a foreign city she had never been to. Celine would have helped pick out a new name for a new identity. And that regret and guilt went on to sit heavily in Adriana’s chest for years.