Carol was a little mortified as she searched for a fresh pair of underwear and her pajamas. She was to share a room with Sebastian? She had no doubt that it was going to be a very awkward one week. She glanced surreptitiously at him to see what he was doing and whether he was paying attention to her and was not surprised to see that he had brought out his laptop and was in the process of turning it on. It was always work and more work for him, not that she could blame him as this was not a real honeymoon and there was the fact that he was actually on a business trip.Quickly, she gathered up her underwear and pajamas and disappeared into the bathroom where she ran a bath and soaked in it for over thirty minutes, humming her favorite song the whole while until Sebastian pounded on the bathroom door.“What is it?” Carol called out, not yet ready to get out of the bathroom as she was really enjoying her bath.“You've been in there since forever. I need to take a shower too.”

By the time Carol came back in the evening, famished and sweaty from all the shopping that she had done, Sebastian was nowhere to be found, neither did it look like he even came back at all in all the time that she had been away. She dumped the parcels she was holding on a nearby chair and proceeded to take off all her clothes before having a much-needed bath. The day had been rewarding, albeit stressful. She had visited a lot of tourist attractions and shopped a little. Now that she knew that the money that Sebastian had sent to her was hers to keep, she could use it freely. Some days ago, she had sent the money that her mother had requested from her but did not even get a thank you for it. Carol sighed and shook her head. By the time she was done having her bath and had eaten dinner, Sebastian was still nowhere to be found. Carol was beginning to become a little worried. What sort of business meeting was this that kept him out till nearly ten in the night? “I’ll ju

Jessica nodded in the affirmative, that she understood everything that the woman had said. She would be damned if she let herself get killed when she had a chance to get free after Sebastian’s uncle had ordered that she be killed. She still did not understand any of what Charlotte’s mission was, and frankly, she did not give a flying fuck. All that mattered was that she got out of the whole thing alive and well... or as well as could be, considering her current state. “Of course, I don’t need to tell you that when I said you are to keep a low profile, I meant that you are to stay away, not just from Sebastian and his family, but also from everyone that you know, your family included,” Charlotte said, watching Jessica intently as though she would be able to decipher from her face if she would follow these instructions to the letter or not.

The days passed in pretty much the same fashion for Carol. Sebastian left the hotel most times before she woke up and came back after she had gone to bed. As such, they hardly ever saw each other, not to talk of talking to each other. Carol did not mind though. Since that night that she had called him to check up on him and he had yelled at her for no reason, she had begun to dislike him even more than she had before. It was such a pity that she still had such a long time to spend with him. She spent her days painting the different places that she had visited, deciding that when she got back home, she would send them to some of the homeless shelters in which she volunteered while she was still single. It was the evening before she and Sebastian were scheduled to leave Paris, and she had packed up all her things and was now seated and painting the Eiffel tower. As usual, Sebastian was not around and

The fleeting camaraderie that Sebastian and Carol shared the night before they left Paris disappeared as though it had never been when they got back home. Carol never saw much of Sebastian in the months that followed that time, and when she did see him, he acted as though they were strangers. The only time that there was a semblance of normalcy between them was whenever his uncle called and they had to talk to the man together. As time passed, Carol began to hate this arrangement with a passion. If he wanted to act like she did not exist, then it was better that he did so all the time, and not just when it suited his purposes. He made sure that she got her monthly allowance at the end of every month, and even doubled it, making it a hundred thousand dollars from the fifty thousand that it was when she first started to live with him. When Carol asked him about it, he told her that it was a reward that he thought that she should have for playing her part in trying to convince his uncle