It doesn't really "break free" from gravitational attraction. It's always being attracted so it doesn't "break free". Escape velocity just means that that your kinetic energy is matches gravitational potential energy and hence, when you're moving away, you gain potential energy and decrease in kinetic energy but you can only decrease kinetic energy till it's 0 (which occurs at infinity). At that point, you'll have 0 KE and 0 GPE assuming you escaped with a velocity equal to the escape velocity.