Chapter 261. The Getaway Weekend

The world fell away in layers. First, the grey crush of London, seen from the helicopter as a sprawling, damp circuit board. Then the sterile, efficient hum of the Gulfstream’s cabin. Finally, the sun-drenched blur of the Ligurian coastline, where ochre villas clung to cliffs above a sea so vividly blue it seemed to vibrate.

Anton had given no destination, only instructions: pack for warmth and sun. Sabatine, for once, had asked no questions, a quiet, knowing smile playing on her lips as she folded linen shirts into a soft duffel. The secrecy had shifted; it was no longer about the surprise of the event, but about the gift of the moment itself.

The car that met them at the private airstrip was a vintage Alfa Romeo Spider, convertible top down. Anton took the wheel, the coastal road unwinding before them like a ribbon of baked clay and fragrant rosemary. The air was a physical sensation—warm, pine-scented, carrying the distant, salty tang of the sea. Sabatine leaned back in the passenger seat, her head tipped to the sun, her fingers trailing in the wind. The tension that was her default setting, the low-grade hum of threat-assessment, seemed to evaporate with every kilometre.

“No encrypted packages here,” she murmured, her eyes closed behind her sunglasses.

“The only code is the one for the wine cellar,”Anton replied, shifting gears with a smooth, satisfying click. “And I memorised it.”

The villa was not a palace, but a sanctuary. A low, honey-coloured stone house with faded green shutters, tucked into a hillside overlooking a secluded cove. Bougainvillea cascaded in violent magenta riots over pergolas heavy with wisteria. The only sounds were the distant crash of waves, the chirp of cicadas, and the lazy drone of a single fishing boat far below.

A quiet, elderly couple, Gina and Franco, who cared for the property, greeted them with shy smiles and a simple lunch laid out on the terrace: crusty bread, local olive oil that tasted of grass and sunshine, fat olives, and creamy slabs of mozzarella di bufala. Then, with a discreet nod, they vanished.

They were utterly, deliciously alone.

The first day was a lesson in stillness. They swam in the villa’s infinity pool, its edge seeming to pour into the Tyrrhenian Sea below. They read on sun-warmed loungers, the only interruption the clink of ice in tall glasses of lemonade. Anton watched Sabatine sink into the quiet, her body losing its London rigidity, her laughter coming easier, triggered by nothing more than the antics of a gecko on the wall or the sheer, absurd perfection of a ripe peach.

As the sun dipped, painting the sky in strokes of lavender and gold, they walked down the steep, winding path to the private cove. The pebbled beach was empty, the water clear and cool. Sabatine kicked off her sandals and waded in, her trousers rolled to the knee. Anton followed, the smooth stones shifting under his feet.

“This,” she said, gazing out at the horizon where sea and sky melted together, “is a different kind of security. No walls. No sensors. Just… distance.”

“The best security protocol of all,”he agreed, coming to stand beside her. The water lapped at their ankles. “Geography.”

That night, under a canopy of stars so dense and bright they seemed within reach, they ate on the terrace. Gina had left a simple , a rich seafood stew, in the oven. They drank a local red, and talked of nothing consequential—books they’d pretend to read, places they’d never been, childhood holidays that felt like someone else’s life. The conversation meandered, punctuated by comfortable silences filled with the symphony of the night.

It was in one such silence, as they cleared the plates together in the rustic kitchen, that Anton felt it. The nervousness that had plagued him in London was gone. The frantic need for a ‘perfect moment’ had dissolved in the Italian sun. Here, every moment was perfect because she was in it. The question wasn’t a peak to be scaled; it was the air they were breathing.

He didn’t plan it. He simply turned from drying a plate to find her leaning against the counter, watching him, a soft, contented smile on her face. Her hair was loose, still carrying the scent of sea salt and sunshine. In the soft glow of the kitchen light, she looked like a dream he’d once been too afraid to have.

The ring was upstairs, tucked in the drawer of his bedside table. He hadn’t brought it down. He didn’t need to.

He put the plate down, the tea towel following. He crossed the few feet of terracotta tile between them.

“What?”she asked, her smile tilting, curious at his intensity.

He didn’t answer with words.He took her face in his hands and kissed her. It was a kiss of sun-warmed skin and the taste of red wine, of deep peace and deeper belonging. It was a conversation that had started in a London penthouse filled with suspicion and had found its purest dialect here, in a kitchen smelling of garlic and basil.

When he pulled back, he kept his forehead against hers, his eyes closed, breathing her in. “I love you,” he said, the words simple, profound, and utterly inadequate for the universe of feeling they contained.

“I love you,” she echoed, her hands coming up to cover where they held her face.

He opened his eyes. Her gaze was clear, steady, waiting. He didn’t need the diamond, the sunset, the grand gesture. He needed this. The quiet kitchen, the hum of the refrigerator, the scent of her.

“Marry me, Sabatine.”

There was no gasp. No dramatic pause. Her smile simply deepened, blooming into a radiance that outshone the stars outside the window. It was the smile of a woman who had been waiting, not for the question, but for the moment when he would finally be free enough to ask it.

“Yes,” she said, the word a sigh of absolute certainty. “A thousand times, yes.”

He kissed her again, a kiss of sheer, unadulterated joy. When they broke apart, laughing softly, he remembered. “Wait. You’re supposed to have the ring. I have a whole speech.”

“You can give me the speech tomorrow,”she said, her arms winding around his neck. “And the ring. For now, this is enough. More than enough.”

And it was. They stood wrapped in each other in the quiet kitchen, the promise made and accepted, as fundamental and right as the sea sighing against the cliffs below. The getaway weekend had yielded its treasure, not through planned spectacle, but through the blissful, quiet alchemy of sunlight, sea breeze, and a love that needed no fanfare to be complete. The future was waiting, but for now, there was only the perfect, endless present, sealed with a kiss and a whispered ‘yes’ in an Italian kitchen.

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