Chapter 264. The Interrupted Proposal

The plan, in Anton’s mind, had been one of sublime, elegant simplicity. They would finish their torta della nonna, its lemon-scented cream and pine nuts, a perfect, light finale. The last of the Prosecco would be poured. He would wait for the precise moment when the last sliver of sun vanished into the sea, leaving the world in the tender, purple hush of twilight—that breathless pause before the stars took command.

Then, he would rise. He would speak the words he’d carved into his heart. He would kneel, not as a subject, but as a supplicant before his own greatest fortune. The ring would catch the first starlight. And her answer, which he already knew in his soul, would be whispered into a silence broken only by the distant sigh of the waves.

It was, he thought, a perfect orchestration of emotion and atmosphere.

He had not, however, coordinated with the village of Portofino, five miles down the coast.

They were halfway through the torta. Sabatine had just closed her eyes to savour a bite, a look of pure, uncomplicated pleasure on her face. Anton’s hand was in his pocket, his fingers closed around the velvet box, his pulse a steady, anticipatory drumbeat. He took a breath, the prelude to movement.

The first BOOM was so immense it seemed to come from inside his own chest.

The sky to the south, over the dark, humped silhouette of the headland, exploded in a supernova of emerald green. It detonated in a silent, stunning flower of light, which then dissolved into a thousand falling, glittering tendrils with a sound like a celestial sigh.

Anton jerked, his chair scraping loudly on the flagstones. Sabatine’s eyes flew open, her body instinctively twisting toward the threat, her hand dropping to where a weapon wasn’t. For a split second, they were both operatives again, assessing the blast radius.

Then, a second CRACK-THUD and the sky bloomed into a vast, weeping willow of silver and gold.

“Fuochi d’artificio,” Franco’s voice came calmly from the doorway of the villa. He pointed south. “Festa della Madonna della Neve. In Portofino. Every year. Very beautiful, no?” He gave a small, apologetic shrug, as if he’d just remembered this minor detail, and retreated.

Fireworks. A festival. Not an attack.

The tension snapped. Sabatine’s rigid posture dissolved. She looked from the dazzling, silent chrysanthemum of white light now unfurling in the sky, to Anton’s face—which was frozen in a rictus of thwarted romantic agony—and her lips began to twitch.

Another volley erupted, this one a rapid salvo of crimson rockets that screamed into the heavens and burst into a synchronized canopy of red stars. Pop-pop-pop-bang-bang-bang!

A snort escaped her. Then a choked giggle. She clapped a hand over her mouth, but her shoulders were shaking. Her eyes, wide with mirth, met him across the table, gleaming in the reflected, multicoloured light.

Anton stared, his perfect moment lying in glittering, noisy ruins around him. The profound speech in his head had been replaced by a single, furious, internal scream. The twilight hush was now a cacophonous celebration of some saint he’d never heard of.

A particularly enormous shell went off, a triple-layered monstrosity of blue, purple, and white that filled the entire southern sky, its thunderous report rolling over the cliffs like approaching artillery.

Sabatine lost the battle entirely. She threw her head back and howled with laughter. It was the same free, unfettered sound from the jetty, but now tinged with the absurdity of the situation. She laughed until tears streamed down her face, gasping for air between detonations.

“Oh… oh, Anton…” she managed, wiping her eyes. “Your face…! You looked like you’d just been personally betrayed by the universe!”

He wanted to be annoyed. He’d planned for poetry, and the cosmos had delivered a punchline. But the sight of her—doubled over, beautiful, utterly delighted by the catastrophic ruination of his proposal—was impossible to resist. A reluctant smile tugged at his own lips. The sheer, ridiculous humanity of it began to seep through his disappointment.

“It’s not funny,” he tried, but it came out as a grumble, undermined by his own growing amusement.

“It’s hilarious!” she wheezed, as a sequence of whistling comets streaked skyward. “The most meticulously planned man on earth… foiled by… festive pyrotechnics!”

Another spectacular burst, this one a golden waterfall that seemed to pour directly into the sea, illuminating the cove in a brief, surreal daylight. In its glow, he saw her face, alive with joy, the ring forgotten in his pocket, the moment transformed into something utterly, unpredictably theirs.

The frustration melted away, replaced by a surge of love so powerful it eclipsed the fireworks. This was their life. Not a sterile, perfect script, but a chaotic, beautiful, noisy affair where even a proposal could be upstaged by a village party.

He stood up. The decision was instantaneous. The perfect moment was gone. This was better.

He walked around the table as another salvo of pops and bangs painted the night. He didn’t try to speak over them. He simply went down on one knee, right there on the flagstones, amidst the crumbs of the torta and the reverberations of the festive bombs.

Sabatine’s laughter died in her throat. Her hand flew to her mouth again, but this time in shock. Her eyes, still sparkling with tears of mirth, went wide.

The sky behind him erupted in a simultaneous burst of a dozen white stars, casting him in a stark, dramatic silhouette. He pulled the box from his pocket and opened it. The black sapphire, for a fleeting second, reflected a shower of silver sparks.

He didn’t shout. He said the words clearly, calmly, his voice a steady anchor in the storm of colour and sound. “Sabatine Elara Stalker. I love you. Marry me.”

There was no poetic preamble. No list of her virtues. Just the core, immutable truth, offered not in a sacred silence, but in defiant, joyous competition with a sky on fire.

She stared at him, at the ring, at the exploding heavens behind him. A fresh wave of emotion—different from the laughter—washed over her face. Awe. Tenderness. A love so deep it humbled the spectacle above.

The fireworks reached their crescendo, a frantic, glorious, deafening finale. BANG-CRACKLE-POP-WHIZ-BOOM! A relentless, magnificent barrage of light and sound that felt like the universe itself was applauding.

In the very heart of the noise, as golden and red and blue flashes illuminated them like strobe lights, she slid from her chair onto her knees in front of him. She took his face in her hands, her own wet with happy tears.

“YES!” she cried, the word lost in a thunderous BOOM, but he saw it on her lips, felt it in her touch.

He fumbled the ring onto her finger, his own hands unsteady now, not with nerves, but with overwhelming feeling. As the final, echoing report of the grand finale faded, leaving a ringing silence and a sky hazy with smoke, he kissed her.

It was a kiss of laughter and fireworks, of ruined plans and perfect timing. They knelt together on the stone, clinging to each other as the last specks of light drifted down like dying stars.

The quiet that followed was profound, sweet, and utterly theirs. The only sounds were their mingled breaths and the distant, happy cheers from Portofino, carried on the sea wind.

Sabatine pulled back first, looking at the ring on her finger, then up at him, her expression dazed and blissful. “Well,” she whispered, her voice hoarse from laughter and emotion. “That was… memorable.”

Anton let out a long, shaky breath, then began to laugh at himself, a deep, relieved, joyful sound. He rested his forehead against hers. “I wanted it to be perfect.”

“It was,”she said, her thumb stroking his cheek. “It was perfect for us. A little bit dramatic, a little bit chaotic, absolutely unforgettable. And loud. My god, was it loud.”

He helped her to her feet, and they stood wrapped in each other, looking out at the now-dark sea, the scent of cordite and celebration lingering on the breeze. The interrupted proposal hadn’t been ruined. It had been baptised—in noise, in colour, in the glorious, unexpected mess of real life. And as they stood together in the quiet aftermath, the ring a solid, promising weight on her hand, Anton knew he wouldn’t have had it any other way.

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