Chapter 16

“He wants us to be a unit."

A fresh wave of pain washed over her. He wasn't just her father's friend; he was being inducted into the family she was about to leave.

"And I told him no," Desmond said.

Anna stared at him, sure she must have misheard. "What?"

"I told him I had plans. Personal plans." He took another step, closing the distance between them. "I told him I was in love with a woman who was going to be in Florence for six months, and that I intended to spend as much of that time as I could with her."

Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic, wild beat. "Desmond, you didn't."

"I did," he said, a flicker of a smile on his lips. "He was… confused. He asked who she was. I told him it wasn't his business yet."

"Yet?" She whispered.

"I'm not asking for a day, Anna," he said, reaching out to take her hands. His hands were cold, trembling slightly. "I'm asking for a season. I'm asking for the spring. I'm asking for the chance to stand with you in the Uffizi Gallery and argue about Botticelli. 

I'm asking for the chance to drink coffee with you in a real cafe. I'm asking for the chance to be seen with you. By the world."

This was it. The ultimate gamble. He was cashing in all their chips, calling their bluff. He wasn't waiting for the perfect moment anymore; he was creating it.

"What about the foundation? Your career?" The words were practical, a last-ditch effort to cling to the reality she understood.

"Screw the foundation," he said, the vehemence in his voice startling her. "It's a job. You're my life. I was so focused on building the case, on being patient, on protecting you… I forgot what we were fighting for. I was so afraid of losing him, I was about to lose you."

He squeezed her hands, his eyes burning with an intensity that seared right through her. "Go to Florence. Have your adventure. Learn everything you can. And I'll be there. In two weeks. In a month. Whatever it takes. I'll find you. And we'll start building something real. Not a secret life. A life."

Tears streamed down her face, hot and silent. This was the confession she had craved, the grand, romantic gesture she had dreamed of. It wasn't a key or a book or a coded text. It was everything.

"So what happens when you find me in Florence?" She asked, her voice thick with emotion. "What do we tell my father when he calls?"

"We tell him the truth," Desmond said, his voice resolute. "Or maybe we don't. Maybe we just live. We send him a postcard from the Ponte Vecchio. We send him pictures of us smiling in the Tuscan sun. We show him the life we've built. And we let him deal with it."

He was offering her the world. A world she had thought was impossible. A world where she wasn't the other woman, but the only woman.

"What about the cage?" She whispered. "The golden bars."

"They're only a cage if you stay inside," he said. "I'm stepping out. I'm right here, Anna. With you. The question is, are you going to let me in?"

She didn't answer with words. She just closed the remaining distance between them and kissed him, a kiss that was salty with her tears and tasted of hope, of beginnings, of a future she had barely dared to imagine. It was a kiss that said yes.

Florence was a dream. The city was a living museum, a feast for the senses that Anna devoured with a ravenous hunger. She spent her days in lectures, her afternoons sketching in shadowed churches, and her evenings wandering along the Arno, the golden light of the setting sun painting the ancient stone in hues of amber and rose.

And she waited.

True to his word, Desmond didn't come in two weeks. Or a month. The wait was a new kind of agony, a test of the fragile, new hope they had built. They talked on the ghost phone, their conversations now stripped of pretense. They weren't building a case anymore; they were living their life, just in two different places.

He told her he had been dealing with the fallout. A tense, emotional conversation with Richard, who was confused, hurt, and struggling to understand. 

A delicate negotiation with the foundation's board, who were concerned about their new CEO taking an extended leave of absence. He was dismantling the old life, piece by painful piece, to make room for the new.

"I'm selling my shares in the Berlin venture," he told her one night, his voice tired but determined. "It's the last tie. The last thing that keeps me bound to that life."

"Are you sure?" She asked, a knot of anxiety tightening in her stomach. "That's a huge part of your company."

"You're a huge part of my life," he replied. "There's no comparison."

He finally arrived in Florence on a crisp, clear morning in March. He texted her from a cafe in the Piazza della Signoria, a simple, "I'm here."

She found him sitting at a small table, a copy of “La Nazione” lying unread beside his espresso. He was thinner, the lines around his eyes a little deeper, but the look on his face when he saw her was one of pure, unadulterated relief. 

He stood up, and for the first time, in the middle of a bustling public square, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her, not caring who saw.

It wasn't a passionate, desperate kiss, but a slow, tender one. A kiss that said, “I'm here. We're here