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Everett's voice comes from beside me, quieter than usual.

"Yes."

But when I turn, he isn't looking out at the coastline.

He's looking at me.

The car waiting on the tarmac is white and gleaming and too polished to be real.

A driver in a pressed uniform opens the door before we've fully descended the jet stairs, and another man loads our luggage into the trunk with the quiet efficiency of someone who does this for people like Everett every day of the week.

Everett tips his head toward the car. "Come on."

The drive to the villa takes twenty minutes along winding roads lined with cypress trees and climbing bougainvillea so bright it almost hurts to look at.

Then we turn through wrought-iron gates.

And I forget how to breathe again.

The villa is stone and cream stucco and pale green shutters, all wrapped in climbing roses and sunlight. Olive trees dot the drive. Lavender spills over the edges of the path. The sea glitters in the distance just beyond the terrace like someone staged it for a film.

It is absurdly, impossibly perfect.

I step out of the car and just stand there.

My mother used to describe this place to me when I was little. The light. The flowers. The smell of salt and citrus and old stone warmed by the sun.

And here it is.

Real.

Not in a painting. Not in a story. Not in one of Dad's old retellings over cookies and coffee.

Real.

"You okay?" Everett asks again.

I laugh softly and wipe under one eye before any tears can make this humiliating.

"Yes," I say. "I just… yes."

For once, he doesn't push.

He lets me have the moment.

Inside, the villa is somehow even worse.

Worse in the sense that now I may actually cry.

Cool stone floors. A wide staircase curving upward. French doors thrown open to the terrace. Linen sofas. A kitchen bigger than my first apartment. Fresh flowers on every surface. A bowl of lemons the size of my fist. Somewhere in the back, I can hear water—maybe a fountain, maybe a pool.

The house manager appears almost instantly, greeting Everett by name and handing over a folder with keys, reservations, and what sounds like an offensively romantic itinerary planned by Everly's team.

Of course she planned an itinerary.

Of course she did.

Everett takes the folder, skims the top page, and mutters something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like a threat.