Elena’s POV
It was Adrian’s idea. “You need a break,” he’d said, fingers brushing through my hair as I sat curled in his lap, laptop balanced on my knees. “Somewhere that doesn’t echo with my father’s voice or Rachel’s perfume. Somewhere that’s only ours.”
He booked it that same night: a sleek villa perched on a cliff above the ocean, hours from any city, wrapped in wild pines and the salt-sweet air of the coastline. Three glorious days, just us. No phones or tabloids, no scheming family and no ghost of past wounds lurking in marble halls.
The moment we stepped off the small plane and I tasted the sea in the breeze, my shoulders dropped. Adrian slipped his sunglasses off, gave me a smile that was half-hungry, half-relieved, and twined his fingers with mine.
“Let’s disappear,” he murmur
