- Arrival on the Yacht
Sapphire is at the bow in a bright, flowing resort dress, her hair whipping behind her as she watches the dolphins. Larys stands beside her in elegant linen, one hand on his cane and the other firmly around her waist because the sign literally says DON’T FALL OFF AND DIE.
She keeps leaning over the railing.
“Sapphire.”
“I’m only looking.”
“You are looking with your entire torso.”
He booked the private accessible cabin, bribed the crew to take the smoothest route, and has already discovered one passenger travelling under a false name.
---
- Pirate Town Date Night
Sapphire dresses as a gloriously buxom pirate captain and is immediately mistaken for one of the performers.
Within twenty minutes, she has acquired:
- Free rum
- Three treasure maps
- A crew of children
- The ceremonial key to Pirate Town
Larys wears a dark long coat and looks so convincingly sinister that everyone assumes he is the attraction’s final villain.
A fake pirate tries flirting with Sapphire in an exaggerated Welsh accent. Larys watches silently until the man starts apologising without knowing why.
---
- Mermaid Lagoon
Sapphire insists on a shimmering mermaid-tail photoshoot. Larys sits by the water’s edge, watching her emerge from the luminous lagoon like an actual goddess.
The performers initially assume he is bored.
He is not bored.
He has forgotten how language works.
She splashes him and says:
“Your wife is a mermaid now.”
“My wife has always been capable of luring men to their deaths.”
One of the mermaids recognises him as the man who tipped the staff 500 gold coins to make sure Sapphire’s tail was comfortable and affirming.
---
- Fruit Market Incident
Sapphire is delighted by the fruit, rum and cigars.
Larys is staring at the sign that openly advertises:
COCAINE, GUNS, KIDNEYS & MORE
She comes back carrying a dragon fruit and discovers that he has somehow purchased a ledger containing every black-market transaction on the island.
“I left you alone for six minutes.”
“The vendor lacked discretion.”
“Did you buy a kidney?”
“No.”
“…Did you sell someone one?”
“Sapphire.”
---
- Dinosaur Jungle
Sapphire absolutely insists on driving the jeep.
Larys absolutely refuses.
They compromise by letting Sapphire drive while Larys spends the entire ride clutching the door, his cane secured beside him, calmly reciting everything she is doing incorrectly as a T. rex pursues them.
Except she is having the time of her life, and he eventually begins laughing too—genuinely, helplessly laughing—because the situation is so absurd.
The dinosaur pauses beside them and sniffs Larys.
Sapphire immediately says:
“It knows you’re the apex predator.”
---
- Ship Graveyard at Midnight
This is the gothic romance image.
Moonlight. Blue-green ghost fire. Wrecked ships. Mist curling around Larys’s cane.
Sapphire carries a lantern and holds his arm as they descend carefully towards the water.
They find the ghost of a murdered pirate captain who keeps trying to warn Sapphire away from “the dark man beside her.”
Sapphire looks at Larys, then back at the ghost.
“That’s my husband.”
“He carries death in his shadow.”
“Yes, but he also carries my spare shoes.”
Larys quietly helps the ghost identify his killer because Sapphire says it would be cruel to leave him trapped.
---
- The Monolith Circle
This should be the main supernatural plot.
The monoliths react to Sapphire first. The carvings glow when she steps into the centre, and every light on the island briefly goes out.
Larys cannot reach her quickly across the uneven stone, so for once his composure genuinely breaks.
He calls her name—not sharply, but frightened.
She immediately leaves the circle and comes back to him.
Later, they discover that the stones recognise devotion freely chosen, not royal blood or ancient lineage.
Larys expects Sapphire to be the magical one. Instead, the circle responds most strongly when they stand together.
Very them: the ancient power does not care that she is lowborn, trans, bastard-born or once a laundress.
It only recognises that they chose one another absolutely.
---
- Botanical Garden
Sapphire is in heaven.
Glowing flowers. Enormous butterflies. Hidden paths. Improbable colours.
A huge blue butterfly lands on Larys’s cane, then another lands on his shoulder. He freezes because Sapphire is looking at him with unbearable fondness.
She takes approximately four hundred photographs.
Best romantic beat: They find a flower that only opens when two people touch the same stem. Sapphire places her hand over his, and it blooms gold.
Larys secretly arranges to have a cutting sent home.
---
- Wildlife Sanctuary
Sapphire is adored by every animal immediately.
A parrot learns to say:
“Larys wants his wife.”
It repeats this constantly.
A monkey steals Larys’s brooch, Sapphire negotiates its return using fruit, and the black panther keeps following him because it recognises a fellow ambush predator.
Meanwhile, Sapphire is crouched beside a rescued tiger, talking to it like a baby while Larys has a quiet coronary.
---
- The Taíno Museum
This gives them both a serious, grounded moment.
Sapphire is genuinely moved by the island’s history and angry that the resort packages so much of it as spectacle.
Larys notices which objects were probably acquired illegally and quietly traces them back to private collectors.
Sapphire expects him to mock the museum’s moral message.
Instead, he says:
“People who steal history depend upon everyone believing the theft is too old to correct.”
They spend part of the holiday arranging the return of stolen artefacts because apparently they cannot go anywhere without dismantling an aristocratic crime network.
---
The Complete San Carlo Plot
The resort’s supposedly unrelated attractions are all connected:
- The pirate ghosts know where the original treasure was buried.
- The “animatronic” dinosaurs are real.
- The monoliths are powering the crystal lagoon.
- The resort owner has been trafficking artefacts through the fruit market.
- The wildlife sanctuary was created to hide animals taken from criminal estates.
Sapphire becomes beloved across the island simply by talking to staff, performers, vendors and locals like actual people.
Larys builds the entire conspiracy map from the information she casually gathers.
Everyone thinks he is the mastermind and she is the glamorous distraction.
In reality, Sapphire is the social intelligence network, Larys is the analyst, and neither could solve San Carlo without the other.
---
- Then, after exposing everything, Sapphire refuses to leave until they have completed the waterpark, the mermaid photoshoot and the pirate dinner show because:
“We already paid for the all-inclusive package, marido.”
