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He patted my hand before withdrawing with a warm smile. “Time spent with you is time well spent.”
I breathed against the tightness in my chest. Perhaps I was wrong and the burdens I carried were of my own making, but the anxiety was always with me, particularly now that I was gambling our entire future on a bet placed by my heart.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Dante
MY FATHER’S VOICE was sharp as he berated my progress.
“What’s the problem?” he asked when I admitted I hadn’t procured the winery yet. “Did you offer more money? I want that winery.”
“We underestimated the Baroni family. They aren’t interested in money. They have something that money won’t buy—sentiment. We need a different plan.”
“Sentiment? What is this nonsense? Ridiculous. You just haven’t found their price. Triple the price. I don’t care. I want that winery,” he repeated, the deep baritone of my father’s voice grating on my nerves. I’d always admired my father’s ability to push past any obstacle, regardless of who stood in his way, but I realized in that moment, his bullheadedness wasn’t always a virtue.
In this instance, I didn’t see stalwart persistence, I saw an old, petulant man throwing a temper tantrum to get his way. I shifted against the uncomfortable vision and tried to explain.
“The daughter, Alessandra Baroni, is at the head of the winery and she won’t budge. Her twin brother, Enzo, died when they were teens and she’s holding on to the winery in his memory. There’s no amount of money that will change her mind, which is why I said we need a different tactic.”
“A dead brother? For fuck’s sake, this is what happens when you let women be in charge. God forbid we ever let one become president. There goes the nation.”
“Alessandra is more competent that most CEOs,” I said, pushing back. It didn’t sit well that my father insulted Alessandra when he didn’t know what he was talking about. “She’s very good at what she does.”
My father’s disgruntled, “Clearly, she’s better than you if you couldn’t get her to see our way of things” made me see red, but I knew it was foolish to let my father bait me. Sometimes I felt he said things just to see how far he could push me.
“What about back taxes, liens? Anything we could use to put some pressure on them to sell?” he barked.
Of course I’d already considered these options but when I did a little digging, I came up with nothing. What I didn’t admit to my father was that I’d been relieved. I hadn’t wanted to win that way—for the first time ever, the win wasn’t everything.
Still, I knew that I had to come up with some kind of plan or else my father would lose all respect for me. “I’m working on something. It takes some finesse. Just relax, give me some time to figure this out and you’ll have your winery.”
“Maybe I should’ve sent Luca,” he grumbled, and I clenched my jaw to keep from snapping. It was always the same old fallback of pitting me and Luca against one another. It used to motivate me to work harder, but now it just pissed me off. Still, I hated to lose and I would bring home the win, if only to stuff it in the old man’s face.
“Be patient. I’ll get the damn winery,” I said, my brusque tone shutting him down before he could grouse some more. “I’ll be in touch.” I clicked off and left the conversation, a juvenile part of me wishing I could slam the phone down in my father’s ear instead of clicking off with such anticlimactic dullness.
A part of me didn’t want to buy Alessandra’s winery for my father. I wanted to see her thrive and succeed, to shove her success down the old cronies’ turkey necks for trying to keep her down.
My father was just as bad as the old white men determined to keep things the status quo when change was sorely needed. To my growing discomfort, I was beginning to realize that my father was a misogynist and the fact that I never really noticed before told an even deeper uncomfortable truth about myself.
God, I was an asshole.
Sure, plenty of people had thrown that in my face but I’d never cared. Now, it seemed less of a badge of honor and more a cone of shame.
When you had money, sometimes certain truths didn’t apply because you could always make a problem go away with enough cash.
Unless that truth was coming from the lovely mouth of a woman who had her own money and didn’t give two shits about impressing you or assuaging your ego.
The world needed more women like Alessandra.
Ha! I’d never been particularly Go Woman Power! but I was feeling it right now. I couldn’t imagine the bullshit Alessandra had to wade through to be successful in her industry.
But then I supposed all generations had to put their stamp on things. Luca had had a time of that, trying to change the way our father did business, but in the end he’d simply put our father out to pasture with a firm but polite, “Time to retire,” and then did things his own way.
Luca had never suffered from the need to please our father, probably because our father had always given Luca the benefit of the doubt. It was a blessing Nico had never been burdened by an overabundance of ambition. Since he was the youngest of the three Donato boys, our father had rarely paid much attention to Nico or his antics. If anything, our father had simply chuckled with absentminded amusement whenever word of his youngest son’s nonsense had crossed his desk.
It’d always been up to me to clean up Nico’s messes, which was why I’d been bemused when he’d up and fallen head over heels in love with a single mom, of all people.
I didn’t have anything against his wife. Lauren seemed like a decent woman, but Nico had been the last person on earth I’d ever imagine settling down.
And yet, he seemed happier than ever.
Happier even than that time I’d had to extricate him from the arms of three strippers after a drunken bender before the press had gotten wind of it.
He was a different man.
And, I couldn’t believe I’d admit this, but he was a great father. He seemed to enjoy the hell out of being a dad to Lauren’s son, Grady, and that was probably an important part of being good at it. At least, I imagine, not having any practical experience in the matter.
I used to feel secure in what I knew. My foundation was solid. Since coming to Italy, my foundation seemed less stable than I’d thought. Questions that I never thought to ask, feelings I never thought to have, were crowding into my head and heart, demanding an audience.
I’d started to think about why I wasn’t close to my brothers, and I realized that perhaps I’d never let myself get close to them. Growing up, they had their roles to play. Luca, firstborn and beloved heir. Nico, the baby and the charmer. As a kid, I’d sometimes felt like I was living on the sidelines, struggling to figure out where I fit. Maybe deep down, I resented them for having found their place in our family, knowing where they stood with our father, while I’d always felt I had to earn mine.
I frowned, shaking my head. I didn’t like this newfound sensation. I didn’t have time for an existential crisis. For fuck’s sake, I hated nothing more than people who had everything at their fingertips yet whined about how life was somehow empty.
My life was a fucking dream.
I had more money than I could ever spend in one lifetime, beautiful women fought to put themselves on my arm and my name was powerful enough to create a ripple of unease in negotiating circles.
But since meeting Alessandra, everything seemed less cut and dry than before. What was it about her that had me twisted up in knots? She wasn’t the most beautiful woman I’d ever spent time with. Okay, maybe that was a stretch. She was a fucking goddess. Even though her body made me weak, there was something far more exotic about the connection I felt when I was around her.
It was...fucking cosmic.
Electric.
Heavenly?
I sighed, grateful I was the only one privy to the running dialog
ue. I couldn’t let myself think that way. I didn’t believe in true love, perfect families or happy-ever-after. I still thought my brothers were crazy to go after those things—that was one dream I’d never chase.
And neither would Alessandra, thank God.
I was glad she wasn’t mooning after me, staring at me with longing, trying to become the newest Mrs. Donato.
No, she was running her own empire and couldn’t be bothered with mine.
I liked that.
Damn, I liked it a lot.
But my amusement faded quickly, my father’s voice carping in the back of my mind, dampening any semblance of a rising mood.
