My wife lives in Bolgheri.
I live here.
We both have demanding, relentless jobs, and finding time to be together feels like a logistical puzzle we’re always losing.
I miss her constantly.
She misses me, too.
It’s a half-life—this distance. And when we are together, itfeels like a race to make up for what we both know is coming next.
More absence.
More missing each other.
I can’t ask her to give up Pietra Alta.
I don’t want to give up my job, not after how much work and effort it has taken, not just from me but from those who worked at Cantina Alarico to get us here.
“I know.” Renzo sighs, dropping his head. “It’s just…it’swrong, Nico. What he’s doing is colossally unfair. Just because Alessia is a woman, he thinks she can’t be the head winemaker.”
I lean forward, knuckles white on the armrests. “It’s more than that. Cesare believes, and maybe rightfully so, that an external hire signalsevolution.” I bark out a laugh with no humor in it. “The truth is that but for Alessia, we’d both be jumping with joy if we could get Fontana.”
“Si,” Renzo agrees, his mouth twisting like he’s tasted something rotten.
“We have to separate the personal from the professional.”
He cocks an eyebrow, unimpressed. “Rich, coming from the man who married a woman to climb the corporate ladder.”
I slam my palms onto the oak desk, the crack echoing through the room. “Renzo, that’s not only unfair, but it’s?—”
“I’m sorry,” he cuts in, hands flying up in surrender. “That was a cheap shot. An unfair one. It’s just that”—he lets out a long breath, shaking his head—“Toni told me some things about them growing up that upset me.”
Pressure clamps down behind my sternum. “Like what?”
“You know Alessia practically raised Alba and Toni.”
“I know they’re close.”
“Alessia was thirteen when their mother died. While other girls were at sleepovers, she was making sure hersisters ate, studied, and survived. She stood between them and the world like a human shield.”
“Where was Cesare?”
He slashes a hand through the air. “Cesare checked out. Physically present, emotionally extinct. Threw money at staff and called himself Father of the Year.”
My stomach drops—not only because I ache for the young Alessia who lost her mother, but because she never told me.
The insecure part of me wonders if that silence means there’s something broken between us. But the sensible part knows better. That’s just who Alessia is.
She doesn’t display her scars or parade her pain. My wife doesn’t demand to be seen. She does the work—and she’s been doing it since she was a child.
And suddenly, the weight of what I’m allowing to happen—what I’m failing to stop—feels unbearable.
“We have to be patient,” I say, more to myself than to Renzo. “Cesare is powerful. If I fight him head-on right now, I will lose.”
He shoots me a sideways glance sharp enough to light a fuse.
I flip him off. “Stop being dense. You know this.”
