I move down the barrel aisle until I stand before Altèra— my premier wine, which Papà decried as indulgent, and the one Nico let go undefended.
I remember signing off on these barrels—€1,200 apiece—without a flicker of doubt. Not for the price, but because the wine demanded the finest vessel. Because the echoes of shortcuts here would resonate for decades. I don’t regret that. I regret trusting people who wouldn’t trust me in return.
I sit down in the tasting area in the cellar and pick up a bottle of Altèra—one I shouldn’t.
But the hell with it. I give and give and give…it’s time for me to take something.
So, I open a prized vintage. 1998.
At midnight, after I have drunk about half a bottle of the two thousand-euro-a-bottle retail wine, I decide I will not confront Nico and beg for his faith or insist he be braver than he is. I have spent my life tending to vines, younger sisters, and sprawling estates, believing that care breeds loyalty. That was my error. Barriques do not love you back. People do not either.
I take a long swallow of the wine I have now stopped tasting as I make more decisions one mustn’t when they have my blood alcohol level.
I will do what I do best.
I will work. I will guard my wine with every ounce of conviction. I will build something so undeniable that even Papà cannot wave it off as sentiment.
If Nico wants a strategy, I will give him one and beat it into his skull with a mallet. And if he presumes I will quietly allow myself to be managed by my husband or my father or the family trust board—then he has profoundly misunderstood me.
I walk up to my prized barrels of wine.
I pick up a piece of chalk and scratch a fresh line of chalk across the oak below the words: ALTÈRA — LOT 3. NO INTERVENTION.
I write not in the best example of calligraphy: TRUST THE PROCESS
I step back and let the words settle into the grain.
Yes.
That will do.
The next morning, after I’ve gotten maybe four hours of sleep and I’m slightly hungover, which doesn’t happen often considering my profession, Alba finds me in my office in the cellar contemplating if I should just say the hell with it and take a nap or keep at it.
“Lucia said I’d find you here,” Alba announces. She’s in a skirt suit and heels that make my feet hurt even though she’s the one wearing them.
I straighten, spine lengthening like a drawn cord.
“I told Lucia to tell anyone who came looking for me that I was unavailable.”
Alba lifts a slender hand, voice already soft as dusk. “I’m sorry.”
I lean forward, my elbows resting on my weathered desk. “You knew,” I accuse her, “and you didn’t tell me right away? What? You’re suddenly loyal to Nico?”
Alba sighs, her shoulders slump. “He…he said he loves you and?—”
“Basta!” I shout, standing up. “My marriage is none of your Goddamn business. Got it? You and I have a relationship that you walked all over.”
She curls her lips into a sad nod. “I fucked up, Alessia.”
A beat of silence stretches between us, filled only by the hum of distant cicadas and the low groan of barrel hoops settling with the heat.
“But I can’t lose you,” she pleads, voice unsteady now. “Please forgive me.”
A part of me wants to roll my eyes and say like hell she’ll lose me, but the other, the petty one wants her to suffer some. The petty bitch inside me doesn’t last when her eyes fill with tears.
“That’s not fair,” I clip.
“What?” She brushes off her tears.
