“I know.” I force my fingers back into motion, snipping, dropping, snipping again.
Matteo’s sigh is so small it barely disturbs the air. “You need to talk to Nico about…thatwoman.”
Not going to happen. Ever!
I straighten. “Matteo, let’s not discuss this any further.”
It’s embarrassing enough that he wants to know about my non-existent marital sex life, and now he wants to talk about my husband’s mistress? Talk about mortifying!
“Your father?—”
“Is good at treating me like a vine he can prune into obedience.” It’s pure and simple emotional blackmail, but I know this will make him back off when I add, “You are supposed to be different.”
“Cara.” His expression softens. “I will talk to Nico.”
I arch an eyebrow. “And what will you say?Oh, Niccolò, could you go have sex with your wife instead of your mistress?”
He gives me a pained look.
I lean closer. “How about this, Matteo? You worry about what’s fermenting in your cellar. I’ll handle what’s fermenting in mine.”
His eyes flick down to my clothes—old jeans, a thincotton shirt already sweat-damp at the spine, boots scuffed and dusty. “You need to get ready.”
“I need a shower.”
“I think….”
“I amnotcompeting with the likes of Chiara Jossa,” I grit out.
Guilt, along with the August heat, makes him flush. “Cara, I never?—"
I put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll get ready when I’m done with the merlot.”
“Matteo,” I hear Lucia call out.
She’s such aMama Bear! She can see we’re both getting flustered so she wants to provide respite.
“What?”
She gives Matteo a look that is a blend of concern and anger she usually saves for broken equipment and stupid men who drive tractors too fast. “Leave her alone.”
“Her husband will be there,” Matteo tells Lucia, as if she doesn’t know.
“Husband?” she scoffs.
The wordhusbandfeels foreign, like a label placed on a bottle that contains something else entirely.
“He lives at the Palazzo Alighieri, so yes, he’ll be there,” I interject.
Lucia makes a soft noise that could be a grunt or a prayer. “Maybe you can talk to him about discretion.”
“Or maybe”—I pause for effect, first looking Matteo in the eye and then Lucia—“you both can shut the fuck up.”
Matteo, Lucia, and Edam are some of the few people, besides family, who know the truth behind my marriage—know that I’m Nico’s wife in name and inconvenience only. They know the marriage has not been consummated, and that I have slept alone every night since I became Mrs. Alarico, listening to the modern villa at Tenuta Pietra Altasettle around me as a body exhales, while the estate’s dogs bark at shadows and the sea wind worries the shutters.
It’s humiliating in a way I can’t explain without sounding foolish—as if I’m a silly girl who thought marriage meant something other than a stamp and a signature.
I am twenty-nine years old. I run fermentation trials. I can taste a blind lineup and identify vineyard blocks by soil. I have managed harvest crews through brutal heat, keeping them moving by sheer will.
