I was forced into this marriage, I told myself. And I let that resentment settle somewhere poisonous.
Compared to the women I've been with, Alessia appeared plain. Dull. Unsophisticated.
The first time I really saw her was eight—maybe nine—years ago, at Tenuta Poggio Imperiale, the Alighieri estate on the high hills of Chianti Classico, just south of Greve.
It was green harvest season, late and punishing, when everything in a winery is stripped down to essentials.
I was there with my father, touring estates, shaking hands, being groomed. I remember thinking the place was beautiful in that effortless, inherited way—orderly rows, gravel paths, cypress trees standing like punctuation marks.
She stood near the crush pad.
Not dressed for guests or for attention.
She wore jeans that hung too loosely on her hips and a ratty, old T-shirt that was more grape juice than fabric. Herhair was pulled back without a care, her face drawn and pale beneath a layer of dust and exhaustion. Too thin. Not fashion-thin—worked thin, the result of missed meals and long days, not discipline.
I remember thinking she looked unwell.
She was listening to someone—Matteo, I think. Her hands were stained purple, nails bitten short. She didn't look up when we passed.
I barely registered her as a woman.
I remember leaning toward Renzo and murmuring something careless—something about how the Alighieris hid their daughters away, how she looked more like hired help than an heiress.
"I think Alba is the beauty," he whispered to me. "The middle daughter."
So that's why she was the face of Alighieri—the sister studying hospitality and destined to manage the company's restaurants and tasting rooms.
Our attention was drawn by Alessia's sharp, "Cazzo!"
She stood with her back to the open fermenter, hands on her hips, eyes narrowed on the bubbling must.
"The temperature is climbing," she snapped, her attention on the cellar hand. "If it goes any higher, you'll burn off the aromatics."
He shrugged dismissively. "It's within range."
"It won't be in an hour," she retorted. "Cool it now, or you'll be chasing balance you can't get back."
The man hesitated. "Matteo didn't say?—"
"Matteo will thank you later," she cut in. "Trust me."
The cellar hand grudgingly reached for the controls.
Alessia exhaled, muttering under her breath, and turned back to her work—never once acknowledging the small audience that had gathered behind her.
She’s too aggressively masculine, I thought, my youthful arrogance put out by her dominant behavior.
Later, when someone mentioned the eldest Alighieri girl, saying that she had the misfortune of having her mother's demeanor and her father's looks, I thought that explained everything—and dismissed her without another thought.
Cristo!
What I didn't understand then—what I see now, with a clarity that makes my lungs cinch up in ache—is that she wasn't trying to be seen that day or any day. She was doing her job, and she was doing it well.
She looked terrible because she was carrying the weight of the harvest. She was skinny because she was pouring herself into important work. She was plain because she didn’t care that appearance could be armor.
I judged her for not wearing one.
Now, years later, I realize the cruelest part is that I held that first impression against her. And the cost of that realization is knowing how easily I once dismissed the woman I now can't stop thinking about—simply because she didn't glitter.
