Abbott Winery.
My stomach churns.
I’m holding in my hands the original deal that my father made with Dante—the agreement whereby my father turned over our family wineryand meas payment of his debts.
Disgusted, I let the stack of papers fall on top of the ugly, offending page. I don’t want to read this document. Don’t want to know how much money my father sold me for.
But even as I tell myself that, a perverse curiosity is taking over, my fingers flipping through the stack as I look for the page.
Exactly how much did my piece of shit father think I was actually worth?
The page appears and my eyes track the document for currency. There, almost at the end. I read the number, then read it again. I can’t believe it. There must be a mistake. Missing zeroes. Something.
$286,000 stares at me in black and white.
I swallow, but my throat is dry.
$286,000.
There’s ringing in my ears, and I feel like the ground is dropping out from under me.
The Abbott Winery is easily worth twenty times that…and yet my father had traded italong with his fucking daughterfor $286,000.
That fucking dumbass shit-for-brains. Fucking unbelievable. Fucking…
I slam the whole file folder closed, cram it back into my filing cabinet, and shove the drawer back into the cabinet with a bang.
Two hundred eighty six thousand…fuck.
The number can’t help but stick in my mind, the thought of it making me sick to my stomach. I wish I’d never looked.
Trying to shake it off, I return to the binders full of Bellanti Vineyards’ financials that I started looking through last week. I pore over the paperwork, hoping to distract myself with all the numbers, working backwards from the end of the last quarter—when Enzo had died.
God, have I really only been married to Dante for a few months? It feels like entire lifetimes have passed. Like I’ve died and risen from the ashes more times than I can count.
I flip to a fresh page and find a single sheet that seems to be a list of debt forgiveness statements and loans to be forgiven, to be released upon the death of Enzo Bellanti. The typed lines are in some kind of code, strings of letters and numbers attached to dollar amounts, but one number—a total listed as $286,000—screams at me from the page.
There are no actual names listed on the statements, just the codes.
I press the intercom button. “Ruby, can I borrow you for a moment, please?”
A minute later she comes in, holding a steaming cup of coffee. “Good morning, Mrs. Bellanti. I thought you might like a fresh coffee.”
“Thank you, Ruby.”
She sets it on the desk with a smile that quickly fades when I hold up the sheet.
“Can you tell me what these codes mean?” I ask.
Suddenly flustered, she works her fingers before reaching for the page. “Oh, that’s…that’s nothing, Mrs. Bellanti. Let me take that.”
Her face pales as I pull the page out of her reach, holding her off.
“I need to know, Ruby,” I say, keeping my voice as calm as possible, but my tone brooking no arguments. “What. Is. This.”
We lock eyes for a moment, but she looks away nervously. A tense smile plays on her lips, but it doesn’t last. Finally, she sinks into the chair opposite me.
“Yes, well, I—I suppose you are a Bellanti now,” she says haltingly. “So that page is…it’s from the old business. The way the family originally made their money. Personal loans, some betting books, not all of it…you know. On the up and up. So to speak.”
