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“I did,” Leon said. “And I’m telling you to let it go.”
“Don’t you think it’s time—” Lena began.
“No.” Amara’s tone was firm.
Time for what?I wondered. It was clear from the looks on the faces of each Delatou that there’d be no further discussion on the matter. While her parents frowned at her, Amara lifted her wine glass and knocked its entire contents back.
“Easy, tiger,” I said, low enough so only she could hear. “It’d be a bad look if everyone figured out who you really are.”
Amara turned to me slowly, so slowly it was almost robotic. Those enchanting golden eyes, currently flared bright with rage, locked on mine for a beat, then two. The moment stretched, and the muscles in her jaw bunched and jumped as she ground her teeth together.
Then she rose to her feet abruptly, nearly knocking over her chair in the process, and hissed, “Fuck you, Calvin,” at me before stomping away.
I was getting really used to hearing those three words from her.
My mom caught mebefore I reached the door to the cellars. Instead of trying to stop me, she wordlessly wrapped her hand around mine, punched in the code, and pulled the heavy wooden door open.
Growing up, my sisters and I hadn’t technically been allowed down here. These stone-walled rooms were full of invaluable bottles of wine, and our parents—rightly so—didn’t trust us not to damage something. And these bottles weren’t invaluable in that they were expensive or exclusive; they were invaluable because a lot of them were the last of their kind, and the sentimentality made them irreplaceable.
The first bottle great-grandpa Andreas ever produced.
The first bottle Papou ever produced.
The first bottle Daddy ever produced.
New labels and vintages, the first bottle of red, of bubbly. The firsteverything, the turning points in the company, the history of Chateau Delatou spread out on the walls, a living, breathing timeline of my family legacy.
Even the simple act of descending the stairs, the temperature dropping as we went, my mom’s hand wrapped firmly around mine, steadied me, grounded me, eased some of the weight off my chest.
I didn’t want my first bottle down here. As far as I was concerned, bottled wine was old news. No, I wanted my firstcanimmortalized along these perfectly maintained, temperature controlled shelves. I wanted to showcase the thing I’d done to leave my mark on this company, to take CD to new heights.
I wanted to be remembered not strictly as a winemaker, nor the CEO of this long-standing, family-owned company, but as the first woman to successfully run this company, and as a woman who didn’t follow in lock step the path my forefathers had set for me. I wanted to break that mold, to usher us into the twenty-first century, and give my children a legacy they could be proud of—just as I was proud of my dad, and the men before him.
I only wanted to do things differently, and change was good. Necessary, even.
The problem with Calvin was that, to him, different equaled wrong. And maybe, if I didn’t know what I was doing, he’d be right. But I’d spent the last five years preparing for this, first during my time in London, and then the years I spent doing market research and expanding our portfolio to all the hottest restaurants in all the major European cities
I was more than ready, willing, and able to lead this company, and Calvin was going to have to get used to it. He could oppose me at every turn, make it known to anyone who listened that he didn’t think I could handle this job, but he was sorely mistaken if he thought I was going to give in that easily. If I gave up every time a man told me I couldn’t, I’d never get out of bed. Corporate America was a boys’ club, and I was here to fuck shit up.
My mother let loose a long-suffering sigh, pulling me from my swirling thoughts, and I braced myself.
“You shouldn’t let him get to you like that.”
I snorted. “You say that like it’s the easiest thing in the world to ignore him when he takes potshots at my character. You know he tried to make me sign a promissory note?”
My mother stared at me for a beat, eyes wide, then said, “Nevertell your father that. They’ll never find Cal’s body.”
I chuckled, then sighed heavily. “Working with him fucking sucks, Mom.”
“I don’t understand why you don’t just tell him that you’re more than ready for this. We may have groomed Chloe to take over, but you’ve dedicated just as much time and energy to the success of this company as her. More, actually.”
“Because that’s not the point.”
“Then whatisthe point?” Mom asked, throwing herself onto one of the armchairs in the corner.
Yeah, we had armchairs in our fifty-five degree cellars.
We didn’t spend a lot of time down here, but sometimes it was nice to escape to this place where only Delatou family members could go and recenter before facing the world again.
