Chapter 28
Jake
“W hat?” I turn my head to stare at Rosa, not sure what’s making her swear so unexpectedly. I follow her gaze out the windshield and see her looking not at her uncle but at the man he’s talking to.
I’ve never seen him before in my life.
“Who’s that?” I ask, but she’s already scrambling to undo her seat belt and jumping out of the truck.
“Damien?” she calls out, and both heads turn to look at her.
Geno looks as pissed off as he did last night. The other guy?
Looks guilty as hell.
“Who’s Damien?” I mutter to myself as I follow behind her. She comes to a stop in front of the two, her hands on her hips, radiating all the fierce anger her five-foot-something frame can muster.
Not gonna lie—if I was one of those guys, I’d be a little scared of her.
“I thought you moved to the coast,” she snaps, and I finally get with the program.
This is the guy who quit right before I showed up. The one who abandoned his job to open a surf shop.
Not a lot of surfing happening at Belmonte, though. So what the hell is he doing here?
“I, uh, changed my mind,” the guy says, sounding just about as dim as he looks. Doesn’t surprise me, with the way he left Caparelli—the crops half-dead from lack of water, the place barely tended to.
She turns her fury onto her uncle. “And why in the world would you hire this loser? He’s incompetent!”
“Hey!” Surfer Boy says, but both Geno and Rosa ignore him.
Geno rolls his eyes and turns away. “Who I hire has nothing to do with you,” he snaps.
Rosa looks over at Damien again. “How long have you worked here?”
He doesn’t answer.
Leo walks up. “What’s going on?” he asks, looking at all four of us in turn.
Don’t ask me, man. I have no idea.
Rosa turns to her cousin. “How long has this guy worked here?”
“All summer,” he replies, while Geno barrels into the conversation, trying to drown him out.
All summer.
Things start to click.
“So he’s been working for you since what, May? Late April?” I ask, my eyes narrowing.
Leo nods. “Not the most dependable, but Dad insisted we keep him on.”
“I am standing right here ,” the guy protests.
“Since late April, huh?” Rosa is talking to Leo but doesn’t take her eyes off Damien. “Including the first couple weeks of June, right? When he was—theoretically, at least—working for me?”
“Wait, what?” Leo’s head snaps in Damien’s direction. “Why were you working two jobs? No wonder you didn’t show up half the time back then.” He looks at Geno. “I wanted to fire him, remember? And you wouldn’t let me.”
Geno looms over Leo, his eyes narrowed to slits. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I suggest you stop right now.”
“Nah, I think you’re on the right track, Leo. Don’t stop now.” I clap him on the shoulder. “Doing great.”
“What in the hell is going on?” Leo throws his hands into the air.
“See, if I’m reading this situation right, Damien here didn’t have two jobs. Well, he was getting two paychecks, but…” I glance at the guy. “You were never really working for Rosa, were you?”
He glowers at me but says nothing.
Rosa steps forward. “What, were you spying on me for my uncle? Is that it?”
“How dare you,” Geno snarls.
“Or maybe,” I add, “it wasn’t just spying. Maybe he was finding ways to make life difficult for you.”
Geno’s mouth snaps shut.
Rosa nods firmly. “The sabotage.”
“What sabotage?” Geno and Leo say at the same time.
“Oh, come on,” I scoff. “The water being cut off? The missing pest traps? The damaged hail nets? All the complaints to try to shut Caparelli down?”
Leo’s hands are tight fists next to his body. He takes a step toward Geno. “You’re trying to get Caparelli shut down?”
“Of course not!” Geno waves a dismissive hand at Rosa and me. “Don’t listen to them. They’ve held a grudge against me for ten years!”
“No, Uncle Geno, that’s not what’s going on,” Rosa says. “All I want is a logical explanation for why Damien is here, on your staff, when he said he was leaving town a month ago. And why he was being paid by you when he was also working for me.”
Geno clenches his jaw, a muscle jumping.
Leo takes a step toward Rosa. “You really think your place was being sabotaged?”
She looks at me, then turns back and nods. “We don’t think it was being sabotaged. We’re sure of it. So sure, in fact, that we’ve reported it to the police.”
Damien starts to step to the side, clearly looking for an escape, so I pivot until I’m right next to him. I clamp a hand on his shoulder. “You don’t have anywhere you need to be, do you?”
He slumps, looking at Geno, who turns away with a look of disgust on his face.
Gianni comes out of the house, probably pulled outside by our not-so-quiet argument. “What the hell is going on out here?” He looks at Geno. “Dad?”
The man says nothing, just stands there looking furious.
Leo says, “Someone’s been sabotaging Caparelli. Rosa and Jake think it’s this guy.” He waves a dismissive hand at Damien.
“What? Why would someone sabotage Caparelli?” Gianni shakes his head. “I don’t get it.”
“See, if the vines die or get damaged in a hailstorm or we get shut down by the authorities over some bullshit made-up complaint, we won’t be able to survive the season. And your father can swoop in and take it away from us.” Rosa’s eyes fill with tears, and she swipes furiously at them. “Whatever it takes, right?”
“I don’t want the vines dead,” Geno yells. “I just want them back !”
Silence follows his statement. I glance around and realize that everyone is looking at us. And I mean everyone. Workers, Aunt Janet, Vittorio.
Geno whirls around, stabbing a finger at Damien. “And you ! I asked you to make it difficult , not damaged!”
“How else was I supposed to get her to give up?” Damien argues. “Even when I was working there, she kept at it, no matter what. I had to pretend to leave the area just to have a shot at screwing things up enough to break her down.”
“Well, it didn’t work, did it? She’s still at it, thanks to this asshole,” Geno growls, waving a hand at me. “And you never should have messed with the vineyard itself. Those vines are too precious to sabotage!”
“But not me, right, Uncle Geno?” Rosa’s voice is quiet but steady. She takes a step back. “I want you to understand one thing: No matter what happens, my sisters and I will never give Caparelli back to you. We would sell it first.”
“That’s not what I meant,” he snaps, but I’ve had enough. I pull out my phone and a business card and start dialing.
“What are you doing?” Geno asks me.
“Calling the cops.” He grabs for my phone, but I move out of reach. I look over at Leo and ask, “Can you make sure Damien doesn’t try to take off? I think Deputy Romero might want to have a word with him.”
Leo nods, his mouth a thin line.
“You’re calling the police?” Janet has a hand over her mouth.
“Of course.” I shrug. “We’re talking about property damage, false complaints, theft…the list goes on. If Geno is telling the truth and Damien here was going rogue, he’s got nothing to worry about.” I stop and correct myself. “Well, very little to worry about.”
Rosa tugs at my hand, and I look down. “We forgot something,” she says.
I tilt my head.
She turns to her cousins. “The hail nets are in the back of the truck. The extra ones, not the nets that belonged to Caparelli. Those, we’re keeping.”
She lifts our linked hands, smiles quietly, and leads the way back to my truck. She lowers the tailgate, the guys offload the nets, and I finally get Deputy Romero on the line.
The card he gave me came in handy after all.
Damien tries once again to sneak off, but Leo and Gianni each take a shoulder and seat him on the bumper of my truck, holding him there for the imminent arrival of Romero. Geno and Janet are arguing, some of the workers are surreptitiously snapping photos—probably for social media posts, and Rosa?
Rosa lifts up on her tiptoes and kisses me on the cheek.
“What was that for?” I murmur.
“That’s for everything you’ve done this summer,” she whispers back.
Then the deputy’s truck rumbles up the drive, and we don’t talk again for another two hours.
* * *
The sky is fully dark when we step inside the house, stomachs grumbling. “We should have stopped for dinner,” I whine, leaning against the wall right next to the door.
“Don’t be a baby,” Rosa teases as she locks the door and turns on the light. “Have a bowl of cereal.”
I follow her to the kitchen. “How’d you know that’s my favorite?”
She taps her forehead. “Intuition. Also, we’re both too exhausted to make a full meal.”
“True enough.”
We scarf down some cereal and fruit, and wash the dishes together, our hips and shoulders and hands bumping together as we move around each other in the small space. It feels cozy and peaceful and right.
Then Rosa turns off the light in the kitchen, and I double-check the locks on the front and back doors, and we head upstairs to bed.
Without having to say anything, we both turn left at the top of the stairs, and I join her in what’s starting to feel like our room. This is dangerous, I know, but I can’t bring myself to go back to my own room on the other side of the house. We take turns in the bathroom, and when I come back into the room, Rosa is in bed, in her little pajama set, the moonlight streaming down on the curves and valleys of her body under the covers.
For a moment, I imagine a lifetime of nights like this, where I slip under the covers with her after a long day and she curls into my side instinctively, her head on my bare chest, her arm around my waist.
I press a kiss to her forehead, and she hums sleepily in my arms. Her hand at my waist slides down to cup me, and I arch into her touch.
I can’t help myself. I want all the memories I can take with me when I go.