Chapter 6
NICO
I drift in and out of sleep, replaying the conversation with my wife until the words lose their edge and still somehow keep cutting. By dawn, I give up. I lace my shoes and leave the palazzo while Florence is still half-asleep.
Running, physically, has always been how I think—and emotionally, how I deal with situations that upend the balance of my life as I have planned it.
The streets are cool, stone holding the night longer than the air. I cut across Piazza della Signoria, past statues that have watched men like me justify themselves for centuries. The city smells like espresso and damp marble and yesterday's heat.
I cross the Arno at the Ponte Vecchio, the river dark and steady below, moving without apology.
Florence looks indifferent to me this early—unimpressed by power, lineage, or money.
The city is different in daylight—less theatrical and more honest.
My breathing settles into a rhythm, shoes striking stone, body working while my mind refuses to let go.
I was an asshole to her. Deliberately.
I slow as I run along the Lungarno, the river opening up beside me, the city stretching awake.
Alessia's face rises unbidden—composed, polite, trying so hard not to ask for more than she's already been denied.
I resent her.
Present tense?
Or the past?
But as ugly as that is, it is my truth.
I didn't want to marry her. Not because she did anything wrong—but because she was chosen for me. Because Cesare decided that she was the acceptable Alighieri daughter. The quieter one. The dull one. The one who wouldn't push back. The one who would make the transaction easier.
The lesser sister.
The thought makes my stomach turn now, but at the time, I clung to it. Used it to justify my treatment of her.
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.
Her hair 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.
Another epiphany raises its ugly head: what I've been doing to her—my absence, my rare and careless presence—is because I couldn't strike at Cesare, so I struck at her instead.
I've been punishing her for my lack of choice, for my anger, and—most unforgivably—for my wounded pride at being made to marry a woman I saw as beneath me.
Isn't that why I have been using Chiara unashamedly? She doesn't feel like she's being used and, in fact, enjoys the attention she's getting by being favored by me over my wife, but it doesn't change the truth.
I slow to a jog, pressure clamping down behind my sternum.
I shoved Chiara into my wife's space as a way to insult her.
Intentionally. Even though I promised Alessia that if anything like that happened, it would be accidental—that I wouldn't humiliate her on purpose.
At the time, I told myself I was being honest. Now, with my actions, I have made myself a liar.
I told myself I was being honest by not pretending marital fidelity mattered. But it was dishonest of me to say that because it does matter to me, and isn't that why, despite the many opportunities, I have chosen not to betray my wedding vows?
I wasn't being honest.
I was being petty.
Slapping at Alessia right after the engagement because I was angry with her, myself, and the universe. It was a way to assert control, to remind everyone—including my future wife—that I hadn't been tamed, that I still belonged to myself.
My behavior offends me.
I run harder, lungs burning now as I cut uphill, sweat slicking my skin. Florence blurs—the Duomo rising in the distance, the sound of a delivery truck, the first tourists appearing like ghosts.
Last night, even while I was playing a man like boys sometimes do, to my chagrin, Alessia had the grace to invite me to Pietra Alta, saying that she'd cook for me.
I scoff softly, breath ragged. She did that after I told her that I'd have a guest room prepared for her, making it obvious that I had no intention of sleeping with her, my wife.
She didn't punish me for that. No, she opened the door for us to have a relationship.
Who does that? Who extends themselves like that to someone who's done nothing to earn it?
Someone who still believes effort matters.
I stop near a small piazza, hands on my knees, heart pounding, humbled by the woman I’ve been mistreating.
The city hums around me now, fully awake.
Church bells ring.
Life goes on.
I straighten slowly.
I wasn't just an absent husband all these days—I was small.
But that isn't even the worst part, because what makes my crimes unforgivable is that I knew exactly what I was doing throughout—and even last night, when I attacked her for us not having a marriage, blamed her for living in Bolgheri when I have geographic flexibility.
One look from her last night—her stormy hazel-gray eyes stunned at my rudeness—and guilt hit harder than any accusation she could have lobbed my way but never did.
She didn't say, "Hey, stronzo, you're the one who's gallivanting around social media with another woman on your arm, and you're giving me a hard time for not staying the night in Florence when I have to be up in a few hours to take care of the vines that keep the lights on in this Palazzo?"
No, she said in her sweet manner, that she wanted me where she was, so we could try and be more than what I warned her we would be.
Yes, I resent—resented—her. Because right now, in the cold light of day, ninety-two days after the wedding, I don't. Not at all.
Alessia was forced, too. More so than I ever was. She had no leverage. No exit.
That realization is sharpened later in the afternoon, when Renzo and I meet with Cesare in his office overlooking the Arno.
The room is exactly what you'd expect—opulent without apology.
Gold-leafed frames, heavy brocade curtains, polished marble, and antique furniture arranged not for comfort but for effect.
Every surface announces success, legacy, and money spent to be noticed.
It's intimidating not because it's restrained, but because it's excessive—and entirely deliberate.
His desk is immaculate. Papers aligned with military precision. A single leather folder centered before him like an offering.
Cesare Alighieri sits behind it like a man who has never needed to raise his voice to be obeyed.
Renzo leans against the wall to my left, jacket already off, coffee in hand. He looks awake in the way men who thrive under pressure always do.
"How was your meeting with the Australian distributors?" Cesare asks without looking up.
"Good." I don't elaborate. He's no longer the CEO, and it's none of his fucking business.
I take the chair opposite him without waiting to be invited.
"Renzo tells me you wanted to discuss expansion plans," I prompt.