Chapter 35
NICO
He may have looked broken outside Matteo’s house, but the man pestering me during his best friend’s funeral is definitely the Cesare we all know and dislike.
As Alessia warned me, even though I didn’t want to believe it, Cesare doesn’t wait.
Not for grief to settle like morning mist.
Not for the dark earth over Matteo’s grave to finish collapsing into itself.
He starts on the day of the funeral, one that begins before sunrise, when the air is still blue with night and the stones of Castagneto Carducci sweat quietly from the cold.
The bells have not yet rung, but the church doors stand open, their dark mouths breathing incense and wax into the narrow street.
I arrive early to be there for Alessia.
Toni and Alba are with her as well, and she takes comfort in them.
But through the tragedy—I’ve reclaimed my place in her bed, not for sex but for intimacy, for comfort, for assuaging pain.
“Nico. Good, you came early,” Cesare remarks.
I don’t tell him that I’m here out of reverence and a need to stand still somewhere sacred before the world begins asking things of me again.
He wouldn’t understand.
“Not here,” I tell him calmly.
“Of course not,” he snaps. “At the Palazzo during the reception. We need to get things back on track now.”
I struggle not to roll my eyes.
I don’t respond to his ridiculous statement; I walk around him and into the three hundred-and-forty-year-old church.
Built by the Della Gherardesca family to commemorate the liberation of Budapest, the church of Sant'Antonio a Bolgheri still bears the family crest on its facade. Its illusionistic interior decor creates a sense of greater space with paintings depicting the castle of Bolgheri and the church itself.
Candles flicker along the side altars, their flames trembling in the draft that follows mourners through the nave. The scent of beeswax, old stone, and lilies makes the air heavy.
Matteo’s coffin rests before the altar.
It’s per his request, simple—unadorned wood. He didn’t want excess or a spectacle, only the quiet dignity of a life lived in devotion to craft, soil, and patience.
He will be buried beside Isabella today. After all this waiting, all this endurance, they will lie together again.
Cesare pushes past me and goes to the front pew. He leans down to talk to Renzo, who gives him a flat but disapproving glare, but says nothing.
Before my father-in-law can bother my wife, I step beside her.
She’s stopped crying, but her face is pale and her eyes puffy.
This morning, Alba suggested that she wear some makeup, and I heard Alessia ask her to fuck off in rapid and very colorful Italian.
The organ begins to stir, a low note rolling through the church like breath drawn deep before speech. Mourners take their seats, and Alessia walks up to the priest.
There is no confusion about who is in charge here.
It is Alessia.
I watch as the priest leans toward her near the side altar, speaking in a low, deferential voice. She listens and answers softly. He straightens and moves away without question.
She arranged everything.
The service.
The readings.
The hour the bells would ring.
The grave beside Isabella’s—opened again, carefully, as if love were something that could be resumed rather than ended.
Matteo had no children. No siblings. No one left to claim him by blood—but then with Alessia, the bond is stronger than blood could ever be.
When she finally takes her seat beside me, the church doors close behind us with a heavy finality, and she reaches out to hold my hand.
The service is short. Alessia reads Leopardi’s poem, and everyone who knew Matteo smiles, even Cesare.
“Some men leave behind legacies,” Alessia speaks into the microphone after she finishes the poem and sets the paper she’d written the words on down on the lectern. “Others leave behind love.” She pauses to gain control. “Matteo left both.”
Cars and helicopters have been arranged for those who will be attending the funeral reception at the Palazzo Alighieri in Florence.
Cars for the regular folk and helicopters for the executives. Even here, there’s a hierarchy.
When we get to the Palazzo, Alessia goes right to the concierge who is managing the reception, and Renzo tells me that we’ve been summoned.
“We just fucking buried him,” I mutter, annoyed.
“Yeah, and he’s thinking you buried his winemaker, and now he doesn’t have one,” Renzo says sardonically.
“Cristo! The man is odious.”
Cesare does not meet us in his office but at the grand Palazzo library.
He stands as if, and probably, for affect, by the tall mullioned window, his silhouette framed against a brilliantly blue Florentian winter sky. Beneath him, the city sprawls like an intricate tapestry. His hands are clasped behind his back; his posture is as rigid as a marble statue.
I walk into the room and head straight for the bar. “You want to talk.”
I pour myself a scotch and down it like a shot.
Renzo nods when I lift the bottle and tilt my chin in enquiry.
I pour him a drink, and since I know what Cesare likes, I serve a twenty-year-aged Nonino Riserva grappa in a tulip glass for him.
I walk up to him and hand him the glass. He takes it with a softly mumbled, “Grazie.”
“Have you talked to Costa yet?” he asks.
Renzo sits on a barstool at the antique bar, sipping his drink as if he doesn’t have a care in the world.
I sit down and lift the book from the side table. Dante’s Purgatorio.
Not hell. Not heaven. Just the long, difficult climb in between.
Very apropos.
“No, I haven’t talked to Costa.”
“Why?”
“Because my wife’s close friend—and mine…and yours—just died. I haven’t had the time to deal with it.” My words aren’t loud, almost hushed, and yet they carry in the high-ceilinged room. “May I remind you that we are at Matteo’s funeral reception?”
He turns now and faces me, unperturbed by my bluntness. “Matteo was very good at his job.”
“You know who else is very good at their job?”
He sneers, his eyes narrowing. “You think I don’t know why you’re stalling? You think I don’t know what Matteo wanted? Boy, I’ve been playing political games since before you were in diapers.” His voice is the scrape of metal on stone.
“I don’t know, Cesare, what it is that you think you know?” I ask languidly, not letting him intimidate me.
He’s spoiled. Gotten too used to everyone kissing his ass, me included, even if I didn’t ever pucker up properly or quickly enough. Still, I’m done being his whipping boy, waiting for the right time to gently push him out of his place of power.
“I know that we cannot afford a gap,” he replies briskly. “The market is already jittery. Distributors are calling. The board will demand answers. We need to announce a successor.”
I draw a slow breath, tasting the faint scent of roses from a bouquet on the ornate center table. “Not today, we don’t.”
His gray eyes, Alessia’s eyes, go sharp and flinty. “Scusi?”
I take a long swallow of my drink. “I’m not rushing this.”
“What does that mean?” The threat in his voice is like a sharpened knife. But I’m out of fucks, so he can do whatever he wants.
“I’m going to take my time, Cesare, out of respect for Matteo and out of good business sense. Davide is a fucking clown and would be a terrible choice. So, no, I’m not going to rush.”
“Respect doesn’t run a company,” he shouts. “We are not a monastery. We are a business.”
“We are a wine house,” I correct gently, “and we just lost its steward.”
His jaw clenches, the muscles beneath his skin taut as bowstrings. “Which is precisely why sentimentality is dangerous.”
I lace my fingers in front of me to still their tremor. Beyond the window, crows wheel over the rooftops. “Alessia will step in.”
That’s my other plan—Plan B, as they call it in America. She takes over now in an interim capacity and then stays in the job forever.
Cesare lets out a short, incredulous laugh. “Absolutely not.”
“She already has taken over, whether you like it or not,” I remark.
“In practice, she’s been running Pietra Alta for years—overseeing the harvest, tending the vinification vats, supervising every coop and barrel.
The wines speak for themselves. And since Matteo fell ill, she’s been working with other winemakers. Ask Renzo.”
“I don’t need to ask Renzo about my business,” he crows and then waves a dismissive hand. “Alessia is the wrong decision. She’s too idealistic. Too feminine.”
I lift my chin. “She’s disciplined. More qualified than any outsider you’re courting.”
He steps forward, his Ferragamo shoes whispering against the marble floor. “Davide Fontana is internationally respected.”
“So is Alessia,” I reply. “The difference is she doesn’t need a public announcement to prove her worth.”
His gaze narrows. “You are confusing marriage with management.”
“No. I’m not.” I set my now-empty glass down right next to Dante’s book about his climb up the Mount of Purgatory. “You are confusing her gender with competence.”
Cesare comes closer, towering over me. It’s an old power play old white men like him still employ and think it works.
It doesn’t.
“You will appoint Fontana,” Cesare says, cold certainty in every syllable. “Or someone of his caliber. This is non-negotiable.”
“As CEO, I alone appoint the head winemaker.”
He leans down, and I can smell the faint trace of bergamot on his lapels. Voice dropping to a low chord, he warns, “You serve at the pleasure of the board.”
“I know.”
“And I am the chairman of that board.”
I don’t look away, keeping my face expressionless. “I know.”
His eyes scour my face, hunting for the old reflex—the flicker of fear or compulsion to yield. He finds neither.
“If you force this”—he straightens—“there will be consequences.”
“I accept that.”
Cesare’s expression shifts, as if I’ve recited a foreign liturgy. “You would risk your position—over this?”
“Yes.”
“Over her.”
I smile. “For her, Cesare, I’d risk my life.”
For the first time, I see uncertainty cross his features, and the shock of meeting resolve he cannot crush.
“I will fire you,” he threatens bluntly.
I wave a hand in a “go ahead” gesture. “Faccia pure, Cesare. Go right ahead!”
He turns to Renzo. “Talk sense to him.”
Renzo shakes his head. “You fire him, I walk out, too. Probably take a few people with me.”
I rise then, the decision coiled in my bones like the vine roots beneath our vineyards. “You have a good rest of your day, Duca Alighieri.”
With that—and battle lines drawn—Renzo and I walk out of the library and straight into fucking Chiara, because apparently the universe enjoys kicking me when I’m down.
“Talk to your wife,” she hisses.
“You have a wife, Renzo?” I ask, turning to him.
Renzo doesn’t bother hiding his smile. “Chiara, we’ve discussed this. You go through me, not directly to Nico.”
“She won’t let me take pictures and post—”
“You post a single picture of this funeral or the reception,” I cut in, “and I won’t just fire you, Chiara—I’ll make sure you never work as a PR professional again in your fucking life.”
With that, I storm off to find Alessia, who I know is already pissed thanks to Chiara being…well, herself.
As I head down the marble hallway, I hear Renzo snap behind me, “Matteo was like a father to her. Show some respect.”
I find Alessia speaking quietly with the caterer. The moment she sees me, she strides over and pokes my chest with one sharp finger.
It does my heart good to see she isn’t collapsed in grief—she’s furious. I’ll take fury over broken any day.
“You keep that bitch away from me and mine, got it?” she snarls.
“Renzo’s handling it. She reports to him now.”
“Why does she still work here when she tried to mess with us?” she demands, punctuating each word with another poke.
I catch her finger, lift her hand, and press a kiss to her knuckle. “I love you, cara, but I can’t fire every woman who wants me. If I did that, we’d have hardly any employees left at the House of Alighieri.”
Behind me, I hear Alba snort and Toni mutter, “Merda, he’s in so much trouble.”
“You have some big, hairy balls, Niccolò.” Alessia steps back, eyes blazing, but she’s fighting a smile.
Good. She needs a little light after the hell of the past weeks.
“Big, yes,” I agree solemnly. “But hairy? No.”
“He manscapes?” Toni asks brightly.
And just like that, heat floods my face.
Me. Nico Alarico. Blushing.
What has the world come to!
“Maybe he’ll drop his pants, and you can see for yourself,” Alessia says sweetly—then turns on her heel and saunters away.
“She’s something when she’s angry,” Alba remarks, sliding her hand through the crook of my right arm.
“Not often,” Toni adds, looping her arm through my left. “But when she is? It’s a full production.”
I look down at my two sisters-in-law hanging off me.
“Ladies, can I get you a drink?” I offer.
“Absolutely,” Toni replies pertly. “And then you can tell us all about your manscaping regimen.”
They walk me away, laughing, while I attempt—and fail—to form a coherent reply.