Chapter 37
ALESSIA
Two days later, we arrive in Florence just as the late-morning sun pours across the Arno, bathing the Palazzo Alighieri’s weathered stone facade in molten gold.
Every carved cornice and balustrade seems to glow with centuries of whispered power.
Nico walks beside me along the echoing corridor, his measured stride making faint sounds on the marble floor, his expression like a coiled spring ready to uncoil.
“So…you just decided to come over?” he asks again, clearly trying to catch up.
“Yes,” Alba answers for me. “Neither of us would ride with Toni, and she refused to ride with us, so I drove Alessia, and Toni drove herself.”
Nico blinks, then shakes his head slowly, like he’s attempting to solve a riddle written in another language.
That makes two of us.
I have no idea what Alba just said either, but she’s nervous—and Alba babbles when she’s nervous. Long sentences. Circular logic. Too many clauses.
We’ve gone back and forth on how to figure out what Papà is actually planning, and somehow pimping out our baby sister feels…wrong. Ethically questionable. Possibly criminal.
However, said baby sister is thrilled to play her own hyper-modern, Maserati-driving version of Mata Hari, and no amount of sisterly concern will stop her now.
Toni lives for chaos.
Renzo trails a pace behind us, phone in hand, his thumb scrolling through messages, but his dark eyes are flickering to every door, every shadowed archway.
We slow beneath the frescoed ceiling outside Papà’s office, feigning admiration.
Nymphs and gods swirl overhead in frescoed drama: Apollo’s gilded lyre, Diana’s hunting hounds frozen in mid-pounce, cherubs spinning through painted clouds. Their silent reverie hangs heavy above us, watching.
I feel Nico’s gaze brush mine. “You okay?” he murmurs, voice low as distant church bells.
I nod once, barely. “Fine.”
It’s true—but only half.
“Look, I love that you’re here for a couple of days, but—”
The heavy oak door creaks open.
Piero, Papà’s EA and right hand, steps into the corridor, his arms burdened with manila folders whose edges stick out like secrets begging to be spilled.
His tailored navy suit is flawless, his tie knotted so precisely it looks almost sculpted—and yet his face is hollowed, dark circles pooling beneath weary eyes.
Late nights and locked doors have worn him thin.
Toni’s face brightens, her warm laughter bubbling through the hush.
“Piero!” she cries out and launches at the poor guy, who blushes furiously, color climbing all the way to his hairline.
Now I’m even more worried about taking advantage of his obvious crush on Toni—who, judging by the gleam in her eye, is practically salivating at the prospect of extracting information from him.
“What the fuck?” Renzo mutters when he sees Toni hug Piero.
“They’re friends,” I say flatly.
Renzo looks livid, jealous enough to kill poor Piero.
Alba and I exchange a look and execute a perfectly synchronized, exaggerated eye roll.
And they expect us to believe there’s nothing going on between them? Honestly—how stupid do they think we are?
“Friends?” Renzo splutters. “He’s a fucking kid.”
“So is my sister,” Alba says sweetly and even flutters her eyelashes for extra effect.
Renzo isn’t even listening to us; he’s glowering at Toni, who’s talking a mile a minute to Piero.
Nico grabs my arm. “Dolcezza, what are you three up to?”
I give him my most innocent, wide-eyed look. “What do you mean?”
He spears me with a warning stare.
Thankfully, his phone rings then, and he swears. “Cazzo! We’re late.” He answers the call. “We’re on our way. Just serve them some wine…call it a tasting.” Pause. “Well, some coffee then if it’s too early for wine.” He hangs up and looks at me. “Is 11 a.m. too early for a wine tasting?”
“Depends, are your guests Americans?”
“Yes.”
“They are weird about when they drink wine, keep wanting it to be happy hour.”
Before Nico can answer, we hear Toni giggle. Loudly. She’s not the giggly kind, and it’s over the top, but poor Piero, who is staring at her, doesn’t know that.
This has disaster written all over it.
“You know, Toni, we should talk about your project.” Renzo steps beside her and glares at Piero.
Toni pushes Renzo away. “Don’t you have a meeting? You said you can’t have coffee with me because you have a meeting.” She pouts at him and then flashes a million-watt smile at Piero, who is about to go into apoplectic shock.
“She’s good!” Alba murmurs.
“Oh yeah,” I agree.
“You’re all up to something,” Nico says in resignation.
I wave him away. “Go for your meeting. We’re just…hanging out…you know, being sisters.”
Toni leans in close to Piero, her voice dropping to a silken, conspiratorial whisper. “Honestly, how do you keep track of all those…meetings and calls? So many spinning plates. So many hidden agendas.”
Piero stammers. “Ah…well…I…manage.”
“That’s because you’re brilliant.”
She’s laying it on so thick I’m surprised Piero can’t see through it.
“I am always very busy,” he gushes.
“Why don’t I take you for a drink as I promised?” Toni purrs, tipping her chin and peering up sweetly in practiced innocence.
Nico’s posture stiffens—not with suspicion, but with that protective set of his shoulders when Toni cranks up her charm to eleven.
Renzo’s jaw tightens. “The fuck is she up to?”
“Renzo, we’ve got to go.” Nico puts his hand on his arm probably to steer him away from punching poor Piero in the face. “We have the people from Stag’s Leap waiting in the conference room.” He drops a quick kiss on my lips. “Dinner?”
I nod. “Yes, please.”
He frowns. “You sure you’re okay?” he asks again.
“Never been better.”
“Now, I know something is wrong,” he says on a sigh.
“I love that place.” Toni now has her hand in the crook of Piero’s arm, and she leads him away, all the while Renzo is watching them, baffled.
It takes a minute, but then Alba and I are all alone in the hallway in front of our father’s office.
“Well,” she says waving a hand to fan herself, “that had the potential to blow up fifteen different ways.”
“Renzo and Toni are not sleeping together, are they?” I whisper.
“She’d have told me if that happened.” Alba puts her palms up. “I think.”
“He’s too old for her.”
“He’s hot, though.”
I groan. “Cristo, Alba, you need to get laid, you’re sex starved.”
“Tell me about it.” She looks at her watch. “I have a meeting. You’ll be okay on your own?”
“No, I’m going to get lost in this big Palazzo and the big bad city of Florence,” I throw back at her. “Yeah, I’ll be fine.”
She scoffs at me and leaves.
I look around me and realize I have absolutely nothing to do.
Lucia is managing things at Pietra Alta because I took today and the weekend off. I do have a call with the winemakers to help out Renzo, but that’s just thirty minutes in two hours, and I can take it from anywhere.
A slow smile curves my lips.
A whole afternoon—just for me.
Delicious.
I step out of the Palazzo’s cavernous entrance and let Florence envelop me.
The narrow lanes glint with afternoon sun; the walls of honeyed sandstone radiate warmth. I taste espresso in the air—bitter, sharp—and the yeasty perfume of fresh bread.
My footsteps echo past shuttered cafés and old stone fountains where tourists lean and sigh.
I walk without haste, winding until I arrive where I always do when I need to find myself again.
The Uffizi.
A small nod to the guard at the gate, a discreet flash of my Alighieri pass, and I slip inside—no queue, no waiting. My family’s name is etched into this museum's history. Each generation of Alighieri has gifted art to the museum to cement our name in Florence’s cultural spine.
Filippino Lippi’s Adoration of the Magi is Papà’s contribution.
Small by Renaissance standards, almost modest. It hangs in one of the quieter rooms, often overlooked by tourists who rush toward Botticelli and Leonardo.
The label notes the Alighieri bequest. Papà loves that footnote more than the painting itself.
Alighieri men love to donate art that depicts devotion—so long as they’re not the ones kneeling.
The scene is crowded but intimate. The Virgin sits slightly elevated, not distant, just centered. The Magi kneel—not in theatrical submission, but in contemplation. Behind them, the landscape stretches into pale Tuscan hills, the light soft and almost forgiving.
What I love most is not the gold or the procession, it’s the faces. Lippi painted recognition into them. The moment when someone sees something sacred and understands it. The varnish has deepened the blues and reds over time, but the tenderness remains intact.
I walk the grand hallways where shafts of pale light dance across oak floors polished by centuries of feet.
I drift down the grand gallery, no map in hand, following the pull of brushstrokes and color. These paintings have survived wars and plagues, the greed of princes, the pride of patriarchs. Each canvas a testament to endurance—eternity painted in pigment.
I stop, as I always do, at Caravaggio’s Medusa.
You’ll almost always find tourists thronged around it—phones lifted, guides whispering about severed heads and scandal. The convex shield gleams under the lights, that frozen scream suspended between myth and paint.
But it’s November now. The high season has drained away like summer wine.
Florence belongs to those of us who live here.
The room is nearly empty. No murmured translations. No elbows nudging for position. Just the faint echo of footsteps on polished floors and the quiet hum of climate control preserving genius.
The canvas is smaller than people expect, mounted on a convex wooden shield, as if it were meant to be lifted into battle.
Medusa’s head is caught at the instant of severing—eyes wide, mouth open in a silent, furious scream. Snakes coil and writhe from her scalp, each scale rendered with obsessive precision. Blood arcs outward in a frozen spray, impossibly vivid against the dark ground.
The varnish glints beneath the gallery lights; the curvature of the surface makes her expression shift as I move. From one angle she looks horrified. From another, almost triumphantly.
What I love about it is that Caravaggio painted Medusa not as a monster already defeated, but as a being mid-transformation—caught between terror and defiance. There is fear in her face, yes. But there is also fury and a refusal to go quietly.
Medusa was born of violence and exile. So was Caravaggio’s career.
Matteo once told me that great wine, like great art, is born in extremity—heat, pressure, imbalance.
“Too much comfort and nothing interesting happens.”
I move on and linger before The Birth of Venus. Her pale skin glows beneath Apollonian light; her golden hair drifts like sea foam. She stands, improbably serene, arising from chaos fully formed.
I watch her, and as I do, the tension of the past weeks leaves me. Art does that. It soothes and clarifies.
I let go of the tight coil of boardroom politics, the weight of the family name, the whispered threats of Nico being fired—let them dissolve into the marble and frescoes around me.
I stop thinking about Papà, about profit margins, about Matteo leaving me alone in this big, wide world.
Even Nico’s voice fades to nothing.
Instead, I remember who I was before I learned caution. Before I folded myself down to fit into other people’s expectations, and began to mistake patience for powerlessness.
I close my eyes and breathe in the hush.
I am Alessia Alighieri.
I am a winemaker.
I am a daughter.
I am a wife.
I am a woman who knows her own worth—even when the world pretends it doesn’t.
When I open my eyes, the painting and I meet again.
I feel steadier—anchored by something older than ambition, older than fear.
Alba scowls as we wait for Toni at the Antico Caffè del Moro, a ten-minute walk from the Palazzo. We got a cryptic message from our sister, asking us to be here at this time.
“She’s really enjoying playing the little spy, isn’t she?” Alba types away on her phone.
My job has its highs and lows when it comes to how much time I spend at work.
In the winter, it’s usually quieter. There’s a lot of work to do, but it’s not as crazy as harvest time and thereafter.
For Alba, there isn’t any such respite. She manages restaurants and tasting rooms around the world, which means she’s working during all the time zones and in all seasons.
Toni is bursting to talk when she walks in. She looks around and then parks her ass on a chair next to me and across from Alba.
“The things I’ve learned,” she proclaims, her eyes wide.
Alba pulls a face like she tasted vinegar. “Please tell me none of that includes Piero’s preference for boxers or briefs.”
Toni waves a hand. “Please, Piero would have a coronary if he ever got me naked. Anyway, so…Papà is calling an extraordinary board meeting next Friday.”
Seven days from now.
Alba’s spine snaps upright. “For what?”
Toni’s glance darts, as if she fears the walls might listen, or maybe, and most probably, she’s just having too much fun playacting secret agent. “Succession.”
I almost drop my glass of Franciacorta. “What?”
“He plans to announce Fontana as a stabilizing choice,” she continues. “Frame it as continuity. A seamless transition.”
“Fontana is an asshole!” Alba shakes her head in disgust. “How can Papà be this stupid?”
“What about Nico?”
Toni’s jaw tightens, a line of steel. “He assumes Nico will either bend the knee…or walk away.”
I set my glass down. “He’s not firing Nico?”
Toni picks up my glass and takes a long sip of the sparkling wine. “He’s going to see how Nico reacts to the Fontana hire and then bring up the stuff he’s been compiling against him.”
I hate this.
My father is conspiring against my husband.
We are spying on our father.
The whole thing is enough to make you sick.
“So, if Nico makes a fuss, he’s going to ruin his career and reputation.”
Alba hisses under her breath. “Won’t be the first time he’s ruined a career. Papà does this so well it’s almost one of his top three skillsets, right after making money and making people feel like shit about their life choices.”
“What’s our plan of action now?” Toni looks from me to Alba and then back to me.
I make a sound somewhere between a sigh and a growl. “I need to think.”
“Don’t take too long,” Alba warns.
“I won’t,” I assure her, because the truth is I’ve always known what to do—I just haven’t wanted to do it.
I think Alba knows this, maybe Toni as well. Papà may be the patriarch, but we’re the heirs of the House of Alighieri.
But Papà is overplaying his hand, and I have to decide when I’m done pretending I don’t know how to take his game apart.