The Billionaire's Neglected Wife Seeks a Divorce

1. Chiara

— ? —

Chiara

Three Months Earlier

The grapes are warm beneath my feet, and Lorenzo is laughing at me.

He has left his shoes beside mine, but so far he is enjoying the view from outside the vat. I had hoped the invitation meant he wanted to spend an evening with me. I had not realized I would be providing the entertainment.

I nearly lose my balance trying to get a better look at his face. He usually saves his smiles for guests and people bringing good news about the harvest. Apparently, all I had to do was take off my shoes and make a fool of myself.

“You’re supposed to crush them.” He leans against the edge, close enough to see every cautious step I take. “Not negotiate with them.”

“I am crushing them.” I take another tentative step and feel the grapes burst beneath my heel, cool juice rising between my toes.

The sensation is strange, not unpleasant but foreign, and I am acutely aware that I look ridiculous.

A botanist from Lyon, barefoot in a Sicilian grape vat, trying to participate in a tradition I do not fully understand.

“I’m crushing them very effectively. With science. ”

“With science.” He repeats it as if he’s tasting the words, finding them amusing.

The evening light catches the angles of his face, softens them. Behind him, the vineyard slopes down toward the coast, and the sky is doing something spectacular with gold and rose that I would appreciate more if I weren’t concentrating so hard on not falling.

“Measured pressure distribution,” I say, taking another step. The vat is perhaps ten feet across, holding a layer of dark grapes that shift treacherously beneath me. “Optimal surface contact. You can’t just stomp randomly. The cellular structure of the grape skin requires consistent…”

I lose my footing. My arms pinwheel. A sound escapes me that is definitely not a shriek, more of a surprised exhalation, and I am absolutely going to end up face-first in crushed fruit. Lorenzo moves faster than I expect.

One moment he is standing outside the vat, dry and composed, and the next he is beside me, his bare foot landing beside mine, his hand catching my elbow, his other arm steadying my waist. His trousers are soaked to the knee. His white shirt is spattered with juice.

He has ruined what are probably very expensive clothes to keep me from falling, and he does not look annoyed about it at all.

“Consistent pressure,” he says, his mouth close to my ear. “You were saying.”

I become aware of several things at once.

The warmth of his hand through the thin fabric of my blouse. The smell of him, clean and warm beneath the sweetness of the grapes. The fact that my husband is touching me voluntarily, casually, without the careful distance he usually maintains.

We have been married almost two years. We share a bed when he remembers to come to it.

But this, this easy contact, this willingness to ruin his clothes just to catch me, this is new.

“I was saying,” I manage, still gripping his sleeve because I do not trust my feet, “that you should have warned me about the texture.”

“Would you have listened?” He waits until I have both feet planted before letting his grip relax at my waist.

“Probably not.” I surrender the sleeve I have wrinkled beyond saving. At least he cannot accuse me of dishonesty.

His laugh vibrates through me where our bodies are pressed together, and something loosens in my chest that I did not realize was tight.

This whole evening has been unexpected.

The pigiatura, the traditional grape-stomping, was his idea. He appeared in my doorway this afternoon while I was reading, something hesitant in his expression that I had never seen before, and asked if I wanted to participate.

Just the two of us, he said.

An old tradition. His father used to do it with his mother, before.

I almost said no. I have become skilled at saying no to things that might hurt, at armoring myself against hope. But something in his voice stopped me. Something that sounded almost like wanting.

So here I am, ankle-deep in grapes, with Lorenzo’s arm around my waist and the Sicilian sun turning everything golden, and I am trying very hard not to read too much into any of it.

He releases me slowly, making sure I have my balance, but he does not leave the vat. Instead he rolls his sleeves higher, revealing forearms I have admired more than I should admit, and starts to move through the grapes with the easy rhythm of someone who has done this many times.

“Watch.” He clears a space beside him so I can see how he moves. “You shift your weight, not your feet. The grapes move around you.”

I try to copy him and immediately stumble again. He catches my hand this time, threading his fingers through mine, and uses the connection to guide my movement. Step, shift. Step, shift. The grapes burst in a satisfying chorus beneath us.

“Better.” He loosens his grip, letting me try the next step without his help.

“I feel like a very clumsy crane.” I lift my knee too high and send a small splash up his shin.

“You look like a botanist trying to apply laboratory principles to an agricultural tradition.” He moves his other leg out of range before I can splash that one too.

“Is that an insult?” I deliberately set my next foot down beside his, close enough to threaten the rest of his trousers.

“It’s an observation.” His thumb brushes across my knuckles, a gesture so small I might have imagined it. “You approach everything like a puzzle to be solved. I’ve noticed.”

The admission startles me. He has noticed something about me. He has been paying attention, even when I thought he wasn’t looking.

I want to ask what else he has noticed. I want to know if he sees the way I linger at breakfast, hoping he will speak to me.

If he knows that I spend hours in the neglected corners of his estate, coaxing abandoned plants back to life because it is the only way I feel useful here. If he has any idea how lonely it is to be married to someone who feels like a stranger.

But the evening is too warm, too golden, too rare. I do not want to ruin it with heavy questions.

“My father used to say I was born asking why.” I match his rhythm now, our steps synchronized, the grapes yielding sweetly beneath us. “He and my mother thought I would grow out of it. Instead I got a degree in botany and started asking why about plants.”

“Amerigo mentioned your studies. In his letters, before the wedding.” Lorenzo’s voice carries something complicated when he says my father’s name. “He was proud of you. The tea brand you were building.”

“He was also proud of the alliance our marriage would create.” I keep my tone light, but the words have an edge I cannot quite hide. “Those things can coexist.”

Lorenzo is quiet for a moment. We move through the grapes together, and I watch the juice rise around our ankles, dark as garnets.

“Do you regret it?” His fingers stop guiding mine, though he keeps hold of my hand. “Coming here. The betrothal.”

The question is so direct, so unexpected, that I stop moving. He stops too, our hands still joined. Do I regret it?

In Lyon I had a small rented greenhouse, a growing client list, and botanical tea blends I had spent years perfecting.

My mother Delphine thought I spent too much time working, even while she handed out samples to her friends. I came to Sicily because they asked me to, because honor matters, because a promise made between families is not easily broken.

And I have been miserable.

Invisible. Lonely in a house full of people who do not know what to do with me.

And yet he is holding my hand, waiting for an answer he might not like. I want to give this evening a chance. I want him to keep asking.

“Ask me again at the end of the evening.” I start moving again, giving him time to decide whether he wants an honest answer badly enough to stay.

His mouth curves, not quite a smile but close. “Fair enough.”

We work in comfortable silence for a while, and I let myself enjoy the sensation of it. The cool burst of fruit. The warm grip of his fingers. The way the light keeps changing, gold bleeding into rose, and how it makes everything feel suspended, temporary, precious.

“Tell me about the tea brand.” He matches my slower pace instead of making me keep up with his. “What made it special?”

“You want to hear about herbal infusions?” I search his face for the polite patience people wear before they ask a botanist how to stop killing their houseplants. He seems to mean it.

“I want to hear about something you built. Something that mattered to you.” He turns us toward the untouched grapes at the edge, giving us a reason to keep working together.

The sincerity in his voice undoes something in me.

I start talking, haltingly at first, then with more confidence.

Lorenzo listens and he asks questions. Real questions, specific ones, about profit margins and distribution and how I handled the business side when my training was scientific.

I find myself laughing at my own early mistakes, admitting failures I have never told anyone, and he does not look bored. He looks interested.

“You gave all that up.” He has stopped treading again, leaving a little ridge of uncrushed grapes between us. “To come here.”

“I did.” I press my heel into the ridge. Saying it plainly is harder than recounting the cheerful market stories.

“Why?” He lets the question stand, even when I take too long to answer. For once, he does not rescue us both by changing the subject.

I could give him the easy answer. Because our fathers arranged it. Because honor matters. Because a Delacroix does not break a promise.

Instead, I tell him the truth.

“Our fathers made a promise, and everyone expected us to keep it.” I remember how carefully I packed my sample tins, convinced I would find a place for them here. “But I also thought there might be room for what I wanted. A husband. My work. I didn’t think I would have to stop being myself.”

“Have you found any room for that here?” Lorenzo keeps his eyes on me, and the question makes me wish I had mentioned my work months ago.