Chapter 17
NICO
I call Matteo. He answers on the third ring.
His voice is thinner than usual, and that tells me more than Cesare did.
“He told you,” Matteo says without preamble.
“Si.” I take a deep breath. “I’m so very sorry, Matteo.”
“Life’s like that. Easy come. Easy go.”
He’s only in his mid-sixties—I can’t imagine this being easy anything.
“Are you in pain?”
“Yes,” he admits. “But pain is good, eh? Means I’m alive. When I can’t stand it, there’s morphine.”
I’ve known Matteo for a long time, but never well—that changed once Alessia and I got engaged, and I started working on the merger between Cantina Alarico and the House of Alighieri. I like him. I respect him. This is a good man and an even better winemaker. His loss will be felt deeply.
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Yes,” he replies like he’s been waiting for that question. “Firstly, you can’t tell Alessia. I don’t want her to know. When she finds out it’s going to be because I tell her.”
“With all due respect, Matteo, if you don’t tell her soon, she will find out from other sources.” He knows as well as I how small organizations and industries are when it comes to gossip.
There’s a pause, and then he speaks so softly that I have to strain to hear him, “I can’t stand to see her sad.”
The truth? Neither can I. But we can’t protect those we love from outside influences—that will require us to put them in a bubble.
But Matteo is dying and his wishes come first.
“I won’t tell her,” I promise.
“Good.” The relief in his voice is immediate—and it guts me. “Secondly, I want her to succeed me.”
I wish it were that simple.
“Matteo,” I begin, already weighing my words, “Alessia is—”
“Not one for politics,” he cuts me off. “That’s not because she can’t play the game; she chooses not to. All three of the sisters stay away from it. This is why Cesare has power. If those girls brought their interest in the company to bear….”
I’ve never heard anyone in the House of Alighieri, or even around it, talk about the Alighieri daughters having any influence.
Cesare is the loud and overbearing patriarch, the leader.
I know each sister has a percentage of the company, based on when their trusts were released and their ages—I also know that Cesare is their proxy.
I’ve never seen any of them at a board meeting.
“She’s a born leader. Tell me you haven’t seen it already at Pietra Alta?” Matteo insists.
“I have seen it.”
“I told Cesare she’s my successor,” Matteo continues. “I’ve told him for years. I told the board informally. I’ve told anyone who matters.”
“Cesare is the chairman of—”
“You are the CEO. Hiring decisions are yours, not his. You don’t have to cede power as Dario did. You can hold on to it.”
“Power is a zero-sum game, a limited commodity, and right now it sits with Cesare. I haven’t been here in this role long enough to have more than a few allies. It’s going to take time.”
“Is that you being risk-averse or is it your cowardice?” he demands on a sneer.
I don’t reply—partly because I don’t know for sure and partly because what I do know sets me up as someone lacking courage.
As a man who has always fought to do the right thing over the easy thing, this is a feeling that doesn’t sit well with me.
So, I do what I normally do when I don’t like where I’m at: I ignore the feeling and move forward, move past it, beyond it.
“I’m dying, Nico, and that’s not hyperbole,” he bites out.
“I know, Matteo.”
“You must make me a promise,” he demands.
A promise to a dying man! Matteo certainly knows how to turn the emotional screws.
He takes my silence for acquiescence. “When the time comes, you won’t let him bypass her. You won’t let him turn this into a hire with a famous name and no soul. Alessia is the House of Alighieri. She’s ready.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose as a stress headache blooms somewhere in the back of my skull. “Matteo—”
“Promise me,” he pleads.
I look out my office window at the Arno, at Florence sprawling below like something eternal and unmoved by the lives passing through it
“I’m not going to pick a fight with Cesare right now,” I say carefully.
His disappointment is immediate—and unmistakable. “Cazzo!”
“She’s young.” I try to explain my reticence. “She can wait. Another few years won’t hurt her.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” he throws back at me.
“It’s not about just me,” I argue. “You know what Cesare can do.”
Duke Alighieri doesn’t just sit at the head of the table—he owns the table, the room, and the building around it.
He controls the trust. The estates. The land itself.
He appoints and removes executives.
He can dissolve the operating board with a signature.
He can make a phone call and end careers permanently. Including mine. My role as CEO exists because Cesare allows it.
He could fire me tomorrow.
If he did so, where would that leave Alessia? Still married to me—but with no buffer between her and her father, especially with Matteo gone as well. She’ll have no voice inside the company arguing for her. There will be no shield for her at all.
And what about you, Nico? You’ve sacrificed so much to earn this role—to build Cantina Alarico, to steward the legacy of the House of Alighieri. What about all the work you’ve poured into your life to stand exactly where you are now?
I even married Alessia for it, and, granted, that has worked out better than anyone could have imagined, me included, but the truth is I was ready to do whatever it took to reach my goal of becoming CEO of one of the world’s most prestigious wine companies.
And Alessia did whatever she had to, so she could be the winemaker at Tenuta Pietra Alta. Wouldn’t she want her position secured? Isn’t she better off with me as CEO than someone else like Dario, who will be Cesare’s puppet forever?
“I thought you weren’t afraid of Cesare,” Matteo says hoarsely.
“I’m not afraid of him,” I assure him, and then add, “However, I am concerned about the damage he can do, considering his power.”
He lets out a harsh, dry laugh. “That’s the same thing, Nico. If you don’t fight for her, no one else will.”
“I’m trying to protect her,” I snap.
“From what?” Matteo challenges. “From disappointment? Or from you being afraid and calling it something else?”
The man is dying, and he loves Alessia. So, I rein in my temper, even as it strains at the leash, pushed there by his accusation that I’m failing my wife out of fear rather than because Cesare has left me with no real choices at all.
“Cesare will never give her power unless it’s taken,” he thunders, and for a moment, it sounds like there is no illness that can diminish the great Matteo Rinaldi. “And you’re telling me that when pressed, you won’t protect her.”
“That’s not fair.” Sourness coils in my stomach.
“Isn’t it?” he counters. “You think waiting makes this safer. It doesn’t. It just tells him she’s expendable.”
“I’m doing what I think is right.”
“You are wrong,” he shouts.
I don’t reply. He’s agitated, and my fighting with him isn’t going to get us anywhere.
After a very long, silent minute, he speaks, exhaustion threading his voice, “I hope when she finds out—because she will—you can live with what you choose.”