Chapter 36
ALESSIA
It’s Toni who tells us.
Of course, it is because she’s canoodling with Renzo, but she won’t admit it.
Am I worried? Hell, yes.
Renzo is like how Nico used to be. He’s always with some woman. He’s experienced. Ten years older than Toni. My baby sister is all bluster and fire, but she’s an innocent.
But she’s also twenty-three, and I’m not her mother, no matter how much I feel like I am. I have to believe I raised her right, that she knows who she is and who Renzo is, and that she will make the right choices.
She arrives in Pietra Alta, driving her Maserati. I don’t ask her how many tickets she gets because I know she does. In Italy, they take pictures—it’s not some poliziotto stopping you on the motorway asking for your driver’s license and registration.
She walks in around aperitivo, her eyes glowing with a secret thrill.
Alba and I are sitting out in the courtyard, two heat lamps lit, wrapped in our coats and a blanket each, drinking grappa. Not a tradition aperitif, but we’re honoring Matteo. This is his Grappa di Chianti made from Sangiovese grown at the House of Alighieri’s Castello di Monteserra estate.
Toni’s dark hair is whipped into loose tangles by the wind, because it may be early November, but our girl drives with the top down and the heat on full blast.
“We didn’t know you were coming.” I unwrap myself very reluctantly from my blanket and give her a hug.
Alba doesn’t do that. She just makes kissing sounds and drinks her grappa.
“I had to,” she squeals. “I just found out. On the day of the funeral at the Palazzo, Nico basically told Papà that he’s hiring you to succeed Matteo, and when Papà said he’d fire him, he said, 'faccia pure.' He actually said that word-for-word.”
“Go ahead is only two words,” Alba counters lazily and then straightens. “He’s okay being fired from the CEO job, which he married Alessia for?”
“Yes!” Toni throws her arms around me and plants loud kisses on both my cheeks. “And this is so romance movie. When Papà asked him if he’d risk his position for you, do you know what he said?”
Alba and I stare at her, stone-faced, refusing to give her the satisfaction of wanting very much to hear what he said. On purpose. Because this is what sisters do.
“You two don’t deserve romance.” She flaps a hand dramatically. “He said—quote—'For her, Cesare, I’d risk my life.’”
Alba’s hand freezes halfway to her glass.
I catch my breath, my heart stuttering between hope and dread. “What?” My voice comes out in a whisper.
Toni’s grin lights up like sunrise—but she reels it in when she sees the tension around my eyes.
“Ah…well, I don’t have all the details,” she stalls.
We both roll our eyes.
“I heard it secondhand—from someone who heard it from…well that doesn’t matter, right? It’s rock-solid. Papà pressed him, Nico didn’t back down.”
My pulse pounds in my ears.
Alba refills her drink and mine. “If you want a glass, go get one from inside.”
Toni ignores her and picks up Alba’s glass and takes a long swallow. She sets the glass down and giggles. “Isn’t this awesome?”
“You heard this from Renzo,” Alba observes. It’s not a question, even I, whose brain circuits are fried right now, know that.
Toni shrugs and sits down on a chair next to Alba. “No,” she says in an exaggerated manner.
We both narrow our eyes.
She sticks her tongue out. “If you must know Renzo didn’t say a word. I tried to pry it out of him but he was a tomb. Also, nothing is happening between us. I don’t know why everyone keeps thinking there is. He’s mentoring me to take his job one day.”
“Is that what they’re calling it these days?” Alba mutters.
“Hey, and even if something is happening, which it’s not, how is that any of your business?” Toni demands belligerently.
I smack her lightly on the back of her head.
“Ouch.” She rubs the spot where I barely struck her. “That’s child abuse.”
“If you’re doing what ‘something is happening’ entails with Renzo, you’re not a child,” I retort and sit back down. “If Renzo is playing tight-lipped COO and friend, how did you find out?”
Toni wiggles her eyebrows. “Because in this family, walls have ears. And maybe Papà’s executive assistant unwinds with Campari and maybe finds me…ah…entertaining?”
“You flirted with him, you little slut!” Alba raises her hand for a high-five, which Toni slaps with enthusiasm.
Toni’s always had this skill. She’s charming—with an open laugh and disarmingly warm, the kind of woman strangers confess to without realizing they’re spilling secrets. People tell her things they’re later aghast to have revealed to her.
I close my eyes for a heartbeat, picturing Nico sitting tall across from Papà, meeting his gaze. Standing up for me.
“Argh!” I cry out.
“What?” Alba asks.
“Am I supposed to forgive him now for lying to me about Matteo?” I muse.
“Technically, he didn’t lie,” Alba points out, waving her glass toward me.
“Technically, you didn’t lie either,” I sneer at her. “You just hid things from me.”
“Ladies!” Toni raises both hands, palms out. “Calm your tits! Did you hear me? Nico is about to lose his job.”
I pour myself more grappa, already aware that tomorrow’s hangover is going to be epic.
There’s the usual kind—the kind you earn by overindulging in wine or cocktails—and then there’s a grappa hangover, which is like waking up in the seventh circle of hell, a place Dante himself would recognize without a map.
“How’s he going to fire him? Who do you think he’s got on the board?” I ponder.
Alba exhales slowly, and her breath turns into a pale cloud between us. “Rainer would jump off a cliff for Papà.”
Rainer Mancini is the Chief Financial Oversight Director for the House of Alighieri trust and a complete simp.
“Rio?” I ask.
Alba shrugs. “He’ll do what’s right for the trust. And I’m afraid he’ll convince himself that keeping Papà happy qualifies as that. Also, Nico just got here, right? He hasn’t established himself yet. Firing him will be framed as correcting a hiring mistake quickly and decisively.”
I stand up and let the blanket fall off me. “But Papà can’t just fire him for hiring me as a winemaker?”
“No. That would be a lawsuit,” Alba acknowledges. “He’s going to manufacture a reason to fire him.”
Toni’s eyes brighten. “We need to figure out what Papà is actually planning to do and when and how.”
The three of us exchange a glance that feels as smooth and inevitable as clockwork.
Sisters.
Strategists.
Survivors.
We carry our drinks—and our cold bodies—into my office in the cellar, where I open a bottle of an elegant Chianti Reserva that Matteo made. This kind of work requires good wine.
Alba pulls up the corporate calendars on her tablet, her fingers moving fast, precise. She doesn’t frown at first. That comes a second later.
“Papà’s stacking meetings,” she says quietly. “Back-to-back. Governance. Compensation. Executive review.” She scrolls again, then stills. “And notice what’s missing.”
I lean closer. “What?”
“Strategy,” she replies. “No long-term planning sessions. No growth reviews. Just oversight. Control.” She looks up at me, eyes sharp. “These aren’t conversations. He’s getting people on his side.”
I turn back to the allocation reports spread across my laptop. At first glance, nothing is wrong. That’s the genius of it. The numbers add up. The margins are still technically acceptable.
But technically acceptable doesn’t keep an estate breathing.
I trace a column on my laptop screen with my finger.
“Delayed releases,” I murmur. “Nothing dramatic. Just enough to choke cash flow.” I flip to another worksheet.
“Inventory held back under the guise of market timing.” I browse through the windows of Excel.
“And here—distribution tightened right before peak ordering.”
Alba exhales slowly. “So when revenue dips—”
“Nico takes the fall,” I finish.
Not for hiring me or disobedience, but for performance.
Papà will blame him for missed targets and weakened quarters and announce things like “loss of confidence.” Then he can fire him, and no one will say it’s personal; they’ll agree that it’s fiduciary. That will not only get Nico kicked out as CEO but also ruin his reputation.
I push back from the table, heart pounding—not with fear, but clarity.
“So, when he fires Nico,” I say slowly, “it won’t be because he refused to hire Fontana.”
“No,” Alba agrees. “That would look vindictive.”
She meets my gaze, grim and certain. “This way, Papà gets to look responsible.”
“Well, we can’t have that,” I declare.
“No, we can’t.” Alba smiles mischievously. “But to thwart Papà, we need to know his exact plans.”
We both look at Toni.
She flutters her eyelashes. “I already sent Papà’s EA a coffee date invite.”
Toni can slip into every corridor of power with her easy laugh and pointed questions because people underestimate her, think she’s innocuous.
She is not!
Her phone beeps, she grins. “And he accepted. I’m taking him out for drinks. Campari, obviously.” She adds dramatically, “The man will be putty in my hands.”
We spend another couple of hours planning, giggling, and laughing while drinking the wine Matteo crafted so lovingly three vintages ago.
We go to bed with a clear plan for how to proceed—even if our heads are pleasantly fuddled with fermented grape juice.
I wake up an hour after the alarm goes off—while my sisters are ensconced in their rooms, sleeping off the hangover I’m going to have to go to work with.
“Cristo! What happened to you?” Lucia says, shocked, when she sees me in the courtyard at seven a.m., all but mainlining coffee.
“Alba, Toni, and I drank a bottle of grappa, then a bottle of Matteo’s Riserva, and then…something else I can’t remember.”
Lucia purses her lips, valiantly stifling a smile. “Was this you grieving over Matteo, or…?”
I wave my coffee cup in the air. “Yeah. Let’s go with that.”
Matteo would’ve been proud of our scheming. I’m sure of it.
“Toni came last night,” she notes, raising both eyebrows.
I chuckle. “She came with intel!”
Lucia’s eyes widen with curiosity. “What?”
I wrinkle my nose as I continue, “Papà is planning to fire Nico because he wants me to be the head winemaker.”
Lucia claps. “He does? You’ll take over Matteo’s job?”
I groan. “Didn’t you hear the part about Papà wanting to fire my husband because he doesn’t want me to be head winemaker?”
Lucia winces. “The Duca can be…well, no offense, pigheaded.”
“None taken.” I drink more coffee. “Okay. Let’s get to work. We need a plan for winter pruning.”
Lucia grimaces. “Ah, Alessia, I think you should go back to bed and let me handle today. We can do strategy work when you’re not running on a mixture of alcohol and caffeine through your veins.”
I glare at her for a moment and then decide that she’s right and nod, which is a mistake because my head feels like it’s going to split in two.
“And take some ibuprofen,” Lucia further suggests.
“Si,” I mumble as I head back to bed.