If I have dreams about convincing Nico to give our marriage a chance—that’s on me.
That’s me being foolish.
How can a man like Nico want me?
He exudes polish and power, and he’s not going to wantto tether himself to a farmer who still comes home with soil beneath her nails.
But God, how I wish he did.
I want someone to choose me—not for strategy, not for alignment, not for legacy—but simply because they wantedme. Because if Nico ever truly gave me a chance, I would be a formidable partner to him—in business and in life.
I shake my head at that thought.
I have truly lost my mind if I’m weaving fantasies about a partnership with Nico. After all, I am a sensible, pragmatic woman. I do not indulge in romantic fantasies about myself. I think about vineyards, fermentation curves, acidity levels, and whether the night temperature dropped low enough to preserve aromatics. I think about the way a vine shows stress before a person notices it—leaf angle, shoot growth, the faintest bronze at the edge of green.
But…our vows may have meant nothing to him…they mean a lot to me.
The wedding may have been a transaction for us both, a means to secure what we each wanted, but to me it’s still sacred.
I stood there and promised something real—even if he didn’t.
The wedding, my only one, was important to me, so much so that I didn’t just put on any wedding dress. I wore my mother’s, delicately restored by skilled hands in an atelier in Milan.
Alba did that for me because she knew how much my mother meant to me—how close we’d been before she lost her battle with breast cancer.
I am most like my mother, Giulia Alighieri. Hers was a dynastic marriage as well—the beautiful Giulia paired with the rough, unpolished Cesare. They were happy, I think, for the most part. I don’t believe my father strayed, though thatwas likely helped by the fact that he had the most stunning woman in Tuscany on his arm.
Mama was loyal, diligent, and deeply loving. She was my idol. From her, I learned patience. I learned the value of not being the loudest voice in the room. I learned the importance of waiting—of biding my time.
Ask anyone, and they’ll say Alba and Toni are the ambitious ones.
But I know that isn’t true.
I covet the most. Because neither of them would have done what I did—marry a man with whom happiness was clearly not in the cards, simply to secure theterroirmy family has nurtured for centuries and make it my own.
Alba wants expansion. Toni wants innovation.
I want legacy.
I want roots sunk so deep no one can ever pull them out again.
So, I will bide my time as Mama taught me. I will work harder than anyone expects, and I will prove myself to be the ideal successor to Matteo Rinaldi, theenologo, the head winemaker of the House of Alighieri, who has held that position since Papà took over the company.
Matteo has been my mentor from the beginning—quietly preparing me to show my father that a woman can be not just a capable winemaker, but a superior one.
He is the father I never had—a man who believes in me. He insisted I learn not only how to make wine, but how to grow it; that I understand vineyard cultivation as intimately as fermentation, that I become a truevignaiola—a winemaker who also tends the vines—not merely anenologa.
He made sure I worked every job on an estate—from pruning and canopy management to harvest logistics, cellar sanitation, barrel selection, and blending—until there was nothing I hadn’t done with my own hands.
He’s taught me how to smell a stuck fermentation before it becomes a catastrophe, and how to read a vineyard like a book.
A shout carries down the row. “Alessia!”
I turn and smile as I see Matteo approaching from the end of the block, stepping over uneven ground with the ease of a man who’s like me, of the vine. He’s in his sixties with a sun-leathered face, thick gray hair, and the kind of intense calm that comes from watching enough vintages fail and survive to know panic is just wasted energy. And he’d know, as the head winemaker for the family, over all the estates, not just Pietra Alta.
“You’re cutting heavy,” Matteo scolds when he reaches me. He doesn’t greet me with affection, but with assessment. This is his version of love.
“It needs it,” I reply, stepping aside so he can see the row. I brush a cluster with my fingers. “The bunches are too compact. If we don’t thin them now, the berries won’t ripen evenly.”
