“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 Cesareright 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 herposition 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.”
