I just love giving money away.
It took the whole weekend to recover from the Gala, but now it’s Monday and I’m well rested and ready to dive back into work.
The staff is gathered in the tasting room for a briefing, and I’ve just addressed them with congratulations for putting on such an extremely successful event—followed by my gleeful announcement about the bonuses they’ll each be receiving out of the vineyard’s profits. The looks of shock and delight on their faces fills me with joy. They’ve earned it, and I’m glad Dante agreed to giving them something in return for their hard work.
He’s standing in the back, observing and clearly letting me take the spotlight on this. I’m glad to do it. This is my staff, after all.
“I have one more announcement,” I call above the excited hum. Locking eyes with Greg, I motion him over. “I’ve enjoyed my time working here with all of you, but moving forward, I’ll be spending the bulk of my time on back-of-house details. So, I’m promoting Greg from tasting room manager to tasting room director—he’ll basically be getting a well-deserved raise, and hiring someone else as his assistant manager. So get those resumes polished up, team.”
Another cheer goes up. Greg’s cheeks grow pink as he gives a little bow.
“But that’s not all,” I say. “Greg, you want to tell them your news?”
I step back, and he moves to the front of the room.
“Thank you so much. And everyone, I do apologize for missing the Gala—but I had a pretty good reason.” He glances at me with a smile. “I’m happy to say that I’ve completed my Sommelier qualifications.”
The staff starts applauding and shouting their congratulations, and the meeting breaks up as everyone rushes to surround Greg with love and support. I give his arm a squeeze and slip off to the side, watching everyone until Dante appears beside me.
Kissing the top of my head, he slips an arm around my waist and says, “I have to run into town for a meeting at the bank. But I’ll meet you at home for dinner…and dessert.”
He gives my ass a covert squeeze before stepping away.
I can already feel my cheeks heating as my mind fills with all the things I want to do to him—and have done to me. I wonder if I could sneak a can of whipped cream from the refrigerator later…
Realizing how late it’s getting, I say my goodbyes and try to banish my dirty thoughts as I head to my office. The halls are quiet today, as if everyone is still basking in the success of the Gala. Pausing outside my door, I smile at the new name plate on the wall. Francesca Bellanti.
I run a finger over the engraved lettering. Finally, a name I can be proud of.
Settling in at my desk, I start going over the merger paperwork for Bellanti Vineyards and the Abbott Winery again. There’s a bunch of legalese that I can’t fully parse—the finer points of merging one business to another. In the back are unofficial-looking typed notes, probably the work of Jessica when she was still assisting Dante. I also come across some cursory agreements for what look like personal loans and their repayment terms, but I quickly flip past those pages since they don’t seem applicable to the merger. Until a name jumps out at me.
Abbott Winery.
My stomach churns.
I’m holding in my hands the original deal that my father made with Dante—the agreement whereby my father turned over our family winery and me as payment of his debts.
Disgusted, I let the stack of papers fall on top of the ugly, offending page. I don’t want to read this document. Don’t want to know how much money my father sold me for.
But even as I tell myself that, a perverse curiosity is taking over, my fingers flipping through the stack as I look for the page.
Exactly how much did my piece of shit father think I was actually worth?
The page appears and my eyes track the document for currency. There, almost at the end. I read the number, then read it again. I can’t believe it. There must be a mistake. Missing zeroes. Something.
$286,000 stares at me in black and white.
I swallow, but my throat is dry.
$286,000.
There’s ringing in my ears, and I feel like the ground is dropping out from under me.
The Abbott Winery is easily worth twenty times that…and yet my father had traded it along with his fucking daughter for $286,000.
That fucking dumbass shit-for-brains. Fucking unbelievable. Fucking…
I slam the whole file folder closed, cram it back into my filing cabinet, and shove the drawer back into the cabinet with a bang.
Two hundred eighty six thousand…fuck.
The number can’t help but stick in my mind, the thought of it making me sick to my stomach. I wish I’d never looked.
Trying to shake it off, I return to the binders full of Bellanti Vineyards’ financials that I started looking through last week. I pore over the paperwork, hoping to distract myself with all the numbers, working backwards from the end of the last quarter—when Enzo had died.
God, have I really only been married to Dante for a few months? It feels like entire lifetimes have passed. Like I’ve died and risen from the ashes more times than I can count.
I flip to a fresh page and find a single sheet that seems to be a list of debt forgiveness statements and loans to be forgiven, to be released upon the death of Enzo Bellanti. The typed lines are in some kind of code, strings of letters and numbers attached to dollar amounts, but one number—a total listed as $286,000—screams at me from the page.
There are no actual names listed on the statements, just the codes.
I press the intercom button. “Ruby, can I borrow you for a moment, please?”
A minute later she comes in, holding a steaming cup of coffee. “Good morning, Mrs. Bellanti. I thought you might like a fresh coffee.”
“Thank you, Ruby.”
She sets it on the desk with a smile that quickly fades when I hold up the sheet.
“Can you tell me what these codes mean?” I ask.
Suddenly flustered, she works her fingers before reaching for the page. “Oh, that’s…that’s nothing, Mrs. Bellanti. Let me take that.”
Her face pales as I pull the page out of her reach, holding her off.
“I need to know, Ruby,” I say, keeping my voice as calm as possible, but my tone brooking no arguments. “What. Is. This.”
We lock eyes for a moment, but she looks away nervously. A tense smile plays on her lips, but it doesn’t last. Finally, she sinks into the chair opposite me.
“Yes, well, I—I suppose you are a Bellanti now,” she says haltingly. “So that page is…it’s from the old business. The way the family originally made their money. Personal loans, some betting books, not all of it…you know. On the up and up. So to speak.”
“Shady stuff,” I supply.
Some of the color returns to her face and she nods. “When Mr. Bellanti Senior passed, his sons wanted to be rid of his more…sordid affairs. So they forgave some debts to get them off the record, and then started negotiating with the Bruno family to sell off the gambling books.”
I lean across the desk and hold the page out, pointing to the line concerning my family’s debt. “And this deal?”
She glances at the number quickly and then clears her throat. “That deal was, um, kept out for some reason.”
“Ruby,” I ask, my voice devoid of emotion, “is this my father’s debt?”
Her eyes drop to the floor. “Yes, ma’am. It looks like it.”
A hollow feeling starts to gnaw inside me. “And the Bellantis were going to forgive it?”
“The Brunos wouldn’t have been interested in that one. They only wanted the debts related to the horse races or the auto tracks, so they told the Bellantis to keep the rest, cash in on whatever else was left. It was only around a million or so in personal loans. But Dante didn’t want to chase the money down, so he had them all forgiven instead. Or I guess, all but this one. I’m afraid I don’t know more than that.”
The emptiness yawns wide inside me as the solid world that I’d been so sure of drops away, leaving me flailing once more.
“Thank you, Ruby. You can go.”
She leaves without a word. I pull the mug of coffee on my desk closer, trying to warm my hands on the ceramic. My entire body feels like ice.
Dante…he organized all of it. If he didn’t want to forgive my father’s debt, he could have at least settled it.
In fact, if he had waited just a few more months, I would have been home from Italy already and firmly in control of the Abbott Winery’s finances and business operations. Dante could have approached me with a proposal—a financial one—and I could have brokered a deal to square my family’s debt that would have the Bellantis paid off in a year or two.
The Abbott women would have still owned our family winery.
If only my father had…
But now…
…oh, God.
I’ve signed it all away to Dante.
And that profit sharing he offered to me and my sisters—profit sharing that I’d been oh so grateful for—pales in comparison to the money we could have potentially been making if I’d been allowed to keep the winery and turn it around. But I didn’t know I was being played.
Dante played me.
A wave of dizziness washes over me, my hands get clammy, sudden nausea burning in my throat. I’m going to be sick.
I bolt from the office, barely making it to the restroom before I vomit up my breakfast. My middle heaves again and again until I’m spent. Washing out my mouth at the sink afterward, I realize that the golden palace I thought I lived in is really a gilded cage.
$286,000.
My father sold me, our family’s livelihood, and his daughters’ futures away for just over a quarter of a million dollars.
And Dante…God, what a fucking fool I’ve been. How expertly he’s manipulated me, every step of the way, from day one.
He made me believe he loved me, all so he could maneuver me into signing away my family’s fortune. Sure, he’s still attentive now, but how long will that even last? Clearly he gets off on having power over me. Controlling me.
I think back on how well he had faked being in love with me at the pressing event, even though he was furious at me. He was so very good at fooling people. A fucking expert at it.
Another memory comes to me: the image of Jessica through the window of the main house, on her knees, sucking cock. Dante, encouraging her in Italian.
He’s been lying to me the whole time.
Letting out a deep breath, I blot my face with a paper towel and look in the mirror.
Goddamn, I am so tired of the men in my life. And what a fucking fool love has turned me into. So eager for affection that I’d wrecked my life—twice now.
I can’t do this anymore. I need to get away. Far away. Somewhere Dante will never find me. Because I’ll never clear my head if I’m anywhere near him, or the Bellanti property.
On my way back up to the main house, I text Charlie and ask her to pick up Livvie at school and bring her back to the Nob Hill house. I promise to explain later.
In Dante’s room, once more, I pack a bag—quickly realizing there isn’t much to take, because I hardly own anything that Dante’s money hasn’t bought me. I take the bare minimum, along with my makeup and toiletries, and then I borrow a few hundred in cash from the home budget safe with a note that says it was me who took it.
Gripping the keys to the Jaguar for dear life, I toss my bag into the back seat and get in. I don’t look at the house or give what I’m about to do a second thought.
As I peel out of there, I leave the biggest dust cloud I possibly can on my way out of this hell.
Dante and Frankie’s story concludes in Broken Trust…
You can’t run from the past… or from a Bellanti.
I’ve always been a foolish girl.
I should have learned my lesson the first time a man betrayed me.
It hurt when Rico abandoned me. My father’s deal was agony.
Dante’s betrayal… it might kill me.
And there’s nothing I can do.
He’s not the kind of man who takes orders from his wife.
And he’ll never let me leave.
There’s nowhere I can go that he won’t find me.
My father forced me to marry him.
Dante made me love him.
It’s my turn to show them all what a Bellanti woman is...
Find out what happens in Broken Trust.