Page 18 of Strictly Business

“C’mon, I’ll show you our room,” I whisper to David, leaving behind a mortified Romy and an amused Elizabeth.

The rolling hills of Estranei surrounding the Bacami Vineyard and Estate look more like a painting than a real-life landscape. The estate began operating in 1891 and would release its first wine two years later. It sits on two hundred and thirty-five hectares of land — close to five hundred and eighty acres — most of which are dedicated to the vineyards, divided based on which side of the estate they sit. Red grapes were planted closer to the coast, while white grapes were planted on the inland, mountainous side of the estate. One of their main goals is to preserve the originality of each wine — each stage of production is done on the estate.

Lorenzo Villa, Nina’s grandfather, grew up here. His father worked as an estate groundskeeper. After the tragic death of his parents, Alessio and Gaia Villa, Lorenzo sold everything the family owned and moved to the United States. He would never return to Italy, much to the disappointment of Tommaso Vitali, his childhood best friend and son of the estate owners.

“Our grandfathers were the best of friends,” Camilla Vitali, one of the current co-owners, tells us as we enter the tasting room inside a large barn. “We still have some photos of them up over here.” She leads Nina and Romy around the corner toward the back of the tasting room.

“You wanna get out of here?” A deep whisper tickles my ear and a hand tugs on mine, pulling me a few steps behind the rest of the group. “Not like anyone would notice.”

“I think they’d notice. C’mon, this is important to Nina, which means it should be important to us.”

“It’s not our family,” David huffs.

“But Nick is mine, and Nina is his, which makes her family mine.”

“Whatever, Mic. You just want to be around that Enzo guy.” David drops my hand and takes two steps away from me.

“You cannot be serious.” Today has been going a little too well, and I’ve been waiting for the moment things implode. Houston, we have arrived. “David, are you starting this right now?”

“I’m not the one who started it.”

“For the love of God.” I roll my eyes and leave him to rejoin the others. As I turn the corner the group disappeared around moments ago, I meet the curious eyes of Enzo Vitali — brother of Camilla and the co-owner of the Estate.

“Oh, hello Michaela,” Enzo says. His accent makes me melt. There is nothing better than a man with an accent. He whispers something inside the office before closing the door, turning to me with a small smirk. “Did you get lost from the group?”

“Something like that.”

“No worries, I’ll help you find them.” I hesitate briefly but take his arm when he offers.

David immediately apologized when we returned from the vineyard that night. And as much as I wanted to stay mad, I couldn’t. We don’t get much time together and I wanted to enjoy vacation, not spend the rest of it arguing.

On the last two days of our trip, David and I decided to stay in Rome while the others traveled to Lake Como; though I am a little sad I won’t see where Anakin and Padme got married. Minus the fight at the vineyard, this trip has been exactly what David and I needed to reignite the spark we seem to have lost a few months ago. However, I am a little worried about what happens when we go home.

Will we go back to the way it’s been? I don’t think I can bear it. Being so far from him for such long periods isn’t working…for either of us. In the beginning, we thought he would at least get to come home once a week, but that rarely happens. He wants me to move to D.C., but I can’t — I don’t belong there, I belong in New York. My entire life is there.

“What are you thinking about?” David asks as we walk side-by-side through the ancient streets after a romantic dinner at Aroma, a restaurant with amazing views of the Colosseum It’s our final night in what might be the most magical place on Earth.

“Just how nice this has been,” I sigh and loop my arm through his, but he feels limp in my grasp. He only nods. Come to think of it, he’s been extra quiet today. “I don’t want to go back home, back to reality.”

A soft chuckle.

“When do you go back to work?”

“I’m flying straight to D.C.”

“You can’t even come home for—”

“Michaela, I’ve been gone long enough, I have to get back to work.” He stops abruptly, “Look, Mic,” he stops abruptly. He pinches the bridge of his nose and takes a long, deep breath. “We need to talk.”

My stomach sinks at his words, but I try to laugh it off. “Isn’t that what we’ve been doing?”

“You know what I mean.”

Chapter Eight

MICHAELA

“I’M SORRY, MICHAELA, BUT he’s not budging,” Elias says from across his oversized mahogany desk. The man across from me isn’t who I imagined when I found his law firm online. I pictured an older man — slicked back gray hair, glasses, maybe a bit of a gut — but that is not who I found when I walked into his office almost three months ago. Elias Donovan reminds me of Rufus Humphrey — if you know, you know. He removes his glasses from the edge of his nose and looks up from the papers in his hands. “He wants it back, in its entirety.”

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