Page 35 of Beneath the Sapphire Sky

She looked to Mac. He shook his head sadly. “I have no idea, Belle. We salvaged some of the wine to test, but, unless they were stupid enough to leave fingerprints, there might never be a way to find out.”

Heat pricked her eyes. She blinked rapidly, determined not to cry. Not when Jack and her father would be hurting far worse than she could be. The perpetrators had targeted the two vats Jack had singled out for the award entries. They’d known which ones to taint.

“The awards?”

Jack shrugged. “I have some bottles I ran off out of a barrel Dad filled earlier in the week, but they were only for testing and experimenting, not for entering.”

“How many?”

“Ah, maybe five?”

Belle nodded, trying hard to think through the molasses in her head. “Okay. You only need four. I know it’s not ideal, but could you salvage those? Is there any way possible you could use them?”

Jack held up his hands. Utter defeat had settled in lines around his mouth. “I honestly don’t know.”

A rising rush of anger flooded her, overcoming the shock and hurt. “Someone doesn’t want you entering the awards.” She grabbed his hands and looked around the small group. “Don’t tellanyonethat there’s some left. Let whoever it was think they’ve won. Do what you have to—and enter those bottles.”

A gleam of hope entered her brother’s eyes. He nodded slowly. “I can do that.”

Mac looked up from his phone, which had just beeped. “The forensics team will be here within the hour. They’re headed over from Bialga. You guys go on up to the house and I’ll call on you when I need you.”

Belle, Jack, and her father all nodded, a pall of uncertainty and shock settling over them. It felt surreal.

Who would do this to her family? More importantly—why?

Chapter Twelve

Dante wiped hisface with the back of his wrist and put the last corked bottle in the crate. He’d tried to get his father to change to twist-top lids, but that was something he wouldn’t budge on. So, corking it was.

He’d been at it for the last five hours. Repetitive jobs like this helped to calm him on a normal day. After a night of the best sex he’d never expected to have? It was a godsend.

Monotonous repetition did wonders for zoning out.

He gave the pneumatic corker a pat and stepped back, surveying his handiwork.

Not bad.

Forty crates. Just under five hundred bottles. Now they had to sit for a few days before he could cellar them.

He wiped his hands on a clean rag and left the closed-up shed. He’d head back after a coffee and something to eat.

He stepped into the kitchen of the cellar door café and leaned against the wall.

“Whatcha got for me to eat, Angel?”

Michelangelo Casellati didn’t even look at him. He waved to a prep bench containing just-decorated biscuits.

“Help yourself.”

Dante wandered over and poured himself a coffee from the plunger that looked like it had recently been made.

Yep. Still warm. Good enough.

He stirred a teaspoon of sugar in and sipped while deciding which of Angel’s biscuits he’d pinch.

Leo’s raucous laughter mixed with his sister’s more restrained pitch came through the doorway to the small cellar door café.

He smiled at the sound. One of the perks of being part of a large Italian family—there was always someone making noise, laughing, or goofing around. He still missed his mother and her vivacious laugh every single day, even after ten years of her being gone, but they’d picked up and got on with everything. She’d left a gaping hole, but they’d finally got to a point where they could talk about her freely and have it be with love and laughter, not sorrow.

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