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Still, I didn’t cower.
“I didn’t come here to fight with you,” he finally said. “For what it’s worth, I think you would be good for my brother. Still,I encouraged him to return the winery to you. He was keeping it for the wrong reasons.”
“As a business investment? Or to make my life miserable?”
“Because he’s in love with you. He was keeping the winery in the hopes that someday you would forgive him and give him another chance.”
My jaw unhinged, my mouth falling open. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Not to Vito. He thinks far off into the future, and he honestly believed you would come around. Capisce?”
No, I didn’t understand. At all. “He doesn’t feel anything for me. I was convenient for him.”
This got another laugh out of him. “My brothers and I, we know convenient. We can have convenient whenever we like.” He grew serious, leaning back in his chair. “But a man does not uproot his life for convenient. He does not spend millions on convenient. He does not smoke and drink and work himself into the ground when he loses convenient. Do you see the difference? You arenotconvenient to him.”
Enzo didn’t know the whole story. “You’re wrong. He wanted to keep me in his penthouse, then allow me to fly here every now and again. That’s not the kind of offer you make to a woman you love.”
“That isexactlythe kind of offer you make to a woman you love and are terrified of losing.”
I could hear my heart beating inside my ears as I considered this. “He never said he loved me. And he wants to keep his life separate from mine. How can that possibly work?”
“Did you make a counter offer?”
“Oh, so this is allmyfault?”
He tilted his head and regarded me. “Have you heard of the famous designer, Gianna Mancini?”
I’d discovered this when I looked Enzo up online. “Your wife? Yes, I have. She’s awesome.”
Enzo’s eyes shone with genuine affection. “Yes, she is very awesome. I bring this up not to impress you, but rather to prove to you that compromises can be made. Do you think I like the idea of having a wife who is in the spotlight, who travels around the world?”
“I’m guessing by your scowl the answer is no.”
“Correct. It gives me pain here—” he put a hand on his stomach “—and causes nightmares for my security team. Because they know what will happen tothemif something should happen toher.”
“Yet you do it anyway.”
“Yes, because this is the only way she will be happy. And I want to keep her happy.”
“Okaaaaay,” I said slowly. “I don’t see how this is relevant, though.”
“Don’t you?”
I pressed my lips together, thinking. “I asked Vito to compromise. He wouldn’t consider it. He wouldn’t listen when I told him what I wanted.”
“And what is it that you want?”
“A partner. Someone who doesn’t lie and evade and keep me in the dark all the time.”
He nodded, like he understood. “My brother has made a plan for how a future might look between you. Unfortunately, he often can’t see outside his plans. If you want a life with him, you must demand the life you want. Make him readjust his plans. Or . . .”
“Or, what?”
“Or let him go. If you love him, then fight for him. If you don’t, then disappear from his life and never come back.”
I didn’t know what to say. My chest burned as I stared through the glass at the acres of dirt that used to be my vineyard. I still ached for the loss of it, but the last few days had given me time to think. Everything lost in the fire could be replaced. Replanted. But people were irreplaceable.
What if Vito had died in that fire?