“It’s fine,” said an all-business voice, also from the top of the stairs. “I’ll meet her down there.”
Sofia slumped on the closest barrel and kept her focus on her empty wineglass instead of on the improvements she’d made to this chamber beneath the medieval monastery. The spectacular cathedral space now boasted a two-stories-high wood-beam ceiling and black, Corinthian marble floors. Barrels branded with Bodega Sofia were stacked two deep on the sides. At the room’s edges, cut-stone archways led to tunnels that ran beneath the Monte, providing an underworld of primeval pathways that Sofia knew like the back of her hand.
This was the heart of Bodega Sofia, where the stone and the cold blocked out everything and allowed Sofia’s sensitive nose and palate to do the intricate work of creating great wines that proudly displayed the thousand-year history of her land and people.
Sofia shut down the images of this space filled with people relishing their first sip of Bodega Sofia wine. She wished her brain was as empty as her glass.
As they descended, the boots of the PR woman rang louder against the metal and the winery manager’s grumble grew more distinct. “... Just been hiding down here and I can’t get her to do anything...”
“I’ll take care of it,” the American promised as they turned the corner of the stairs. Sofia marveled again at how tiny and delicate the woman who was taking on the Herculean task of managing Sofia’s PR woes appeared to be. In an emerald-green baby doll dress, her black hair cut into eyebrow-brushing bangs and a bob, Namrita Mirakhur looked like a fragile hipster butterfly. What Sofia had come to realize after months of working with her on a winery launch plan was that the PR exec was about as fragile as a steel-punching drill bit.
Sofia propped her back against the cold rock walls of her cellar and tipped her empty glass at the women as they noticed her.
Carmen Louisa, her winery manager, stopped in her muck boot tracks. “¿Estás borracha?”
“No, I’m not drunk,” Sofia replied in English, for the sake of the PR rep. “Not yet.”
Sofia had known and looked up to Carmen Louisa for the entirety of her twenty-nine years; it was immensely soothing to play the teenager around her. With her caramel and curly shoulder-length hair and a body used daily as a tool, the forty-eight-year-old woman looked like a model hired to play the role of a winegrower, rather than the accomplished grower she’d been all of her life.
Right now, she looked like she was going to seriously blow her top.
Namrita put up a calming hand. “How’s it going?” she asked, tucking her arms around herself.
It was chilly down here, just like Sofia needed it. “Bien,” she replied through a fake smile.
Carmen Louisa scoffed. “No, she is not bien. She’s ignoring the phone and her emails, thank God you sent that press release or people would think she was dead, no sé cuando she ate last y she says she’s topping off the barrels, does she look like she’s topping off the barrels to you y no sé qué hacer y ella no me habla...”
Carmen Louisa’s university-learned English went to hell when she got wrought up.
Both of her brothers and her best friend Henry had given up texting or calling. They didn’t try to visit. Sofia knew the tunnel system that ran into the mountains better than anyone. When she’d played escondidas with her brother Mateo in it, she’d always won. Not even the power of being the next king gave Mateo the confidence that he could find Sofia if she wanted to hide.
Namrita put up a slender hand again.
“I know this is rough,” she said, in her trademark not-going-to-sugar-coat-it voice. “You’ve been working your ass off and then this video comes out two weeks before launch. Things might seem hopeless but they’re not going to get any better with you hiding down here.”
The majority of the wine world had already treated Bodega Sofia as a joke, calling it the worthless vanity project of a party-girl princess. Wine industry influencers had essentially ignored her invitation to take part in an all-expenses-paid launch of the winery and its adjacent luxury hotel. And here at home, many in the village were concerned and suspicious about Sofia’s efforts to innovate Monte winemaking.
“I’m sorry to ask, but I have to,” Namrita said. “Is it true? Were you in a relationship with Aish Salinger?”
His name. A name she’d successfully blocked out for ten years. Sofia slipped her hand into her front pocket, palming her hip, and pressed back against the cold rock wall. She nodded once.
“Okay,” Namrita said, gentle for once. “And have you seen him since the relationship ended?”
Gracias a Dios, no. She’d thought the universe had been kind.
After that disastrous autumn, Sofia put her energies into getting her dual degrees in enology and wine chemistry from the University of Bordeaux, learning all she could apprenticing to top winemakers, and filling in for her absent brother and careless parents as a leader for the Monte. Once her brother, Príncipe Mateo, found his brilliant billionaire bride and took his rightful place at the helm of the kingdom five years ago, Sofia had left the Monte and filled her days developing a chemical to correct a wine fault that had long harassed the industry. Her nights...well, she’d learned in her wild-child teen years that pretty boys and parties were an effective distraction from whatever she didn’t want to think about.
When she perfected her chemical compound that revolutionized the wine industry and became instantly and magnificently wealthy, she turbocharged that wild child with an Amex Black. She worked with top winemakers, went clubbing with the worst of people, advised in creating exciting wines, and let the paparazzi catch her in compromising positions. For three years, she enjoyed the work-hard-play-hard behavior that would have been celebrated in a man. When Sofia did it, they called it antics.
She’d put all that aside two years ago when her
