Two years of quiet living and unrelenting effort to build the winery weren’t enough to erase Sofia’s wild child from the wine world’s collective consciousness or cool the rumors that her invention relied more on her billionaire sister-in-law’s money than Sofia’s wine expertise.
The wine world was making her pay now for her behavior then.
But at all those parties with all of those boy toys, she’d never heard Aish’s name. She’d never been haunted by his voice in a dance club. She’d remained blissfully unaware that Young Son was a worldwide sensation.
The universe hadn’t been kind; it had been cruel, hiding a secret until its reveal was the most disastrous.
Sofia shook her head no. She’d had no contact with him.
“Okay,” Namrita said. She paused for a beat and then said, “I think I figured a way out.”
“We delay the launch,” Sofia said. “We wait a month for some other stupidity to attract people’s attention.”
“It’s not that simple,” Namrita said. “You don’t understand how big the mystery of that song is. ‘In You’ was Young Son’s breakout hit; a really hot guy sang about a very hot relationship in a lot of detail. He wouldn’t deny that she was real but he also wouldn’t name her, which only made it more catnip-y for everyone. There are websites and YouTube documentaries dedicated to discovering her.”
Sofia scrubbed at her thick hair, cut into a bob that ended at the top of her neck, and wished she could brush it forward and hide her eyes with it.
“Now to discover that the woman is you, a princess, who had a romance with a rock star when you were teenagers, well...people are losing their shit. The hashtag #Aishia is trending worldwide. The Daily Telegram paid someone from that fall $500,000 for a fuzzy Polaroid of you two. His video has been viewed millions of times.”
Sofia had only deigned to watch the video once, caught a glimpse of him—drunken and half naked and covered in ink—before she’d turned away, nauseated. She wanted to run into the darkness of her tunnels with the hope that when she emerged, blind and grey, years from now, the world will have forgotten that her name was ever linked to Aish Salinger.
“We’ve struggled to get attention for the launch. Now we have more attention than we know what to do with. Even people who turned down your internship invitation are calling.”
That snapped Sofia’s head up. They’d invited a pool of fifty people to take twenty spots as superstar interns who would enjoy a luxurious, all-expense-paid, month-long trip to assist Bodega Sofia with its inaugural harvest season. The last time she’d checked, only two had RSVP’d. These wined and dined interns—wine writers, hospitality up-and-comers, travel bloggers, and young winemakers—would be the first guests at Bodega Sofia’s luxury hotel, would take part in the entire winemaking process, and would be the most powerful bullhorns declaring the potential of Monte wines and tourism.
Namrita continued, “So how do we take advantage of the attention, transform it into something positive, and work the public’s sudden empathy for Aish?”
Sofia’s combat boot slipped off the barrel. “What?” she asked. “Empathy for Aish?”
“That’s right,” Namrita said, shaking her head. “Don’t ask me how, but he made vomiting on camera a positive. His vulnerability hit a chord and reminded fans how much they used to love him. People are so giddy about you two that it’s drowning out the rumors that he stole songs and was involved in his bass player’s death.”
“What?” Sofia asked again, thoroughly confused.
Carmen Louisa waved an irritated hand at her. “She doesn’t listen to any music made after 1965. Or that doesn’t have something weird in it, like a rain stick or a gaita, un como se dice bagpipe.” She sighed at Sofia. “The guy he started the band with, John Hamilton. He killed himself last year.”
Sofia dug her blunt nails into her jeans. “John?” His name echoed in her ancient chamber. “He’s dead?”
Namrita nodded. “Did you know him?”
Aish’s blond and blue-eyed best friend went everywhere with Aish. So of course John joined him as one of the student-laborers Aish’s winemaking uncle recruited every year to help with harvest at his California vineyard. That fall of her nineteenth birthday, Sofia had also joined the group. And Aish found her in a wine tank.
John had been friendly, funny, accommodating. And he’d disliked her. Probably even hated her.
She nodded. She’d known John Hamilton. But she didn’t elaborate.
“Production on Young Son’s fourth album has stalled,” Namrita said. “There were nasty rumors that Aish couldn’t write a song without stealing it, that he was jealous and convinced his friend to kill himself, but now...”
When she paused, Sofia felt the hairs stand up on the back of her neck.
“There’s a growing romanticism that only the princess who inspired his most famous song can save him.”
Sofia slid to the front of the barrel and put her feet on the floor, shock biting at her numb fingers and toes. “What are you saying?”
Namrita didn’t blink. “I’m saying we should invite him to be a part of our internship program.”
“No,” Sofia said, standing slowly.
“We can use the public’s fascination with you two. If we suggest that there are still feelings between you then we can...”
“No!” she shouted, a flare of heat burning through her cool as she flung her wineglass down, shattering it against the marble, flinging crystal like shrapnel.
Namrita gasped. The PR rep looked down at her smooth, dark shin.
Blood was welling in the cut across the middle of it.
Sofia stared, horrified.
“¡Dios mio!” Carmen Louisa said, the first to react as she led Namrita to sit on a barrel then slapped the woman’s hand on top of the cut. “I’ll get the first-aid kit.”
“I... I’m sorry,” Sofia stuttered.
Namrita blew out a breath. “Believe it or not,” she huffed, planting her boot on the barrel then tucking her dress around
