“Uh...it’s okay, Manon...we’re figuring it out.”
He startled when he felt her lips brush against his ear. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
He’d barely felt the needle slide into his side when he started suffering from the effects.
He slumped in Manon’s arms.
“Whoa, I got you, buddy,” said the hotel worker, grabbing on to Aish, hauling him toward him. “I’ve always got you, man.”
That voice. Aish knew that voice.
It sounded like his own.
Aish mumbled against his shoulder, trying to call out, his limbs useless.
“Shh, shhh, don’t worry, I’m going to take care of everything,” the hotel worker said as he picked Aish up. Aish felt like a bag of bones as he was flung into the laundry cart. “You know I never let you get in your own way.”
Then the man, that unknown face with that lifelong familiar voice, hovered over him as everything else started to go dim.
“Or let you get in mine.”
September 28
Part Two
Crunched up into the corner of Roman’s couch, Sofia punched Decline on her mother’s incoming call for the second time in ten minutes. Whatever harassing, cruel, mocking thing the queen wanted to say could wait until Sofia returned to the Monte.
With her one-way flight out already chartered for the next morning, she planned on that being months, maybe years, away.
Carmen Louisa pulled the phone and empty wineglass from Sofia’s hands and then tucked the blanket tighter around her as if strangling her would keep her in the kingdom. She refilled Sofia’s glass and then downed half of it herself. Sofia held her hand out, but Carmen Louisa stood in her white button-up shirt and figure-flattering jeans and stared down at her.
“Just stay until the press conference,” she said, the strain of the last few days showing around her pretty hazel eyes. “See how people react.”
Sofia retracted her hand and pulled the blanket back around her shoulders. “If it goes well, then Bodega de la Gente will benefit.” That’s what she told the growers they should rename Bodega Sofia. She was already calling it that—winery of the people—in her head. “If it doesn’t go well, I won’t be here to make it worse.”
The grower couldn’t get it into her head that Sofia was leaving to save her.
To save all of them.
Carmen Louisa had shown up an hour ago at Roman’s mountainside home with Namrita and Devonte so they could tell her that Aish was going to throw himself on the pyre. He was going to take full responsibility for the plagiarism and the release of the flash drive. He was going to swear that Sofia had nothing to do with it, that she’d been an unwitting victim of his dastardly plan.
They had threatened to call Mateo when they heard Sofia’s response. She wasn’t going to change the press release scheduled to go out the next morning that relinquished all her rights to and involvement with the newly christened Bodega de la Gente. She wasn’t going to cancel her departure.
And, she’d told them, if they tried to sic Mateo on her, she’d just leave early. She didn’t want the Monte’s future king—the kingdom’s only hope—anywhere near her.
She’d made herself numb to the dejection on Namrita’s face when the woman left—she’d worked so hard to save the unsalvageable—but Carmen Louisa had stayed.
Sofia rested her temple on her knees and blocked her friend out. Carmen Louisa paced away with a frustrated sigh.
She could let Aish take the fall for the debacle that her winery launch had become. But now she understood how temporary a solution that would be. Aish wasn’t the illness. Sofia was, Sofia and her vast unquenchable need to be needed. She’d tried to satiate it with her mother’s attention, Aish’s affection, and her people’s devotion. Each attempt had been slapped away, making her more and more desperate. What had it led to this time? Positioning herself as the savior of her people and insisting everyone bow to her ideas. And when no one was convinced, she sank her kingdom into this ludicrous, devastating scheme. What crazy thing would she do next to prove she was essential?
She would take her desperation away so that it could no longer hurt the people she loved.
Sofia jerked as the blanket was shoved down, her hand pulled out, and her wineglass slapped into it. The violence of the movement sloshed the contents of the nearly full glass on her shirt.
“¡Joder!” She looked up at Carmen Louisa looming over her, fiery-eyed. “¿Qué pasa?”
“What?” her friend shot back. “You don’t want to do anything but sit and drink. So there. Sit. Drink. Get on a plane tomorrow. Abandon us again.”
“Abandon you?” They’d all been walking on tiptoes around her. Carmen Louisa’s anger was shocking. “That’s not what I’m—”
“No? You’re fleeing the kingdom. Again. What would you call it?”
Again. She snapped down her glass, kicked out of the blankets, and stood. “I’d call it killing the bacteria before it can spread.” What did she want from her? “I’m trying to help you.”
“How?” Carmen Louisa had never accepted a no in her entire stubborn life. “By taking away the best winemaker the Monte has? By removing our princesa’s warmth and encouragement and making us stumble around in the dark?”
She felt herself twitch at the description of herself. “That’s not what I’m...”
“All this time, you think you’re not essential, Sofia?” Aish’s words flickered punishingly. “Look at me, look around you, look what you’ve done for your people.”
“You’re this kingdom’s life force,” Carmen Louisa said. “You make us strive to be more than a sleepy village in the mountains. You make us thrive. And everyone can see that but you.”
Sofia bit down hard on her lip. How dare she? How dare she sketch out everything Sofia had ever wanted. But her outrage evaporated when she saw Carmen Louisa angrily swipe at her eyes.
She never wanted to make her
