During my research, I had come across an article about a winery in another country putting flavors inside of their wines, and I wondered why we weren’t doing that. That was when my desire to experiment had been born. But, instead of inserting multiple flavors into the wine like they were, I only wanted one—one perfectly infused flavor with a singular wine type. I believed that less was more, that we had enough in life to overwhelm our senses. Last year’s winner was a limited-edition rich dark chocolate port.

“I’m glad you like it,” I said as Jeanine poured herself another glass.

“I don’t like it. I love it,” she said, finishing it off. “Do you have any new war information?”

“Okay, that’s enough for you.” I took the bottle from her greedy little hands, and she pouted. “You literally ask me this every single time we see James—which is a lot, you know,” I complained, annoyed that she insisted on questioning the decades-old feud instead of accepting it the way I had.

Jeanine knew that if I had learned any new information about our rivalry, I would have told her by now.

“I just think that if you’re supposed to hate someone based on their last name alone, you should at least know every single reason. You do realize that this all borders eerily close to Romeo and Juliet, right? I mean, you’re both even Italian.”

“So, I’m what, Juliet in this scenario? And James is Romeo?” I spat out a sick laugh. “I suppose you’re my chambermaid? Thanks for letting me die, by the way,” I continued to tease.

My parents refused to talk about whatever had happened between our two families in detail. And my dad practically exploded each time I even hinted about wanting to know more than what I’d been told.

“Isn’t it enough that I tell you his family almost ruined ours? Why can’t you accept that they’re evil, and if they could, they would take over our vines the second we turned our back to them? Stay away from that Russo boy!”

He always ended his tirade with a warning for me to stay away from James and made me promise that I would. He’d told me on more than one occasion that nothing in this world could disappoint him more than me befriending James Russo and that if it ever happened, he would disown me completely and I’d lose the winery.