Piero, too, was guilty of not asking enough questions but he was going to remedy that. He indicated the computer. ‘Could you call the email up?’

Reluctantly, Salvatore entered his password. Again, he glanced at Graziella.

Graziella let her head fall back, rolling her eyes towards the uneven ceiling in a gesture of frustration.

‘Is there a problem?’ Emiliano demanded. His gaze flicked to Piero with a fierce ‘what do you know that I don’t?’ expression.

Salvatore, eyes on the computer screen, clicked the computer mouse. Outside, vineyard workers called to one another and the familiar hiss of a downpour could be heard through the windows.

Graziella vented a sudden, frustrated wail. ‘I was just trying to protect you, Salvatore!’

‘By doing what?’ Emiliano demanded, sounding more frustrated by the minute.

Salvatore swung around to regard his girlfriend, features rigid.

Tears began to trickle down Graziella’s lean cheeks but Piero wondered if they were of disappointment and rage rather than sorrow or remorse. She continued to aim her explanation at Salvatore, the person likely to give her the most sympathetic hearing. ‘I just wanted you free of the endless, endless pressure of this place. You don’t have many years left, Salvatore, I want you to enjoy them. Travel, relax. La dolce vita. I’m sorry. Very sorry. But I was worried about you.’

Not too worried to make the seventy-year-old sound as if he were on his last legs, Piero thought savagely as he bit back the scornful observation that travel and la dolce vita just happened to be exactly what Graziella wanted herself. She’d obviously been trying to ‘free’ Salvatore to go with her – and no doubt foot the bill. It would be far better for Salvatore and Emiliano to see this for themselves, though, so he sat on in granite silence as Graziella wept.

‘I just presented the circumstances a certain way,’ she wailed. She swept Piero with a vicious glare. ‘Your family is selfish.’

With a gasp, Emiliano saved Piero the bother of pouncing on that remark. ‘Selfish? The vineyard belongs to us three.’

As Emiliano and Graziella launched into a spat loud enough to rival the thunder, Piero’s attention remained on Salvatore. His father’s entire face drooped with disappointment. But disappointed by what? Or in who? Piero sighed. This wasn’t over.

‘Papà.’ He spoke over the rising, passionate exchange between Emiliano and Graziella. ‘I would like Emiliano and I to read all correspondence between Tenuta Domenicali, the lawyers and the Binotto Group for ourselves.’

Graziella stopped in the middle of a shrill accusation that Emiliano had no consideration for an old man.

Salvatore nodded. ‘We’ll send the files—’