The fields of Tuscany had once been her kingdom.
Rows upon rows of emerald vines stretching across golden hills, swaying gently under the forgiving sun. The scent of ripe grapes thickened the air like a promise of something eternal. In that world, Alberta Contadino had been a princess long before she ever became a queen.
Born to the renowned Contadino family, Alberta grew up in the heart of their legacy — Vigna di Sogni, the Dream Vineyard — a winery that had ruled over European tables for nearly a century. To the outside world, the Contadinos were merely vintners, artisans who captured the sun and rain in glass bottles. But those who mattered — those who pulled the strings behind silk curtains and crystal goblets — knew better.
Wine was power.And where there was power, blood was never far behind.
From the moment Alberta could walk, her life had been steeped in the rhythms of the land. She knew how to read the vines before she could read books, understood the fickle moods of the weather better than any poet could capture. Her father, Lorenzo Contadino, had been a giant of a man — broad-shouldered, with hands calloused by labor yet delicate when he inspected the grapes, as if touching precious relics. Her mother, Sofia, brought the numbers to life; she ran the business side of the winery with a mind as sharp as a blade, and a tongue twice as dangerous.
Alberta worshiped them both.And she worshiped her little brother, Matteo — a whirlwind of laughter and mischief, a boy who could charm the birds from the trees and talk her into a hundred different kinds of trouble.
At fourteen, while other girls dreamed of first loves and school dances, Alberta sat in boardrooms alongside her mother, learned to decipher contracts, calculate logistics, spot a liar before he spoke. Her nails were always stained purple from harvest season, her heart always divided between the soil and the ledger.
By sixteen, she was signing deals in her father's name.By eighteen, she was steering expansion into French and German markets.
She was destined to inherit an empire built on dreams and tradition.
But empires, as she would learn, are only ever one war away from ruin.
It started small — as these things always do.A whispered name.A suspicious contract.A shipment "misplaced" along the Rhine.
The man behind it was Marc Fournier, a French magnate whose charm could soften any council and whose ruthlessness could silence any rival. On the surface, he was a businessman, a fellow lover of viticulture who spoke eloquently about heritage and craftsmanship. Underneath, he was a wolf in silk, a man who saw the Contadinos not as peers, but as obstacles.
He wanted Europe's wine market.He needed to erase the Contadino name to get it.
And so, the war began — not with armies, but with poisoned contracts, sabotaged harvests, and silent threats delivered with bouquets of dead roses.
Alberta had been twenty when it all burned down.
It was harvest season.She remembered the morning as vividly as a scar.The sun was barely cresting over the hills, mist clinging to the earth like the breath of sleeping giants. She had been checking the fermentation tanks with Matteo — he had just turned fourteen, old enough to be trusted with small tasks, eager to prove himself. His smile had been boyish, proud, tugging at her heart.
Then the ground shook.The blast came from the main house.
Alberta ran, Matteo at her heels.
The sight would haunt her until her dying breath — the villa's stone walls blackened, flames devouring the heavy wooden beams, the front doors blasted off their hinges. Men in black masks moved like wraiths through the smoke, carrying canisters, guns glinting in the early light.
She screamed for her mother, her father.Matteo broke away from her grasp, sprinting toward the inferno.
"No, Matteo!" she cried, lunging after him.
But gunfire split the air — cruel, sharp, final.Matteo fell in the grass, a red flower blooming beneath him.
Alberta's legs gave out. The world tilted, the smoke thickened, and somewhere in the chaos, someone grabbed her — a loyal vineyard worker, dragging her away as bullets tore through the morning.
She fought. Kicked. Screamed.
But Matteo's body faded from sight.And her world was reduced to ashes.
The local authorities — bought and paid for — ruled it an "accident." A gas leak. A tragic fire. No investigations. No arrests. Only the hollow condolences of cowards too terrified to speak the truth.
The funeral was a farce.Empty caskets for her parents — their bodies never recovered.A too-small box for Matteo.
The vineyard was seized within weeks under "safety violations."The contracts were reallocated.Fournier's wines flooded the market.
The Dream Vineyard became a graveyard.
But Alberta Contadino did not die with her family.
In the quiet after the storm, she rebuilt herself from the wreckage.No longer the laughing girl who danced among the vines.No longer the daughter who believed hard work and honor could conquer the world.
She became something else entirely — something harder, sharper, more enduring than stone or sorrow.
At twenty-one, she moved to Genoa.At twenty-three, she started Contadino Holdings — a front for something much darker than wine exports.
She entered the underworld the way she had entered the business world — head high, eyes wide open, no illusions left to shatter. Where her vines once grew, now she grew alliances.Where she once pressed grapes, she now pressed advantages.
By twenty-six, Alberta was known across Europe — not just as a businesswoman, but as a queenpin of elegant ruthlessness.She wore her power like a second skin, and the world — both legal and criminal — learned quickly: you crossed Contadino at your peril.
Still, late at night, when the world was quiet and her armor hung heavy on her bones, Alberta would find herself reaching for Matteo's old compass — the one he used to carry everywhere, convinced he could find treasure if he only followed the right star.
It was battered and scratched now, but she kept it close, a relic of the girl she used to be, and the boy she had failed to protect.
Revenge had never been Alberta's goal.Not at first.
But revenge had a way of finding its way into her blood, sweet and bitter, like the wine her family once made.
And one day, she vowed, she would make Marc Fournier choke on it.
**
The memory washed over her now as she sat in the lounge of the rooftop, across from Fabian Di Neri.
He studied her with eyes like knives — calculating, intrigued, wary.
And for the first time in years, Alberta felt something stir in the ice she had so carefully wrapped around her heart.
Not love. Not trust.Something more dangerous.
Recognition.
He was like her, she realized — shaped by loss, tempered by blood. A king without a crown, just as she was a queen without a throne.
Their empires had risen from ruins.Their hearts were built from broken glass.
And perhaps — just perhaps — their futures would be written together.
Or destroyed trying.
**
"Miss Contadino," Fabian said, lifting his glass — the one he hadn't touched until now. "To new beginnings."
Alberta arched an eyebrow, her smile cool as frost, but her eyes — her eyes burned with something far more reckless.
"New beginnings," she echoed, clinking her glass against his.
And somewhere, in the far corners of the city, the wolves began to howl.
They knew.
A storm was coming.
And this time, it would burn everything in its path.