Letters He Never Sent
762 Words
The study hadn’t changed.
Dust floated like ghosts in the fading light, caught in golden shafts that spilled through the shutters. Books lined the walls, untouched. A bottle of unopened Chianti stood on the desk, its cork stained but unbroken. The room still smelled faintly of tobacco and leather—of the man who once ruled this land with the voice of a poet and the cruelty of a king.
Maximilian Raffaele Beaumont had not stepped foot inside since his father’s death.
Now, he stood before the desk, one hand resting on the back of his father’s old chair. The leather cracked beneath his fingers. Everything here was a relic—of legacy, of expectation, of silence.
He didn’t sit. Not yet.
Instead, he opened the bottom drawer.
There they were. Dozens of them.
Letters. Untouched. Unsent.
Addressed not to him—but to someone named Santoro.
His breath caught.
He pulled one free, carefully unfolding the yellowed paper. The handwriting was unmistakable—sharp, slanted, bold. His father’s.
“To Matteo Santoro,”
“I regret that we parted with anger. You were the only man who ever matched my vision for the vineyard. Your daughter—your family—was always welcome here, even if I was too proud to say so aloud…”
Maximilian sat down slowly.
Santoro.
The name struck like thunder through memory. It took a moment to connect the dots.
Anindya.
He had heard her full name only once—spoken softly by a housekeeper.
Anindya Prameswari Santoro.
She was his daughter? Matteo Santoro’s child? The man his father had once fought beside—and later driven away?
Maximilian pressed the letter flat against the desk and leaned back, heart pacing. He had assumed she was just a worker. Someone the vineyard had taken in. But now… now, the roots went deeper.
⸻
Outside the window, he could see the vineyard stretching across the hills, golden and eternal. Somewhere among those rows, she was walking—maybe laughing, maybe not. She did not yet know what he had found. Or maybe she did. Maybe she had known all along.
It wasn’t just the beauty that haunted him now.
It was her history. Her right to this land.
And suddenly, he felt small. Like a boy again. Standing in a vineyard built on pride, with no idea what he truly inherited.
He picked up another letter.
“If our children ever meet, Matteo, may they be wiser than we were. May they understand what we lost when pride won.”
Maximilian let the paper fall.
A silence settled over the room so deep, it hurt.
⸻
That evening, he walked alone through the vineyard.
No jacket. No destination. Just the soft hush of vines brushing his fingertips as he passed. Workers were gone for the day. The hills glowed violet. The wind had returned.
He found her sitting under the olive tree.
She didn’t look up as he approached. Her braid was undone again. A book rested in her lap, open but unread.
He stopped a few paces away.
“I read something today,” he said.
She turned to him, her eyes calm, unreadable.
“From my father,” he added. “A letter. Addressed to yours.”
The shift in her gaze was subtle—but it was there.
She closed the book.
“So now you know,” she said simply.
He nodded. “I know.”
She didn’t apologize. Didn’t explain.
And somehow, he respected her more for it.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.
“I didn’t owe you that,” she said. “Not when you walked through this place like it was yours to sell.”
He opened his mouth—then closed it again.
The truth stung because it was true.
She rose slowly, the sunset catching in her hair like firelight.
“Did your father hate mine?” she asked.
“No,” Maximilian said quietly. “He feared him. Because he loved this vineyard as much as my father did. And because he didn’t bend.”
Anindya looked away, blinking once.
“My father taught me to stand tall,” she said. “Even if the soil beneath your feet isn’t yours yet.”
He stepped closer. “You say yet.”
She met his eyes. “The land remembers, Signor Beaumont. Even if men forget.”
And with that, she turned and walked away—leaving Maximilian alone in the twilight, with her voice echoing like wine against the walls of his chest.
- Writer
