The vineyards had been particularly successful in the past two years, and she reaffirmed her previous decision. She would sell to Marchesi Antinori. She no longer had the energy to oversee operations, and who knew better than she that absentee ownership never worked. She had tried it forty years earlier, and it had been a disaster. All employees steal money given the opportunity, human nature being what it is. And Italians are particularly skilled at it, given their extensive experience in cheating the government of taxes. Not that Queenie blamed them; she did the same herself. In October, she had rented the attic apartment to an American couple, the trusting kind who’d never dream that the Countess Molin, a descendant of the Medici, would cheat the government of a few hundred euros in taxes. But the euros add up no matter how many you may already have, and Queenie had always preferred addition to subtraction. She laughed out loud thinking of the American couple, particularly the woman.
