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Michaele’s mom made it known that she wasn’t too keen on this flashy new man in her daughter’s life. For that reason it would be nearly three years before there was a wedding.
    Michaele’s mother also had no idea about her daughter’s long and passionate relationship with guitarist Neal Schon from the band, Journey. It was one secret she’d always kept from her mother. With the rest of the world, Michaele remained adamant about keeping the secret of her MS (multiple sclerosis). She had gotten over the sense of embarrassment about her illness, but hated the thought of pity from anyone. She wanted to live as normal a life as possible for as long as she could. But in accepting Tareq’s marriage proposal, she knew she would have to tell him all about her health condition. She struggled to figure out just the right time and place. Shortly after their return from their trip to Rio de Janeiro, Michaele took Tareq to the Holt family’s church, St. Marks, in Vienna, Virginia. This place made her feel safe and comfortable and there, Michaele broke down and disclosed to Tareq that she had a disease that would slowly but surely debilitate her.
    Michaele recalls her mindset that day, “I figured if he really is the right one, after I tell him, we’d still be engaged.”
    “She was crying when she told me,” Tareq said. “I told her I loved her and wanted to marry her—no matter what.” They held each other tightly in that church for a very long time.
    Michaele remembers Tareq saying, “‘we will get through it together.’ … and then Tareq said he wished he could have (the disease) instead of me, to take away the pain. He was very loving.”
    After the proposal and the health disclosure, Michaele moved to the Oasis property to live with Tareq in the summer of 2001. She bought her fiancé a gift of a Doberman pinscher puppy they named “Rio” to commemorate where they’d celebrated their engagement. The dog’s name was one in a long string of romantic bonds between them. Michaele immediately meshed with Dirgham Salahi, who never met a pretty woman he didn’t like. But there was immediate and ever present tension when Corinne came to the Oasis home from her Montessori school in Alexandria.
    Over the years, Corinne’s behavior, as documented in employee affidavits and in police reports, would become increasingly erratic. She once deadbolt-locked Michaele in a room at the winery and held her for three hours before police came to rescue her. Burglaries of some of Michaele’s designer clothes and other items kept at the younger Salahi’s winery apartment were reported to police and Corinne was suspected. A family attorney named David Silek says he saw office videotape of Corinne going after an employee with a hammer and banging it on a closed door. Some of the employees actually called police to come rescue them from the elder Mrs. Salahi when Tareq and Michaele were off the property. Tareq says his mother cruelly removed Michaele’s name from the company health insurance policy knowing full well that she suffered from multiple sclerosis.
    “My mother did not like the possibility that there might be another Mrs. Salahi on that property—in that house—and she made our lives a living hell whenever she came home.” Tareq says. Michaele admits she believed at first she could somehow reunite this fractured family and mold it into something like her own loving clan. But Tareq and his half brother barely spoke. Corinne and Tareq bickered constantly and often about the money he accused her of taking from the winery cash register. Dirgham and his wife never seemed to be happy when they occupied the same space for too long.
    Still, the young couple flourished at Oasis in many ways. Their relationship got stronger because of all the family strife and together they joined forces to expand the business ever further.
    “At first I got a little scared moving out there. I looked around at all the land—beautiful land—but