Page 10 of Last Breath (Blood Wine Dynasty #2)

Nella closed her eyes. She knew what this prickling feeling was – she needed her migraine drugs. Which she’d left in a purple make-up bag in the Perth penthouse. She pressed her fingers to her temples. ‘What do you need, Max?’

‘I need DNA.’

‘All right, I’ll just pop down to the supermarket. What’s your bread situation like?’

‘I need a legal way I can get a DNA sample from Forrest without him knowing.’

‘Well, you haven’t done your homework, because that’s an oxymoron. For a DNA sample to be legal, you need informed consent.’

‘Surely you can find a precedent somewhere or ...’

‘Sure,’ Nella said, because that’s what would get her out of there the fastest, even if it did leave a lump of cement inside her. ‘I’ll see what I can find. I’ll email you when I’m back in Perth.’

‘Aren’t you staying?’

Nella shook her head. ‘All Tom needed me to do was sign a piece of paper. Jett lied to get me back here.’

The prickling sensation was getting sharper, and she could blame the incoming migraine for that strange note in her voice.

Max held Nella’s gaze through her dark strands of hair. ‘If Jett lied to you, he must have done it with your best interests at heart.’

Urgh. Did Max have to look at her like that? ‘Jett doesn’t keep my interests anywhere, let alone near his heart. I’m a job.’

Max opened her mouth at the same time Daisy poked her pink head of curls through the door. ‘Uh, sorry, Nella, but there’s some little old lady and a really loud younger lady here looking for you ...’

‘Fuck.’ They found me.

Max pursed her lips. Nella mentally added her name to the list of people she’d let down lately, right below Poppy Raven.

Nella squeezed Daisy’s arm in thanks and ducked out the back door, tucking her hair up under a yellow cap with the Bindi Bindi fish ’n’ chip shop logo that was conveniently hanging on the coat rack.

The summer heat was laced with a cooler, saltier tang than the pressurised humidity back in the city.

In spite of everything swirling around her mind, she took a deep gulp of the fish, cinnamon donuts and petrol on the air – the smell of Bindi Bindi.

The smell she used to associate with summer and home.

But now it felt like everything she remembered was starting to rot.

She could see Zia Rob’s Alfa Romeo through the alleyway separating her building from the bakery and coffee strip.

They’d be setting up a perimeter at the edge of town, snipers on the rooftops – Italian girls could not so much as change their normal morning coffee order without their entire family knowing by lunchtime.

Italian zias and nonnas had more undercover agents and civilian informants than the FBI.

Nella could really use her getaway driver right about now.

But she could just as easily kill him for dragging her back here.

Zia Rob and Nonna just wanted the Barbarani secrets staying in the family; they didn’t actually think she was the best person for the case.

And Tom had made it clear where he stood.

Her headache started to bang its little fists against her skull as she strode past one of the banks, getting closer to Eliza’s vet clinic.

Like it knew she could get her hands on a prescription with no end date for some deliciously illegal animal medication just behind the glossy white door.

Nella should have replied to Eliza’s messages and called her back.

She was her only friend who’d survived the challenges in primary and high school – well, she was Nella’s only friend because she’d survived all the challenges, including, most notably, Challenge 18 ( Know how to swim.

You have to actually do the strokes to stay afloat – don’t expect friendships to just survive if you’re not putting in the work ).

As a surfer, and because they met in the Under 12s Nippers group, it had been Eliza’s idea to base the challenges off the Swim to Survive manifesto for clarity.

‘It makes perfect sense,’ Eliza had said, slurping her strawberry milkshake.

‘You need to weed out the people who are just going to surround you because your dad’s a billionaire. ’

And it had started that way, until Sally Sue. That was when Nella’s challenges became even more about survival – she wasn’t going to mess up again. Challenge 17 ( If you bleed, even a little, you’ll be able to tell who the sharks are ).

Maybe before she went back to the city she’d get a drink with Eliza. Or maybe, she thought as she passed the window of a new nail salon that had sprouted from the graveyard of the old thrift store, we could get our toes ...

‘Ma?!’

Her mother, who had been in bed, too distraught, according to Zia Rob, to watch the police swipe Nonno Emilio’s wine from the shelves, was in the sunny window seat of Prestige Nails and Spa, hair wrapped in a black silk towel and her half-pedicured toes in the hands of a salon assistant.

Nella called out again but it wasn’t until the third ‘MA!’ that Vittoria Barbarani finally acknowledged her eldest child, raising an eyebrow (darker than normal – freshly re-tinted) in the way Nella was painfully aware she did too when annoyed.

Before she or her fledgling migraine knew what was good for them, the warm smells of the sunburnt street were gone and Nella was inhaling the chemical fumes of polish and acetone as she pushed through the door and over to her mother’s red plastic armchair.

Vittoria looked Nella up and down. ‘You’re back, are you?’

‘Zia Rob said you were resting.’

‘I am.’ Vittoria smiled, blowing on her fresh fingernails, lacquered in deep red – the colour of the wine the La Marcas had successfully pulled from their shelves. ‘I assume you didn’t get here on your own? That boy’s always driving you out of the trouble you put yourself in.’

‘I wasn’t in trouble. And Jett dragged me back here for no reason. You’ve already got a lawyer. You don’t need me. And FYI, Jett or Tom could have just brought the papers for me to sign.’

Her mother’s entire frame went as still as her forehead with its shiny hints of fresh Botox. ‘What are you going to do when he leaves? How will you get yourself out of trouble then, Antonella?’

‘What are you talking about? Who’s leaving?’

‘Your driver.’

Nella frowned. ‘Jett’s leaving?’ The burn she’d felt at the sight of her mother so casual and uncaring about everything was replaced by a terrible, falling sensation like she’d been kicked down an empty elevator shaft.

‘I thought Tomaso was just threatening to hire that other lawyer,’ her mother continued. ‘I didn’t think he’d actually do it. I bet the rest of the family have something to say about that. Your father would be ashamed of you for not taking this case for us.’

‘Ma. How do you know Jett’s leaving?’

‘I’m surprised he didn’t tell you. I suppose you have forsaken your entire life back here, so he probably assumed you’d denounced the Barbarani name for good.’

‘ Ma .’

‘They called me. His new boss – Kevin or Keith or something – just wanting to make sure he wasn’t a murderer or anything. Actually, once they saw the name of our estate that’s probably exactly what they were checking.’ She gave a wry smile.

‘So, what, you just let him hand in his resignation?’ This was impossible – her mother’s grief was clearly clouding her perception of reality.

Jett wouldn’t have resigned, but more to the point, the Barbaranis wouldn’t have let him.

Jett had been their driver since Nella finished high school.

Everyone loved him more than they loved actual blood relatives.

‘No, I tore it up and dunked it in my negroni. Then I made him a deal. He does what I ask, he goes.’

‘Where the hell’s he going?’

‘Don’t make a scene, Antonella.’

‘It’s a bit too late to be concerned with our reputation.

’ Nella glared at the two blonde women her mother’s age sitting side-by-side at the nail benches, who were watching their exchange with wide eyes and pursed lips.

A picture of Nella and Vittoria was probably going to end up on the landing page of What’s the Tea tomorrow morning: Barbarani mother and daughter pamper themselves while father rots in grave and wine is discontinued.

‘Ask him yourself. I don’t know why he didn’t tell you.

Seemed like he couldn’t hand in his resignation fast enough after the funeral, and from what that Kenneth boy said on the phone, Jett was the one who contacted him about the job.

You must understand, Antonella, now that your father’s dead, his debts are dead too. ’

Nella frowned. ‘Jett wasn’t indebted to Dad.’

‘He gave him a job, didn’t he? Plucked him from the trash heap his mother dumped him in.’

‘He was twenty-four when Dad hired him.’ But Nella’s insides hissed at the vague truth in her mother’s words.

In every business deal, every charity donation, every investment in a start-up company, her father had painted himself as the good Samaritan.

But he never gave without expecting something in return. And he’d parented just the same.

‘Is that why the La Marcas are closing in with this bullshit claim that Nonno stole the recipe from Antonio? Because they were too cowardly to do it while Giovanni was alive?’

Vittoria hissed at Nella’s use of her father’s name. ‘The La Marcas and the Barbaranis are never in debt to each other. If Matteo is making this claim, it’s because he is trying to even the score.’

There is nothing worse than the sting of the realisation your mother is right. The Barbaranis and La Marcas were two sides of a scale, balancing each other out. It was how they stopped an all-out, mafia-style war.

‘But we are weak at the moment, without your father,’ Vittoria continued. ‘There are a lot of people in this world who are breathing easier since the news of his murder.’

‘Including you.’ Nella didn’t know where that came from. Only that she’d hit the bottom of that elevator shaft and there was no way out. Jett was leaving, and he hadn’t told her. He’d contacted some guy to enquire about a job. Was it because of what she’d said at the funeral? He couldn’t go—

‘Get out of my sight.’ Vittoria’s tone was light, not wanting to alert the old biddies that this was anything other than a pleasant mother-daughter conversation. ‘You shouldn’t have come back. There’s no use you being here if you’re going to let that outsider try this case.’

‘The cops have already taken the wine. Clarkson’s the best but even he can’t stop what’s coming. Make sure you book in for a colour and blow-wave next door – I can see your roots.’

As she squeezed past the line of chatting nail technicians who had no doubt heard every word, Nella’s mind declared war on her fleeing body.

She needed answers. About Jett. About the La Marcas.

About why her mother was here and not playing the grieving widow for Zia Rob and Nonna Maria back at the house.

But it seemed like Nella couldn’t be in a room with one of her family members for more than five minutes before the ticking bomb in her brain started its inevitable countdown.

If she didn’t get answers soon, it was going to explode.