Page 17 of Last Breath (Blood Wine Dynasty #2)

‘So how do we get a hold of Raphael without Matteo knowing?’ Jett asked. ‘Nella said the injunction stops us from going on their property.’

Grey sighed; he knew Jett wasn’t going to be swayed. ‘The little hypocrite goes to mass every Sunday morning down at the beach church. Eight am.’

Jett checked his watch; the numbers wouldn’t focus but there was definitely a zero at the front – past midnight. ‘Better turn in then.’ He scooted around the island bench to the door, but turned back just before he pushed it open. ‘Just let Nella sleep, okay? Don’t tell her.’

This time Max and Grey didn’t even try to hide the look they gave each other.

‘Mate, Nella won’t be sleeping,’ Grey said, the corner of his mouth quirking sadly. ‘And she’ll kill you if you don’t tell her you’re going to talk to Raphael.’

‘She’s got too much going on,’ Jett said. ‘You didn’t see her, back there on the road. She almost gouged out Matteo’s eyes.’

Max pursed her lips. ‘She’ll do the same to you.’

‘Please.’ Jett closed his eyes. ‘Just let her deal with the trial. She’s been through enough today.’

‘She’ll gouge out more than your eyes if she hears you talking like that.’

‘I’m not ...’ He didn’t have a response. Max was right. Nella was an adult and had made it quite clear for about fifteen years that she didn’t need or want his protection.

Max sighed. ‘I won’t text her. But I won’t lie to her.’

‘Scared you’ll be banished from the Circle of Challenge Survivors?’ Jett asked as he pushed the door half open.

The empty Magnum box just missed him as he ducked out into the night.

‘Can you feel that?’ Max hissed at Jett.

He was staring at the Virgin Mary, holding her hands over her bright red heart that was coated in gold and hanging out of her chest.

‘What?’ Jett said, ripping his gaze away from the sculpture.

‘The heat.’

‘Heat?’ he asked, confused, as the church choir stood in unison.

‘Mmm. From the flames I’m about to burst into.’

Thankfully the choir’s splintering octaves drowned out most of Jett’s snort. Incense, candle wax and the expensive perfume of Bindi Bindi’s most devout believers coursed up his nose as the congregation kneeled at the end of their pews before ambling down the aisle after the priest’s final blessing.

Max and Jett stayed under the protection of fibreglass Mary as they tracked the La Marca’s fixer.

Raphael was talking to the priest, bowing his head and opening his hands, laden with thick silver rings, up to the sky as though trying to bring Jesus in on the conversation too.

When he finally slipped back into the crowd, Jett and Max followed him back to his pew, empty except for a blonde woman with her hair pulled back in a tight knot.

‘Shit, that’s ...’

It was too late – Raphael had already seen them.

‘Atoning for your sins?’ Jett whispered as he and Max slid into the pew behind them.

Ariana La Marca whipped around; her blue eyes rimmed in red. She took the white handkerchief, embroidered with red roses, that Raphael offered and dabbed at them quickly.

Jett wasn’t sure how he felt about Matteo’s only daughter – Forrest Valentine’s future wife. By virtue of her birth, he should hate her, because he worked for the Barbaranis. Because her family had tried to hurt his. Because her fiancé was a murderer.

But Ariana had been captured in the cellar with them six months ago.

She was an unexpected witness that the people who’d imprisoned the Barbarani siblings hadn’t anticipated and had been seconds away from her own death when Max and Grey saved her life.

She was the only La Marca who’d cried at Giovanni’s funeral.

But how could she be so blind to the fact that her fiancé had murdered a girl in cold blood? Or worse, did she know?

Raphael half turned to face them, his onyx eyes narrowed.

He looked the same as he always did – black goatee trimmed in sharp lines along his pointed jaw, every hair styled and combed into a modern fade so the nape of his neck was basically shaved.

His silk shirt was the colour of dried blood and his ringed hand was lazily drawing circles on the wooden pew in front of him.

‘You know, it’s incredibly tedious to keep up this charade that I am your enemy, Mr Randall.

’ His eyes pulled towards Max, whom he greeted with a wink.

‘You do recall, don’t you, Mr Randall, that I saved your life? ’

‘Deciding not to pull the trigger on the gun you had pointed at my head isn’t exactly the same thing as saving my life,’ Jett said, leaning against the pew.

‘I think you’ll find,’ Raphael drawled, ‘in the world of the La Marcas and the Barbaranis, it is exactly the same.’

Well, that’s not going to be my world for too much longer.

‘Perfected those fake tears, haven’t you?’ Jett asked, no longer sitting on the fence about whether or not he should treat La Marca’s daughter with a modicum of reverence. Raphael’s comment had pushed him right off onto the side of burn her and her family to the fucking ground .

Max gave him a warning kick under the pew. He didn’t care.

Raphael’s hand stiffened against Ariana’s shoulder. ‘Leave. Now.’ Jett didn’t miss the small shift the woman made to move away. ‘You have no business here.’

‘Jesus loves everyone, even us sinners ,’ Max said, but she was still glaring at Jett.

Who still didn’t care.

‘Raphael,’ Ariana said. ‘Go. It’s fine.’

Jett assumed he’d heard wrong, and so did Raphael, it seemed. ‘Ari—’

‘They won’t eat me,’ she said.

Raphael raised an eyebrow at Jett and Max as if to clarify.

‘I’m vegetarian,’ Max lied.

‘Big breakfast,’ Jett said.

He almost rolled his eyes. ‘I’ll be right outside.’

‘De-winging butterflies,’ Jett muttered under his breath as Raphael sauntered down the aisle like a jilted groom.

Ariana sniffed. The sound scraped away the last of Jett’s resolve.

‘Are you crying because your fiancé murdered the Barbaranis’ lawyer?

’ Jett dug his elbows deeper into the hard wood, feeling Mary’s disapproving gaze from above.

‘Or because your father did? Or maybe there’s a new player in town, Ariana.

Did your father hold a tournament to pick a new hitman?

Or was there always someone waiting on the bench for Skinner to tap out? Your father’s always one step ahead.’

‘Jett,’ Max hissed.

Ariana’s shoulders were still, the handkerchief wrapped around her hands in her lap; she was cradling it like it was a sick dove. Slowly, she turned. Her eyes were bright with fresh tears but her mouth was tight. ‘I am not my father. And I am not my fiancé.’

‘That wasn’t a no.’ Jett leant back. ‘And you clearly know what I’m talking about.’

‘The whole town knows about Clarkson Lieu,’ Ariana said, folding the handkerchief into a square. ‘And my dad didn’t even know him. He thought Antonella was going to take the case.’

‘And Forrest?’ Max said.

‘Forrest doesn’t like it when I talk about him in front of other people. Especially not people who work for the Barbaranis.’

‘I don’t work for the Barbaranis,’ Max said. ‘I’m a private investigator.’

‘Whose office is in Antonella Barbarani’s law firm.’

‘Seems you know a lot about the layout of Nella’s law firm,’ Jett said. ‘Maybe it was you who strung Clarkson up on the fan. Or Raphael at your request.’

This time Max’s kick was obvious to everyone. Jett’s eyes watered.

‘Mr Randall.’ Ariana’s eyes narrowed. ‘I don’t think you’re meant to give out specific details of a crime scene to anyone. Especially someone you’re accusing of committing the crime. See, now I know what you know.’

‘Well, you know slightly more,’ Jett said. ‘You know who killed him.’

Jett hadn’t spent much time with Ariana, didn’t know much about her besides who her parents and fiancé were.

She had always been an addendum in his mind.

But now he was forced to reconcile the idea that Ariana La Marca was a separate entity.

She might have had just as much reason as her father to want Clarkson dead if he’d found something that threatened her family.

It was possible that Matteo had ordered Forrest or someone else to kill Clarkson and hadn’t told Raphael or Ariana.

Raphael’s choice to not murder the Barbaranis the night of the gala couldn’t have gone down well with Matteo, even though he hadn’t been the one to order their murders.

Raphael had had a clear shot at a goal and he’d turned around and walked off the field.

Maybe that was enough for Matteo to ice him out about this latest kill?

But then why would he be allowed to escort Ariana to mass?

It didn’t fit. Even though he had to begrudgingly agree that if Clarkson hadn’t killed himself (if!), the La Marcas were the obvious suspects by default, something still didn’t feel right.

They didn’t feel right. He thought ambushing Raphael on a Sunday morning would give him clarity, make him accept that whatever it was about Clarkson’s death still niggling in the back of his mind was just exhaustion and shock.

But Ariana’s reaction only reinforced the feeling.

‘Clarkson Lieu was innocent,’ he said, trying to see if she reacted.

Ariana blinked. ‘No one’s innocent,’ she said, ‘especially not in this place.’ She gestured to the high eaves and stained-glass windows of the almost empty church.

‘Ariana,’ Raphael called from the doorway – an avenging angel haloed by glittering morning sun, ready to shoot an arrow through Max and Jett if they moved any closer.

She moved away, towards Raphael at the back of the church. Jett still wasn’t sure why she’d told him to leave her alone with them, but just before she got to the aisle near the First Station of the Cross painting (Jesus is condemned to death), she stopped and turned back to them.

‘I want to help you,’ Ariana said. ‘You’—she looked at Max—‘you saved me, you saved all of us. I owe you my life, so I want to help. But I can’t help with this.’ With that she let Raphael’s glare continue to pull her down the aisle, towards him. Neither of them bowed at the altar on their way out.

Back with Bessy, Max clicked in her seatbelt and stared stonily out the window. ‘Why were you such an arsehole to her? It’s not her fault her dad’s a cunt and her future husband’s a psychopath.’

‘I don’t think me holding her hand and stroking her hair while she cried was going to make a difference,’ Jett replied. ‘She knows we don’t like her – why should I pretend?’

Max scratched at a bit of blue paint on her jeans. ‘It’s just interesting that you can pretend to hide what you feel about other people, but you couldn’t do it with Ariana.’

Jett fought to keep his gaze ahead. The bright colours of Sunday morning blurred into incomprehensible blobs. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Max sighed, giving up on the speck of paint. ‘Nothing.’ She crossed her arms. ‘So, what do you think? Definitely the La Marcas, then?’

‘I’m not convinced.’ He answered quickly so she wouldn’t go back to her previous comment and let his lungs expand around the tip of the knife she’d gently pushed into him.

‘Me neither.’

Jett thought back to the interaction with Matteo and Forrest on Cove Road.

‘But they are involved somehow. There’s a missing part to this – whatever it was that convinced Matteo his family has a claim to the Barbarani recipe.

Did Clarkson know what that was? Maybe he was able to find evidence to discredit it. ’

‘Lawyers usually have detailed notes about their work on a case,’ Max said, ‘so they know how much to slug you for every comma they type. If he knew something, he would have written it down.’

If Max had thought of that, then Nella definitely had too. How was Jett meant to stop her from inhaling all of Clarkson’s notes, and poisoning herself with whatever knowledge caused his death?

Caused his death . Only a few hours ago Jett was trying to convince Nella that Clarkson had killed himself, like the cops thought.

But this was what it was like in the Barbaraniverse – you got sucked in, turned inside out, and started questioning whether your thoughts were your own or had ever belonged to you in the first place.

He had to get out.

‘Jett?’

‘Hmm?’

‘You know you can’t stop her if she wants to take the case.’

‘When have I ever tried to stop Nella from doing anything? Besides, she’s already decided to.’

‘We have to focus on her protection,’ Max said. ‘If this isn’t a suicide, if Clarkson discovered something about the recipe that got him killed—’

Jett felt like his lungs were an undeployed airbag, straining against the plastic of the dashboard. ‘Whoever takes over next, La Marcas or not, is in danger.’