Page 33 of Last Breath (Blood Wine Dynasty #2)

Jett

‘It’s all here.’ Nella held up the iPad.

‘Was he going to work with this Donna Rayne woman?’ Jett asked.

‘Looks like.’ Nella’s lips tightened. ‘And they don’t say it explicitly in this thread, but he was probably taking his clients with him.’

‘Did Oliver know?’ Jett hated how his cave-man body still reacted whenever that man’s name came up.

‘Doesn’t seem like it,’ Nella said, her finger scrolling through the chain. ‘Look – here he says to Rayne he was going to tell Oliver ... Shit .’

‘What?’ Tom was unwittingly taking on the role of ‘comic relief’ quite seriously, his tongue stuck out like a dog salivating for treats.

‘Clarkson was going to tell Oliver he was leaving and taking his clients with him ... Look at the date.’

‘The day before he died,’ Tom said.

Jett whistled. ‘We need to get this to Avery.’

Nella gripped the iPad tighter, as though Jett had suggested they put it under Bessy’s front wheel and floor it. ‘And what happens when he asks where we got it? The only reason we had to go through ... all of that ... is because Avery and his donut squad confiscated the Boogie Board!’

Go through all of that .

Of course what happened in Clarkson’s office had been an ordeal to her. Of course it hadn’t meant anything. She’d probably been cringing inside the entire time, waiting for it to be over, pleading for the security guards to hurry the hell up so she could push Jett away.

The anchor he felt dropping to the pit of his stomach at her words only served to prove how delusional he had been to consider, for a moment, that maybe Nella wasn’t pretending for all of it.

Tom steamrolled his thoughts. ‘You can’t hide things you find during an active murder investigation from the cops.’

‘According to them, it’s a suicide investigation. They told me this morning I can have my office back. And I will give it to them, once we’ve worked out if Clarkson discovered anything about Barbarani Wines. Besides, Avery’s got better things to worry about now, with his fiancée in hospital.’

‘You could at least pretend to sound concerned. This gives Oliver a clear motive to want Clarkson dead, and even more to make it look like a suicide.’

She ignored him, opening the Boogie Board app and clicking on the most recent entry the iPad had backed up. It was dated the day Clarkson died.

‘This would have been after I left the office.’ Nella’s voice wavered, and Jett had the ridiculous urge to put his hand over hers to stop it shaking.

‘What is it?’ The three of them peered at the letters scrawled in neat, cursive handwriting, like something from a war letter.

Abbey, Isola San Giulio.

‘Who’s Abbey?’ Tom asked. ‘Have you heard Dad mention her before?’

‘It’s not a person,’ Nella muttered, opening up Chrome on her phone. ‘I was searching the wrong spelling, looking for a person, not a place. Look – it’s an abbey , where nuns live. Mater Ecclesiae Benedictine Abbey, on an island on Lake Orta near Milan.’

‘Isn’t that the part of Italy the La Marcas are from?’ Jett asked.

Silence.

‘Why would Clarkson be interested in an abbey near a La Marca property?’

‘Maybe a more pertinent question is why would Clarkson have a voice recording labelled Matteo La Marca ?’ Tom jabbed a finger at the screen.

‘Dated the day before he died,’ Jett said, feeling like a three-year-old pointing out that a stove was hot.

Nella’s expression shifted. Her perfect fucking face that didn’t even look bad in the iPad’s unnatural blue light. ‘Clarkson went to the La Marca Estate the day before you came to get me.’

‘How do you know?’ Jett never thought he’d live to see the day he and Tomaso would have the opportunity to call jinx! on each other.

‘I have my sources,’ she said. Jett could tell that, despite the situation, she was glad to have a piece of information Tom wasn’t yet privy to. ‘And I guess this memo’s going to explain why.’ She bit her lip as she fiddled with the volume on the iPad.

Before he could stop himself, their eyes met as Nella pressed play.

‘ Shhh! ’ Tom said into the silent car as Clarkson’s carefree but articulate voice broke through the speakers.

‘Could you please state your name and the date for the recording and your verbal consent for my recording of our conversation?’

They all listened in shock as Matteo La Marca’s voice replaced Clarkson’s, offering everything he’d asked for, including his consent for the recording.

‘I don’t like this,’ Tomaso declared.

‘ Shhh! ’ Nella said.

‘Have you heard of Isola San Giulio, Mr La Marca?’

‘Si, my family owns a house there.’

‘I’m aware. It’s also come to my attention there is evidence hidden within that house that can confirm the true origin of the Barbarani Wine lies with the Barbarani family. Have you heard of that too?’

All the air was sucked from Jett’s lungs as both Barbaranis inhaled the last remaining oxygen in the car.

‘Are you a writer, Mr Lieu? Or a lawyer like you claim? Because that is one gigante fairytale you are telling me.’

Jett indicated for Nella to pause the recording. ‘Why would evidence that the wine belongs to your family be in a La Marca house?’ he asked. Nella shook her head and pressed play again.

‘You know of the evidence I speak, Mr La Marca?’

‘I know there is a rumour. I assume you came by this information from Emilio Barbarani’s diaries? Who translated the Italian for you? Are they fluent in bullshit too?’

Jett was no expert on Matteo La Marca, or humans in general, but he knew cars. He knew what they sounded like when there was something wrong, when they were being steered in a direction they couldn’t go, didn’t want to go. That was the sound in Matteo’s voice.

‘I assume you agreeing to have this discussion with me, and allowing me to record it, comes down to the simple fact you think it will be impossible for me or any of the Barbaranis to gain access to this evidence?’

‘You assume correctly. Only a La Marca can enter. Anyone else who tries to access the house without a member of my family present will not live to beg for forgiveness. There is one key, hidden on the island, and only my blood can retrieve it.’

‘Sounds like quite the home security system you’ve got.’

‘Quite.’

They stared at each other. ‘What if he found another way in,’ Nella said, ‘and Matteo found out?’

Even Tom didn’t shush her this time.

‘This conversation happened the day before Clarkson died. There’s not enough time for him to have flown to Milan and back.’

‘It’s a beautiful house,’ La Marca continued, ‘cream, almost giallo – the colour of fresh floured pasta sheets. No one lives there but the garden is always tended to, vines never ensnaring the windows or doors. The view is unimaginable.’

‘But I will never see it?’

‘You will never see it from the top floor of that house. And that is a real shame.’

‘You enjoy painting this picture for me, sir, don’t you? Tempting me to test your boundaries, to find another way into the property? There are other ways to break into a house, you know.’

‘None in which you can exit that same house.’

The recording clicked off.

‘There’s only one way for Matteo to be one hundred per cent confident Clarkson would never find it,’ Nella began.

‘What is it?’ Tom said. ‘What’s in the house?’

‘I think if we had the answer to that,’ Jett said, ‘this whole night would be pointless.’

‘Matteo’s playing with him,’ Nella said. ‘He knows Clarkson would never be able to get into the house. Not if it needs to be opened by a La Marca. He thinks it’s impossible.’

‘ Thinks ?’ Tom asked.

Nella scrolled down the rest of the notes but there was only the one voice memo and Clarkson’s earlier harried scrawl about the abbey.

‘We know something Matteo doesn’t,’ she said quietly, ‘and Clarkson might have figured it out too.’

‘What’s that?’ Tom scoffed. ‘How to pair adequate wine with cheese that doesn’t taste like the bottom of a boot?’

‘Ariana owes us. Well, she owes Max and Grey for saving her life at the gala.’

‘You think that stuck-up cow would betray her own family for a favour?’

‘Maybe our brother knows more about what makes Ariana tick,’ Nella said. ‘They used to be friends, didn’t they?’

‘Before his prefrontal cortex had completely formed.’ Tom glared.

‘Ariana won’t help you,’ Jett said. ‘And even if she would because she thinks she owes you, Matteo would never let her.’

‘We need Luca,’ Nella said. ‘He—’

A phone rang.

‘Speak of the devil and he shall butt-dial you.’ Tom held up his phone with Luca’s caller ID flashing across it. ‘I’ll take it outside.’

No, don’t, Jett wanted to yell. Too late.

The car may as well have plummeted upwards into the atmosphere, where there were no pressurised cabins or oxygen filters, as Tom slammed the door, phone to his ear. Jett undid his top button to help himself breathe.

‘I know it’s there,’ Nella whispered, her voice level – of course it was level, she was in a stationary car, not an oxygenless aeroplane nosediving towards Earth. ‘Clarkson found the proof we need. It’s in the La Marca Lake Orta house – I can feel it.’

She shifted in the seat and Jett’s mind spiralled back to the feel of her hips in his hands. Her skin scorching through his. He had been perfectly content burning alive as cosmic punishment for his transgression.

‘Jett?’

All he could smell was her perfume. All he could taste, still, was her strawberry gin and bitter, silky red lipstick.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

‘Huh?’ He fiddled with Bessy’s radio dials, desperate for any sound other than the echo of the noises she’d made into his mouth. Anything he could touch that would not remind him of the feel of her.

‘I shouldn’t have made you do that. It was all I could think of ...’

Me too.