Page 4 of Last Breath (Blood Wine Dynasty #2)
She quickly averted her eyes. ‘Too scared to take me on face-to-face, so you’re resorting to cyberbullying?’ She recrossed her legs; he shifted in his seat. ‘My phone’s dead.’
He passed over his iPhone.
‘Still no case?’ she asked.
‘I like to live on the edge,’ he replied flatly. That much was true – he drove like a cat, recklessly taunting his nine lives and getting pissed off when someone sat in his seat.
She took the phone, sinking into the couch to read, then launched right back up. Her vision blurred. ‘Jett.’ Her hands shook. She re-read the tiny text, blinking to make sure it wasn’t her half-drunk state muddling the words. ‘Tell me I’m reading this wrong.’
He crossed his arms, back stiff.
She stared at the headline. La Marcas sue Barbaranis for profits made from stolen wine patent. ‘This is a prank, right? You can’t sue for rights to a recipe in Australia. Are we on one of those reality shows where they—’
‘The lawsuit’s real,’ Jett cut in. ‘And you know Matteo La Marca’s always been convinced your grandfather didn’t make the famous sangue recipe on his own.
He’s found a loophole.’ Both their eyes tracked to the framed recipe Victor had got his sticky fingers all over.
‘He’s always claimed it was suspiciously close to the one his father was allegedly working on. ’
‘What’s suspicious is the death of my grandfather and how Antonio La Marca was never questioned about that, even though he—’
‘I know , Nella.’
Jett did know. Which was even more frustrating. Why wasn’t he raging and spitting flames and storming the La Marca property right now?
‘The initial hearing’s in three weeks,’ he continued. ‘I take it you haven’t been following the news. I found your phone in the microwave, so when you say it’s dead , I assume you mean you tried to murder it. When’s the last time you charged it?’
‘I’m invoking my right to silence as outlined in Section 8 of the Evidence Act, 1906.’ She closed her eyes.
‘And there you go.’
‘What?’
‘That’s why Tom needs you.’
She opened her eyes and stared at him. ‘Everyone’s entitled to Section 8, not just me.’
‘But he needs a lawyer.’
She shook her head. ‘I’m not that type of lawyer.’
‘Exactly. You’re better. You’re also the eldest, even though Tom’s in charge of the winery. You’ll be expected at the initial hearing. The family’s flying in.’
The family. A cold stake went through Nella’s spine.
‘So that’s how you’re going to convince me to go back to Bindi Bindi? Seducing me with technicalities?’
‘I know what makes you tick.’ Jett stretched his long limbs.
‘Greyson and Tom had all these grand schemes to kidnap you, or hire a Mariachi band to profess their undying familial love, or send a video of the war-torn mansion empty of the light that used to be Nella Barbarani, or interview all the inhabitants of Bindi Bindi Cove, begging for your prodigal return. But I knew it would be much easier than that.’ He smirked, but Nella could see the shadows behind his eyes. This was worse than he was letting on.
‘I’m not coming back. You’re not getting that satisfaction today.’
Neither is Tom. Neither is my mother. And neither is Dad, who, even though he’s dead, I know is looking up at me and shaking his fist. I’m not coming back for them.
‘You wouldn’t be coming back for Tom or the others.
’ Long ago, Jett must have planted some sort of chip in her mind that sent her thoughts to him whenever he activated it.
‘You’ll be coming back for you . The La Marcas’ attack on your family is still an attack on you, Nella, no matter how much you’ve tried to distance yourself from them. ’
‘It’s not my money the La Marcas are after. Everything I have, I’ve earnt myself.’
‘I know that, and so does Tom, but there’s a reason you’re so good at your job.’
Nella smirked. ‘I slept my way to the top.’
‘You’ve always had something to prove. You fight for your clients, like you’ve fought to have your own reputation, separate to your father’s. But this is a legal case. Your reputation as a lawyer is on the line, whether you like it or not. Everyone knows what you’re like in the courtroom.’
Jett’s words echoed those of the journalist who’d written a bio on her for the Australia’s Most Influential Businesswoman of the Year Award two years ago: Nella Barbarani is the ‘everything girl’.
You know the type, that woman you love to hate because she has it all – looks, intelligence, wit and money.
She’s the girl everyone wants to be like, the girl everyone wants to be liked by, but the one thing you don’t want to be is the person up against her in a courtroom . ..
But that article and nomination had been published before the ‘Rise of the Australian Nepo Babies’ viral piece that had featured her and the rest of her siblings.
‘It doesn’t matter what I’m like in the courtroom for my clients. The second they see me up there fighting to keep my family’s fortune, I’m just another nepo baby chucking a tantrum.’
‘You didn’t get handed a law degree along with your Hermès clutch on your twenty-first birthday.’
‘It wasn’t Hermès , it was Lana Marks,’ Nella interrupted.
‘Everything you have, you earnt. Your father didn’t pay off the university or the Australian Bar Association.’
Nella shrugged. The thought of her father shaking hands with the Dean at her old university, or the President of the ABA, whispering into their ears, made her skin turn to snakes, twisting around her bones.
Even though she’d seen her transcript herself, even though she’d been in the interviews she’d done, there was always that thought, that splinter of a possibility – what if it was all a lie?
What if everything I thought I built, he constructed for me?
Even now that he was dead, sometimes she thought she could sense the edges of her augmented reality, like a shimmery wall.
Just pressing slightly could rupture the entire thing, and she’d be forced to see it had all been make-believe.
She was nothing without him and his dynasty.
Jett rested his elbows on his knees. ‘I get what you’re saying. You can’t win either way: if you take the case you’re a spoiled brat trying to keep her fortune in her little nepo-baby fists, but if you’re not involved, everyone’s going to think—’
‘That I’m not cut out for it.’
‘Or ...’
‘Or my family’s guilty, therefore implicating me by association.’
Goddamn Matteo bloody La Marca. The law was her sacred oasis.
The thing she was better at than everyone else, the one thing that didn’t make her feel small in the eyes of her father and her brothers.
The law didn’t care what your name was. Since the King was forced to sign the Magna Carta in 1215, even ‘untouchables’ like her millionaire family weren’t exempt from it. The law made everyone human.
And it was hers. But now Matteo’s skinny, oily hands were strangling it with his bullshit lawsuit.
‘I’ll come to the hearing,’ she conceded.
To his credit, Jett didn’t jump and punch the air, but simply gave a nod.
‘But then I’m gone,’ she continued. ‘I met a guy at a spin class who’s a shaman in training – he needs someone to practise on, so I’m going to be swamped with exorcised demons trying to exit me for a while.
I’ve handed my clients over to Ian, and Daisy told me he’s doing fine. Work’s managing without me.’
‘Your family’s not.’
‘My family ’—the word burned in her mouth—‘no longer exists.’
She waited for him to tell her she was being dramatic. Or selfish. Or whatever other adjectives he and the rest of the world used about Antonella Barbarani, far more truthful than the AMIBY journalist. But instead, he stood, grabbed both their coffee cups and silently rinsed them under the tap.
She wished he’d yell at her and demand to know if she’d meant everything she’d said six months ago.
But Jett didn’t let things like that affect him.
He didn’t care what she’d said or what she did, she was just a Barbarani to him.
The spoiled party girl turned ice-queen lawyer he worked for.
There had never been any depth to what Jett felt for Nella.
She was a puddle. And she’d dried up any remaining droplets of friendship after the funeral by ignoring his and everyone else’s calls these past six months.
He’d be glad when she was gone. And that would be right after this hearing.