Page 42 of Last Breath (Blood Wine Dynasty #2)

Nella

As her life crashed around her, Nella sipped her Aperol Spritz outside on the terrazza of her hotel. Her drink was the same colour as the setting sun – a brilliant, beautiful scene oblivious to the silent apocalypse of her entire world raging and ending inside her.

‘AI can do all sorts of things to images, can’t it?’ Nella said in Italian as Roman handed the last of the boxes of wine to his colleague, a forensic expert of some sort. Wine forensics. As if that was even a thing.

It was, clearly. And all they were going to do was confirm what Nella now knew.

Matteo La Marca was right. And he’d been playing her all along.

‘But AI cannot yet doctor what is inside a wine bottle,’ Roman said. ‘Forgive me, signora, but have you not found what it is you came for?’ He sat down opposite her, signalling to the waiter to bring him a drink.

‘I came to clear my family’s name! What was in that house was supposed to prove the wine was made solely by my nonno. Not a joint collaboration with Antonio La Marca!’

‘But’—Roman’s handsome features were twisted in confusion—‘Signore Matteo was adamant I show you the details of the wine. He said not to mention anything until we got into the house – he said he wanted it to be a surprise!’

‘You ...’ She squeezed her eyes shut, like this was a dream and if she concentrated hard enough, she’d wake up. ‘You work for Matteo La Marca?’

‘Si, ’ Roman said, ‘I thought you knew! You are here with his daughter, si?’

How could she have been so stupid? How did Clarkson get it so wrong?

Assuming it couldn’t make her feel any worse, she picked up the photograph they’d found in the La Marca house. She was wrong.

‘There’s no way this could have been faked?’ she asked again.

‘No, signora, this is real – my father is a historian. I know when something has been photoshopped or AI influenced. This photograph is legitimate.’

Her eyes blurred as she took in the tiny square that had been taped to a red cupboard in the house. Daisy, Roman and Ariana had circled it like bodyguards standing in front of the Mona Lisa , their expressions like they’d just uncovered a dead body.

Nella wished it had been a dead body.

The photo was black and white, with slightly faded edges and a thin white border.

It showed two men standing side by side, their arms around each other, smiling and holding a piece of A4 paper between them.

The A4 paper that was currently framed in Nella’s Perth penthouse suite, with the secret ingredients blacked out.

The two men were just as recognisable. The one on the left was short with a thick, black moustache and a large mole near his left eye. The other man was tall and slim with a blond, receding hairline.

Emilio Barbarani and Antonio La Marca.

Mortal enemies. Embracing in front of a half-finished railway track, holding the recipe they’d created.

Together.

‘And the wine ...’ Nella’s voice cracked as she looked at Roman, pleading. ‘Is there any way to prove when it was made?’

‘Si, we have experts – you will have them back in Australia too – but I can tell from the bottle. See the grooves here?’ Roman took her hand and she was too shocked to resist. He ran her finger over the bottom of the bottle, the inverted part that was normally smooth, but Nella could feel tiny raised bumps like Braille.

‘It’s a message,’ Roman said. ‘I am one of the few in this country who can read this.’

Matteo La Marca’s own fucking Wine Whisperer. Brilliant.

‘Let me guess,’ Nella choked out. ‘It says this wine was made by Antonio La Marca in the same year this photo was taken.’

‘And Emilio Barbarani,’ Roman added, pointing at a constellation of bumps at the end of the message.

‘Together. This encryption was to prevent counterfeits. And some, like Signore Matteo, believe the reason it is no longer on any of the later bottles of sangue is because only Antonio knew about the encryption. He put it on the bottles as a safety net in case his business partner betrayed him.’

Nella wanted to scream. She wanted to jump into Lake Orta and hold her breath under water until lights popped in her eyes and she drifted down into the peaceful agony of death.

The waiter placed a tray of pistachio cannoli in front of them.

Nearby, a couple kissed as they chose a lakeside seat under one of the red umbrellas and the group behind Nella and Roman burst into laughter and clinked their glasses together.

The sun was melting in brilliant oranges and pinks over the shadowed mountain ridges.

How does the rest of the world not know it’s upside down? That everything is over?

This could not be happening.

They’d come here to prove the La Marcas wrong .

The evidence Clarkson was searching for was meant to show the judge that the Barbaranis were the rightful owners of the sangue patent.

But if Matteo had played Clarkson just as effortlessly as he had her, what did that mean for her friend’s death?

Matteo had no motive to want Clarkson dead if what the lawyer would find in the Lake Orta house only proved the La Marcas’ case.

‘My experts will analyse the wine,’ Roman said as Nella stared out the window of the Lake Orta restaurant. ‘But from my rudimentary analysis, it looks like those bottles have been locked away in that house for at least fifty years.’

‘So they’re the original sangue. The original bottles La Marca and my grandfather made together in Australia?’

Together. It was such a foreign concept. That her grandfather and his arch nemesis had once been business partners. Had smiled together for a photo. Signed the bottom of the recipe they’d created together.

But her grandfather had betrayed his business partner. Why?

And then Emilio Barbarani had died. Suspiciously, according to the Barbaranis.

Naturally, according to the La Marcas.

‘I will have some bottles sent to my own experts back in Australia for an independent analysis.’ Nella found her voice briefly, though it cracked and dropped in and out like a dodgy radio connection.

The knowledge that she had absolutely no wine contacts and would therefore have to ask Tom was too much to bear right now.

She dulled it with another deep sip, almost draining the glass of now-warm liquid.

Roman nodded politely, but they both knew it would be a fruitless endeavour.

The tests would show it was the same recipe that Nella’s family had built their fortune on and continued to profit from today.

It would show it was made at the same time as this photo was taken, proving that the two men had created it together.

Proving Nella’s entire life had been a lie.

Daisy’s voice rang in her ear as she watched condensation dribble down Roman’s untouched glass of soda water. He was rambling on about the exact process of wine testing.

‘The photograph doesn’t prove anything, Nella. It suggests they were in business together, but it’s not exactly a contract, is it?’

‘The burden of proof is on a balance of probabilities,’ Nella had said.

‘The La Marcas just have to make the judge and jury believe there was a likely possibility the recipe belonged to them. It’s not like criminal cases where you need incontrovertible proof.

This photo, the wine we found, it’s more than enough. ’

She had to call Tom. She had to tell her mother. Her whole family. Everyone who’d been relying on her to fix this.

No wonder Clarkson hadn’t told Tom. What would Clarkson have done once he got to Isola San Giulio?

That is, if he’d managed to convince Ariana to get the key for him.

Would Clarkson have tossed the wine into the water?

Burned the photograph? How could he? He wouldn’t have been able to get in without Ariana or one of the other La Marcas.

And there’s no way she would have kept quiet.

Nella was darkly grateful Ariana’s vomiting spell had continued into the afternoon.

The younger woman was holed up with Daisy keeping watch upstairs.

But it didn’t matter. Nella had done the one thing she was never meant to do: trust a La Marca.

There was no way to deny they’d found the wine; Ariana was there and Roman would testify she’d been there.

The evidence would get to court whether or not she brought it. It was over.

‘Signora?’ Roman’s voice had the strained patience of someone who’d been trying to get her attention for a while. ‘What do you think?’

‘I ...’ She had no idea what he’d asked. Maybe something about the wine. About the recipe. About that date she’d agreed to a lifetime ago. ‘I have to ...’

She didn’t know where she was going, only that she could not stay here.

The hotel blurred past her in a mix of red and gold, interrupted occasionally by bright cobalt blue as she passed a window. Evening was drowning the winter-blue sky. Eggy pasta and fresh basil. She was near to the restaurant. Restaurant meant people. People meant ...

‘Oliver?’