Page 44 of Last Breath (Blood Wine Dynasty #2)

Jett

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s okay. I understand.’

‘It’s just ... bad timing,’ Jett said, rubbing his brow. ‘And I’m leaving soon anyway. I was upfront that I only wanted something casual.’ He watched her face.

‘I understand.’

‘You keep saying that, Daisy, but I feel like you don’t. I’m so sorry.’

‘Hey.’ She put her hands on his shoulders. Her touch was calming, stabilising, not electric, not like how someone held you as they stabbed you in the gut. ‘You don’t have to apologise.’

‘I do,’ he said, sickness curdling in his gut. ‘If I’m being honest, it was wrong to ask you out when I knew I was leaving Bindi Bindi.’

And on some level, I’m worried I asked you out because maybe Nella would find out and she’d come back, even if it was just to yell at me.

‘Jett.’ Daisy’s voice was level. ‘Can I just ask one thing?’

‘Sure.’ They had to keep their voices low because Ariana was sleeping in the room adjacent.

Daisy was supposed to be looking after her while she slept off whatever bug she’d brought with her on the plane, but Jett couldn’t leave this any longer.

The jolting, earth-shattering discovery they’d made on Isola San Giulio only cemented the necessity for him to do it now.

‘Is this because of Nella?’

‘What?’ Could not have answered quicker, you dumbass.

‘Is there ... something between you?’

‘What? Me and Nella?’ He laughed. Manically. Daisy watched him. ‘Dais, come on. Me – the chauffeur – and Antonella Barbarani? Do you think I’m stupid enough to entertain the idea of such a ridiculous fantasy?’

‘So you admit it’s a fantasy?’

‘Fantasy as in cannot and does not exist. In any dimension.’

‘But I see the way you look at her.’

‘I ... What ...? I don’t ...’

‘Have you ever considered that maybe she feels the same way?’

‘The same way I feel? I’m sure she does, Daisy. Because all I feel towards Nella is professional acquaintanceship, exactly the same way I feel about Tom and Luca. Sure, it may cross over into friendship, or at least it used to ... So yes, I’m sure Nella feels the exact same way about me.’

‘She deserves to be happy.’ Daisy’s smile wasn’t sad; she seemed genuine.

‘Nella gave me a shot when she didn’t have to.

There were tonnes of applicants for the paralegal position who had better grades and more experience than me, but she gave me a shot because I was a kid from a rural town, raised by a single mum on Centrelink, and I had something to prove.

She said that meant I’d worked twice as hard to get where I was and wouldn’t shy away from all the hard work she’d need me to do. ’

‘You must have reminded her of herself,’ Jett said without thinking.

‘I wish I was half as incredible as her.’

‘Daisy, you are incredible.’

She gave him a tight smile. ‘Maybe. But I’m not her.’

Jett sighed. ‘No matter what I say to convince you otherwise, you’re still going to keep pulling at that thread, huh?’

She smiled.

‘You’re wrong,’ he said.

Daisy stared at him with an odd expression he couldn’t decipher, like it was in another language. She tilted her head towards the door of the room she was sharing with Ariana. ‘I better check she hasn’t choked on her own vomit. Though that would at least solve one of Nella’s problems.’

He nodded tightly, the tendons in his neck like barbed wire as he let himself out. Jett had always known when it was his time to go.

New mothers’ hearing adjusts so they can hear their newborns’ cries; they can hear decibels that normal ears can’t – it’s some sort of evolutionary thing.

Similarly, Jett’s hearing was adjusted to hear the tiniest sound of an engine.

And currently, the noise he was hearing as he tried to fall asleep on the lumpy hotel pillow was the distinctive roar of someone stealing a 1973 Lamborghini Espada.

He didn’t have time to put a shirt on, running out of the hotel lobby barefoot into the icy cobblestoned streets of Lake Orta, following the roar and the alarming spluttering like a police hound dog.

Feet screaming with cold, he rounded the corner into the dark alley that his hotel window looked out onto.

The Espada was still there, headlights blinding him.

‘Hey! HEY!’ He slammed his palm against the bonnet, flinging open the driver’s door ready to tackle a teenage delinquent to the ground. ‘Get the fuck out of my ... Nella ?’