Page 5 of Last Breath (Blood Wine Dynasty #2)

Nella

Jett stared at her in the elevator mirror. ‘Did you skin Sully from Monsters, Inc. to make those shoes?’

Nella hoped it was just distorted glass and that she didn’t actually look like the reflection staring back at her.

Back home, she’d been working out so much she could pretty much eat whatever she wanted and not worry about not fitting into her favourite jeans (which of course actually meant not worrying that random guys would look straight through her like she was a vacuum cleaner).

But she’d never admit that. What she’d said to Jett about the spin class shaman was true, but her presence at said spin class was more Christmas and Easter church attendance than devout self-flagellation.

Had she changed that much these past six months?

Would she ever get to that stage that women seemed to reach where they didn’t care about flat stomachs and toned arses and perky tits?

Was it forty? Fifty? Did you care about all of that until your thirty-ninth birthday and then suddenly wake up at forty and think ‘ Fuck that, there’s nothing wrong with me!

Men’s opinions of my body don’t matter at all! ’?

Nella hoped so. That meant she only had about seven more years of this. Of wondering ridiculous things like what Jett had thought when she’d pranced around in front of him in nothing but knickers and a bra. He’d probably been equally disgusted and satisfied at the sight of her, fallen from grace.

Maybe the shaman would help her with this.

‘You’ve been planning that line since I walked out of the bedroom, haven’t you? I saw you look at my feet.’

‘It’s human instinct to be drawn towards horrific sights. Like how people always slow down to look at a car crash.’

‘These shoes were on the catwalk at Milan Fashion Week.’

‘See, I didn’t know that. Pity Chris— I mean Vincent didn’t get a chance to see them.’

‘The only reason Victor didn’t get a chance to see much’—she pushed past him as the doors opened into the gold and white lobby—‘is because you broke into my apartment.’

She left her suitcase in the lift so he’d be forced to take it. Power Moves 101.

He grabbed it without missing a beat. ‘He passed all the challenges then?’

‘Barely knew him long enough to make it past number 10,’ Nella shot over her shoulder.

‘So he made it through Ugly clothes ?’

‘I was wearing a fluorescent orange fedora.’

‘I’m sure there’s a Pornhub category for that particular fetish. Are you going to see him again?’

They exited the building. Bessy, Jett’s red Porsche (well, her family’s red Porsche that Jett pretty much had full custody of), was parked in a tow-away zone right outside the lobby entrance, the rainbow lights of Elizabeth Quay twinkling off her shiny coat.

Nella’s cheeks burned at the arrogance of his assumption that he’d be able to convince her to leave with him so quickly.

‘He’s married.’ She knew that would shut him up. Jett hated cheating.

As Bessy’s lights winked hello , Nella flopped into the front passenger seat, the familiar smell of leather, Bindi Bindi honeysuckle and Jett’s smoky, peppery cologne unwittingly soothing her thumping heart (courtesy of the unexpected espresso and lawsuit).

‘Sounds like I did you a favour then.’ Jett’s words were clipped and woke something inside her, but she was too exhausted to pay it any attention.

‘He only wanted to fuck me because my surname’s Barbarani.’

‘That’s not why he wanted to fuck you.’

She opened her mouth to reply but her brother’s caller ID flashed up on the Bluetooth connection.

‘Tom?’ Jett answered as he turned onto the arch-shaped road that cut through the quay.

Nella still did a double take whenever she looked out onto the new Elizabeth Quay foreshore.

It annoyed her that Perth couldn’t just stay as it had been when she was a child.

It annoyed her even more that she struggled to remember exactly what the foreshore used to look like before the plastic surgery construction started to Kardashianify the city, making it look more like the eastern ‘cool’ girls Sydney and Melbourne.

She closed her eyes and tried to remember the shape of the banks, the road, the swans, before it all changed. She couldn’t. Maybe Perth was standing in front of a distorted elevator mirror too.

‘Did you get her?’ came her brother’s voice. ‘Did she finally pull her head out of her—’

‘She’s here now, Tom, you’re on speaker.’

‘Screw you both,’ Nella said.

‘Ignore the speed limit, Randall. I’ll sort any fines with the cops – they’ve passed an interim injunction.’

Jett floored it through a light that was on the red side of orange. ‘What does that mean?’

‘It means’—Nella pulled her knees up to her chin, ignoring Jett’s frown at her disregard for his strict laws about riding in Bessy—‘that any of the products under question in the trial will need to cease production until the trial’s complete.’

‘So ...?’ Jett urged.

‘They’re pulling the wine!’ Tom’s disembodied voice screamed through Bessy’s speakers. ‘They’re coming to the winery at sun-up! You better get here fast, Antonella, because if we lose, it’s going to be entirely, wholly, completely your fault.’

‘They need to rename this place.’ Nella pressed her forehead against the cool glass of Bessy’s window as they passed the faded pink clam shell announcing they were one kilometre out from Bindi Bindi Cove.

It had been technically morning when they’d left the city but now the sky was a socially-acceptable-to-be-awake shade of blue.

‘Why?’

‘There are no butterflies anymore. Bindi Bindi is the Noongar term for butterfly.’

‘Well, what’s the Noongar word for just fly ?’ Jett asked as he swatted another enormous march fly out the window. ‘HOW are they getting in?’

‘I opened the back window. I needed fresh air but not, like, directly on my face.’

Jett stabbed the window button so viciously Nella was surprised he didn’t break his finger.

Obviously his annoying calm demeanour had been an act while he dutifully played the role of bounty-hunter.

And now that his bounty was securely strapped in the passenger seat, he was back to apathy, staring stonily ahead. Most of the car ride had been silent.

February was never a quiet time in Bindi Bindi.

Even though most summer holiday-goers had traipsed back up the sandy highway to Perth for work and school, there was still an after-party electric buzz in the air that made Nella want to stick her Beats on so she didn’t have to hear it.

Teenagers with dark tans and salt-crusted curls balanced surf and boogie boards on their bikes as they wobbled through the morning breakfast crowd in the main tourist strip.

Adults were wrapped in floral dresses, activewear or board shorts, ready for a day of wine tasting, cave exploring or getting burnt on Bindi Bindi’s famous white and turquoise beaches.

As Jett angled Bessy past the courthouse and police station, Nella flattened against the seat just in case anyone from work had decided to come into the office pre-opening hours to impress their absent overlord.

It wasn’t like she and Jett were inconspicuous in the cherry red Porsche.

She used to love summer in Bindi Bindi, breathing in that crabby, seaweed smell and lathering herself in coconut sunscreen and sticky strawberry lip gloss.

Hours stretched out by the water or climbing rocks with Eliza, her one and only friend who had passed all her challenges.

Well, maybe it was a bit biased since Eliza had helped her create them.

At eleven, Nella had devised her own How-to Guide for weeding out those who only wanted to be around her because she was Nella Barbarani, not because she was just Nella.

She used the Swim to Survive Surf Life Saving Rules of the local club as her starting point and they grew from there.

She and Eliza had laid with their bellies on the sand, crafting a list of twenty-one in sparkly neon-green pen in a fluffy journal that had come free with a Total Girl magazine.

They’d flirt with the boys holidaying from Perth and pretend they didn’t know how to surf so they’d have an excuse to touch their slippery, hardened bodies as they begged for lessons.

Sometimes Nella’s little sister, Frankie, would tag along and Nella would try to come up with annoying tasks for her to do like she was their servant – get them Fantas from the beach kiosk, hold their bags while they peed, watch their stuff while they swam out to the floating jetty.

Frankie had even helped Nella carry out some of her more convoluted challenges, doing it because it was the only way Nella would let her hang out with them.

Then she developed a proper-sized pituitary gland and started making better decisions.

Until she didn’t.

Thinking about Frankie just made the echo of gunshots louder. The damp smell of her grandfather’s hidden passageway, where Nella and her siblings had been held captive on the night of the gala, seeped through the seaweed and coffee tang of the main strip.

‘Nel?’ Jett was staring, one hand casually on the steering wheel, the other tapping Bessy’s gear stick to the beat of whatever James Taylor song was playing. Jett had the musical taste of a 63-year-old retiree.

She tipped her head back, pepper, honeysuckle and leather swallowing the painful summer smells. The gunshots and screams quietened, replaced by the echo of what Jett had said back in Perth before Tom called.

That’s not why he wanted to fuck you.

It had probably been an insult, a small payback for the funeral, but she couldn’t work out what he’d meant. But the moment to interrogate it had long since passed, and she’d sound like a neurotic narcissist if she brought it up now.

‘I’m fine.’