Page 54 of Last Breath (Blood Wine Dynasty #2)

Nella

There was an Italian tradition at Easter or Pasqua .

Instead of chocolate egg hunts like in Australia, people painted the shells of real eggs, siphoning out the yolk through a tiny hole in the bottom so only the shell remained.

That’s what Nella felt like as her family celebrated in the winery.

A tough, hard shell on the outside, but absolutely empty on the inside.

One tiny crack, a fall, a push, and she’d shatter completely.

The crack came in the form of Max.

‘What have you done?’ She rounded on Nella, eyes flashing.

Nella closed Grey’s cottage door behind them. Max rented a place in the Bindi Bindi town centre, but she spent most nights here. Nella selfishly wished this was not one of those nights.

‘Max.’

‘Don’t Max me.’ The other woman’s eyes were red and swollen. ‘Do you know what you’ve done?’

‘Of course I do.’ Nella’s throat burned. She would not cry; Max would think she was trying to play the victim. ‘I know it’s unforgiveable. I know you’ll never speak to me again, I ...’

‘This isn’t about me!’ Max smacked her palm on the marble bench top Nella had painstakingly chosen for Grey when she’d remodelled this cottage.

‘This was justice for Libby, for Poppy – for two innocent women whose families are never going to get closure because you let Forrest Valentine sail off into the sunset!’

Don’t argue. Don’t tell her she’s wrong. Don’t tell her you plan on spending every waking minute trying to fix this, trying to find another way, more evidence ...

‘I trusted you,’ Max said. ‘I trusted that you cared, that you had some sort of heart underneath ...’ She waved up and down at Nella’s dusty rose Reiss pantsuit – her armour for fighting the La Marcas – ‘... all of this.’

‘Nope.’ Nella lifted her chin so the tears would cliff-dive faster. ‘No heart, I’m afraid.’

This was how it always ended – all those friendships that she’d started, that she’d tested, even though she knew they’d never make it. Only this time she was the one who’d broken first.

You are truly your father’s daughter, Antonella Barbarani.

Max shook her head. ‘Jett saw something in you, but I guess you managed to break his heart too somehow. Is that’s why he’s not around? I really thought he, of all people, would be able to soften you, melt you down – but I guess it’s fucking impossible.’

‘Max.’ Grey’s voice joined from the hallway, a warning.

‘Stay out of this,’ she shot back at him.

‘We should let her explain ...’

‘What a great idea!’ Max’s eyes were wild as she opened her arms, beckoning Nella into her vortex of pain. ‘The floor’s all yours.’

Nella’s hands shook. ‘I ...’

Guess you managed to break his heart too somehow. Is that why he’s not around?

Wait. Max hadn’t seen Jett either?

No one had seen Jett since he’d been at the gym with Grey that morning.

Pacing behind the bushes outside Grey’s cottage, Nella had even interrupted Daisy’s conference in Perth to ask her if she’d heard from him.

She said he’d called around dawn asking if she was home (what the fuck, what the fuck), but obviously she wasn’t and had been asleep in her Perth hotel.

‘He hung up and then when I tried to call him back there was no answer,’ she said.

‘Did he mention what he was doing or why he ... needed you?’

‘He sounded out of breath,’ Daisy said. ‘As soon as he realised I wasn’t home he just dropped out. I gotta go, Nella – sorry, the 5 p.m. speaker’s about to start.’

So Daisy had been the last person to talk to Jett, almost twelve hours ago.

When Max told Nella to leave, she didn’t need telling twice; she was already halfway out the door with a new fear settling firmly in her stomach.

‘I need you,’ she whispered uselessly into the phone as it went to voicemail again. ‘I need you, please pick up.’

No. Stop. She always did this, when it got too much, when she was broken – she needed him to rescue her.

And where had that got them? He thought she was so far out of his reach because she’d treated him like a servant who’d respond to her every beck and call, while she thought he was above her in a different way.

Both of them were lying to each other, to themselves, trying to obscure the truth.

She didn’t know half the things she wanted to know about him.

Fifteen years and she’d barely scratched the surface.

But he was the only one who’d ever really known her, really seen her. She’d realised that far too late.

She couldn’t even answer the simple question now: where could he have gone?

‘Nel?’ Grey’s voice made her jump, which was stupid because she was sitting cross-legged in the bushes outside his cottage – she should have been the one making him jump.

‘Sorry.’ He shifted his weight. ‘I couldn’t say everything I wanted to. I—’

‘Don’t.’ She held up a hand. ‘Max is right.’

‘She’s upset.’

‘But she’s right.’

He regarded her with an expression she couldn’t decipher.

‘You really haven’t seen him since this morning?’ Nella asked, unable to hide the waver in her voice.

‘I wouldn’t worry ...’ Grey’s voice trailed off.

‘What? What, Greyson?’

‘Shit.’ He rubbed a hand through his short hair. ‘With Tom and the fires, I got so distracted, I forgot ...’

‘Forgot what?’

‘Jett called me, from the car park, right after I left. He wanted me to check something ...’

‘Yes?’ Why did it seem like Grey was being deliberately, infuriatingly coy?

‘He didn’t want me to tell you, which is probably why it didn’t spring straight to my mind ...’

‘Greyson, I know you’re angry at me, I know I fucked up, but if this is the torture you’ve chosen to inflict, I—’

He touched her arm. ‘He asked me to look up when Sally Sue got parole.’

Her chest tightened. ‘Sally Sue? My old stalker?’ Her voice was higher than it should have been. ‘But she’s still in prison.’

Now it was Grey’s turn to hang his head in shame.

‘Greyson. Isn’t she still in prison?’

‘We agreed it was best not to tell you. Tom ... Tom gave the order.’

Nella pressed a palm to her forehead. ‘Of course he did. Ridiculous to assume I should know when the woman who abducted me and planned an elaborate life for me in the basement of her townhouse was out of jail. I really am such a spoiled brat, aren’t I, Greyson? For wanting something like that?’

‘Nel—’

‘Shut up. This isn’t about me.’ She drew a breath. ‘This is about Jett. What did you tell him?’

‘She got out on good behaviour two years ago.’

‘TWO ...’ She closed her eyes as the world staggered off its axis.

‘That’s why Tom wanted you back,’ Grey said.

‘I’ll kill Tom later. Focus on Jett. What happened after you told him Sally had been released?’

‘He said he needed to check something.’

‘Check what?’

‘I don’t know! When he hung up I had a firie yelling at me to turn around and Tom calling incessantly. I never ... I never called him back. I assumed he was ...’

‘Fine. We always assume Jett’s fine!’

Guilt slashed across Grey’s face – a wound she’d meant for herself.

‘Why do you think he wanted to know about Sally Sue?’ Berating Grey about keeping her in the dark wasn’t going to accomplish anything.

That was what her father would have done.

And if something had happened to Jett, they’d be wasting precious minutes arguing when they could have been looking for him.

Grey shook his head. ‘He was never completely convinced the La Marcas were involved in Clarkson’s death. I think he always thought it was more ... personal.’

‘Personal, how?’

‘Like it was ... I don’t know ... like it was about you.’

‘Me? Jett thought Clarkson’s death was about me ?’

Not everything’s about you, Nella. But he’d thought this was?

Two years. Good behaviour.

It was about you.

Grey ran inside to get his maps of trails and lesser-known forest paths around Bindi Bindi Cove. She presumed he was going to be a few minutes, explaining to Max why he was leaving her at her most vulnerable to go on a search party with the person who had just ripped out her heart.

As soon as the cottage door slammed, she ran.

She cut through the karri forest on the edge of the property so he wouldn’t see her sprinting across the grounds to the garage. Hopefully Grey would spend too long looking for her around his cottage before he realised she’d left without him.

There was no way she was letting anyone else get hurt. No way she was going to explain to Max that she’d got Grey killed searching for Nella’s psycho stalker who had probably killed Clarkson and maybe, somehow, got to Jett. No way Nella was going to be that girl again.

The one who needed saving. Little Red Riding Hood skipping off into the woods, safe in the knowledge that she had a driver and a fixer who’d save her from whatever wolves she got herself caught up with.

As the garage door roared to life, she opened Find My iPhone. The app she hadn’t given a second thought to because some na?ve part of her still hoped he’d change his mind.

She grabbed the spare keys off the hook next to the bathroom and Bessy’s lights blinked at her in trepidation.

‘Oh, shut up,’ she told the car. ‘I remember the basics.’ She tossed Clarkson’s iPad onto the passenger seat, mainly out of habit of taking it everywhere with her but also because it made her feel like Clarkson was still here.

She put her phone in the windscreen holder, her eyes on the little blue dot flashing near Bindi Bindi beach, and remembered to keep her foot on the clutch as she turned the key. Bessy roared to life and something inside Nella roared as well.

She was the huntsman now.