Page 65 of Last Breath (Blood Wine Dynasty #2)

Six months later

‘No way.’ Max gaped at the yellow carbon paper Nella tossed through Bessy’s window and shut her laptop – frozen on a still from CCTV footage of the bakery opposite Liquor Paradise, where Forrest had injected the Barbarani wine with poison.

‘I lost some points for stalling on a hill, and I was too far from the kerb on the parallel park, but otherwise, full marks.’

‘Guess I’m redundant now.’ Max and the laptop slid into the passenger seat.

‘How short are your legs?!’ Nella shoved the driver’s seat backwards, a shaky giddiness running through her body.

She drove them back through the town centre, Max giving the occasional inconsequential update that there was nothing of note in the section of footage she’d been running through.

The bakery CCTV had initially been neglected in the investigation because the owner had installed it illegally, looking onto a private property because he’d been certain the owner was throwing dog poo into his courtyard.

Max and Grey had found it and promised to not bring up the poo-spying to the cops. But so far, nothing.

Nella’s new psychologist had suggested she distance herself from the Forrest Valentine case.

Actually, her psychologist had a lot of very interesting suggestions.

When Nella had finally confessed the secret she’d been keeping from everyone except Max and Eliza (because they’d been taking turns giving her driving lessons), the psychologist, a startlingly young hipster with a man bun called Felix, had simply interlocked his fingers and said, ‘And tell me more about that.’

She complained very loudly to Max and Eliza that Felix’s sessions were a waste of time and so, so much money, but truthfully, she’d pocketed some of his little musings like bits of gum to chew on later.

The day she’d told Felix about Sally, she’d cried into her hands until her fingers ran with mascara. She kept saying over and over, I didn’t see it! Why didn’t I see it?

After she’d rocked herself into a dazed stupor, Felix had crossed his legs and said thoughtfully, ‘Because you saw what you wanted to see.’

‘I am not paying you half my weekly salary for wishy-washy tarot bullshit like that.’

Felix tapped his pen against his – most likely organic – loafers. ‘You’ve said you see everyone who has supposedly suffered more than you as “good” and deserving of happiness. Have you ever thought maybe by casting people like Daisy as heroines, it blinded you to their flaws?’

‘So that’s why I didn’t see it? Because I’m na?ve?’

‘Why would you choose to use that word?’

‘I didn’t! YOU did!’

Waste of bloody time.

‘All I asked was if you’d thought about it.’

And on it went, Felix poking at her bruises, Nella snapping back.

But eventually she started letting it all out and then she couldn’t be stopped.

It was more comfortable than she’d expected, and something she figured she’d keep doing for as long as she needed.

Which could be two more sessions or forever.

But Felix would have to get a new haircut.

Passing her office was getting easier. Clarkson’s death and Daisy’s betrayal had charred the place like it had been half burned in a bad fire.

But Nella had worked hard for that office, for that perfect location; she didn’t want to move.

So she’d started plans for a renovation.

A fresh look, a fresh start. She’d brought in some local workers who needed the cash – guys who’d been in and out of rehab trying to get clean.

Their resumes and background checks were spotty – it was almost impossible for them to get work – but Nella had been impressed so far; she’d never had such determined and punctual workers.

But it was things like this – little moments and wins and observations – that she only wanted to tell to one person. It was like storing pieces of gold inside her – they were okay for a while, but soon she’d start to feel the effects of heavy metal poisoning.

‘You sure you want to go alone?’ Max asked through a slurp of her chocolate thickshake as they pulled out of the McDonald’s drive-though. ‘Grey and I can always reschedule.’

Nella chewed her lip. She knew for a very secret fact that Grey would not be rescheduling their date night tonight. She just hoped the stupid oaf remembered to put the bloody ring she’d helped him choose in his stupid, giant pocket.

She didn’t want to risk giving anything away to Max, so she stuffed her mouth full of thin, salty fries and shook her head. ‘Nah, but I do have something I need to do before I go. Can you come, but wait in the car?’

Oliver was standing by the same pink coffee van they’d met at the day after Clarkson died. He wore a blue cap over his slightly longer hair and held an undrunk iced coffee with whipped cream. He raised the other hand in a quick, uncertain greeting before turning his gaze back to the silver surf.

She stood next to him for a moment, staring out at the water.

‘You really thought it was me, didn’t you?’ he said, finally.

She shielded her face from the sun but didn’t reply.

‘I thought you were cold towards me because you were grieving Clarkson,’ he said. ‘But it was because of that night, wasn’t it?’

She turned to face him. ‘Do you remember what happened?’

‘Not really. I was drunk. Did you read my email?’

‘Not really.’

He swallowed, the iced coffee still untouched. ‘I was trying to tell you – to show you – but you wouldn’t talk to me. Your housekeeper almost impaled me with a roasting fork.’ He pulled out his phone. ‘Here.’

Nella squinted at the screen. ‘What am I looking at?’

‘It’s one of Clarkson’s cases – he passed it on to me. He had heaps, so I only managed to get a look at it after I got back from Italy. It’s for your father’s hotel development.’

‘Yeah. I see that.’

‘Scroll down. Look at the name of the attorney he’s named – the one who’s going to close the biggest deal he’s ever made in his entire life.’

She saw the name. Blinked. Restarted her entire brain. But still, the letters did not rearrange into any coherent order that would make sense in this universe.

Antonella Barbarani.

She almost didn’t believe it. But there it was, clear as day, next to her father’s unruly pigeon scrawl. Her name. The one he’d given her.

‘Would have made,’ she said, throat burning. ‘He’s gone.’

‘He named you, Nella. That has to count for something.’

Maybe. Maybe in time it would. But not now.

Oliver scratched his head. ‘I really wanted you to know.’

‘Because you feel guilty?’

‘I ... I mean ... what you said back in Italy, about not wanting ... That’s not what happened with us, was it? You never said ...’

‘I shouldn’t have had to.’

Oliver looked down at his half-covered feet.

‘Did you ever do it again?’ she asked.

‘I don’t ... I never ...’

‘I’m not interested in what you think happened, or what you meant to do. You didn’t ask. You assumed. I didn’t like it.’

‘Didn’t like it or didn’t want it? Because you were flirting with me all night.

I’m not saying that means you couldn’t say no .

.. I’m not a rapist ... I’m a feminist. But I was confused about what you said in Italy.

That’s just not how I remember that night.

I’m sorry, I’m really, honestly sorry if I forced you to do something you didn’t want to do. ’

Nella raised her sunglasses. Tiny bits of hair tugged painfully but she didn’t move them. Even though the sky was overcast, with thick, bulbous clouds pressing down, there was a stinging brightness to the afternoon, just like there had been the day they’d buried her father.

Now she had to bury something else. ‘You’re going to make me a promise, Oliver.’

He opened his mouth, then closed it.

‘Whenever you’re with a woman, until the day you die, every single time, before you do anything, you will say four little words. Can you tell me what those words are, Oliver?’

His throat bobbed.

‘Oliver?’

He mumbled something.

‘I can’t hear you.’

‘ Do. You. Want. To .’

It didn’t satisfy her the way she’d thought it would. Was it enough?

‘And something else. If there’s one thing you should know about my family by now it’s that we keep our promises. And we don’t like it when people break promises they’ve made to us.’

He shook his head.

‘What?’ she asked.

‘Nah, nothing.’ He sipped the iced coffee. ‘Just you and Clarkson. It was your main goal to set yourselves as far apart from your families as you could. And look where you both ended up. I never thought I’d see the day you used them to threaten me.’

Nella turned away. ‘Goodbye, Oliver.’

Max didn’t ask what she’d spoken to Oliver about.

Nella would probably tell her, eventually.

Just like she’d have to admit to Felix she was a nerd who’d completed the homework he’d set her by planting seeds about owning stories and absolving herself of any guilt she’d harboured over that night.

But right now, all she needed was the quiet, steady breathing of a friend beside her while she drove back to the Barbarani Estate.

The sky was orange bleeding into pink by the time she’d dropped Max back at Grey’s cottage, the poor woman none the wiser that, inside that house, her boyfriend was sweating like a Christmas turkey, practising four little words over and over again in the mirror.

Nella would have to drive through the night, stay in a motel and then go to her destination in the morning.

It was thrilling, really, the feeling of being in control of the car.

Alone and silent. It was one of the many things she was realising for the first time, much too late in life.

I can drive. My father respected my job.

Jett was there all along . I should have chased after him. I should have ...

Felix’s wise, dopey voice filtered into her ears at that. ‘Should haves’ don’t make lives. You need to act on it, or move on.

So that’s what she was doing.