Page 19 of Last Breath

‘You did,’ Tom countered, trying Lieu’s number again. If Lieu was as smart as his reputation claimed, he would have already changed his number so he couldn’t be contacted by his client until he’d won the case. ‘Because I told you to.’

‘Jett doesn’t have to play your Simon Says games anymore, do you?’ Luca winked at him. ‘You’rejetting off ASAP, right?’

‘What?’ Tom frowned, phone still to his ear. Grey said nothing because he already knew, but Jett didn’t miss the tensing of his friend’s shoulders. He was a seismograph, forever attuned to the warning waves in the ground that meant a Barbarani earthquake was coming.

Jett picked up an empty cardboard box and started flattening it. ‘Why would you say that?’

‘Yeah, Luca, why would you say that?’

The earthquake had arrived. Nella leant against the customer entrance door to the winery, silhouetted by the orange and pink sunset behind her. But Jett could see the expression on her face.

She knows.

‘Nothing’s set in stone.’ He swept a part of the floor Greyson had already gone over.

‘They called Mum for a reference,’ Nella said. ‘That’s why your phone was going off all through the drive, wasn’t it? It’s your new boss.’

‘I don’t have a new boss, I still work here.’

She threw back her head as though filling her lungs for a scream.

‘C’mon,’ Grey said to Tom and Luca. ‘Let’s make sure the restaurant’s restocked with the other line.’

Luca looked like he wanted to stay and watch the nuclear explosion but, seeing Grey’s face, he shrugged and followed him through the glass doors. Tom went too, phone still pressed to his ear.

‘You had other stuff going on,’ Jett said. ‘I didn’t think you’d care, anyway.’

‘I don’t,’ she bit back. ‘I just hate being the last one to know everything.’

‘What did you expect?’ His stomach was like a hotplate, her words turning it up, and up. ‘You’ve been gone six months and refused to answer anyone’s calls.’

‘You managed to barge into my life just fine when you needed me for something.’

Her eyes flickered as memories of the previous night washed over them. Jett didn’t let them stay for long, quickly shoving them up to the attic he kept at the top of his mind for moments like that: the very worst foster homes; the night of his high school ball; Nella in her tiny, black underwear; the gala. Once he shut the door, those memories stayed there. And he never went back.

She lifted her chin. ‘Where are you going?’

‘I told you, nothing’s final yet.’

‘Where, Jett?’

Why do you care?

He sighed. ‘A social worker I used to know, Kevin Byrne, needs a second in command for his mechanic shop up north.’

‘A mechanic shop?’ She repeated it back with the inflection of: a cannibal porno set?

He shrugged. ‘It’s an alternative education centre for kids who’ve dropped out of school or are chronic school refusers. It’s part therapy, part skill building so they can get a job on their own. We don’t all have the option to decline our family’s vast fortunes and put ourselves through university by working casual jobs we could leave whenever we wanted with daddy’s safety net.’ He regretted that as soon as he tasted it on his tongue.

Nella’s mask wasn’t quick enough to cover her parted lips and wide doe eyes, the stunned shock of an arrow landing.

There was something about seeing Nella hurt that made Jett feel physically sick, but it was another feeling entirely when he was the one who caused it.

‘What are they offering?’ she asked, clearly not wanting him to see he’d landed a blow. ‘You know we’ll offer more. Christ, Jett, if it was more money you wanted, why didn’t you just say so? Conversations about ourvast fortuneare the only ones my family is comfortable having.’

‘It’s not about the money.’ He moved behind the counter and started to fill the gaps where the sangue had been with the new bottles of Barbarani sparkling.

She stalked over to the oak bench and leant across it, arms folded, dark eyebrows angry slashes above her eyes. ‘Then it’s about what I said?’ Her lips tugged down, slightly parted.