Page 96 of Last Breath

Something dislodged in her brain. A dark Bindi Bindi road, Jett’s smell enveloping her.

Forrest Valentine’s grin.

‘My dash cam backs up the footage for months. It’ll have the whole conversation since you tried to play roadkill.’

Max was right. DNA was too risky. But video footage – that was something even the La Marca lawyers wouldn’t be able to get thrown out.

‘I know how to get the evidence for Max.’

If Jett was surprised at her sudden subject change, he didn’t show it. He listened without interrupting as she explained. By the time her plan was formed, their breathing was almost back to normal. When he reached over, all that progress disintegrated and her body tightened in anticipation. But he didn’t touch her.

‘Give me your phone.’ He took out his own. Still no case. He took her iPhone with her hot pink case and scrolled and tapped while she tried to force her heart to beat again without a defibrillator. ‘Look – so you can always see where I am.’ He flicked the screen up, showing Find My iPhone.

Pathetic, teenage hope shot through her before she had a chance to stifle it. The kindness of the gesture made it more unbearable. ‘Does it come with an inbuilt cattle prod so I can shock you when you’re driving some other rich girl around?’

‘I’m going to work with delinquent teenagers up north,’ he said. ‘I’ve had enough of driving rich girls around to last me a lifetime.’ He passed her phone back, still warm from his hand.

Back in her room, Nella took out the letter she’d typed out for Ariana La Marca. She highlighted the whole text and deleted it.

No more lies. Time for the truth.

Then, cursor blinking to the beat of her thumping heart, she started to type again.

32

Nella

‘You didn’t have to come,’ she told Tom as they stared up at the sky. It had looked so different back in Italy. Was it just the change in hemisphere? Or the encroaching bushfires? The warnings in the surrounding towns of Bindi Bindi had now risen to the orange category: Watch and Act. Or was it because everything had tilted upside down?

‘And how did that work out last time?’ he hissed as the headlights of Matteo’s car cut through the night.

‘You’re right,’ Nella said. ‘If you’d come to Italy, then fifty years of history between the La Marcas and the Barbaranis would have been completely rewritten.’

‘I would have found an opportunity—’

‘To what? Destroy the evidence Matteo and all his associates knew was in the house? The evidence Ariana saw with her own eyes? That’s why he let us take her, by the way—’

‘That was your idea!’ Tom said. ‘You got our brother kidnapped—’

‘Traded.’

‘And Matteo still wins. Do you have any idea how you’re going to fight this tomorrow?’

Tomorrow. She hadn’t seen Ariana since Matteo had escorted her off the plane that afternoon. Nella had no idea if she had even read the letter she’d slipped under the door of the hotel room she’d shared with Daisy. Daisy, who Nella hadn’t wanted to broach any sort of conversation with after what had happened in the car with Jett.

‘I’ve got Clarkson’s notes,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a strategy.’

Really, she had nothing. Nothing except the memory of Ariana La Marca as a little girl, hanging off the monkey bars at the primary school, calling out to Luca through a gap-toothed grin.

‘You better.’ He squared his shoulders. ‘Now, Concetta says a blond man was trying to access the property. Looking for you.’

Nella’s stomach folded. Oliver. ‘She didn’t let him in, did she?’

Tom barked a laugh. ‘He’s lucky she’s not making tortellini di sleazy lawyer. What does he want with you?’

He thinks we killed Clarkson. Or he killed Clarkson and he’s overcompensating.

Nella shook her head. ‘I don’t know. But you all need to be careful.’