Without looking at her, Luca turned and stumbled away. By the time Nella reached the end of the alley, he was gone.
She’d finally done it. She’d got what she’d always wanted. She was alone.
Even Jett, who by his own admission had survived on scraps of familial affection and love dolled out inconsistently, felt his duty to Kevin – a figure from his past who’d taken on the role of ‘family’.
Was she no better than those pieces of shit who’d locked him up, cut him, burned him, broke him? They had no idea about family, about love. Everything was conditional. Was that who she was to the people who relied on her?
Luca’s face, the way he’d looked at her just then ... something in that expression had pierced her heart. And although she was trying with every fibre to not think about Jett, she couldn’t help but see him when she looked at Luca, as a boy, untethered, unloved, always denied affection and with nowhere to really call home. Jett had made it out, made himself into something, while Luca was lost. But Luca had something Jett never had – family. He had Nella and Tom and maybe, sometimes, their mother. Luca’s birth had almost killed Vittoria, and Nella didn’t think their parents had ever forgiven him for that.
Nella couldn’t let Luca become Jett – always on the move, never settling, never truly feeling he had a home. She couldn’t lose them both.
She looked back at her office, thought of the screen that was still paused in Max’s room and the stake in her heart sank deeper. Because now she knew what she had to do.
35
Jett
‘They got it.’
‘The footage from the dash cam?’ Jett asked.
‘Yup.’ The beads of sweat on Grey’s forehead matched his own, but neither of them relented. Jett was going to miss these pre-dawn passive-aggressive competitive lifting sessions at the Bindi Body Barn – a business name coined to suggest an establishment where one could sculpt an ideal physique, not, as it more obviously suggested, a corpse storage facility.
‘Max must be thrilled.’
‘She’s not letting herself hope until it’s official. After the hearing tomorrow she’ll go over all the legalities with Nella to make sure it’s by the book, by theletter, before taking it to the police. My forensics contact did the comparison unofficially, so if we want Forrest convicted for the murders of Poppy Raven and Libby Johnston, we’ll need it on the record.’
They fell silent as they inclined their treadmills. Greyson’s idea of a cooldown was something most mortals would consider a gruelling Iron Man workout.
‘I don’t get it.’ Jett’s words came out sporadically through desperate breaths.
Grey glanced over at him, barely puffing. ‘The footage is time-stamped twenty seconds after Forrest injects the wine on the store’s security camera. He didn’t bother to disguise himself in front of his own car, and he’s got the same clothes, same—’
‘Not that,’ Jett wheezed. He slowed the treadmill so he could speak. ‘I don’t ... understand ... why Ariana suddenly gave up her fiancé like that ... Why risk Matteo finding out? We all know what he’s capable of doing ... or ordering someone else to do ... to a traitor? The buck wouldn’t stop at his own daughter.’ He took a sip of water. ‘And he’s made it clear Forrest is basically family. They wouldn’t survive the scandal of—’
‘Of Forrest being convicted of murder,’ Grey cut in, nodding. ‘It could invalidate the whole La Marca v Barbarani case.’
Whatever had forced Ariana’s hand had to be something that terrified her more than her father and the threat of ostracism from her family. Jett wanted to confess everything to Grey – tell him his concerns about what Avery said about his fiancée’s accident, about what happened with Nella at the law ball and in Italy, what was going on in his mind every time he closed his eyes, how every time he thought about leaving and never seeing her again it was like someone was pulling out his intestines with rusty, serrated tongs. But he couldn’t. He knew he needed to cut and run now, before it got worse. Telling Grey would only speed that up.
‘She ready for today?’ Grey asked.
‘I’ve barely seen her since we got back.’
‘Everything all right with you two?’
Jett didn’t look at him. ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’
Grey stayed silent. Which was worse than anything he could have said.
They fell into silence once again, focusing on the run – or jog, in Jett’s case. ‘That yours or mine?’ Grey asked as a dull ring Jett had barely registered disrupted the tranquility of their thundering shoes against the treadmill belts.
‘Mine’s in the car.’
‘It’s Tom.’ Grey slowed a little and held the phone up to the roof. ‘That didn’t ring long enough, did it?’
‘Could he have had an epiphany mid-dial that you’re not their butler anymore?’
‘You mean fixer.’
