What had he actually said to her? He’d been so desperate to get her in the car that he couldn’t remember how much he’d given away. But he hadn’t lied, had he?
‘If you have time. It’s important.’ Grey turned back to Tom and Clarkson with a heavy sigh. ‘They’re here.’
Tom swore again. The group followed Grey into the lower-floor ballroom and Jett noticed again how walking through the Barbarani mansion felt like stepping through a portal to another time, another world.Modern renaissancewas how Nella described it, whatever that meant. Jett’s word for wall-to-floor Da Vinci-esque paintings, gold trimmings on every door and white marble staircases wasrich as shit. He kept his eyes away from the old wine cabinet that hid the secret passageway they’d all been held captive in last July. The stiffness in the way Nella held herself told him she was doing the same thing.
Her head had been in his arms, her breathing the only thing tethering him to sanity. The mantra that had battered through his skull, through the adrenaline and hot blood and his body’s attempts to survive in what he’d thought were his last moments sometimes pounded through him even now, like rain lashing against the windows of his mind. All he could do was wait it out.
She’s still alive. Still breathing. Keep her alive. All that matters is that she’s alive. She’s all that matters. She will not take her last breath in your arms. She’s all that matters.
She will not take her last ...
‘Jett?’ Somehow they were at the staff entrance to the winery. Grey stepped back to let everyone else through first. ‘You good?’
Jett nodded. Grey frowned but let him pass without further interrogation. Jett didn’t think about it too much because he wasn’t an eleven-year-old girl, but Grey was probably his best friend. Since Jett had arrived there, age twenty-four, they’d commiserated as outsiders turned insiders of the Barbarani family. But the secret that had come to light about Grey’s true parentage at the Barbarani gala last July hadn’t changed anything between them.
What would Grey say once he found out about the messages on Jett’s phone, about Kevin’s job offer? Jett’s invisible debt to his old social worker was finally being called in. Or at least that’s what he told himself.
Jett owed Kevin, even though Kevin had never said anything of the sort.
This was not about the dream he’d had.
Except that of course it was.
Grey would buy Jett’s reasoning. Jett had never stayed in one job too long before coming here. Jumping from foster home to foster home had stirred an insatiable restlessness in him, and he’d never worked at one job for longer than a year. He always knew when it was time to leave; he could feel it, like the sun when you’ve been sitting in one spot too long and you need to find shade.
Working for the Barbaranis had dulled that feeling, though, enough that he’d stayed fifteen years.
He closed his eyes, mentally calculating.Shit,had it really been that long? It was like he’d been in a coma and was only just coming to now. Unlike most of the employees, Jett hadn’t owed Giovanni Barbarani anything. He’d seen the ad for a ‘personal driver’ in a newspaper someone had left at the bar he’d been working at and figured the starting salary had been a typo. At the interview – at Perth Motorplex, not the mansion – there’d been ten other guys and one woman also waiting, but by the time Giovanni had explained how the interview process was going to work, five had left. Two crashed cars, one ambulance and a very-nearly-missed hairpin turn later, Jett emerged the clear victor. He’d proudly signed a stack of confidentiality agreements as thick as an encyclopedia and started the next day.
Jett hadn’t exactly liked Giovanni on their first meeting, but he’d respected him. And he’d never had money like this before.
But now Gio was dead. He was free to go – to follow that motor inside him that was always revving, always wanting to push forward, to explore, to leave and not look back.A getaway-car heart,an old foster parent had called it.
His normal sun-prickling instinct had been tethered somehow, in a way he couldn’t explain. But two mornings after the funeral, that tethering had snapped. He’d let his guard down, gone to bed thinking about her, like he’d sworn to never do, but she had left, and no one knew where to at that point, so of course his mind was on her and the last thing she’d yelled at him. It was a risk, and he took it, like always.
He couldn’t control his dreams; logically, he knew that.
But he could control what he’d done as a result of them.
He’d already be gone if it wasn’t for the little clause in the new agreement Nella’s mother, Vittoria, had made him sign three days ago. Once that was taken care of, Bindi Bindi Cove and the mansion would be flecks in his rearview mirror.
The winery was closed for the first time since the COVID lockdowns, but it was completely full of people.
‘Don’t touch that!’ Tom lunged at one of the police officers behind the counter who’d grabbed three bottles of red wine in one hand. ‘It needs to lie flat! Put it back!’
The officer, Constable Gabby Cole, raised her eyebrows and continued to stack the wine upright onto a metal trolley, one of many that were holding the now illegal wine. The cops hadn’t wasted any time.
‘I will personally sue you for everything you own,’ Tom spat.
‘Mr Barbarani, if you cannot contain yourself, I will have to ask you to leave.’ The voice belonged to a tall, red-bearded cop – Avery. He’d been at the mansion on the night of the gala, taking statements, holding Nella upright when they ripped her away from Jett.
‘This ismywinery. That ismyfather’s wine,mygrandfather’s recipe.’
‘And these aremyofficers that you are harassing,’ Avery said.
‘C’mon, Tommy.’ Nella’s uncle, Vince, who was in charge of the Barbarani brand in the States, grabbed him by the arm.
‘I’m not letting them get away with this.’ Tom twisted away from him but Zio Vince was a retired footballer (American, not AFL, a distinction that always had to preface every mention of the man), and he dragged Tom into the restaurant where the rest of the extended family sat, watching the police take the wine that the La Marcas were claiming wastheirfamily’s legacy. The sounds of espresso cups tinkling on saucers and muffled voices through mouthfuls of panettone overlaid the distant sounds of wine bottles tumbling over each other. It wasn’t just Nella’s extended family Jett recognised but faces he’d only seen in the rearview mirror as he’d driven them to and from the airport after their short visits over the years – Giovanni’s business associates from Italy, Eastern Australia and the UK. The ‘family’.
