Max scratched at a bit of blue paint on her jeans. ‘It’s just interesting that you can pretend to hide what you feel about other people, but you couldn’t do it with Ariana.’
Jett fought to keep his gaze ahead. The bright colours of Sunday morning blurred into incomprehensible blobs. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Max sighed, giving up on the speck of paint. ‘Nothing.’ She crossed her arms. ‘So, what do you think? Definitely the La Marcas, then?’
‘I’m not convinced.’ He answered quickly so she wouldn’t go back to her previous comment and let his lungs expand around the tip of the knife she’d gently pushed into him.
‘Me neither.’
Jett thought back to the interaction with Matteo and Forrest on Cove Road. ‘But they are involved somehow. There’s a missing part to this – whatever it was that convinced Matteo his family has a claim to the Barbarani recipe. Did Clarkson know what that was? Maybe he was able to find evidence to discredit it.’
‘Lawyers usually have detailed notes about their work on a case,’ Max said, ‘so they know how much to slug you for every comma they type. If he knew something, he would have written it down.’
If Max had thought of that, then Nella definitely had too. How was Jett meant to stop her from inhaling all of Clarkson’s notes, and poisoning herself with whatever knowledge caused his death?
Caused his death. Only a few hours ago Jett was trying to convince Nella that Clarkson had killed himself, like the cops thought. But this was what it was like in the Barbaraniverse – you got sucked in, turned inside out, and started questioning whether your thoughts were your own or had ever belonged to you in the first place.
He had to get out.
‘Jett?’
‘Hmm?’
‘You know you can’t stop her if she wants to take the case.’
‘When have I ever tried to stop Nella from doing anything? Besides, she’s already decided to.’
‘We have to focus on her protection,’ Max said. ‘If this isn’t a suicide, if Clarkson discovered something about the recipe that got him killed—’
Jett felt like his lungs were an undeployed airbag, straining against the plastic of the dashboard. ‘Whoever takes over next, La Marcas or not, is in danger.’
11
Nella
The man who killed Clarkson was standing beside her bed.
His shadow was long and slender, and he was breathing heavily, just like he had before he’d ...
‘How are you still in bed?’
The murderer was not a murderer. It was just Tomaso. He stormed over to her curtains and ripped them open, forcing daylight to infiltrate the room. Nella stayed where she was, heart in her throat, staring at where Tom’s shadow had just been.
She could lie here forever, her blankets warm, the air conditioner blowing a steady breeze so it felt like she was somewhere else – in the Northern Hemisphere perhaps. Maybe even further away. Maybe Jupiter. Just close her eyes and go back to sleep, and she wouldn’t have to face any of this. It could all go away ...
Her warm, protective crust ripped off and she was an exposed, shivering ball in her period undies and an oversized grey shirt with a grumpy ginger cat in a pink tiara on the front. At least Concetta, the housekeeper, had made Nella’s bed with a doona the colour and texture of porridge and hadn’t grabbed the Sleeping Beauty blanket Nella would always beg her to put over the sheets. A blanket that now she’d always associate with unwashed blonde hair, zip-ties, damp basement floor and her own stupidity. And the secondhand embarrassment Jett must have felt when he covered her with it after he and Grey broke her out of her stalker’s home. She should have tossed it out well before then, once she’d outgrown the Disney-induced delusion that a single kiss from a good guy would fix her entire life.
‘What the fuck, Tom?!’
‘It’s 8 a.m.’
‘Right, so I’ve had approximately two hours’ sleep.’
‘Jett dropped you back just after midnight. What were the two of you doing until six, then?’
Nella stuffed her face into her silk pillow at his ridiculous insinuation. ‘I have no idea what Jett was doing, but I was here, alone, going through that.’ She kicked the pink binder at the foot of her bed. Plus googling every possible combination of ‘Abby + Barbarani Wines + Emilio + Lieu’ she could think of.
‘What is that?’ He regarded her binder like it was an enormous pink cockroach.
