‘But what if I have an escort?’ Nella asked. ‘Someone who can get us in? I’m assuming it has something to do with the abbey – that’s where the key is, right?’
‘Ariana.’ Matteo pushed past Grey.‘Andiamo.We’re leaving.’
‘Like Grey said,’ Nella continued, ‘there’s no gun to your head now, Ariana, but there was, in the cellar last July.’
‘Ariana!’ Matteo’s ears were reddening but his daughter didn’t move. Her trapped, sapphire eyes were moving between Max, Grey, Nella and Jett as though replaying those moments from last winter. ‘I told you already, I—’
‘You spoke to them?’ Matteo spat. ‘When?’
‘You told us you couldn’t help us find out what happened to Clarkson,’ Jett said, his voice thick, ‘but this is different. This is not a risk to your life. And if your father and the rest of your family are so adamant that you have claim to the sangue recipe, then there can’t be anything to this rumour that there’s evidence in the Lake Orta house that undermines that. Right?’
Ariana’s eyes flickered to Max. ‘If I go with you,’ she said, ‘my debt’s repaid? You won’t ask me for anything again?’
‘Ariana!’ The reddening of Matteo’s ears had now spread to his face. ‘You owe them nothing! The gala was their fault, their own—’
‘Max saved her,’ Grey said. ‘The cops told you that. Ariana wouldn’t have left alive if it wasn’t for her.’
‘Raphael saved you all,’ Matteo said. ‘The Barbaranis oweme,Greyson Hawke.’
‘Maybe Raphael saved the Barbaranis,’ Jett said, ‘but the onlyLa Marcathere was in the bunker with Max and Grey and the killers.’
‘It’s true,’ Ariana said, her head low. ‘I don’t remember much, but I know that.’
‘Ariana—’
‘It’s my choice,’ she said, putting her hand on her father’s arm. ‘You’ve done so much for me, Papa, so let me do this for you. I’ll take them into the house, put this all to bed. If we own the recipe, there’s nothing to fear from what’s in the Lake Orta house, is there?’
Did Nella imagine it, or was there a hint of challenge in Ariana’s voice? Surely not, because that would mean Nella might have to not completely despise her.
Matteo could not back down to his daughter’s words. Everything was playing out exactly how Nella had anticipated. All going to plan. Except – well –that.Where was La Marca’s spanner? The second shoe to drop? Why was he letting himself be backed into a corner? Had she really bested him at his own game?
His face frosted over, ice crystallising over a lake. Her stomach dropped.
Stupid girl.Her father’s voice zapped through her bruised brain like a drowsy mosquito. Matteo was never just going to roll over and let his caged princess make a decision for herself for the first time in her life, let alone fly to Italy with his mortal enemies who he was trying to destroy with the powers of contract law.
What have you done, Antonella?her father hissed.When will you learn to listen to me?
‘Bene.Very well, we are all making decisions. You may take my daughter,’—he turned to Nella—‘but I will require collateral.’
‘What are you talking about?’ She added,You crazy old bastardin her head.
But Matteo ignored her, shoving his hand into his pocket. Nella didn’t miss the way Max and Grey slipped their hands into their respective jackets in anticipation of a mass de-Barbaranifying of the immediate vicinity. But Matteo calmly pulled out his phone, tapped twice on the screen and said, loud enough for the skeletons six feet under in the church cemetery to hear, ‘Raphael. Now.’
Nella’s stomach clenched. She’d resolved to not look at Jett, but Matteo’s words fizzled out the last of her willpower. She tried to ignore the ache in her chest when his dark eyes met hers and she shoved down the instinct to pull him into her now, in this church, in front of everyone, to straddle him on a pew and drown out the sound of Matteo’s voice with the groan she wanted to take from him as she slipped her hand under his belt.
A commotion from the church entrance pulled her, kicking and screaming, from her depraved mind. The front doors wedged open enough to reveal Raphael in the arched church entrance, the new sunlight not reaching far enough to cast his features in its glow. But he wasn’t alone.
‘Let him go!’
Nella was shocked that the voice who spoke first wasn’t her own, or Jett’s or Grey’s – but Ariana’s.
‘Nothing will happen to him,’ Matteo said, eyes glinting, ‘as long as nothing happens to you.’
‘Is hehandcuffed?’ Jett hissed.
‘Mr Barbarani,’ Matteo strode down the aisle, his words directed at the figure whose hands were bound behind his back. His green eyes glared at the scene before him, but his sharp, smart mouth was forced shut for once in his life by shiny black duct tape.
Nella couldn’t breathe. Her father’s voice rattled between her eardrums, a prisoner shaking the bars of his cell.
