‘That seems ... extreme.’
‘That’s rich people for you, Dais. We don’t do charity unless everyone knows about it.’
‘You’re not like them,’ Daisy said, taking out her ponytail and letting pink curls tumble down her shoulders. Her crystal blue eyes looked like bloody oceans in the window light without the need of a Clarendon Instagram filter. How had Nella not realised before how striking Daisy was?
‘You’re right,’ Nella said, ‘I’m worse.’
She’d shirked her family responsibilities in favour of setting up her own life, her own career, and then she’d dumped those responsibilities too and fled to Perth on a six-month bender.
At least her father had been loyal.
To save herself from responding to Daisy’s polite platitudes, Nella reached for a bag of chocolate-covered strawberries Concetta had packed in a hamper that was stuffed in preparation for six months of underground living in the aftermath of a nuclear disaster instead of a private direct flight to Milan. Nella popped a particularly large strawberry in her mouth. Of course Jett chose that exact moment to shove himself out of the bathroom door.
Their eyes locked across the walkway. It was a stalemate. She couldn’t look away after he’d completely ignored her when he arrived with Avery, offering no explanation or apology for why he was late. And she couldn’t exactly spit out the strawberry.
So there she was, deep-throating a piece of fruit while Daisy prattled on in the background about how Nella wasn’t a horrible person, with Jett’s gaze igniting her like she was a dry twig tossed onto a bonfire.
He looked away first, throwing his duffel bag in the racks above Ariana, before taking the seat next to her. Ha. Making sure there was no possibility that Nella could sit next to him.
As if she would.
She turned back to Daisy. ‘How did your date go the other night?’ It was too risky to keep talking about Forrest with Ariana so close. Plus, with no solid plan yet as to how they were going to convince her to lie to her boyfriend, there was nothing more to add. She also couldn’t bear to talk about Clarkson’s notes and the possibility that what they were going to find at Lake Orta might not help them get any closer to finding out what happened to him or prove her family were the real creators of the sangue.
So, it was teenage gossip or sit in silence and have the back of her scalp singed off by Jett’s burning glare.
Daisy’s cheeks flushed at the question. ‘We had to reschedule – something came up for him. His work keeps him pretty busy.’
Nella’s stomach twisted. She wasn’t really listening to what Daisy was saying, but observing her like she was a sleeping bat behind a glass cage at a zoo. Daisy, with her pink hair and shark-tooth necklace. Her natural tan and no-make-up face. Kind, considerate, funny, cute. The girl-next-door who’d earnt her place in the world, who studied and worked hard and came from nothing, but carved out a space anyway. Daisy was the type of girl who deserved love and ‘forever afters’. She was the main character, the heroine who defied the odds, the overlooked underdog everyone rooted for. The reluctant princess in the fairytale who gets the happy ending. Whereas Nella was the evil stepsister who cut off her own toes so she could fit into a shoe. She would never have what Daisy and everyone else like her got. She didn’t deserve it.
And maybe it was that realisation that made her flinch at the words she’d heard but not actually processed.
‘Your date got postponed? The one you left the bar for, after Clarkson’s funeral on Friday night?’
‘Yeess?’ Daisy stretched the word out, confusion warping her porcelain doll features.
Nella swallowed; her throat felt like glass. She thought of the texts Jett kept getting that he wouldn’t let her see. The fact that he’d never actually answered her question when she’d demanded to know his girlfriend’s name. His reluctance to talk about anything to do with her. She’d thought maybe it had been for another reason.
Daisy looked hesitantly over at Jett and Nella’s stomach nose-dived.
What was wrong with her? She always had a sixth sense for these things. She’d known about Grey and Max, she knew, despite Forrest Valentine and pregnant Divya Patel, that there was something strange and dark between Luca and the blonde La Marca girl currently drinking chinotto on her plane. And Nella had been the one to notice it first.
But she’d had no idea about Jett and Daisy.
Because I didn’t want to know.
The truth crashed into her in a sickening jolt, as though Jarls had lost control of the plane and they were plummeting down to earth.
24
Jett
‘They call it the island of silence.’ Their Lake Orta guide (and wine expert, as he’d reminded them approximately seventy times since he picked them up) said, waving out from their boat at the tiny island 500 metres across the ice blue lake, which looked like a miniature snow globe city without the dome. He passed them all maps from the stand at the shuttle boat docks. ‘You must remember to respect the silence the nuns live by. Besides a few private residences, it is only them there.’
‘So we can’t talk at all?’ Nella asked, stepping to avoid one of Ariana’s retches as she threw up overboard again.
The La Marca girl had been sick ever since they’d started the descent into Milan Linate Airport. Normally Jett would have had a stroke at the thought of her getting vomit on the vintage rental car their contacts had set them up with (a sky-blue 1973 Lamborghini Espada, aka the most underrated sports car of the century, which only those who appreciated true style and sophistication could understand), but since he’d got on the plane, he could no longer muster the same energy to care.
Instead his head was ringing with Avery’s words.
