Chapter 10
10
Max
Her whole back shivered like he was tracing his finger down bare skin. She fought the urge to look around wildly and scream, ‘ Where?! ’
Grey steepled his fingers and smiled out the window as though he’d just asked her if she liked the view. Max took the cue, raising her water glass to her lips as casually as she could.
‘How do you know?’ She pointed lazily at a bird.
‘If he wasn’t’—Grey made a face like how cute at the bird—‘Raphael would have just said no. He’s toying with us.’
‘But surely he agreed with what you said? If Barbarani blood runs, La Marca blood runs too ...’ She said it like she was reciting Shakespeare.
‘I didn’t say it like that.’ He turned away from the bird and gave her his signature glare. ‘But it’s true. We need to find Skinner.’
‘What a fabulous idea. If only someone had suggested that to you earlier.’
‘Sorry to interrupt.’ They turned around. It was Forrest Valentine, looking like he’d never been sorry for anything in his life. ‘Can I interest you in some pinot noir to begin?’
‘Just water for me,’ Grey said, as though Forrest had offered to pluck out his nose hairs with rusted tweezers.
‘Is it the La Marca signature?’ Max looked into Forrest’s blue eyes, the colour of Maldives water. His nose was slightly off centre – perhaps broken once. She wondered if it had been caused by Luca Barbarani’s fist or the boat accident.
‘Of course, madam.’
‘Oh, madam ?’ She winked at Grey. He looked at her like she’d farted. ‘Definitely, then.’
‘What’s wrong?’ she hissed as soon as Forrest left with their menus; she’d ordered whatever looked the most expensive – she didn’t have her wallet. ‘I’m not a Barbarani or their loyal lapdog – I can drink La Marca wine.’
‘That’s not what I ... Why are you still wearing his coat?’ Grey scowled at her shoulders like they’d personally offended him.
Max had honestly forgotten about Raphael’s coat. As Grey’s eyes held hers in annoyance, she suddenly felt too hot. Someone must have turned the heating up – maybe that was a technique to get them to order dessert? She peeled off the coat and let it hang over the back of her chair. The scowl didn’t leave his face. What was his problem? It was as though she was sitting upright on Raphael’s erection, not simply trying to stave off hypothermia.
‘If you’d said you were cold, I would have just given you mine,’ Grey said.
‘Right, sure. And then you’d burn it.’
He was still looking at her like the coat was made out of the skin of all his closest relatives. ‘You don’t understand how it works around here.’ He sipped his water pointedly as Forrest returned with Max’s pinot noir.
Taking the glass, she accidentally brushed a ruby-studded ring on his finger. ‘Enlighten me then, Keeper of the Ganglords.’
His jaw clenched. She sipped her wine and almost orgasmed from the taste.
‘What do you think would have happened if you’d run into anyone else besides me on the estate?’
Max shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t be needing this drink so badly.’
‘You’d be locked up. Most likely in town. Still in your underwear or your crappy T-shirt.’
‘It was a singlet.’
‘Jett would have driven you straight to the police station. Your picture would be permanently in the Barbarani records for generations of people to bar from the property. No one would have listened to you. The girl who cried wolf.’
‘You know how that story ends right?’ Max took a deep sip. ‘There actually is a wolf. And everyone in the village dies.’
‘So does the girl.’ His eyes flashed.
‘What do you want?’ she asked. ‘For me to grovel on my knees and kiss you in thanks?’ She watched his expression darken – storm clouds moving across his face – as though the image of her on her knees in front of him was too horrific to digest.
‘I want you to realise the seriousness of the situation you’ve put yourself in. Put me in. Every move you make trying to uncover the truth behind this murder plot is a thread in the carefully woven relationship between the Barbaranis and the La Marcas. You pull too tightly at one, then you really will have a murder, Maxella, but it won’t be the one you’re so sure Libby Johnston was talking about.’
‘You still don’t believe Libby would tell me the truth, do you? You think she was lying, or you think I’m lying.’
‘I don’t.’ He frowned.
Unexpected.
‘But I think you’re hiding something.’
There we go. ‘I’ve told you everything you need to know,’ she said. ‘Everything I know that will help you – help us – catch the killer and make sure no one gets hurt.’
He held her gaze. ‘But you haven’t told me what’s in it for you.’
‘Who says there’s anything in it for me, other than justice? Is it so hard to believe I came here to stop a murder because I don’t want someone to die? Or because – in more selfish terms that perhaps you’ll understand – I couldn’t bear to have it on my conscience?’
‘A criminal with a conscience?’
Luckily the food came, and Max had something to stick her fork into that was not Grey’s hand. ‘You don’t trust me. That’s fair. But why are you so unwilling to believe the family that has hated the Barbaranis since World War Two and would clearly benefit from their demise is behind this hit?’ The wine was going to her head, soaking right through her impulse control barriers. ‘And I don’t know if you thought you and Raphael were talking in code back there, but I managed to decipher it. You actually came here to investigate the La Marcas for poisoning a bottle of Barbarani Wine, not the assassination plot.’
Grey’s jaw clenched. ‘The relationship between the Barbaranis and the La Marcas is a seesaw.’
‘Interesting metaphor. I wouldn’t have thought you were at all familiar with a seesaw since they’re often associated with fun.’
He ignored her. ‘They are always counteracting the balance – they do not like being in debt to one another, good or bad. Peace is kept through that balance. But the problem with a seesaw is that gravity will always force one side down.’
‘So you’re saying if the La Marcas have contracted Skinner to kill Giovanni, then it must be a repayment for something a Barbarani did?’
A vision of the prison TV lounge rushed into her mind at high speed. Libby’s wild eyes as she launched herself at the screen, the shouts of the other inmates, their cellmate Esme’s tattoo of some sort of ball punctured by a knife. She remembered focusing on that tattoo to help ignore Libby’s face as she writhed and thrashed. Esme had grabbed Libby’s legs and Max had hoisted her up by the arms as they tried to shield her from the other inmates ripping her apart for cutting off the Farmer Wants a Wife finale. But nothing could block out what Libby had screamed, over and over again ...
Max shook off the memory and tried to focus, taking another sip to distract her from the echoes of Libby’s voice.
Grey’s eyes crinkled in a way that suggested she was right, but it physically hurt him to admit it. ‘There is nothing the Barbaranis do that I don’t know about.’
‘Okay.’ She leant in, the wine pulsing through her veins. ‘So what did Luca Barbarani do to me last night?’
He choked on his water. Perhaps Forrest had laced it with razorblades on the advice of his future father-in-law. ‘Unless Matteo La Marca is your boyfriend,’ he said, wiping his jaw, ‘therefore giving the La Marcas reason to care what you and Luca did before you tried to slit his throat with a blunt Swiss army knife, that question is redundant.’
‘The question’s purpose was to prove you don’t know everything the Barbaranis do, thus its non-redundancy.’
‘That’s not a word.’
‘Thus?’ she teased, amazed it came almost effortlessly. ‘Yes, it is. It’s like a connective word in Shakespeare. Didn’t you study Romeo and Juliet in school?’
‘There wasn’t really room for Shakespeare in between Knife Throwing 101 and Strangulation for Beginners at Hit-Man School.’
Did the Fixer just make a JOKE?
He stared at her deadpan. Probably not. He probably did go to Hit-Man School.
‘Why come to Luca? Why not the police?’
‘You said it yourself and so did the articles I read on the way here – they don’t involve the police.’
‘You didn’t know that before the auction though,’ he said as he chewed a tomato from his carbless-Instagram-influencer caprese salad.
She looked down.
‘You were worried they wouldn’t listen to you?’
She couldn’t let him see her face. She shoved a bite of her creamy, cheese-stuffed agnolotti into her mouth.
‘How bad was it?’ he asked.
‘It’s actually pretty good – would have preferred more sauce, though.’
‘Your crime, Maxella. How bad was it?’
‘No one calls me Maxella,’ she said. Not anymore. She used to hate her name – her parents had chosen half each from their respective grandmothers. She’d often thought if they ever got divorced she’d have to separate her name – be Max with Mum and Ella with Dad. But they never got divorced. They died and her name stayed whole. But now it felt wrong, in its wholeness, because she wasn’t, after they were gone.
‘The government does. It’s on your licence – there was an R there too.’
‘It stands for “Really good driver”.’
‘It’s a motorcycle licence.’
‘You sure you weren’t also a detective, Hawke?’
He leaned in. ‘What did you do,’ he asked again, ‘that was so bad your old colleagues have shunned you to the point you can’t even tell them about a suspected murder?’
‘You tell me,’ she said. The wine had stoked a warm flame inside her but now he’d forced fuel down her throat and it had become a raging wildfire of fury.
Keep calm. Her psych’s voice and stupid red glasses were in her head. ‘Surely you read on past my mugshot?’
‘I didn’t.’ His jaw was set.
‘Scared of who you’ve been letting sit on your couch?’
He took another bite of basil, his eyes not leaving hers.
‘Just say the word, Greyson.’ Her heart was thumping in her ears but she kept her voice as flat and disinterested as possible. ‘I don’t want to overstay my welcome. If you want to solve this on your own, I’ll leave. This isn’t about anything else except doing the job that I trained to do.’
Understanding struck his face. ‘You think if you solve it, if you save one of the most famous Australian dynasties from a horrific ordeal, then they’ll take you back.’ He was so goddamn sure of himself it made her want to spit the pinot noir all over his crisp white cotton shirt.
‘I want to speak to Tomaso, ask if there’s been anyone asking strange questions at the Barbarani winery,’ she said. ‘Someone disguised as a tourist that doesn’t quite fit the mould. We need to go into town – check all the backpackers and motels – just to make sure Skinner’s not hiding in plain sight.’
She could tell her refusal to acknowledge his bang-on-the-money assessment of her annoyed him. Greyson Hawke wasn’t a man who was used to being ignored. But he didn’t press it. ‘Why would you think Skinner’s staying in town, not with the La Marcas?’
Her heart sagged in relief. Some part of her had thought Grey would actually take her up on her offer to quit. But she must have said something to make him think she wasn’t entirely useless. Maybe it was the strange connection she’d seemed to have with Raphael.
‘It’s not really the MO for a hired gun,’ she said, pretending to bird watch again as Forrest poured more sparkling water for them. Once he’d moved away, she continued. ‘Someone like Skinner isn’t going to want a whole bunch of people around him, distracting him, questioning what he’s doing, even if it’s the people who hired him. He’s gonna need time to prepare, scope out the space. That’s why I want to talk to Tomaso – you said he’s the front guy for the Barbaranis, right? He’s like Raphael – he mans the winery?’
Grey nodded reluctantly.
‘Skinner would be too recognisable waltzing onto the Barbarani property. He’ll have someone working with him. Someone he hasn’t used before. Someone who can slip under the radar, who can get easily into the property.’
‘Is this what Libby Johnston told you?’
‘She explained some of his processes to me, yes. Things he’s done in the past. Mistakes he’s made that he won’t repeat.’
‘Who says romance is dead? Johnston really divulged all those marital secrets?’
‘You wouldn’t turn on the person who framed you for their crime and let you rot in jail?’
‘Johnston never denied her connection to the property where the ice was found.’
‘She pleaded not guilty. Everyone knows Skinner framed her. Even you.’
‘I’m just saying you can’t possibly be so na?ve as to believe anything a con woman like Libby Johnston tells you.’
‘You clearly seem like the authority on loving, trusting relationships. Who was Raphael talking about before you tried to make him bird food?’
Grey’s face shut down, like an enormous, echoing door slamming. ‘None of your business.’
‘Right.’ Her tone was apologetic. She wasn’t scared of him, despite his size and obvious anger issues – even when he’d grabbed her arm back in the garden, she’d mostly been pissed off. But she was scared of what that expression meant.
He stood. ‘I’ll pay. Stay here.’
She nodded, then promptly ignored him as he sauntered off, ducking back into the winery to flash her best smile at Raphael.
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Enjoy the wine?’
‘Delicious.’
‘You want a bottle?’ He held one up.
‘Maybe I’ll swing by after the gala,’ she said. ‘Better not walk onto Barbarani property with that. I’ll be shot on sight.’
He laughed. Deep and real. Strange. He was a difficult man to get a read on.
‘Why don’t you like Kaine Skinner?’ she asked, before Grey realised she’d defied his holy commandment.
Raphael didn’t bother to hide his surprise, giving his entire face over to the expression.
‘It’s my job to read people,’ Max said. Used to be my job. ‘I’m also a decent poker player. It’s a cliché, but everyone really does have a tell. People are good at disguising when they like someone more than they should, but hate is more difficult to hide. When Greyson said Skinner’s name, you tried too hard to cover up your initial reaction.’
If Raphael was considering thunking her over the head with the wine bottle, he managed to conceal it. Just. ‘I meant what I said, Maxella,’ he purred instead. ‘If I find Kaine Skinner, I will deliver him to Greyson myself.’
Why? If Skinner worked for the La Marcas, why would Raphael, their humble servant, betray such a key player in the family’s game?
And what was the game? Max felt like she was switching TV channels between the AFL, the cricket and the Australian Open, trying to decipher the patterns, the goals and who was keeping score. She knew better than to push Raphael. Calling him out on his hatred of Skinner had been a gamble, and she’d managed to escape with a neck free of glass, so she was considering that a win. Not exactly a lead though.
‘So, are you like Greyson? A “fixer” for the La Marcas?’ She pretended to be shy and unsure, like she knew she was being nosy but if she did it in a cute, sultry way, he might just bite.
‘I think your Greyson would be horrified to hear you drawing similarities between us.’
She baulked. ‘He’s not my Greyson.’
‘No?’ Raphael’s eyebrows practically disappeared into his styled fringe. ‘He looked awfully protective when I put my hand on your back, and positively murderous when I offered my coat.’
She shrugged. ‘He always looks like that. At least I think he does ... I don’t really know him that well.’
‘The things we put up with for work, hey?’ he said. ‘I’ll answer your question as long as you promise you’ll come back after the gala?’
‘Promise.’
‘Excellent.’ He clasped his hands like he was making a deal with himself. ‘I’m nothing like Greyson. The La Marcas don’t differentiate between blood and those who work for them. Greyson is not a Barbarani, he works for the Barbaranis. I do not have La Marca blood in my veins, nor am I bonded to them by marriage. But I work with them, and that makes me one of them. I have a lot of different roles, Max, just like everyone within a family has different roles. I work in the winery sometimes, I pick grapes. I muck the stables. Sometimes I lie in one of the La Marcas beds.’ His eyes glinted as he pulled down the front of his shirt. For a moment she thought he was going to take it off. But all he wanted to show her was the blue-tinged tattoo slightly to the left of his chest.
Over his heart.
‘The La Marca Cuore,’ she said. What kind of person bound themselves to a family like that? Was it love, or something worse? Did the La Marcas have something over Raphael?
He winked. ‘You’ve done your research, Madam Security.’
Still staring at the cuore, Max said, ‘Okay, I get it – you’re one of them. So why did Greyson choose you? Why did he think you’d talk to us?’
‘He didn’t choose me, sweet Max. You did.’
She stepped away from the oaky, musk scent of his shirt. ‘What?’
Raphael smirked like he’d won something. ‘Greyson could have asked those questions of any of the La Marca workers in the winery today. He asked me because he saw me watching you when you walked in. Greyson knows I am a connoisseur – I know good wine when I taste it, and it’s the same for beautiful women.’
Max swallowed. ‘I think I should be insulted. But you make it sound flattering.’
His mouth twitched. He looked like he was about to say something else – or maybe even kiss her – she really couldn’t tell. But then he paused, an invisible leash tightening around his neck, as his gaze stuck on something behind Max.
‘Pleasure as always, Greyson.’ Raphael held out his hand like he was offering Grey a priceless piece of jewellery. Grey glared at it like it was a piece of something else.
Max did not move towards Grey. Instead, she stood on her tiptoes and, under the guise of planting a kiss on Raphael’s jaw, whispered, ‘It’s your cheek, by the way.’ Raphael raised an eyebrow. ‘Your tell. You bite the inside of your left cheek.’
His eyes glinted in recognition.
Balance, debt. Isn’t that what Grey said the La Marcas and Barbaranis existed on? It was small, but now she was pretty sure Raphael owed her.
‘Your word, Raphael.’ Grey’s voice was murder. ‘Any whisper of Skinner, you tell us.’
The ‘or else’ part hung like a guillotine above their heads.