Chapter 41
41
Max
‘You didn’t kill them.’
Max had to see it with her own eyes. Her fingers traced the deep fissures Raphael’s bullets had made as he’d shot at the ground five times, about a metre away from where the Barbaranis had been – believing they were seconds away from their deaths.
‘Of course not.’ Raphael picked a bit of dirt from his nail. ‘I was never going to.’ They were alone in the corridor. Greyson had ripped the ties off all the Barbaranis and along with Jett and Skinner, they’d managed to walk out to meet the blue and red lights of the police and ambulance vehicles surrounding the mansion. Max hadn’t seen them since.
The police had carried out Frankie and Ariana and arrested Quinton and the others trying to flee. One of the Bindi Bindi cops, a large, red-bearded grizzly bear, had told Max to stay there and he’d come ask her questions soon.
She turned back to Raphael. ‘Why not? It would have been beneficial for the La Marcas if you killed all the Barbaranis. I’m assuming that’s why Frankie conscripted you in the start?’
‘I think you’ve learnt your lesson about assumptions, Maxella,’ he said softly. ‘Doesn’t look like Kaine Skinner was the mastermind you thought he was.’
‘You knew Skinner was imprisoned here, didn’t you?’
He’d literally said it. Skinner’s a bit tied up right now.
‘Of course I did. Don’t you remember? I told Greyson that if I saw Skinner, I’d bring him straight to you. And I did. Francesca’s been smuggling food to him since the night Luca decided to invite all of Perth’s strippers to his father’s winery for a pole-dancing competition. Terrible acoustics, but an excellent distraction while one hauls an ex-hit man into one’s enemy’s lair.’
He stepped closer, his heeled boots clicking loudly against the cold stone. She should leave – go find the grizzly red-headed cop and let the ambos give her one of those crinkly blankets that look like aluminium foil. But she couldn’t. She didn’t have all the pieces yet.
‘You knew all along what she was planning.’
‘You give me too much credit,’ Raphael said. ‘I am no killer, Maxella. That, you and I have in common.’
‘You expect me to believe—’
‘I never expect anything from anyone,’ Raphael said. ‘I find it leads to disappointment.’
Max was still trying to convince herself that everything that had happened in this strange hidden bedroom was true. That Frankie Barbarani had meticulously planned the murders of her entire family, faking her own attempted murder, to come into their fortune to save the planet. She’d truly believed her cause justified her actions. Was that what Max had done with Evan? Had she been so steeped in self-righteousness and holier-than-thou-morality that she’d forgotten boundaries existed for good reasons? Frankie’s intentions were honourable, but the way she’d gone about it was horrific. Max didn’t know if what she’d done was the same.
‘Francesca was able to plot and orchestrate the murders of her entire family, right under the nose of Greyson Hawke,’ Raphael continued. ‘You know Maxella, if Greyson didn’t know what was going on, what chance did I have?’
‘You knew enough for Frankie to trust you to kill her family! Why were you even down here, if you weren’t planning to help her finish the job?’
‘Francesca was meant to be passed out to take the suspicion off her,’ Raphael said. ‘I was going to set the Barbaranis free, and let Skinner take the fall for their capture and attempted murder. At no point did I know Giovanni ...’ He made a face. ‘I did not know until that gun fired – I believed this was all to scare the family into donating a large sum of money to the Earth’s True Redeemers, like a ransom demand. I did not know she was planning to kill anyone. I was na?ve, I suppose, blinded by my own desires.’
Max raised her eyebrows. ‘Your desires? So this was about Skinner, for you?’
‘This was about the La Marcas for me.’
Just like Grey with the Barbaranis.
No. She could not. She would not.
‘You wanted Skinner gone because he posed a threat to them?’
‘Skinner put his own wife in jail to save his neck. He’s been trying for years to get the La Marcas to invest in his ... other business pursuits.’
‘Meth?’ Max asked.
‘The Barbaranis are not the only ones with convenient passageways under their property.’ Raphael ran his fingers down the rough, clay wall, the scrape of his gold rings reverberating through Max’s ribs.
‘Skinner wanted to use the La Marca property to store his product?’
‘Store, make, conceal. Skinner never met an illegal verb he didn’t like. He swore to Matteo he wouldn’t even know what was going on, who was coming onto his property or what to do with the wealth he’d accumulate from agreeing to such hosting duties. But, for all you may have heard about Matteo La Marca from Greyson and the rest of them, he would never do anything to compromise the safety of his family.’
‘I thought you were going to say the integrity of his wine.’ Max found a smirk.
‘They are one and the same.’
‘So, Matteo said no and Skinner didn’t like that?’
‘You saw his chest. He burnt off his cuore – a clear message that his loyalty to the La Marcas was gone. But I did not believe he would ever be truly gone. And he knew too much. It would be na?ve to assume Skinner was the mastermind behind his drug enterprises – there had to be someone else, someone bigger, scarier, pulling the strings, breathing down his neck. Sooner or later, Skinner would resort to other means to get what he needed.’
‘So you’re the helicopter parent, calling the cops on the troublemaking teenager you don’t want your kids associating with? The Good Samaritan?’
‘I am not good , Maxella.’ Raphael blinked. ‘But I am loyal.’
‘And now the balance has tipped between the families.’ Max nodded. This made sense, but there were still pieces missing – some of them she could see floating untethered in her mind. The poisoned wine. Poppy Raven. Libby.
Half of Raphael’s face was cast in darkness by the shadows of the tunnel. His one visible eye sparkled. ‘I knew there was something special about you, Maxella.’
She ignored him, though some part of her knew it wasn’t wise. ‘Where does the poisoned wine come in?’ she asked. ‘It doesn’t make sense that Frankie would go to all that trouble to destroy her family’s reputation with the wine before killing them. If anything, poisoning the wine risked dropping the value of the Barbarani fortune. And like she said, she didn’t want to spill innocent blood ...’ Max looked through to the spot where Ariana had been. Where Grey had hidden the gun for her.
Poppy still didn’t fit. But someone else did.
Alexandra’s chestnut hair and knowing eyes replaced Raphael’s. Her warning had flown swiftly from Max’s mind after everything that had happened at the hotel with Greyson and then the meeting with the Ravens and the trip to Liquor Paradise the next morning.
That Barbarani boy killed my son .
‘Raphael?’ Max could barely hear her own voice. ‘You know that story that Sophie Kingsley wrote about that party where Luca punched Forrest Valentine? Where that boy fell off the balcony?’
‘I know it.’ Raphael gave nothing else away.
Max felt a stitch zip up her chest as she tried to breathe out. ‘What was the boy’s name?’
Raphael observed her like he wasn’t sure if what he was about to say would be a betrayal to the La Marcas. Eventually, his silent calculations seemed to add up to it being within his best interests to answer. ‘Rocky Johnston.’
Rocky ‘Road’ Johnston. Libby’s son .
‘No.’ Max slumped against the wall, her legs unable to keep her upright.
An orphan thing. That was the phrase her therapist had used. Max had lost her parents, then Jackie, and it made her the perfect fucking mark for an older woman packaged up like a mother and best friend. A fucking tourist with an unzipped backpack under the Eiffel Tower.
‘ That Barbarani boy killed my son ,’ Max said aloud.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘That’s what Libby screamed at the TV in Semperdom. She wasn’t talking about Tomaso or Luca. Frankie must have told her Giovanni’s secret. She thinks Greyson killed her son that night. She blames the Barbaranis for his death, she wants them to pay as well as Skinner. That’s why she poisoned the wine.’
Had the wine poisoned. Libby couldn’t have left Semperdom when that CCTV footage at Liquor Paradise was captured, and Frankie and Quinton were both too short to be the figure on the camera. Besides, it didn’t fit ETR’s moral code of only murdering rich people in cold blood.
The poisoner had to be the other person who visited Libby in prison.
If Frankie was the woman, that meant they were looking for a man.
‘The things people do for love, yes, Maxella?’
Max fought against the avalanche inside her not to think of Greyson or Jackie. Why did it feel like Raphael could read her mind, like an omniscient narrator of this whole saga?
‘But we visited ...’ Max said. ‘She must not have recognised Grey. I told her he drove me there – I think she assumed he was Jett, the driver.’
‘Greyson has always used his invisibility as a weapon.’ Raphael was now out of the darkness. Max could see both his glittering jewel eyes and the sharp lines of his manicured beard. He smelled like smoke and cedar wood – a demon rising from the depths of Hell. His voice trailed down her neck as he bent low enough to whisper in her ear, even though they were the only ones still in the hidden passageway. ‘As you say, the Barbaranis now owe me, Maxella. Be sure you remind them of that. I’ll collect my debt when I see fit.’
Max didn’t let herself breathe until Raphael’s tall, slim form had slipped back through the shadows. Then she sunk to the floor and cried like she had the night her parents died.