Chapter 42
42
Grey
Vittoria saw Grey before he had the chance to backtrack down the hall. It was two days after the gala and he’d just left Nella, Tom and Luca curled up on the couch together with re-runs of Friends blaring in the fourth-floor TV room. At eleven p.m. he’d figured no one else would be anywhere near Giovanni’s office. Mainly because Grey felt like the only ghost still haunting the mansion full of living, breathing bodies.
‘Still don’t believe her, Greyson?’ Vittoria’s voice blew through the crack in the office door like the smoke from one of the cigarettes she smoked every time she felt like eating chocolate. At least that’s what she’d told him. But that was probably a lie too, wasn’t it? She was sitting in the window reading nook, a thin silhouette against the glass, one knee propped up with a flute of sangue resting on it.
‘How did you know it was me?’ he asked.
‘None of the others set foot near this place when he was alive. His death’s not going to change that.’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—’
‘Come in, child. Snoop away.’
He knew better than to disobey an order disguised as a welcome. The door opened with a groan but Vittoria didn’t move. Clouds of cigarette smoke wrapped around her, making her seem incorporeal.
‘I didn’t mean to snoop.’
‘What was it you were doing, then? See, I thought you’d come here to prove Francesca wrong and snoop at Giovanni’s will to make sure he hadn’t named you one of his beneficiaries.’
‘Vittoria, I—’
‘Take it!’ She waved a document at him, her eyes not moving from the window where the night rested cool and still, as it had since the gala, as though the weather was being respectful with its own mourning period.
Greyson’s fingers shook as he did what he was told, as he always did when it was a Barbarani telling him. The document was titled ‘The Last Will and Testament of Giovanni Barbarani’ and every last penny of his dynasty was to go to his wife, Vittoria Antonella Barbarani, and his children: Tomaso Barbarani, Antonella Barbarani, Luca Barbarani, Francesca Barbarani.
And Greyson Hawke.
He traced his own name like he was trying to brush it off – a mistake, a bit of spilled tea tarnishing the otherwise pristine page. He wiped the tears before they blotched the paper.
Vittoria gave a hollow laugh as she took another drag from her cigarette. ‘I told him not to do it,’ she said, ‘and he did it anyway. Smug bastard.’
‘Vittoria, I don’t want any of your money – you have to know, I never knew—’
‘Oh, I know.’ She turned to him, her eyes bright and sharp. ‘I made sure of that.’
Greyson felt his knees buckle. He grabbed the back of Giovanni’s leather chair to steady himself.
Vittoria continued. ‘People say many things about my late husband, but one thing Giovanni truly understood was honour. He was an honourable man, Greyson, you know that, don’t you?’
Grey swallowed.
‘ Honourable in business, honourable in the way he undermined the La Marcas, honourable in the way he fucked his children’s nanny while her husband slept in their cottage. So honourable that when that nanny fell pregnant, he came clean – confessed the whole thing. But not an apology – Giovanni Barbarani has never apologised for anything in his life. No, no, he felt like he was entitled to your mother, because she lived in his house, because she raised his children with far more maternal instinct than I could ever muster. He was entitled to her and therefore’—she laughed again—‘entitled to her son.’ She dipped her cigarette in the glass and they both watched it fizzle out in a dark cloud of wine and tobacco. ‘He wanted to raise you as his own, did you know that? Wanted you to live in this mansion and play with my children like you were all the same. When he told me that was the way it was going to be, I told him if he brought his filthy whore’s spawn into my house, then I would suffocate you in your sleep.’
Grey didn’t bother to ask if Vittoria had been bluffing; he knew the answer.
‘So, we agreed that your whore of a mother would raise you on our property, but you would never be one of my children. You would never be the same as them, and never ever learn of your true parentage. Now, whether or not your stepfather knew the truth remains a mystery, but I suspect, considering how he raised you to believe all women who were cunning and beautiful like your mother would rip your heart out one day, he likely suspected.’
‘It was you .’ Grey’s throat was dry and cracked. Every word felt like a pulled splinter. ‘You made her leave.’
Vittoria tucked up her legs, looking almost childlike, the waxing moonlight smoothing the wrinkles on her face missed by her Botox. ‘Women have a way of understanding each other that men will never truly grasp. I told her I couldn’t guarantee her son’s safety if I ever suspected she and Giovanni were running around behind my back again. I gave her enough money to make a bank robber fall weak at his knees. I told her if she left and never came back, then you would live. I would not let my anger get the better of me.’
‘And my father? He knew none of this?’
Vittoria sighed. ‘I doubt it. All he knew was that your mother wanted more than he could give her. She left in the dead of night while you slept, my money and my promise pushing her out the gates. Your father only ever saw the worst in her. People only see what they want to see. Like you with Giovanni – you saw him as a tyrant who gave you a second chance because he couldn’t risk you handing over Barbarani family secrets to the highest bidder. But he did everything he did to keep you , Greyson, to have his son as part of his dynasty. He still believed I would keep my word and kill you if he told you the truth. He was so hard on you because you were his. Look at how he treated his own sons.’ She laughed again. ‘Honestly, if I had to put money on which of Giovanni’s children would snap and murder him first, I’d have said Tomaso or Luca over Francesca any day.’
Grey couldn’t believe she was able to joke. ‘He didn’t treat me like a son,’ he said, digging his fingers so deep into the chair he could almost feel the Italian leather crack. ‘He didn’t treat any of us like a son. But he sure as shit had more of a heart than you.’
‘What do you know about hearts, Greyson Hawke?’ Vittoria smirked. The memory of Max, gun raised, eyes blazing flickered like a tattered, haunting hologram between them.
I’m sorry. But I do love him.
‘I tried to tell Ms Conrad, in case it was relevant to why my children suddenly had targets on their backs. Gave her all she needed to work it out, but she was too caught up in her feelings she couldn’t see any of him in you. But you do have him, Greyson. You’ve got all of his shadows.’
‘Did you make Max keep the note a secret from me because you knew I’d recognise Frankie’s handwriting, or because you thought I had something to do with the murder?’
Vittoria scrunched her nose, like she was about to scream or laugh. He couldn’t tell anymore.
But he didn’t wait for the answer. He hated Vittoria in that moment, but there was a piece of glass wedged into that hate he couldn’t dislodge. A piece of understanding, of sorrow for her. So when he picked up Giovanni’s glass trophy, some award the Barbarani Sangue had won some lifetime ago, and threw it against the office wall, he was not throwing it because of Vittoria. But the fist he slammed into the photograph of Venice hanging by the door was a different matter. The screaming pain in his hand felt like a first breath of fresh air.
As he kicked the door behind him, shutting out her gleeful, drunken laughs at his rage, he felt his phone buzz in his pocket.
He answered. ‘Not now, Jett—’
‘Grey.’ He would have hung up if it wasn’t for the panic in Jett’s voice. ‘Max is gone.’
‘What do you mean she’s gone? The cops told her to stay with you in the shed until the hearing. The doctor said—’
‘I know, Jesus, why do you think I’m calling? She snuck out a few minutes ago. Her bag’s in the back of Bessy and I saw her looking up directions back to the prison that Libby Johnston’s in this afternoon.’
‘Why didn’t you say anything?’
‘Why do you think?’
‘Where is she now? Where’s Bessy’s key?’
‘You never gave it back after your trip to Perth. I think it’s in your cottage.’