Chapter 13
If there was one thing about the particular life she was leading that Estella was tired of, it was working under horrendous lighting.
Why did shit always have to go down, in the ugliest of places?
The huge, largely empty warehouse she was standing in — hidden in plain sight amongst a bland industrial strip in Melbourne’s inner west — was lit up with overhead fluorescents that were so glaring, cold and white that you could perform surgery in here if you had to.
She just hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
Just behind her, Kenneth shifted foot to foot, and she could feel the rest of her team were restless too.
They were here under the false pretence that this was neutral territory, when the truth was that the warehouse belonged to her dead husband’s cousin’s best friend.
They were in control here, and Estella was glad of that.
Still, the air crackled with tension as her man at the door finally gave the nod and they all straightened up. Show time.
It took another long, excruciating minute before the door at the front corner of the warehouse — the one furthest from the street — burst open.
For a minute, there was nothing to see but a gleaming rectangle of bright morning sunlight.
Then, the figure of a man was shoved hard from behind, falling onto the floor at their feet, wrists bound behind his back, a groan forced from him as he landed. Tyler Grant.
No one moved toward him as he gurgled, hunched in pain, trying to right himself, forehead pressed against the concrete floor of the warehouse.
Bruises bloomed across his face and his torn shirt was bloodstained, but he seemed more or less alive.
The door was still open at his back and so they watched and waited.
When the next man stepped inside, his henchmen behind him, Estella drew herself up tall. Out of her peripheral vision she saw Kenneth spit derisively on the ground.
“What the fuck is this?” Estella gritted her teeth. “These aren’t the terms we agreed on. Your boss can’t even show his face? Didn’t realise Luciano Florelli was a coward as well as a crook.”
The man she addressed stepped forward and kicked Tyler roughly in the abdomen.
Tyler yelled out in pain. Still, just as Estella had instructed, no one moved.
They all recognised the man delivering the blow: Gio Florelli.
Best described as the third-highest ranking member of the Florellis.
An added insult to the damage they’d already inflicted on her dead husband’s nephew.
“You might have pussy-whipped all the men behind you.” Gio ran his eyes over the gathered Grant associates. “But you don’t make the rules where I come from.”
“Spoken like a whiny little bitch,” Estella observed with a shrug. “Your dick would fall off if your mama scolded you. What an embarrassment you must be to her.”
Gio flushed, his jaw going hard.
“Make the trade,” he ordered her, through clenched teeth. “Do it now, before we make you do it.”
Estella stared him down. He was sweating, twitchy, barely holding himself together, which made him dangerous. A joke, but dangerous nonetheless.
“You need more deodorant, Gio,” she told him.
“I can smell you from here. Oh, cut the shit,” she snapped, as one of the Florelli thugs adjacent pulled back his t-shirt so she could see the gun he wore, tucked into the waist of his jeans.
“You think you can shoot your way out of this? That’s what you want?
Mass slaughter in a warehouse in Maribyrnong? Have some fucking class.”
“Make. The. Trade.” Gio seemed to have run out of bargaining points.
Estella glanced behind her, making eye contact with the gagged and bound young woman Kenneth was holding up. The girl couldn’t speak, obviously, but she looked terrified, her eyes beseeching Estella. Estella looked back at Gio. She raised her chin.
“Luciano thinks he can insult me like this? You can go fuck yourself. The deal is off.”
And just like that, all hell broke loose.
After the kerfuffle in the warehouse and the inevitable clean-up that followed, Estella sat in the back of the speeding car feeling rattled.
For years she’d wanted this, to be the one finally in charge and not the pretty side piece who could only guide the action through hints and suggestions, seductive promises and at worst, teary-eyed begging.
She thought of the young woman in the warehouse, her fate in the hands of all these brutal men and, now, those of Estella herself.
She rolled her shoulders back, trying to get the kinks out.
It was better to be in charge than to be a pawn.
But god, the responsibility. Tyler would pull through.
He was young and strong and not anywhere near as stupid as he pretended to be.
Overall, the bloodshed had been worth it.
It had been a win-win, after all. Luciano Florelli had learned a valuable lesson about underestimating her, and she’d kept a hold of the young pawn in their game.
She felt a satisfying chink as another piece in her slow-building puzzle fell into play.
“You alright, boss?” asked Kenneth, peering at her in the rearview mirror as they turned into St George’s Road.
Estella wanted to snap at him. She knew sure as hell he wouldn’t have been asking Mike that, checking in on his feelings like he was a delicate little flower.
His huge knuckles were bloodied and split where he gripped the steering wheel and she noticed for the first time how grey he’d grown around the temples.
She’d seen those eyes go black with unstoppable rage, but right now they were mild and soft, like a goddamned cow in a field.
It struck her, again, both how well they knew each other, and how thoroughly they did not.
All these months on, he still seemed to be on her side. She wondered, for the thousandth time, what he’d do if he knew the greater picture: Estella Grant’s end game. What side would he be on then? Best to keep him in the dark for as long as possible.
“Fuck off,” she said with real heat, and he grinned back at her reflection. “What’s next? Group therapy session? A pep talk? A hug?”
“You don’t need a pep talk,” he said. “You’re all over it. And I’d never hug you. Too scared you’d bite me.”
Estella laughed, balance restored, and he finally shut his mouth, leaving her to her thoughts.
In the silence of the car, she tried to wrangle them into some kind of control.
Too frequently now, in any given quiet moment, it all rushed over her in a filthy tidal wave.
A cascade of schemes, of gun barrels, of shouts and cries for help that would never come.
Mike’s face looming over her, a glint of fury in his eyes, huge fists hanging at his sides.
The inside of the warehouse that morning, so brightly lit that flecks of blood had glowed neon everywhere they’d landed.
“We’re here.”
Estella blinked. She hadn’t even noticed her surrounds, let alone the fact that the car had stopped moving.
“How do I look?”
Kenneth’s eyebrows hit his hairline. He worked his jaw. “Fine?” He tried. “Uh, great. You look… lovely.”
Estella snorted. Kenneth sounded torn between kindly reassurance and a cautious office employee worried for his job.
“Can’t believe your ex-wife put up with you for thirty years,” she told him.
She pulled a lipstick out of her handbag and reapplied it, examining her face up close using her phone camera as a mirror.
Faintly puffy under the eyes — she hadn’t slept well ahead of this morning’s meeting — but otherwise she’d come off rather well compared to some of the other attendees.
She slammed the car door closed behind her and for a moment, she had an almost out of body experience.
The warehouse lights, the scent of blood and sweat, the roars of angry men…
all of it vanished. Instead, as if in a dream, she found herself in a peaceful, tree-lined park, a deep blue summer sky above her head.
And there, sitting waiting for her on the park bench in the heat, her slender throat tilted back to gaze innocently up at the wisps of clouds above, sat Ellie Graham.
Estella felt everything slow down. Goddamned birdsong, the emerald green of a sprinkler-nurtured suburban park in the Melbourne heat, Ellie’s gaze filled with wonder as she daydreamed up at the sky. Warehouse, Gio wet with blood, Tyler screaming. She blinked.
“Hello.” She heard her own voice as if from very far away and watched as the peace in Ellie’s eyes died.
“Hi,” Ellie said tightly. She was dressed in a short linen jumpsuit the colour of autumn leaves, her hair in a loose, messy, chestnut braid and her bare arms and legs so pale it looked as though they’d never seen the sun.
She scrunched her elbows closer to her body as she watched Estella approach, protecting her vital organs.
“What’s that?” she asked suspiciously, at the bundle under Estella’s arm.
“I thought we could have a picnic,” Estella told her.
Ellie’s dark eyes went wide and Estella felt herself dissolve, quite helplessly, into giggles.
Ellie’s shocked face only made her laugh harder.
Because what the hell life was this? She was still stiff-muscled from the violence in the warehouse — it never got normal, literally never — and here she was, what felt like minutes later, inviting a normie to a picnic in the sunshine.
A few seconds later, Ellie cracked too, a small laugh spluttering out her lips, apparently without her consent, because she visibly struggled to hold it together.
“Ooooookay,” she agreed, reluctantly getting to her feet. “A picnic with Estella Grant, that’s not terrifying at all.”
“Oh calm down.” Estella was still smiling. “It’s not like I’d have to invite you somewhere if I wanted you dead. You’d just be dead.”
Ellie visibly glitched, mid-walk, needing to right herself.
“That’s so… reassuring.” She glared sideways at Estella. “I feel so much better now, thank you so much.”
“I’m glad to hear it. That little spot there, under the trees?”
“Um, sure. Yeah.”
They reached the place Estella had pointed to, where the short bright grass was thick and lush and perfectly shaded from the heat of the day between two giant oak trees.
She unrolled the picnic blanket from under her arm, and Ellie was too polite not to help her spread it out.
Estella placed the bakery box she barely remembered detouring for that morning down on the centre of the blanket, but when Ellie gingerly went to sit down, Estella held up a hand to stop her.
She crooked her finger, until Ellie hesitantly took a step closer.
“You’re here to get to know me,” Estella reminded her, and Ellie nodded. “To hear all my secrets?”
“I guess so?” Ellie’s hand came up to scratch the back of her neck, as if uncertain she really wanted to hear them at all.
“Then you know I’d be extremely dumb not to check you’re not wearing a wire, right?” Estella warned her. Ellie’s mouth dropped open.
“A wire? I’m an actor not a police detective!”
“I’m under active investigation,” Estella reminded her.
Slowly she was coming back to herself, the low hum of unreality starting to dissipate.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” she said, stepping closer and watching as Ellie actually twitched.
It struck her as bizarre that Eloise Silver, a woman who impersonated other people’s emotions for a living, was entirely incapable of hiding her own.
What would it be like to walk around like that?
It was absurd. So vulnerable she might as well be naked.
That was an ill-timed thought, she realised belatedly, as she reached out for Ellie, meeting her eyes to gain her begrudging nod of consent, before she ran her hands briskly over the woman’s shoulders.
She brushed down over her back, feeling nothing beneath the soft linen but the surprising heat of her skin and the straps of her bra, then did the same over her chest, keeping her fingers light and impersonal as she ran them down her sternum and just below her breasts.
Ellie stayed ram-rod straight, her eyes fixed fiercely over Estella’s shoulder.
Estella finished with a quick pat down of her abdomen.
Nothing there but Ellie’s body and the fresh green scent of her perfume reaching Estella’s nostrils.
She pulled back with a nod and saw that Ellie’s face and neck were flushed bright pink and she tried not to smirk.
Again, Ellie’s emotions were so close to the surface it felt shocking to witness.
Of course Estella made this woman uncomfortable, she was a fucking mobster.
And yet this same anxious woman had said yes to embodying Estella Grant on screen and had gone so far in seeking her out as to stalk her in the street.
What an interesting conundrum Eloise Silver was.
“Are you done?” Ellie snapped, clearly trying to hide her discombobulation.
“Please,” said Estella pleasantly, gesturing to the picnic blanket.
Ellie paused to slip out of her sandals before she stepped on it and at that, Estella slid right out of the moment again.
It was so odd to be around sweetness after the insanity of her life this morning.
Ellie was fearful of her — despite the occasional snapback — but she couldn’t seem to help being thoughtful amongst it all.
Something about those pale bare feet seemed so defenceless that Estella felt a little off-kilter.
Her breath escaped her in a deep sigh as she sank down next to Ellie on the blanket.
She felt those big dark eyes on her as she opened the cardboard carton to a small selection of Italian pastries.
“So,” she said, her fingers full of ricotta cannoli.
When had she last eaten? Her brain jarred as she looked at her own discarded heels in the grass next to the rug.
Bright red blood was smeared on the bottom of one of the soles.
She blinked and reached out with her bare toe to flick the shoe back over, wondering if Ellie had noticed it. “Where do you want to start?”